August 1st, 2026 - Whiplash on Wall Street

Three financial pros dive into a wild week on Wall Street, unpacking whiplash-inducing Fed-driven volatility, hedge fund blowups, and big tech’s evolving role in AI—especially Apple’s surprising resurgence. They pivot from markets to money-smarts for everyday listeners, tackling topics like home-title fraud scares, squatter laws, life expectancy and retirement planning, and why umbrella insurance beats flashy “protection” products. Along the way, they mix in sharp takes on immigration, jobs, Jeff Bezos’ mind‑boggling hourly income, and tax policy changes that could reshape what homeowners keep when they sell.

Transcript

Steven Van Wie 0:01

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

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey 0:07

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 0:08

Together again on another beautiful, warm Saturday morning, but it is August, so what do you expect, right? Anyway, um, lots going on to say the least. I feel like I say that every week and I feel like I mean it every week and then You think it just can't get any busier than last week. And guess what? It was weird out there this week. It's my opinion. But first, I got to welcome all the regulars. You know, we keep talking, you keep listening. That's a great relationship that we hope to go on for a long, long time. So if you're new to the show, you can become one of those regulars by simply remembering what I always say at the beginning. It's Saturday morning, it's 10 o'clock, and this is the Van Leuwen Financial Hour. I've been doing that for a long time because I want everybody to think in those terms. It'll remind you not to miss the show. And if you do, you can always go to our website at scribuswealth.com

Steven Van Wie 1:08

and pick it up or podcasts. You guys know all of that stuff. Never a reason not to hear the show eventually. So, I'm not gonna mess around too much except to say lines are open,

Steven Van Wie 1:25

904-222-8255. 'Cause I got a feeling Adam's got a lot to say about the market this week and I'm gonna let him jump right on it.

Adam Van Wie 1:31

Yep, that I do. So our theory about the Fed weeks was once again proven right. And if you don't know that theory, we talk about it every so often. Nope. Our theory is that there's always or almost always, there has been a few exceptions, but not many, there is almost always a big up day and a big down day in the market whenever the Fed comes to a rate decision. And this week was certainly no exception. We saw a huge down day after the announcement. It was funny because they announced a neutral policy, so no hike, no cut, and the market immediately went up. And it was, it had been a down, the market had been down all day. And they announced that, the market went up, and then it just reversed hard and ended up further down than it was prior to the announcement. And it was actually down over 1,000 points. So when you hear about the Dow dropping 1,000 points in a day, you can't figure that it's gonna be a positive week, right? Well, hold on. The market then had a big up day on Thursday and then added a little bit on Friday too. Um, the net result was that the Dow and the S&P were both up 1% and the NASDAQ was up 1.6%. So not often that you hear about the Dow dropping over 1,000 points in a day and the week being up, but it can't happen apparently.

Steven Van Wie 1:40

We never lie.

Joey 2:54

It was the most— it was one of the most violent weeks to nowhere I've ever— I remember. Yeah, I remember looking at it this week like, up here it is, this stinks. Yeah, like hopefully this is—

Steven Van Wie 3:02

yeah, whiplash from that one.

Joey 3:04

And then we had what Thursday was up 3, 4% on the NASDAQ. And yeah, it was like, what in the world? Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 3:09

Yeah. And so we closed out the month of July this week with the Dow managing a small gain of 0.3%. The S&P was off just 0.1% and the NASDAQ was off 3.2%.

Adam Van Wie 3:23

This year, the indexes are actually all up about the same percent with the Dow and the NASDAQ up 9.2% and the S&P up 9.4%. So despite a little volatility in July, it's been a good year. Beside the Fed, there was another market-moving event that you might not have heard about this week. This one's really interesting. A hedge fund run by a former OpenAI employee had raised $45 billion to invest in AI and technology, and this week they saw a stunning collapse in assets, down to about $10 billion from $45. How is that even possible, you might ask? Because I sure had that same question. Reports are saying that the fund utilized up to 400% leverage and bet on several semiconductor and other tech-related stocks, which went down pretty hard and fast in the last few weeks.

Steven Van Wie 4:12

What could possibly go wrong with that kind of leverage, right?

Adam Van Wie 4:15

Yeah, exactly. The manager, his name is Leopold Aschbrenner, I think, if I'm saying that right, something like that. He rose to fame just a couple of years ago in 2024 when he wrote a 165-page AI manifesto that became required reading in Silicon Silicon Valley. He's in his early 20s. He apparently was the valedictorian of some, some very, uh, prestigious college at the age of 19. So the, the guy is really smart.

Steven Van Wie 4:44

Yeah.

Joey 4:45

Um, are you gonna say the name of that paper? Because if you're not, I am. Situational Awareness.

Adam Van Wie 4:48

I don't have that. No, that's the name of his fund.

Joey 4:52

I thought that was the paper too.

Adam Van Wie 4:54

It may have been, but the fund is called Situational Awareness. great.

Joey 4:57

Anyway, I just— I had to flag it. Yeah, he completely flunked, which if you're going to use leverage, you need a lot of that. Yeah, you got to react quickly, but apparently not quickly enough.

Adam Van Wie 5:08

He did not have that when it came to managing money, apparently. But his— but he, he, he achieved great fame at a very young age and rightfully so. He's a very bright guy, but that doesn't mean you know how to manage a hedge fund, apparently. So the net result was that Citadel, this other hedge fund, had to step in and buy all the assets. At the distressed prices. So, so he's out of business and his wedding is this weekend. So I doubt that's as happy of an affair as it would have been otherwise.

Steven Van Wie 5:39

You know, if anybody out there thinks that if you get to a point someday when you got so much money, you want to invest in a hedge fund, call us. We'll talk you out of it.

Adam Van Wie 5:52

Yeah. Actually, if you look at the returns in hedge funds, they don't make money. Nothing like public markets recently. Well, no.

Steven Van Wie 5:59

I lied a little bit. There's always one person that makes money on it.

Adam Van Wie 6:02

Oh, there are hedge funds that have done really, really well, but the average—

Joey 6:06

I think Steve was going to say the manager. Okay, the one person who makes money.

Steven Van Wie 6:08

You got that?

Steven Van Wie 6:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam Van Wie 6:13

Um, earnings season is, uh, rolling along and things are looking very strong. More than 700 companies have reported and 78% of them have beat their earnings targets, while 74% have beat revenue forecasts. 14% of companies have raised forward guidance while just 3 have cut it. That's a really strong spread, a +11 difference between the two. That's amazing. As we continue to say, despite the weaker market performance this summer, companies are in really great shape right now and seemingly getting even better in the future, which is a setup for potential future market gains. Again, I, I still think we're not going to see much while the Iran situation is causing the price of oil to be high and rates, uh, interest rates to be elevated. But man, if we can get that wrapped up, we're, we're sitting pretty good right now because these numbers are just off the charts good. Um, in economic news, personal income was up 0.2% in June, which was a slight miss from the 0.3% expected. However, if you add in revisions to prior months, it was actually right on target at 0.3%. Personal consumption was up 0.3% versus a target of 0.4%. In the past year, personal income is up 3.9%, which is a strong number, but spending is up 6.3%

Adam Van Wie 7:31

at the same time. Now, if you do the math on that, your income is not rising as fast as your spending. That means the saving rate is really, really depressed right now. That's not great news. PCE declined 0.1% in June, the first decline in consumer prices since 2022. Despite the negative monthly headline, consumer prices are up 3.7% in the past year. Second quarter GDP growth came in at 1.5%, lower than the expected 2%. The largest contribution to that number was in personal consumption, business, and investment in equipment and intellectual property. The largest drags were net exports and inventories. Core GDP was up 3.9%

Adam Van Wie 8:13

in Q2. That's an annual rate in Q2, the fastest in more than 3 years. Inflation due to oil prices was the biggest problem in the report. No surprise there. But that 3.9 annual rate on core GDP is a really strong print.

Steven Van Wie 8:29

And, you know, there's a problem with reporting financial things very often. Some things are reported in nominal dollars and others in real dollars, meaning inflation, inflation adjusted. Everyone who reports any number like that should include with it whether it is nominal or real. GDP is real. It, it was actually very strong if you go back to the nominal dollars. All right, we'll be right back after a short break. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 9:02

I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey 9:03

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 9:04

And I would remind everyone that the lines are open, 904-222-8255.

Steven Van Wie 9:11

Where you can pick up the phone, take a shot at the trivia question. I've been tossing around 3 or 4 of them today, but I thought I'd do a kind of a fun one. Uh, everyone knows that Amazon is doing very well these days, to say the least, and Jeff Bezos owns a lot of Amazon. So at the current rate of sales and profitability in Amazon, how much does Jeff Bezos

Steven Van Wie 9:38

earn per hour? And you're getting no clues, so take a guess. But think Amazon, which is kind of synonymous with big, right? All right, uh, couple more points on the market.

Adam Van Wie 9:50

Mhm.

Adam Van Wie 9:54

Not really, I just had one funny interesting tidbit. Uh, Asia was pretty— uh, trading in Asia was pretty wild as it was here this week, but nowhere more so than in South Korea where their market had the largest one-day rally on record at an increase of 17.9%.

Adam Van Wie 10:13

And yet for the week, it finished down 1.9%. That's how crazy the Korean market was this week. Insane.

Steven Van Wie 10:21

That is nuts.

Steven Van Wie 10:24

I wanted to point out a couple of things. First off, the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index hit a new all-time high this week. And that just makes my day because that means a lot of stocks that have been lagging and underperforming are now starting to perform. And if you don't like the concept of holding the individual shares in the big large companies like me and I guess everybody here probably, then it's really pleasant when you see other things rallying that will wind up making money for everybody with a really subdued amount of risk in there. Obviously, the more holdings, the less risky it becomes. So I thought that was really important. Tim Cook, who is retiring, had his last earnings report this week and it was a doozy. Things are doing fine. 52% of the revenues on iPhones and iPhone sales were up something like 22%. So he's kind of going out as the winner that he has been for a long, long time. And along the way this week or last, I can't remember, sometime in the last few days, Apple briefly touched on a valuation of $5 trillion.

Steven Van Wie 11:44

And as they say in the old country, that's 12 zeros. That's a lot of dough. It did pull back a little bit, but Apple as a stock has been doing very well. And I gave him a little nudge along the way. So that should help. You know, you can imagine the impact of me buying an iPhone. And right there, you're going to say Apple stock's going to go great, right?

Adam Van Wie 12:10

I'm sure that's why their shares did so well.

Steven Van Wie 12:13

Yeah, well, I can take credit unless somebody takes it away from me. And I can only see 2 or 3 people around here that might. Anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting because he's going to be missed, I believe. We don't know a heck of a lot about the new guy. He's been a hardware-oriented guy during his career, and I don't know how that's going to fit in with the services and the overall corporate thing. But if Cook has confidence in him, I'm willing to just kick back and watch. I don't think Cook would want his last major decision like that to turn into something that didn't work out.

Joey 12:50

Yeah. And the tech world seems to have neutral to positive feelings about him. Yeah. Can we talk about Apple for a minute? Because I feel like that's pretty interesting. And I imagine a lot of listeners have owned it at some point if they don't own it now. So Apple's been an interesting one of the giants to watch over the last few years. All of these other companies have participated in trying to build out some part of the infrastructure or some type of AI inference training model that people can interact with. Um, Apple has kind of dipped its toe, but mostly flopped, and it was punished for it big time last year. Nowhere near $5 trillion valuation. And this year, as things have gotten really choppy, uh, on the frontier models and valuations and looking at Google and Meta, Google and Meta just put out great performance reports this last quarter and immediately paid for it with 7% and 10% drops in their stock price. Apple really is almost getting rewarded in part because it doesn't have anything to do with this at the moment. And there seems to be a bit of a risk-off sentiment in the market as far as AI is concerned until Thursday and Friday, of course, where that's starting to turn around. Uh, but what's interesting is it feels like the market's turning its perspective on what Apple's role will be over the next few years. At first, people thought they were losing because they weren't participating in this whole AI. Excursion. But now it's starting to change its opinion and think maybe Apple, because of its strong positioning in the hardware space, everybody, you know, so many people have iPhones, so many people have MacBooks, and the App Store is such a powerful place to get access to all of these applications that we use. It's starting to feel to investors like maybe they are the toll booth for accessing the benefits of AI going forward. And by not having all of this highly levered expensive infrastructure build-out that everybody else has. All they have to reap is really the rewards of what's coming.

Steven Van Wie 12:55

That counts.

Adam Van Wie 14:44

Yeah. Besides, if they need a large language model, they have enough cash, they could just go buy one.

Joey 14:48

Yeah, they could certainly go buy one. But it seems like they just don't really want it at the moment.

Adam Van Wie 14:52

No.

Steven Van Wie 14:53

You remember, perhaps many, many years ago, when IBM was growing into the behemoth that it became, and they were doing it by making hardware. And along the way back in the '70s, this young upstart named Bill Gates went to see them and he made them a proposal that he would furnish to them the operating system for their hardware and he wouldn't charge them for the whole thing. He would just get a payback for a lease on whatever many it turned out to be. And IBM accepted the deal and then As he left, the reports were that the people at IBM— this was down in Fort Lauderdale, by the way— they all laughed at him when he left because everybody knows the money's in hardware. And we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. What do you call IBM today? I call it a consulting company.

Adam Van Wie 15:51

I think that's what they are.

Joey 15:52

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 15:53

But what two hardware companies are really booming now? And one of them isn't IBM. Apple, 52% of its revenues are from hardware.

Steven Van Wie 16:06

Excuse me. This weather is really getting me.

Joey 16:10

And the other, I assume, is Microsoft, right?

Adam Van Wie 16:13

Actually, no, I was going to say Nvidia making hardware.

Steven Van Wie 16:16

One I'm thinking of is Dell.

Adam Van Wie 16:18

Oh, you're talking about computers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steven Van Wie 16:22

Actually interfacing people with machines, Apple and Dell are just taking it to the bank. And after Dell gets it, he's giving a bunch of it away too. But that's another story. But I think that's interesting. It seems to me to be kind of closing a circle on the whole computer thing. And the next great thing won't be hardware. I think the next great thing will be the software when AI really gets chumming along. So who knows?

Joey 16:52

Yeah, but even between those two companies, Dell and Apple, I mean, one of them is not like the other in terms of their ability to create an ecosystem you cannot leave. And you will pay, yeah, an increase. I mean, I feel like every two months they convince me, you know, $199 a month. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, whatever, you know. Yeah, they just get a toll from me and everybody else.

Steven Van Wie 17:01

Exactly.

Adam Van Wie 17:13

No doubt about it.

Steven Van Wie 17:14

But speaking of Apple They announced that they were gonna start leasing iPhones.

Steven Van Wie 17:23

The theory being people finance them anyway, so they're paying X dollars per month and then they own them. Well, how about paying less, X minus something per month to lease it and just trade it in on a new one 'cause you don't own it.

Steven Van Wie 17:41

I was talking about that at home the other day, and Sarah said to me, "Does that affect your credit rating?"

Steven Van Wie 17:50

Yeah, I thought about it for a minute and said, "I'll be darned if I know." So I actually went to AI and asked them, and they came back and said it depends on the lease. So if anybody out there is Thinking of leasing one of these things, starting with the iPhones, if the lease— the lease will tell you what they're going to do with your credit score. Some of them don't even inquire. Some of them do inquire. And there's everything in between. And the theory is, if you're leasing it for 2 or 3 years, that it's, it's only the inquiry that's going to ding your credit rating and it might come down for a short time and then go back up because actually paying your bills is good for your credit. So I just thought that was kind of interesting that there are some leasing outfits that just— they don't even deal with the credit agencies. And you should know that in case you get involved in it. So I, I always love it when I learn a little something along the way, and it's usually from being asked a question that I don't know.

Adam Van Wie 18:54

I don't, I don't like to lease things very often, but on a phone maybe, because I am going to replace it as soon as the payment runs out is almost exactly when you want to replace it anyway. So I don't know. I mean, it seems like the natural next step.

Steven Van Wie 19:08

My first thought was exactly like yours, and I came to the same conclusion that it's practically brilliant. People are going to do it anyway. You're going to pay 36 payments and then you're going to own a phone that you're going to trade in.

Adam Van Wie 19:17

Yeah.

Joey 19:24

Yeah, right. And you get $100. But I mean, they can just get rid of some of the numbers involved.

Steven Van Wie 19:27

Yeah. So what if you buy a $1,000 phone and you pay $500 to lease it for that time,

Steven Van Wie 19:37

you might have $500,000 if you bought— or $500 if you bought it. But when you go to trade it in, you're only going to get $100,000, $150,000, something like that. I think for the uncertainty of that whole transaction, this could really become popular.

Adam Van Wie 19:52

The math to buy a car only works if you pay off the car and then don't have a payment for for several years. So I'm thinking like, you know, you don't do that with your phone. Most people don't. Yeah, some people do, but I did it for too long last time.

Joey 20:05

The phone broke.

Steven Van Wie 20:08

Uh, Forbes— Malcolm Forbes, Steve's dad, said— I learned this a long time ago— the rules are very simple. If it's going to depreciate, you lease it. If it's going to appreciate it, you bought it, you buy it. And I— you can't say anything more succinct than that, make that, that much sense. And he wound up being a very, very wealthy man. So I, I guess he took his own advice. And I've had mixed emotions about it. I have leased cars before, but when, in our case, the most recent one, when the lease was up, we just bought the car. All right, we'll be right back. We're going to take another quick We'll take a quick break and don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 20:57

Hi, I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey 20:58

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 20:59

And lines are open, 904-222-8255.

Steven Van Wie 21:04

And trivia question, how much is Jeff Bezos currently earning per hour based on his holdings in Amazon?

Steven Van Wie 21:14

It would not be a hard thing to accept, put it that way. Okay, what's causing the drop in the death rate? Our death rate in this country just hit an all-time low, and curious what you guys think is one of the, or any of the major contributors. I think everybody knows that improvements in medicine help, but there's another one that I don't know if you guys will come up with it or not. That's why I thought I'd ask before I do it.

Joey 21:47

Isn't the murder rate at an all-time low?

Steven Van Wie 21:50

Yes, that's one of them. And that's related. The other thing is drug deaths. Oh, oh, you remember how many fentanyl deaths there were? And the flow of drugs across the border has slowed down so much it's having a major impact on death rates. I bring this up for a couple of reasons. Like, more people are going to live to retirement age now. And what we do is help people prepare for retirement. That's one of them. But also

Adam Van Wie 21:59

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 22:19

there's a misunderstood

Steven Van Wie 22:21

concept called life expectancy. You have one life expectancy the day you're born, and it's that big number you all hear about, which I think now is something like 79.3, something like that. But you have other life expectancies when you pass certain goals, like the first 2 years of your life, your life expectancy goes up if you live that long, then you go out to 16, 17, 18. And if you survive those, your life expectancy goes up again. And then you get further on in life. And there are other— there are points that the life insurance industry uses to say, If you make it this long, you're more likely to get there. So way too many people have been taught or learned over the course of their working lives that their life expectancy might be 79, but if they're already 66, then their life expectancy is probably much longer than that. And from a financial planning standpoint, one of our jobs is to make sure that that doesn't come and bite our clients when they turn 80 and they're still alive and still in need of their income. I thought it was interesting that it's changed so much that this particular article was written about just how good it is. The major causes of death in 2025,

Steven Van Wie 23:52

heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injuries.

Steven Van Wie 23:59

I found that a little odd, but that has moved up way ahead of things like drug deaths now. So if you are on the fence about your feelings about the immigration, you could look at that or you could look at— I didn't know this until 2 days ago. There is a part of Spain that is on the African continent.

Joey 24:23

Oh yeah, the tip of Morocco. Yes.

Steven Van Wie 24:26

And something to the tune of 60,000

Steven Van Wie 24:31

young Moroccans invaded. The town is called Souto or Soutou or something like that. It's 5 letters. Anyway, it's on the little tip of the peninsula, right where the Straits of Gibraltar are. And they had to swim to get around some of the barriers. So the average person was swimming 3 miles to get to Spain. And then they were pouring in by the tens of thousands. And we watched this happen on TV. And it was so apparent that something was really weird. Because some of these people didn't have shoes. Most of them were wearing flip-flops. Many didn't have a shirt. Some were dry, most were dripping wet. There were no backpacks, there were no anything. They had no supplies, no food, no additional clothes. The city itself has 83,000 people in it, and about 60,000 people invaded the city. So the shops had to all close down because if your door was open and they saw you in there, they'd break in and take everything. People had to keep They had to stay home and keep their doors locked and all that because there were people everywhere without food, shelter, whatever. And I just watched this thing and shook my head. What the hell are they gonna do? Well, what happened was the lion's share of them turned around and went back home.

Steven Van Wie 26:12

I wanna know why. Because that is a little too reminiscent of what happened to us on the southern border. And now I think Spain's going to have to do something about it. But the interesting reaction has been in Europe. Europe has been very stubborn about limitations on immigration. And now all of a sudden, they're terrified, which means they might actually do something about it. If you haven't seen those videos. Take a look at it. This is the craziest thing I've ever seen. They're all 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 guys, all guys, all good shape. There weren't any fat people or anything. And they're just swarming this area. And they got nothing with them. Nothing. It's just, it's so weird.

Adam Van Wie 27:06

It's a bizarre sight for sure.

Steven Van Wie 27:07

It was indeed. So if you have any reticence about reopening our borders, I say get them sealed up and keep them that way. Because the effects on the change in immigration policy have been very positive to us, even in terms of life expectancy. So I thought that was interesting. All right, who's hiring? Well, let's see. Companies that have announced they're going to start hiring. Includes CSX, Alphabet, Booz Allen Hamilton. It's a consulting firm. And what they're saying is that they were all kind of swept up in this AI is going to prevent us from needing employees thing. And guess what? It hasn't. So now they are bringing people in, hopefully that have some knowledge of and experience with the AI, and you're going to be able to get a really good job here lately, soon, if you know anything about it. Let's see, the CEO of, you know who Robert Half is, big staffing agency? Yeah. He says AI's impacts on the job market are more benign than some had feared. And what I think he meant by that was His business is great. That's what I seem to be reading between the lines in there.

Adam Van Wie 28:33

That would make sense. All the jobs data has remained fairly positive.

Steven Van Wie 28:38

Yep. Well, my admonition to all those people is start. We want to see people going back to work all summer to ease the pain we're feeling over in Iran. Just a thought. Ah, let's see. That's another indication. I print out a lot of articles along the way and this one is a concurring article that the job market is pretty darn good out there after all. And a lot of people don't understand it. Ah, let's see. Everybody know who Clark Howard is? I think pretty much most people do. Our local consumer warrior, and all of the regular listeners to the show know who Marshall is, frequent caller Marshall. And I want to thank both of them for their, their individual roles in this that is really a consumer-oriented thing. We've all been through all the commercials of Home Title Lock, and they are meant to do nothing but scare the heck out of you. You wake up one day and you didn't know it, but you've got 4 liens on your house and they're going to take the title and on and on and on. And couple years ago, maybe 3, I don't know, got a call from Marshall while we're at the show here. And we had been talking about Home Title a lot because that was about the time when they were starting to really push and get some, some tread, I guess, in the market. And Marshall said, well, I don't know how many counties do this, but there is a free service that you can use. And what you do is call the Register of Deeds in your county. And if they have this program, they will supply you the information if anybody tries to do anything with your, your home title. Here's some Basic difference that nobody talks about. Home Title Lock costs money, of course, but what happens with that one is they find out once something is done and they tell you, and then their people— this is covered in the, the monthly fee— their people will help you get it fixed. But the Register of Deeds in each of the counties that participates will tell you before something happens, that somebody's trying to do something. Now I know what I'd rather do. Oh, and did I mention that's free? Save your money, people. But now comes the Clark Howard part. There is a new service called propertyfraudalert.com,

Steven Van Wie 31:23

propertyfraudalert.com.

Steven Van Wie 31:25

And somebody wrote to Clark apparently, and He said, the listener wanted to know, is this a legitimate service worth signing up for? My answer is absolutely, absolutely yes. So I dug into it. And of course, first thing I do, I go to that website and look around and they say not every state has it and not every county in every state has it. So I looked it up. Yes, it operates in Florida. It does not operate In St. Johns County, that's all done with the Register of Deeds. It does in, in Duval County, it is covered. I'm going to tell you more of the reasons afterwards, but the problem with going, telling people to go to their Register of Deeds and to put their own thing in there and get it signed up is a lot of people believe it's a good idea, but don't do it. And the thinking, Clark's thinking, I gather, is if you go to this propertyfraudalert.com

Steven Van Wie 32:26

website, it's easy to use. You can just go right down to Florida and you go to your county and all that, and more people will probably do it. I'll finish this up right after one more quick break. Don't go anywhere. This is the Van Wie Financial Hour. Welcome back to the Van Wie Financial Hour.

Joey 32:45

Tried that.

Steven Van Wie 32:45

Twice and it didn't work. I'm Steve Van Wie.

Adam Van Wie 32:48

Hi, I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey 32:49

And I'm Joey Loss.

Steven Van Wie 32:51

And we have lines open, 904-222-8255.

Steven Van Wie 32:55

And the trivia question: how much is Jeff Bezos earning off of his holdings in Amazon per hour? Big number. Big, big number. All right, I want to wrap up a little bit on this, um, property fraud alert, the home title search. Adam has some interesting thoughts on it that I think you will like. And then we have another little anecdote on it too. But this is— what's a nice word for it, Adam? Rare? I would say very rare.

Adam Van Wie 33:28

I mean, it's not going to happen to you is what I'm— what I would— the conclusion that I would draw from this is that it's not something we need to spend any time worrying about. And in fact, I would argue that that title lock company that advertised a couple of years ago or started advertising a few years ago on— definitely seen it on like Fox and other places. But I would say that they are generating a fake fear for this because it's profitable to them to sell you title lock insurance. The fact is, these numbers are going to sound big, but when you put it in perspective, they are not big at all. So there's 9,000 to 11,000 complaints per year totaling $170 million. So when you look at the total size of the property market in the US, there's over 230 million properties. So 11,000 a year is nothing. It's just not— it's statistically not going to happen to you. It's like 0.01%

Adam Van Wie 34:26

of those reported cases. More than half of them happen on vacant properties that are paid for and have large equity. So what that says to me is that this is your niece trying to rob you because you're in a nursing home.

Steven Van Wie 34:42

Well, that's what you get for cutting her out of your will.

Adam Van Wie 34:45

Exactly. This is like a crime of someone who knows you very well trying to take advantage of the fact that you have money and they don't. And so only 12% of all those cases happened in primary residences that are owner-occupied. So that that takes that 9, we'll call it $10,000 a year down to 10% of that. There's 1,000 cases a year in the entire United States that are potentially going to affect you. This just does not happen. And buying insurance to protect against things that don't happen is wasting money. That's what I think.

Steven Van Wie 35:20

Okay, so if anybody out there gets upset when they see the Home Title Lock commercials, go to this one, put your name in one time in your life. And put it away. And the next time you see those commercials, laugh at them because that's what it's worth. It's called propertyfraudalert.com.

Adam Van Wie 35:38

Yeah.

Steven Van Wie 35:38

It also brought up— I said it's one of those things that you tell people and it sounds like a good idea, but a lot of people don't do it. It's the same thing with the personal liability umbrella insurance policy. In our jobs, we recommend these to Well, virtually everybody, really. I can't think of too many exceptions.

Adam Van Wie 35:59

If you have assets, you probably need one.

Steven Van Wie 36:01

And especially if you're a homeowner and somebody can fall on your property or something like that. And that's one of those things that we recommend all the time and a lot of people don't do. So if you really want to protect yourself, the PLU, personal liability umbrella, is far more important than the title lock. But do both if you want to. Yeah, and just trying to eliminate the panic.

Adam Van Wie 36:25

Exactly. And if this did happen to you, there are legal recourses that you can utilize to show that it was a fraudulent transaction. So it's not like you're automatically— you just lose your house and that's it. That's it. You're done. No, you're going to obviously use legal methods to prove that this was not— whatever happened was not actually done by you. So I just, I just think it's It's buying insurance against something like this is not a good use of your money.

Steven Van Wie 36:53

No, I absolutely agree. Um, also brought up a related item with the squatters. Squatters are a terrible problem in some places, California being one of them and New York one of them. And Florida has the problem, but in the recent special— I think it was in the special session of the legislature— they passed a a law that makes it far easier in Florida to get a squatter out of your place. So you should know that too. And we just try to keep people from doing dumb things, wasting time, and more importantly yet, wasting money. And speaking of money,

Steven Van Wie 37:33

um, there is underway right now in DC a process of trying to do another budget reconcili— reconciliation because they can't all get together on something that is so necessary and easy as actually budgeting. But this, this little something here that some people are trying to work into it that we've talked about, and I think Joey might have been in on it too,

Steven Van Wie 38:03

a few months ago, don't know how many, we were talking about about the selling of a primary residence and how it's exempted if you've— under certain rules, you have to have lived in it for the last 5 years, that kind of thing. But if you sell your residence, there's an exemption from paying the gain of $250,000 per person or $500,000 per couple. And we remarked at the time that it was a law so good, I don't think anybody read it. Or they wouldn't have passed it. But what they didn't do, which they so frequently are guilty of, they didn't index it for inflation. So I had done the homework on the inflation rate from the day it started when this was passed to the day we were doing the show, the inflation rate would have just right on the money doubled both of those numbers. So now somebody's, throwing into the mix.

Steven Van Wie 39:04

It was Mike Johnson, I think, who was trying to get those through the reconciliation process, is trying to get those numbers doubled. So it would go to $500,000 per individual and a million for a couple. And when you go back and look at the appreciation of the houses over the last few years, this is really necessary, I think. What they're not telling us in this article, I don't know how that'll go, those numbers should have a one-time adjustment and then be indexed for inflation.

Adam Van Wie 39:26

I agree.

Joey 39:36

Yeah, yeah, agreed. I think this is one of the best-spirited laws in the tax code. Yeah, because you think about the principles behind it. This is something that American citizens have purchased with after-tax money. The vast majority of them have also paid mountains of interest and property taxes. And property taxes, that's right. Tax on something they already paid for with after-tax money. I mean, it's just every layer of it is this belongs to that person. And if they're selling it to move somewhere else, whether it be to move their family because they've lived somewhere for 10 years and they've got some equity in the home, or they're moving to an assisted living facility or something, all of that money should get to stay with them. You know, that's just like their life's work.

Steven Van Wie 40:15

Exactly. And it's not a small amount when you're— if you made a half million dollars, you can $250,000 of it is exempt. Well, $250,000 of it isn't exempt also. At 15%, that's a lot of money. And if it happens to bump up your bracket, that could easily become 20%. And even 23.8%.

Adam Van Wie 40:36

Yeah. That's correct.

Steven Van Wie 40:40

The marginal tax rate of Americans with the complexity of the tax code is way higher than most people think it is. And you find out if you go through the right software, if your preparer does it for you, just what it really means to make another dollar and that kind of thing. And we're very involved in that with a lot of our clients also.

Steven Van Wie 41:02

All right, moving along.

Steven Van Wie 41:05

Doge is gone.

Steven Van Wie 41:08

Rest in peace, Doge. And of course, all of the usual idiots in the media are saying, well, it went bye-bye, making fun of it. It wasn't very successful, on and on. Well, that's not true because a lot of what DOJ did is not being repeated year after year. So the cumulative effects of the DOJ things is huge. And we should note that it ended on July 4th because when it was established, it had a shelf life. On July 4th, it had to go away, just like why Elon Musk left DOJ because he had a shelf life. They gave him 90 days. On the 91st day, he wasn't there anymore. And people like to make fun of it for those reasons. But I'm here to tell you, without this, we'd be a lot further in debt yet. It may be a drop in a big bucket, but it's really important. So I thank everyone who was involved in it, and we're grateful for their, their work on our behalf. All right, Bezos,

Steven Van Wie 42:16

he's doing okay based on the profit from the last report and his percentage of the, the shares that are owned. He is knocking down a mere $2.3 million every hour.

Adam Van Wie 42:34

Wow, that's a lot.

Steven Van Wie 42:36

It'd be hard to spend They cut it in half for taxes and it's still hard to spend.

Adam Van Wie 42:43

No doubt about it.

Steven Van Wie 42:44

And you cannot possibly have any doubt in your mind why he moved to Florida.

Joey 42:51

He better be maxing his 401.

Joey 42:54

If he's not, I've given up.

Steven Van Wie 42:57

Well, I think his— they did get married, didn't they? I think his wife probably is able to handle spending some of it. But that's just a lot of money. You go to bed at night and you wake up worth another $10 million or something like that.

Adam Van Wie 43:06

It is.

Joey 43:10

That's a good question. Do you think people at that level of income, I mean, you're talking about a drop in the bucket. Do you think they even care about a 401? Is it just like, oh, that's one more account administratively? Like, I don't even—

Adam Van Wie 43:19

I'm sure they do it just because it's there. I just can't imagine not doing it. But yeah, does it matter?

Joey 43:25

I mean, a couple million an hour. Talk about saving.

Adam Van Wie 43:27

Like, that's insane.

Steven Van Wie 43:29

You know, I would like to answer that question through trial and error.

Adam Van Wie 43:33

I would love to get back to you on that because I know about it.

Joey 43:37

Yeah, all right.

Steven Van Wie 43:38

Yeah, well, that said, the billionaire tax proposal in California is going to a vote, but for some reason, the current governor's now against it. 

Adam Van Wie 43:51

Oh, go figure. 

Steven Van Wie 43:52

Can you imagine that? 

Adam Van Wie 43:54

That's weird.

Steven Van Wie 43:55

And his proposal for it is to make it national. So then he doesn't have to take the rap for it. There's something about a snowball in Jacksonville, the chances of this going anywhere. So I thought the hypocrisy never ends with people like that. Well, that was fun. We'll be back next week. I may have stopped laughing by then, I don't know. I'll be here one.