June 20th, 2026 - Oil Prices Down, What's Next?

Steve Van Wie & Joey Loss discuss the impact of global oil markets on the economy, while touching on topics like the strategic reserve and financial fraud. They offer insights into the EU’s brewing trade tensions with China. The hosts encourage listeners to embrace homeownership for wealth accumulation and urge vigilance against fraud.

Transcript

Steven Van Wie 0:00

It's Saturday morning, it's 10 o'clock. This is Van We Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. A

Joey Loss 0:06

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 0:08

And Adam is away this week and will return with me next week, at least through telepathy, as I call it. It's actually telephone, but he's. In other words, he'll be here in spirit rather than in body. And then come July, everybody's back at the regular schedule and we start out this summer. Actually, tomorrow is the solstice. 

Joey Loss 0:35

Oh, that's right.

Steven Van Wie 0:36

Yeah, that first day of summer. So if it feels warmer tomorrow, you know, why that should do it. All right, I. I digress. To all the regulars, I want to welcome everybody back. You know, say it. Every time I think about it. You keep listening, we'll keep talking. So tell your friends and never miss an episode. If you have to, you can pick it up later on the. On our website or any place that you can get your podcasts. And Joey's podcast is always available, too. And what, what is it called?

Joey Loss 1:08

It's called Wealth Unplugged. And so if you look up the Van Wie Financial Hour or Wealth Unplugged, you'll find both of those podcasts.

Steven Van Wie 1:15

Okay, very good. Tell everybody this all the time, but, you know, there's some things you just gotta do. Only about 5% of the people who listen to a radio show will ever call in, but the show is much better when people call in, so I encourage everyone to just take a shot at it. I promise you, we're not ever nasty to people. Well, one person, but he won't be calling anymore.

Joey Loss 1:45

He also asked for it.

Steven Van Wie 1:47

True. And if you're new to the show, you should try to stick around for the whole hour and probably learn something. We will, as usual, be going over a lot of things because there's so many things going on. The world has just been a very exciting place lately.

Joey Loss 2:04

Yeah, I mean, every week the through line is always oil. But what's going on behind that is

Steven Van Wie 2:09

It can be overlaid with soccer and it can be overlaid with all kinds of things. Can be overlaid with tourism. Got a few things to say about that, too. And generally speaking, the market is just in a turmoil with the capital V stands for. For volatility lately. And I don't see that going anywhere. We've got 60 days to deal with the Iranian thing, and I think anybody who's really optimistic probably hasn't been paying attention to Iran. But we're following the rules. After all, we made them and trump will take them right down to the minute. And I assume that if they don't play ball, he'll do exactly what he said. We'll just drop bombs right on their heads. And if that's what it takes, we'll see. Never know. Anyway, it has impacted the market, but the market is a very resilient thing and we managed to close out another good week and things are just kind of generally humming along and I'll let Joey do the explaining on it.

Joey Loss 3:12

Yeah, so it was a short trading week and and as I said, the one story that ran through most of it remains Oil markets were closed on Friday, so the S and P added just under a percent on the week through Thursday. The Dow added 3/4 of a point and the Russell 2000 small caps index was up a bit over 1%. The standout performer was the Nasdaq 100, up about 2 1/3 percentage on a furious semiconductor and memory rally. Intel jumped more than 10% in a single session and Micron jumped nearly 9. That was on Thursday. Emerging markets led the week globally, up close to 5%. And if we step back and take a year to date look, we can see that the leadership is concentrated. The NASDAQ 100 is up about 20%. Emerging markets now up 30%. That's incredible. And the broad S and P is up just under 10. Bitcoin remains a lone laggard, down nearly 28% on the year. Steve is smiling.

Steven Van Wie 4:09

I'm sorry, I can't get emotional about that.

Joey Loss 4:12

And then there's crude oil. So oil fell somewhere between 8 and 12% this week as progress toward an Iran deal drained the war premium out of the market. Related Relatedly, energy was the worst performing sector off over 6%. Even after the sell off, WTI, which is the US crude measurement, is still up about 34% on the year. That figure remains the key to understanding the inflation numbers I'm about to go through. So the government's May CPI released June 10, came out at about 4.2% year over year. This is the hottest reading since April 2023 and the third consecutive month of acceleration. Core inflation was running at 2.9%. The composition explains almost everything. Energy prices were up 23 and a half percent year over year and gasoline up 40 and a half percent. That is the Iran shock. Working through the data, and it accounts for the bulk of that headline number. This is where truflation is worth a second look. Truflation's real time index, built from live gas prices and millions of daily data points has been running well below that official headline this spring, currently showing 1.8% headline inflation versus the government's 4.2%. Obviously that's a big difference and that difference comes down to timing. The official basket lags by design while truflation reflects gasoline roll down in close to real time with daily updates. So if we turn to the Fed, this was Kevin Warsh's first meeting in the chair and he set a hawkish hands off tone to the current situation and made clear that he intends to de emphasize forward guidance, which I think is interesting. Steve, I wanna know your thoughts on that after the wrap. But markets took this as a step away from rate cuts and the probability distributions for September and December both shifted toward fewer cuts. The 10 year treasury yield still fell on the week slipping below 4.5%. And that move mattered more than the Fed's tone for one corner of the market in particular, and that corner of the market is housing. Housing starts cratered more than 15% in May at 253,000 miss versus expectations. And this tied for the largest miss in over 25 years with multifamily starts collapsing 40%. Homebuilder stocks didn't seem to care. They rallied anyway. This portion of the market has been trading on the direction of rates rather than the housing data itself and the downward movement in long term rates gave those stocks a boost. And Steve and I and Adam have talked a lot about the challenges of consumer sentiment surveys in recent years and how they're struggling to give us anything useful because the answers seem to sway to the the extremes along party lines and our tendency to devalue those surveys seems prudent today. As May retail sales rose 0.09 10 of a percent, up nearly 7% year over year in the strongest inflated adjusted growth since February of 22. Spending is running well ahead of what the downbeat sentiment surveys would suggest. At the same time, two cyclical groups, financials and industrials, pushed more than three standard deviations above their 50 day moving averages. So historically readings that extreme tend to be soft over the next few weeks, but consistently positive 6 to 12 months out. And capping the week's appetite for growth and momentum. SpaceX public for all of seven days became the fifth largest company in America at roughly $2.8 trillion on only 46 billion in revenue. So in summary, the investors this week paid up for rate sensitivity, for momentum and for a consumer who keeps on spending while stepping back from energy and commodity names that have led. While the Iran conflict was escalating this Year.

Steven Van Wie 7:44

You know, a year ago, gas was 350, and just this week it came back under 4. We're not that far away from just going back to where we started.

Joey Loss 7:53

It feels that way, especially if we see a real deal kind of come together over the next 60 days.

Steven Van Wie 8:00

Yeah. You gonna trust it?

Joey Loss 8:02

We'll see. I don't think anybody trusts any side, honestly, so we'll just have to see what happens. But people live with the gas prices, and if the gas prices are cool, then, yeah, that's fine.

Steven Van Wie 8:13

One of the problems in here, one of the. One of the known unknowns, is the situation with Hezbollah because Israel's not a party to it. Hezbollah is not a party to it. 

Joey Loss 8:24

Right.

Steven Van Wie 8:25

But they are a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran who is party to it. The problem is, and this is the reason why our framers would not even consider a theocracy, they do not make all of their decisions based on rational things. They make a lot of them on. On the basis of the Quran. And it's not nice to Americans. So, yeah, it's just the same old. Hands up. What's going to happen? I don't know. We got to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Joey Loss 8:59

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 9:00

And we will get to the phone in just one moment. But I first have to introduce the trivia question brought to you as usual by Paul Lloyd at First Coast Alarm. You can call Paul at 904-636-7888. Everybody is pretty well aware of. Of the American dream home ownership and that it's a good way for people to improve their own financial situations. There was a very recent study that came to a conclusion that I think is kind of an eye opener. Simply put, the net worth of homeowners. Well, let's put it this way. The net worth of households who own their home is how many times greater than the households who do not own a home. So how many times? And I've got it rounded off to a single number, and I'll say it's between a 1 and 100. And I'm not going to give you anything else because it's too early in the show. All right, we're going to go to the phone and talk to Marshall.

Marshall 10:12

Gentlemen, let me try to set one into your parameters to start off with. 

Steven Van Wie 10:15

Shoot.

Marshall 10:17

How about 13?

Steven Van Wie 10:20

Well, that is an interesting number, but it's not the answer. It's too low.

Marshall 10:27

Okay.

Steven Van Wie 10:28

But thank you. I like having a beginning point. Yep, you got it. What's happened?

Marshall 10:32

My question for y' all is about the supply chain of oil. You know, in this country, we have people who own land that they have rights to the oil and it's coming out, and we've got people who produce it out of that and put it into some form of transportation to get it either to a refinery or a ship to take it elsewhere.

Marshall 10:58

My question is about all the different parties in that as the price of a barrel of oil goes up, do each of them participate in. In that going up, and then hopefully as it comes down, do each of them participate as it's going down? And would that be free market?

Steven Van Wie 11:21

I will make one comment and then I'm going to ask Joey. But my comment is the people who transport oil don't really care what the price is. They care weight per mile, gallon per mile, however you want to put it. Now, there might be some variable cost because even oil, when it's moved in the right manner, requires oil, diesel fuel or whatever. So there might be some little variations, but in general, in fact, all the years I've been doing this, I have liked owning parts of the energy sector that don't depend on the price, the pipeline people and that kind of thing. And they've had real nice steady returns and real nice steady dividends. But the other ones, the producers and so on, I. I'm not real sure. And like I said, I'm gonna just let Joey take a hit on this one after I remind people of one thing. The Beverly Hillbillies owned rights on their land. Remember, they were shooting at some food, and up come from the ground come bubbling crude. Yeah, you got to be a certain age. Anyway. Joey, what do you think?

Joey Loss 12:33

Generally, the market is efficient, and so the benchmarks for oil costs move together. But you do see moments where that's untrue. And so the storyline behind that is when volume is high, everybody's trading freely, Things are moving. The disparity of the price of a barrel of oil that comes out of Texas is not that different than if it comes from Saudi Arabia. And that's because there's markets everywhere for that barrel. But as that industry becomes more segmented, then the geographic location can put a premium or a discount on that barrel of oil. It becomes more significant. So that's why you'll see disparity between the Brent Crude Index, which is the international oil measure of price, and the wti, which is the US Index. But generally, they move Together.

Steven Van Wie 13:22

There are quality differences too.

Joey Loss 13:24

Definitely quality differences. But just speaking agnostically about the whole market, that's generally true.

Marshall 13:32

And I understand fracking is a much more expensive way to get oil out of the ground. So I thought, I remember hearing at some point in time that once the price of a barrel gets below a certain level, the frackers have to slow to finally stop producing because it then costs them money to produce.

Steven Van Wie 13:53

Same thing with the sand oil in Canada. It has a break even point and they'll just stop when the market price isn't right. But you know, there's another old saying that comes to mind when we talk about things like this and says the cure for high oil prices is high oil prices. The cure for low oil prices is low oil prices. And that's just about consumer behavior, which a lot of I guess so called intelligent people don't seem to understand real well all the time, but it absolutely works. More people drive more miles when it's cheap.

Marshall 14:32

This gets to the bottom of my question. The economic activity because of United States production of oil and also I'm sure we're taking a little bit off the top of the Venezuelan oil has got to be tremendous impact on that whole segment of our economy. And even if it starts dropping, aren't they still going to be picking up their pieces?

Steven Van Wie 15:05

And I'm going to go with yes, especially because of policy. It's the policy of this administration is that we dominate the world in production. And I don't think that's going to stop at least in the next two and a half years and probably way beyond that if we, what is it today, about 74 or something like that. And yeah, if it drops down to, let's say 60, I don't think you're going to see anything happen except price at the pump gets better, people drive more and it increases economic activity. So I'm not sure that there's going to be a tremendous impact from price changes, but there will always be something at the margins that changes.

Marshall 15:55

Yeah, well, as a taxpayer, I'm anxiously awaiting the final results when we refill the strategic reserve with very cheap oil after having used it at a very expensive price. Chucky Schumer, that's going to be an interesting number.

Steven Van Wie 16:12

Yep. In the first, in the first Trump administration, Chuck Schumer absolutely vetoed Trump's attempt to fill what was empty in the reserve at 28 bucks a barrel. You wouldn't let him buy it. And now we're going to have to replenish it at. I would Say it'll start to get triggered pretty soon. So maybe we'll be paying between 65 and 70 to do what we could have done for 28. And that's just an aside. It's not going to change any current policy. You know what?

Marshall 16:43

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 16:44

When you get politicians involved, what do you expect? Nothing. 

Marshall 16:49

I agree. I agree.

Steven Van Wie 16:50

Yeah. Nothing. So. 

Marshall 16:53

Well, thank you, gentlemen.

Steven Van Wie 16:54

Well, always fun. I love talking to you and listening to the good questions. You always make us think. So we. We can pass that along and turn it back at you, I hope, and everybody has. 

Marshall 17:04

All righty.

Joey Loss 17:05

Thanks, Marshall.

Steven Van Wie 17:06

Take care.

Marshall 17:06

Happy Father's Day. 

Steven Van Wie 17:07

Thank you. You too.

Joey Loss 17:08

Thank you. You too. Yeah, that's it. You know, it'll probably be. I think people should expect that oil prices, while they might tame down a little bit, won't get back to the normal we saw pre war for a while. Because everybody's got to refill strategic reserves. Even if every barrel of oil is on the open market tomorrow, it's going to take time.

Steven Van Wie 17:25

Yeah. And the strait is not really open and it's not really going to be open until those mines are removed. And we are not the ones that are going to do that.

Joey Loss 17:37

Just for scale. I looked this up using Claude while Marshall was asking this question. Roughly 54 supertankers, each carrying 1.5 million barrels, were waiting inside the Gulf right now. And they're not going to all come out at once. Even if they did, it wouldn't, you know, it's just going to slowly start fixing the problem.

Steven Van Wie 17:56

If you'll excuse the expression. Oil has a long pipeline. Yeah.

Joey Loss 18:00

Yeah. That's close to a full month of total U.S. crude imports.

Steven Van Wie 18:04

Yeah. And there's. There are so many different blends, I guess could say, for instance in California, the California summer blend. There are almost no refineries that can make it, so they're. They're going to have a backup. I can't begin to imagine how long it's going to take to get a full supply back into California. But it's like that in other places, too. And of course, the inputs. If you're using Venezuelan oil, for instance, it's very dirty. If you're using West Texas crude, it's very clean. Different purveyors and different providers both. For instance, if you're, if you're doing diesel, you're not going to spend the top dollar for the top grade on diesel. So even when you're net exporter as we are, we still import because we need X amount of this type and X amount of that type and we don't have it and they need that. So there's always trading going on. You can't, you can't isolate yourself from the world oil market even if you wanted to. And I can't imagine why you would want to.

Joey Loss 19:13

Right.

Steven Van Wie 19:15

We could get along without anybody else if they all start playing nasty, but they wouldn't like the results and neither would we. The practical, practicality of a market as big as that says everybody's got to play fair. I don't know if that answers the question. I don't even know if it was my, my question. It's just a, it's a complicated thing that I would rather not have to think about. And unfortunately, for the last while, we've all had to think about it.

Joey Loss 19:47

Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 19:48

When you, when you're going out to fill your tank, better figure that's going to take an awfully big bill out of your wallet. And for a lot of people who are living on the edge, just solidly can't afford it. It's a shame, but it's true. Well, more fun things after the break, hopefully. And Joey's got. What did you tell me?

Joey Loss 20:13

Got EU. EU trying to figure out if they're going to have a trade war with China. Interesting.

Steven Van Wie 20:17

Oh, yeah. Things are interesting enough out there. When you throw in the Chinese effect now, you really get interesting because they have so much sway over so many other areas, countries, administrations and so on. So more to talk about. And I've got several other things, too. So don't go anywhere. We'll take a short break, get some bills paid. Then we're going to come back and, and talk about all kinds of fun things. All right. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. We'll see in a minute. Don't leave. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Joey Loss 20:53

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 20:54

I remind Everybody, lines are open. 904222. 8255. Where you can take a shot at the. Everybody knows that homeowners generally accumulate more wealth than non homeowners. So in a recent study, what number of times more wealth do the households that own their home have over the households that don't? And we know that it's over 30, 13 times. You got a base, but you don't. Well, you got a ceiling of 100. I guess I gave you that one. All right, Joe. Joe's got an interesting little thing that's going on in the world that involves a couple of major players and I'm not Sure. What the exact topic is, but there's only one way to find out. Yeah, by listening to him.

Joey Loss 21:47

So this, this is pretty interesting because obviously last year's tariff, you know, issue was largely focused on China, and people had disagreements about the severity of China's issues and whether what we were doing was the right thing or not. Still not a comment on that. But this is interesting because Europe is now having the same problem. And it seems like because the United States is not standing between them anymore, they're facing this problem for themselves. So Europe is running out of patience with China. The Wall Street Journal reports EU leaders are pushing for new powers to hit back at a flood of Chinese exports, hammering their industries and openly weighing whether they're finally ready for a trade war with Beijing. The EU's trade deficit with China hit a record 360 billion euros last year, and it's on pace for nearly 400 billion this year. The complaint is a familiar one. Heavy state subsidies and a cheap currency that lets Chinese goods undercut European producers. One European diplomat did not mince words, calling it an economic attack on Europe. And it's not only about trade. The bloc is increasingly wary of Beijing's support for Russia's war in Ukraine. Officially, any new measures would be country agnostic, of course, usable against any trading partners. But privately, everybody knows the target is China. Leading the charge is Francis Macron, who wants new tools that mirror America's Section 301, the same law Washington uses to impose tariffs for unfair trade practices. And the clearest example of this is the shift in Germany, where machine makers who spent decades cashing in on Chinese demand are now losing market share inside China while Chinese rivals flood their home market. And so when I was looking through the whole article, it was talking about how China's doing this thing where they would just look at an industry, wait for a moment of weakness, and just flood it, Just flood it with crappy inventory and. And it would take out all these makers because they couldn't make payroll, because people weren't buying anything.

Steven Van Wie 23:42

And Chinese economy is predicated on overproducing.

Joey Loss 23:47

Right. It was just bad faith trade. I mean, there's. And I think that's the big gripe, and Europe's feeling it now and they want to do something about it. This is interesting. I mean, it's funny for all the criticism that we got last year, and for them to be mirroring America's Section 301, which was the big weapon of the of 2025. 

Steven Van Wie 24:06

You won't hear that on Ms. Now. 

Joey Loss 24:08

Right. 

Steven Van Wie 24:09

All right, that's interesting because it brings me right back into what I wanted to talk about. Do you know what Triffin's Dilemma is? 

Joey Loss 24:17

I don't.

Steven Van Wie 24:18

Most people don't. I certainly didn't do yesterday. Triffin's Dilemma is a result of the dollar being the reserve currency. For those of you who don't know, that means international trade is, is mostly done based on the dollar that was established in the Bretton woods Conference in 1944, named after Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where it was held, and the long term effects of that currency. The dollar, of course, for us. And we all know that other people are trying to dethrone the currency they're working on, have been for a long time with the goals of steady currency value and full employment. The Fed is charged with the concepts that seem to conflict with one another, which I have been talking about on this program for years. In fact, on this one, and going all the way back to my previous gig on that show, I've been talking about the contradictory goals of the Fed and why anyone would take that job. It's just an absolute mystery to me. But Triffin, he, he had a theory about this whole thing. He said in order to have a reserve currency, you have to have a big supply of that currency, dollars. So we started printing dollars, lots and lots and lots of them. Well, what's the upshot of printing so many dollars? Each one's worth a little less, which is why since the Fed was started, the dollar's lost about 96% of its value. So how do you operate as a reserve currency? Well, you have to spread those dollars all over the world. So the best way, he says the easiest way, is to just operate at a tremendous trade deficit with all the countries around the world. So let's pick China as they're big. We, we have a trade deficit with China, meaning we send them billions more dollars than they send us. So we pay for the imports with our dollars, they pay for our exports with their yuan, and that leaves a big pile of dollars there and in every other country. But what do we, how do we keep stability? And now used to be you were constrained at least by the number of printing presses you had and how much paper and ink. Now it's a computer. You press a button and you make dollars just like that. How can they stabilize the dollar and hence stabilize employment at the Fed under these circumstances? And I say that is the dilemma which Triffin was talking about. Can it be done? I don't think anybody knows.

Joey Loss 27:10

Yeah, that's A very interesting framing. I have not heard that particularly the deficit piece is the weapon for spreading the dollar. But it does make sense.

Steven Van Wie 27:18

Yeah. Yeah, I read it in context, something I was studying up on yesterday. And I just, I went. Actually used AI for this and was a simple question, what is Triffin's Dilemma? And it came back. I've read that about 10 times. Man, it's no wonder we're screwed up. I don't see any way.

Joey Loss 27:38

But it's effective. Think about it. If you're China and you're sitting on, you know, whatever, 20 trillion, or I'm just making up numbers, but that's what's literally in the coffers. But you don't want to necessarily move away from it because it's only got value so long as you agree that it has value.

Steven Van Wie 27:53

Do you know what sdr are? Special Drawing Rights. That is kind of an alternative trade method where they're not backed by the dollar, they're backed by a basket of other currencies that include the yuan, the dollar, and there's a Swiss franc, I think like that, probably pound sterling. And a lot of people are trying to ace us out as the reserve currency. This is one step toward it. Now, is that a good idea or not? Assign me one side of the debate team and I'll, I'll support it. 

Joey Loss 28:28

Right.

Steven Van Wie 28:29

But I could go either way on it. And we've done this since 1944 and we're, you know, it's working, transactions are getting done and all that, but our dollars just becoming useless. And I listened to somebody like Steve Forbes and he makes a lot of sense. He seems kind of gruff sometimes when he says the only acceptable rate of inflation is zero. Well, I don't necessarily agree with that, but he's a smart guy and I would never get in an argument with him. That's for darn sure. And people like that. They support the concept of a reserve currency because that's how we do it. But they want more constraints on it. I guess it's not. I know a lot of economics. I've got a minor in economics. I've been studying economics for 50 years or so. But I don't know a lot about this kind of stuff. And I'm, I'd be the first one to admit it to anybody. I'm just not that at home talking about world currencies and so on. But I do know that there is a cabal out there that really wants to change that system for sure.

Joey Loss 29:44

BRICS is the name, right? You got Brazil Russia, India, India, China. What's the S?

Steven Van Wie 29:53

Um, Steve.

Joey Loss 29:56

Yeah, there you go.

Steven Van Wie 29:58

I don't know or so what? Maybe. What are you going to do about it?

Joey Loss 30:00

Yeah. It'll come to me later. In the middle of another topic.

Steven Van Wie 30:05

Yeah, enough of that one. If I knew enough, I could go on and on, but I don't. So is this another article that I was reading because of this price stability? How can you have stable prices when you keep printing dollars? Don't know. One guy said, here, explain that to me like I'm five. You know, one of my oldest expressions is if I can't explain it to a 12 year old in five minutes, then it's not going to be in my portfolio, period. I like to know what things are. I don't think anybody can truly explain this whole problem. So we'll see where it goes. They're not going to call us and ask our opinion on this. It's the one thing I'm absolutely sure. Yeah, and let's see. Got a couple minutes here. Financial fraud is accelerating. I don't think there's a soul out there who would say. Really? Of course it is. Look at the methods people have now pulling off fraudulent things. It's incredible. And there are thousands of people out there that just live to pull off their next little scam. How bad is it? 62% of Americans have encountered fraud or know someone who has. That is a lot of people. The primary delivery channels for fraud are text messages, email and phone calls. Here's the one I don't like. Most fraud is never reported. I don't know how we're going to fix it if you don't talk about it. This was done by a group that we all know well, the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. Since both Joey and I are CFPs, we watch them and kind of with interest figure out what's going on. And they had a research paper they just wrote says don't fall for it. Guarding against financial fraud. And it was just released, I think, let's see, 55% of respondents expect themselves or somebody they know to at least be tempted by a financial fraud in the next 12 months. Only 37% of people are, excuse me, 29% of people are sure that they could avoid it much more on the other side. We've got to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie. 

Joey Loss 32:41

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 32:42

And I remind everybody that lines are open. 904-222-8255. Trivia question is out there. How many times more wealth do homeowners accumulate versus non homeowners over their lifetime? And we know it's more than 13 times. All right. The CFP board study shows an increase in fraud. I think everybody's pretty much aware of the term phishing. When it's spelled with a P H I S H I N G. That means the initial contact came through email, social media, telephone, something like that. There's a new one now. It's called spishing. S M I S H I N G. That simply stands for phishing schemes that come through sms, which is your text messages. So phishing and smishing and imposter scams are the most common fraud types. You know, the imposter scams can be the people who troll around for old people and bilk them out of money and convince them that they're the greatest thing on earth. We've had some experience with that too, unfortunately. But a lot of people are afraid to even report it because they feel like they let themselves and their families down. They should have been smarter. It doesn't help people. If you've made a mistake, admit it. Bring it to the attention of people. I read I don't know how many articles a month about people who were caught who were doing these fraudulent things. Most of them get caught because somebody reported it. Just you swallow your pride and get out there and do it. Here's something interesting. Americans age 45 and younger are significantly more confident than their older peers in their original fraud detection abilities. They lose money to fraud at higher rates, however, 32% to 20% and report greater exposure to investment scams. 29% versus 14. So you young whippersnappers that believe you know everything should read this study.

Joey Loss 34:59

I thought that was heading in the right direction. Some home team points there, but not necessary. Got me in the second half.

Steven Van Wie 35:06

You know, I got a story for everything, but I've told this one a couple times. I got a phone call this few years ago now at night from a bank and we had a landline and it had caller id. I don't if it's a bank or out of town or something. I don't pick it up. So nothing became of it for a little while. The next day I got a phone call from Vystar Credit Union, which is where we do our normal stuff. And they started out. I'm going to talk about this big check you wrote to the construction company. Dead silence on both ends. Big check. Construction company? No, we had a. We had always had a line of credit. One of my cardinal rules was, have more credit than you're ever going to need. And we hadn't used it. We paid off our credit line a long time ago and kept. Kept it open but didn't use it. So when I say credit line, I mean a big one. And it was hundreds of thousands of dollars written on a check. That was our checking, our numbers, the whole thing. It was check number 001. And the interesting thing about it, the signature on the check looked pretty good. Not quite perfect, but pretty good. Someone had to practice to get my signature that close. But he printed all the information on the check. I have never printed a check in my life, ever. My father did, but I didn't. So we got talking for a while, and they. They thought, of course, like I did, that it was some kind of fraud. And they said, well, do you happen to have your check number 001? I said, sure. Ran out and got the checkbook, and first number it is 001. Everything else lines up perfectly. So it was obvious what was happening. Come to find out, there had been an employee of Vystar who had, since, I think, moved to Charlotte. And while he was at Vystar, he was looking at unused credit lines and practicing signatures. And he did this to several people. And I don't know for sure today if he's breathing fresh air or if there are some kind of blockages, like iron bars, but I think maybe he went away for a while.

Joey Loss 37:37

It seems felonious to me.

Steven Van Wie 37:40

Yeah, they wouldn't. They wouldn't tell me, privacy rules being what they are, but I did. They did. They were kind enough, at my request, to tell me that they got him. Yeah, that's what I really liked.

Joey Loss 37:52

Well, I'm glad they handled it well.

Steven Van Wie  37:53

Yeah. I have nothing to say. Bad at all. But things that you should remember. The IRS will not call you. The IRS will not send you a text. The IRS will not send you an email. They will send you a letter in your mailbox. Initial contacts made by federal agencies, Social Security, Medicare, irs, whatever. They are not coming to your electronics in any way, shape, or form. Ignore them. Report them if you want to, but don't click on anything and don't respond to anything. You can't say this often enough or sternly enough. You're getting scammed. Period. Now, here's something also that I wanted to bring up. Six in 10 identity crimes begin with a new account. Someone opens an account in your name. And it's not that hard. It turns out it's now the leading form of identity misuse. And there is a, called a theft resource center that can help you. Credit cards, things like that, they'll open, but they'll use a new address. They'll get all your information which most of which you can find online about anybody if you want to. And they will take that and they'll develop a enough about you that you can get a credit card or something like that. And they might put a $3 charge on it and then it comes to their, their alternate address and they pay it, things are good. Then they might do a ten dollar charge the next month and maybe a hundred after that. And then they go for it and they'll max out the card and never see them again.

Joey Loss 39:45

I've seen this happen on. We had a target account like at our house and somebody stole it. The login, it must have been part of some hack somewhere. And they bought the credentials and they used them. The guy ordered like six pairs of shorts to his house. It was the strangest crime. I was like, what? You sent shorts to your house? Like, and I called the local police department to the address he sent them to and they handled it. But I was just like, this is the dumbest criminal in America. All for a pair of shorts.

Steven Van Wie  40:17

So it's a contest that we need to.

Joey Loss 40:20

It was hilarious like that day, like that's how unimpacted we were. We're just like, this is an idiot. This is awesome. I'm gonna call the police.

Steven Van Wie  40:28

You know what the Darwin Awards are? Anyway, the, the number one thing is that there's a new account of some sort. And a lot of them are, are credit card accounts, but they don't have to be. They can be bank accounts and so on. So save all of your records for sure. And when you can get it done. But one thing nobody thinks of actually there's two things. That person who's taken your identity and is trying to steal your finances is sometimes your divorced spouse who has more of your personal information than your divorced spouse. Yeah.

Joey Loss 41:06

They'll know the security question answers probably better than most.

Steven Van Wie  41:09

Yep. This is becoming a big thing apparently in the big divorce world. So if you, if you start to think that something's wrong, find that out for sure. Meanwhile, what do you do? Freeze all four credit bureaus. Put a freeze on your credit at Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and Innovus. That's the one. Nobody knows about. Get that. It's a start. It won't do everything, but it's a start. A credit freeze block blocks asset to your access to your credit files. We know that there are, there are ways you can add a fraud alert to that. So when, when somebody tries to do something, they notify you. You do the same thing as with your home title, which is at the register of deeds in the county in which you live. It doesn't take money to do all this stuff. It takes a little bit of time and imagine what you're saving also.

Joey Loss 42:09

I have a quick note on that because it's something that has just their experience. If you don't have an SSA.gov login and you're thinking about freezing your credit, create that login first because those are weirdly, they're connected and you're gonna have a hard time. 

Steven Van Wie  42:24

That's great advice.

Joey Loss 42:25

And hold on to your pins. They're each one of those bureaus is going to give you a pin. You need that number.

Steven Van Wie 42:29

Speaking of pins, while you're up, get an IRS identity pin.

Joey Loss 42:34

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 42:36

The first state that was able to get them was Florida. There were like three of us that got them. This goes back years now. Anybody can get one now, but IRS won't give you anything, including a refund unless you give them your pin. And if your identity is stolen, they're not going to have that. So these are just things. I know it takes a few minutes. A lot of people do it when they've got a day off. Like yesterday on Juneteenth. I, I did a lot of stuff yesterday just because there wasn't much going on. And I have already had these things, a lot of them, but I changed a few passwords yesterday and stuff like that. Maintain your own house, so to speak, by being sure that nobody's going to steal your stuff there. They're on it. They're on it everywhere you look. All right. Homeowners, families that have homes accumulate 38 times more wealth than non homeowners. Isn't that interesting?

Joey Loss 43:41

It's interesting. I mean, it speaks to the power of homeownership, but it also speaks to the staggering absence of other assets. For most Americans, that's a very big takeaway. I think that's honestly the bigger takeaway for me.

Steven Van Wie 43:51

I did a personal study on it over the weekend and for an average home owned for 15 years, the amount of appreciation, which is about double it was 21% due to the principal payments you made and 79% due to just pure old appreciation. That's free money on the table, people, as soon as you buy the house. So I can't encourage anybody enough to do that. It's been fun. And we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening. And tell your friends. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour.