All Things Economic

Maybe 2 weeks ago gas was 2.45ish here. I saw the same station at 2.68 today. Farm store down the street is selling eggs for $3/doz. He was as high as $5

Gas has been creeping up here the last few weeks. I'm not sure if that's due to reblending issues for the change from winter to summer grade.

I paid $2.59 2 weeks ago, today it's $3.19 at the same station. Average around here (yesterday) is about $3.29.

"Factory" eggs are $4.99/doz., organic/free range eggs are $4.99/doz.

I pay $0/doz. for free range chicken eggs. I just wish those chickens wouldn't "free range" on the top of my truck. It's still nice to have friends whose chickens lay more eggs than they can use.

Gas prices, at least historically, have trended up around this time of the year. I always thought it was because the suppliers switched from the winter blend to the summer blend. There are other factors as well though.

Lastly, it is easy to see where I am from as it is right below our picture. We are 50 miles from you. But if you are really curious about Maryland's gas price, I made it easy for you:

MARYLAND AVERAGE GAS PRICES

Regular Mid-Grade Premium Diesel

Current Avg. $3.278 $3.833 $4.141 $3.781

Yesterday Avg. $3.279 $3.838 $4.140 $3.781

Week Ago Avg. $3.189 $3.748 $4.072 $3.729

Month Ago Avg. $ 2.983 $3.571 $3.897 $3.708

Year Ago Avg. $3.601 $4.132 $4.430 $4.105

Yeah, I was shocked that even what was considered the cheap generic eggs were still right around $5/dozen by us. I bet the organic free-range egg suppliers like this, because it puts some of their eggs within $1/dozen of the generic no-frill eggs. Harder to justify $5+/dozen eggs when the no-frills ones were less than half the price, but that is not the case, at least by us.

Sorry, they are still 5/doz. Also, this is entirely dependent on the bird flu. Take a look what the flu count was in the past three months. WHen it goes up, so does the price. In March it dropped, so did the price.

Silly argument.

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ECONOMY
U.S. payrolls rose by 228,000 in March, but unemployment rate increases to 4.2%
Nonfarm payrolls increased 228,000 for the month, up from the revised 117,000 in February and better than the Dow Jones estimate for 140,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Recall that Feb was revised down by almost 50K. Also recall that whenever a downward revision happens under a D administration the R's go batshit crazy and cry foul. Now is your turn to cry foul under a R administration.

And btw, for the record:,

Gas is up over last week, last month, and YTD.
Employment numbers were not double expectations.
Employment numbers for february were also revised down by 48,000
Unemployment ticked up.

I think when Scamp opened this he titled "all things economic", but I don't think he meant things which are half true or all false. Be genuine about your stats.

Good luck on your hope. As for the investment advice, thanks anyway.

Market fact of the day: only two presidents have presided over double digit losses in their first 2.5 months in the S&P500 since it was created.

They were:
GWB: -18%
dt: -10%

Additional market related facts:

The list of the 20 largest single day point drops in the Dow IA pre 2021 belong to a single president:

dt

Think of 1999 , y’all made it through that .

rabbit_n_scamp_ - Yikes! I'm starting to think that MAGA really means "Make Anxiety Great Again", or perhaps "Manipulate And Gaslight Americans" ;-)

April 04, 2025

The S&P 500 dropped 2.7% early Friday, coming off its worst day since COVID wrecked the global economy in 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,000 points, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 3%.

The worst seven drops in the history of the stock market have all occurred with trump in office.

I don’t think “winning” means what trump thinks it means.

~Scamp

Fortunately, or unfortunately, this was all so very easy to see coming at us.

In 2017 the markets continued along. In 2018 the markets hated the ongoing drama from the WH. Tariff wars with China, longest government shutdown, et al. and from Sept on they were horrible. Christmas eve 2018-massive drop was a direct response to WH drama. We are seeing 2018 once again.

Wild swings are great for buyers, but they are very very hard on people near, at, or fully in retirement. They are also very hard on pension managers as well.

Financial markets around the world are reeling Thursday following President Donald Trump’s latest and most severe volley of tariffs, and the U.S. stock market may be taking the worst of it.

The S&P 500 was down 3.3% in early trading, worse than the drops for other major stock markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,204 points, or 2.9%, as of 9:50 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 4.3% lower.

Investors worldwide knew Trump was going to announce a sweeping set of tariffs late Wednesday, and fears surrounding it had already pulled the S&P 500 10% below its all-time high last month. But Trump still managed to surprise them with “the worst case scenario for tariffs,” according to Mary Ann Bartels, chief investment officer at Sanctuary Wealth.

So much winning!

~Scamp

The 800 pound gorilla problem for the markets is the fact that their multiples are already way too high. Absurdly so when given the superior yield of even short term treasuries (versus the expected, and traditional "risk premium").

The 40% drop scenario I noted could be brought about simply by a loss of confidence in the market leading to a reality check correction to long term PEs. The obvious impetus for such a loss of confidence would be a recession. What nobody is really focusing on, it seems to me, is the much worse problem that, by definition, a recession, being an economic contraction, would cause a massive decline in earnings. That would obviously make the baseline number much lower.

@OWc , no way am I a pro . I am with a friend and we have lost our share of money . We bought a grocery store in a small town . That was bad , we couldn’t find people to work.. Then there was road construction a bridge was out . People had to drive around to get there so they go to another town .These office buildings are wrecks . The one we own is four floors and we now have it all rented out . That building had a bunch of homeless crackheads living in it .
Today it has insurance company’s , real estate company’s , a chiropractor a few others .One of the couples on SLS here from Texas owns over 1200 rentals in Texas ..That is money , they’re the ones who talked us into a condo in Galveston . Never brag about making money , you will drive it away.

No, sorry. That was a rant about Washington State's new "Don't call it an income tax, income tax". Income taxes are unconstitutional in Washington. Our activist liberal State Supreme Court decided to, rather than finding the cajones to overturn several precedents, accept the ruling party's view that this was an "excise tax". The Tax aplies to capital gains on equity and mutual fund sales over a threshold of $250,000 (for the moment). The absurd part is that the lower court, on overturning the law, pointed out the obvious. That excise taxes are transaction taxes which cannot, logically, be applied to an aggregated amount comprised of posibly many different transactions. The fact that capital gains are income and only treated differently by the federal government investment policy reasons, they ignored. I find the mental gymnastics of this absurd decision so obviosly political, and hence so offensive, that I prefer to pay the federal gains including the NIIT ("Obamacare surtax" for the unititiated ) on amounts of capital gains below the threshold. Over time I will wash my gains out for State tax purposes. Just so I can Pull a "Bezos" and send a personal "fuck you!" to the Washington State Legislature.

currentrider- on Cap gains, are you referring to NIIT?

RonKath. - Interesting enough one of the high yielding ETFs we are in, is a 20 yr Bond fund that sells calls to generate income above bond yield, Quite clever and only exposes them to some lost appreciation in price. That in turn can be minimized by hedging.

funfor2houston - I've been minor in real estate and sold everything I had 2 yrs ago. I'm a buy when the market sucks guy as thats the only way a guy like me can get enough of a buffer to assure I don't screw up LOL. Sounds like you are a Pro!

currentrider - I also have Phizer and also holding Verizon(6% Yield and 10 PE), DOW(8% Yield and 22 PE) and the one I like but a tad concerned with is Wendys(6.84% Yield and 15 PE). The dividend probably isn't sustainable unless they continue the growth they have gotten from adding breakfast. It has been trading in a range the last 5 yrs and I have been buying low, selling high. All said these 5 are around 20% of my total. I get you on how deep a bear it will be. I timed the 2002-2003 and 2008-2009 bear bottoms well and hope to repeat on the next major one.

I have moved some long term equities into cash. Partly out of being pissed off about Washington's new capital Gains income tax. I'd rather take gains up to the threshold and just pay federal taxes. I recently bought some Pfizer which is fairly beat up. It's trading at a not crazy PE of 18 with a dividend yield of 6.7% on its current price.

I have not bought anything since the inaguration and wouldn't touch the market at this point. Aside from his general economic stupidity, Trump's policy lability alone is virtually certain to bring on a rrecession that seems overdue. It's impossible for businesses to plan in this chaos. When that happens I would expect a bigger drop than 25%. A correction from the current outlandish PE of the S and P 500 (28) to the long term average (16) would be more like 40%.

We are looking at buying another office building on 1960 in Houston . If we can get it for our price we will redo it and rent office space out . We did that with one three years ago it is full today but we want to sell it . That building was four stories infested with bums but after loans and all we are OK today. . Real property is how we roll today .
We bought a condo in Galveston in October . A year ago the complex was selling for 40% more . Things will come back.

Collecting MONTHLY on CD;s paying 5-to 5,5% locked in for a couple years.. we also play options calls and puts in pre and post market.. we have been doing great but not being aggressive !

Lots of cash on sidelines waiting for things to settle down.. but we only play options for now.

We get people trying to buy our CDS in aftermarket but we are not selling now.

We are very happy and because of our age , 10 years older than you guys .. not playing with all our hard earned cash.. happy with our monthly checks.