(upbeat music) Jared, how you doing? I don't know about you, but I think I need a scoop or two of that super savage. And no guys, I have not developed an extreme list. It is super savage, replace those first S's with TH's. This is a pre-workout supplement. - I tried to get my wife to say it and she wouldn't say it. I'm like, just say it, say it, say it, say super savage. She won't say it. - She won't say it. Yeah, I got myself juiced on this amino energy today. Am I going to work out after this? No, this podcast is my workout for the day. So let's get after it, we got to get going. Market headlines this week. First up, stocks break September slump as Q3 ends. So this is the final day of trading of the month. We're recording this on Monday, September 30. And US stocks have defied the typical September trend of weakness. In fact, markets are on track for one of the strongest September's in over a decade as they conclude the third quarter. The next big challenge will be the upcoming jobs report scheduled for release on Friday. So I know heading into September, you were maybe anticipating a little dip in stocks. Are you surprised about this? I know your thesis has changed a little bit in the weeks ahead. - There's a couple things. So first of all, like on a close to close basis from August to September, stocks are up. But there was a lot of volatility in between. And there was a lot of volatility in August. So we had a couple of dips. Risk appetite is enormous. People bought the dip. In the last week, we have had no volatility at all. Like stocks are trading in a very tight range. Today is month end and quarter end. So usually get some big asset allocation moves between stocks and bonds. Probably get some volatility around the close. But yeah, I mean, if you pay attention to seasonality and the more I'm in the markets, the more I pay attention to seasonality, it actually does work. September is usually a bad month. And now it's turned out to be a good month. So we are going into the election with stocks price for perfection. And one of the things I was writing about in my newsletter today was the idea that if one candidate starts to pull ahead in October, then you're gonna start to see some moves in the market, like internally, like among sectors, interest rates, stuff like that. Or if we go into November 5th where it's just a dead heat, maybe we're in this range where we have no volatility. I don't know. I'm gonna be trading the night of the election. I'm gonna be up all night trading, or at least pretty late. It's gonna be interesting. - I'm so scared for the election, but I will also be tuning in. I can't look away. I mean, we're like, what, 35 days out now, really getting close. - Yeah. - Yeah. - All right, next up from the Wall Street Journal, the stock market isn't all about AI anymore. Broad swaths of the market from utilities to industrials to financials, trounced the powerful tech sector in the third quarter. Got a little chart here from some of the sector's utilities is a really big this year, almost like 20%. I wanna talk about energy though. It is down 2.5% for the quarter. What's going on with energy? Does it go up from here? - I actually saw an article today that hedge funds are in this is from Goldman Sachs. I mean, their prime brokerage looks at exposure across all their customers, and they said that hedge funds are now the most short energy that they've ever been. And they're also the most long tech. So this is a continuation of what has worked in the past for what will work in the future. I am super bullish on energy. I can't, I mean, I'm so bullish on energy just based on sentiment and positioning. So I mean, look like oil has not responded to any geopolitical catalyst. They killed the leader of Hezbollah. I figured we get to pop an oil. It was up about 1% this morning. And last I looked at it, it was ontured down a little bit. So it just doesn't respond to any of these geopolitical catalysts. One thing I like to say is that it doesn't matter until it does, right? In one of these days, it will matter. All right, last headline for the week. A new report illustrates just how stuck the housing market is. So just 2.5% of homes in the U.S. changed hands this year in the first eight months. And that is the lowest turnover rate in the last 30 years. The latest data underscores just how much the housing market has stalled in 2024 as Americans faced a toxic combination of record high home prices and elevated mortgage rates, creating one of the most unaffordable housing markets in a generation. A rate cut by the Fed this month has fueled hopes that the interest rate sensitive housing market will soon experience a fresh Jolt. What are your thoughts on the housing market? Do you expect it to get a Jolt here? One of the things that people don't talk about is this idea of mobility. You know, back 30, 40, 50 years ago, if you found a job in another state, you would pack up all your stuff and you would move to another state and you'd start this job, right? Now, with the internet, with work from home, people don't have to move. They can get a job in another state and just stay put in their house, which is contributing to this low turnover of houses. Like you said, 2.5% of houses turned over, which is the lowest in 30 years. That's a big reason why is that people can work from home, which means there's less of a supply of inventory, which means that prices are going to go up. You know, I'm a huge bull on housing prices and I'm talking my own book because I have a big house and I hope it goes up in value. But that combined with immigration, combined with everything else and, you know, housing market's going to be strong for a long time. - I want to dig a little deeper on housing because the recent hurricane, Halene and Asheville, have you seen this? I mean, Asheville is totally devastated. You know what's funny is I have a very good friend in Asheville. She was a classmate of mine at SCAD and she's an incredible writer. She won the writing award the year before I did. She graduated the year before I did and she lives in Asheville and I literally just texted with her and she says, I have no water, I have no electricity and I'm probably not going to have them for weeks. So I made a comment like, yeah, I've been without electricity for a week before. That was on one of the hurricanes we had here and taking cold showers for a week is no fun. And she's like, I'm flushing my toilet with a five gallon bucket with creak water. And she said, I had to stand in line for three and a half hours to get a 24 pack of bottled water. Like it's tough, it is tough. - I've seen some of the videos and pictures that have come out of there, it looks just devastating. And the roads too, I think, have crumbled. I don't know if there's any way in or out of Asheville right now. So it's a bad situation. - I was actually thinking of going there in the spring. I haven't been to Asheville in 12 years. And the last time I was there, I kind of did a cheat by stayed in the aloft in downtown Asheville. I paid like $120 a night. And the alofts aren't great and it's very noisy. There's a lot of bars with music and stuff. So I couldn't really sleep. Asheville is a great town. If you ever been to the Biltmore, that's fun to go to. - Yeah, there's lots of hiking and stuff. I mean, assuming it's mostly cleaned up in the spring, I would love to go back. - Yeah, I lived in Asheville for a brief spell in 2017. So it's hard to see. My brother was actually visiting a week ago and he was like, "Oh, it's totally nice." And then here we are. Did you get hit by the hurricane at all in your area? - Not really, we were too far east. I mean, it was, first of all, I was gone. Like I flew out to be before, I flew to Connecticut. And I missed all the rain and wind and stuff. It wasn't that bad. We were much further east. - Yeah. - So it didn't really hit us that bad. - I want to talk about home insurance and kind of weighing the pros and cons of where to buy a home. Florida real estate is kind of a mess with insurance costs. I want to kind of dig into like what homeowners insurance does and does not cover. Is that something you've had to deal with where you live? 'Cause I mean, it is an area that is susceptible to these kinds of storms. - My homeowners insurance right now is not that bad. And the reason is, is that I live 1.06 miles from the beach. If I live within a mile from the beach, it would be a lot higher. I'm 600 of a mile outside the beach. So my homeowners insurance is 18,000 a year, which is not that bad. The houses on the beach are like 40, 50,000 a year. They're paying homeowners insurance. Which still might be cheap relative to the amount of risk. - Right. I've never made a claim on my homeowners insurance. I've been very lucky, I've been very lucky. - Does it include flood insurance? - It does not. You buy flood insurance separately. We bought flood insurance and since we're not in a flood zone, the flood insurance was cheap. It was like a thousand bucks, so we just bought it. So, but you know, a lot of people in Florida in here, self-insure, which means they don't insure, right? Because the insurance is so expensive. I mean, if you're paying 40 grand a year, like it's, you know, it doesn't make any sense. So people are like, screw it. If I get hit with a hurricane, I'm just gonna pay myself to fix the house, right? Which is kind of nuts, but a lot of people do that, you know? - Do you think it's a bad idea to invest in real estate in a state like Florida now? I mean, these hurricanes just keep coming and pounding the coasts, especially the west coast. - Yeah, you know what's funny is I was talking about this the other day, like Miami has actually done pretty well. Like all these hurricanes have hit Miami. And in Miami, especially the condo buildings, that they're built to withstand a category five hurricane. You know, I don't, I really don't think it's, you know, like there's some vulture investors out there that when a hurricane goes through a place like Fort Myers, they come in and buy a bunch of cheap property and they rehab it and stuff like that. It's not really what I do, but I actually, I think that kind of stuff is a good idea. Yeah, the west coast of Florida just keeps getting hit over and over and over again. Speaking of which, my mother-in-law had a house in Tampa, gone, it's gone. So from this hurricane, from this hurricane, yeah. - My brother-in-law was in Tampa. He said he was lucky to escape most of the bad damage there, but if Tampa ever got a direct hit, it would be bad. - Yeah, they've, yeah, they've just, they had a couple of near misses, so. - All right. Let's head over to the week ahead. We got the September jobs report, as we mentioned. Tomorrow we got a little Vance v. Walls debate, which I mean, that should be pure comedy. - I forgot about that. I forgot about that. - You forgot about it. - I forgot about it. - It should be funny. - Probably too, didn't do it, I don't know. - I hate Tim Walls with a burning passion. - I do. - I do. - Why? - Because he is the most financially illiterate person to ever run for higher office. - I'll give you that for sure. - How do you have a guy who's gonna be vice president, who's never owned a house, never owned a stock, never owned a mutual fund? - He's never owned a house. - He's never owned a house, he's just rents. - He just rents and he has no stocks, no bonds, no mutual funds, he just has money in the bank. He has $330,000, that's his life savings and it's in the bank, right? Like, if you have somebody that doesn't own assets, I don't think they're going to treat people who own assets kindly, you know what I mean? So this is gonna be the guy that's first in line to raise taxes on capital gains. He's never paid a capital gains tax in his life. He doesn't know what it's like, you know? So I have a big beef with this guy, he sucks. - What are your thoughts on Vance? This guy kind of gives me the creeps. - He gives a lot of people the creeps and I really don't get it. Like, I think JD Vance and I have a lot in common. We both grew up, like he was poorer than I was, but we both grew up kind of lower middle class. We both escaped that and went to good schools and succeeded in life and he was a VC for a little while and great, went to Yale Law School. He's a smart guy. There's something about him that is very uncharismatic. I don't see it. You know, when I see him speaking, like I don't want to say that I'm inspired, but the guy's smart and he makes a lot of sense to me. But some people when they see him speak, they're totally turned off. And I, you know, he's a senator. Like he ran for Senate in Ohio. He won, right? He's not a complete doorknob. So I kind of, I just don't get the JD Vance hate. I don't, you know. - Did you see the donut video or you went to that donut shop? - No. - And he was getting these donuts and he was just so awkward. He was interacting with the people who worked there and he was like, I don't know. I'll take maybe one of these donuts, one of those. He's like, you know, whatever makes sense. Like he just like didn't even really know how to like actually like place an order. It was, it was strange. Just one of the weirder videos. I don't know. I'm going to watch this. I'm intrigued by it. Yeah, 35 days until the election, anticipate any sort of October surprise. I'd probably be more surprised if there wasn't a surprise. - Yeah, for sure. Something's going to happen. - Yeah. - Eight years ago, remember we had the Access Hollywood video the week before the election. - Refresh my memory on that. - That was the grab them by the blankety blank comment. - Yeah. - That was recorded. - That's right. - Yeah, that was the week before the election in 2016. - I didn't realize it was that close to the election. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was time perfectly. That was time perfectly. - Something will come out. All right, you want to talk a little night moves here? - I would love to. - All right, so I have read the wallet glowing in search of truth. Yes, I got my copy right here too. Bang. Night moves, Dr. Burns, an insider. - I want to say my favorite story so far, it might be night moves. - It's really good. - I think the ending of night moves was my favorite ending. - Yeah. - A lot of similar themes here, like self-sabotage is for sure a big one. - Yeah. - There's a lot of self-destructive tendencies in these with drugs and alcohol and there's a lot of finance stuff. So I'm wondering like how much of this is based on like your experiences or even like your neuroses, like let's take the wallet for example, like is this like, had I not made it, this could have been my life kind of deal? - I had that story in me for a long time. I play the lottery all the time and I spend way too much time thinking about what would happen if I won, right? Like, so for me, living in South Carolina, first of all, the great thing about South Carolina is if you win the lottery, you can remain anonymous, right? I think that if you can't remain anonymous, don't play the lottery 'cause it's actually going to ruin your life. Like I don't care if you win a billion dollars, like if you're not anonymous, it's gonna ruin your life. So I think about this, like I have the winning ticket, I sign the ticket and I gotta go to Columbia, right? So right after you win the lottery, there's gonna be reporters camped outside the lottery office in Columbia. So you have to wait like a month, two months, three months or whatever. And then you're going in like a Groucho Marx glasses and with like a, you know, in a hoodie with the hood over your head and you're like disguised going into the lottery office and like maybe, maybe you don't park out front, maybe you park a couple miles away and take a cab or take an Uber or something. Like there's a lot of things to think about, you know what I mean? So when I wrote that story, I wanted to capture that and the ticket itself, if you lose the ticket, you're totally host, right? So you're constantly thinking about where the ticket is, you know? And hence the wallet, right? He's always thinking about where the wallet is. I think this story does a good job of building tension. I'll put some spoiler tags up before this, by the way, in case people haven't read this. But yeah, that one's really, really good. I liked glowing. I've read that twice now. That one's up there in terms of my favorites. In search of truth was also a really, really good premise. I almost wanted more from that. Like I could have seen that being like double the length, like diving even further into the cult. - Well, the funny thing is, is that, that story actually started as a flash fiction piece. - Oh, wow. - So it was like 600 words. And you know, I was in a class at SCAD and everybody in the class was like, oh my God, I want more, I want more, I want more. Like this shouldn't be a flash fiction piece. This should be a short story. So I did a short story about it, but it could actually be a novel. Like it's that big, you know? - That's what I was thinking. - Yeah, Dr. Burns was excellent. I actually have been writing a story that's based around a dentist as well, who also has substance abuse issues. So that one was fun to read. - Yep. - What's your days are your favorites so far out of the first six? - One of you proud of stuff. - I would say night moves an insider. Insider, I like a lot. I think it's, you know, my stories are hyper realistic. You know what I mean? They're very, very realistic. Like you read this and you think, yes, this could happen, you know? And it's an insider, you know, there's a couple of times a year, you know, if you think about like insider trading charges, like there's like average people who get a piece of information and trade on it. And they end up, they end up getting pinched, you know? It happens pretty routinely. So I kind of wanted to write a story about some just working stiff, who gets a piece of inside information, trades on it, and what that does to his life, you know? And I don't want to spoil the story, but the relationship between Alyssa and Ray and how it develops over time, like I think it's really good. - Yeah. I think this is my favorite part of the collection is that it takes place geographically over different areas, but they're all such believable things that like anyone could be going through. So it's very relatable. Look, I'm really looking forward to finishing it this week. What's your favorite story in the entire collection? - It's 200 hours. - 200 hours. Where is that in the book? - It's like in two more stories, you'll get it. - Oh good, I'll probably read it tonight then. - I actually thought about naming the collection 200 hours. I went back and forth as to whether I should name it 200 hours or night moves. I thought night moves was a better title. - Yeah, I do too. We're gonna wrap this thing up, get out of here. Let me go read some more. Thank you for your time. I'll talk to you again here soon. - See ya.
