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The Meyers Report 04-04-2025 Fast 15
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00:00If glaciers started to advance, that's bad news.
00:09Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Myers Report, Friday Fast 15. It is April 4th, 2025.
00:17An update on our forecasts. As of yesterday, of the 172 forecasts that our group made in October,
00:26November, and December of last year, 76 can be graded. So far, we have 74 wins,
00:34two losses, and 94 that are yet to be determined for an accuracy rate of 98.7. We've made a lot of
00:43forecasts, and anyone who wants to track them to see how they're coming true, just email me at
00:50garyatmyers-group.com. The big forecast, which doesn't look good so far, is the end of the
00:59Russia-Ukraine war. Our forecast was for March 31st, 2025, which clearly has not happened.
01:07In the meantime, the WTI oil is down to $61.50 a barrel, $10 lower than last week.
01:20We understand that this is intended to pressure Putin to come to the table,
01:24as Trump did during his first term. However, both parties are still speaking to,
01:31they're talking to Trump, they're still posturing, and they haven't gone silent,
01:38which is what you would expect if something weren't going to happen. We do expect, and have
01:44said so before, that just before peace breaks out, it would look like the entire process
01:50has failed. Hopefully, we are at that point now. A question does arise. Will Putin use May 1st,
01:59May Day, as an opportunity to be magnanimous in peace? So, it gives them an opportunity to be a
02:07little bit flexible. While the forecast looks wrong today, if peace occurs anytime soon, we will call
02:15it a win, because when we made it, it seemed that there was no chance in hell. But it's happening.
02:21In the meantime, Don, just when you think the climate change people couldn't get any dumber,
02:29they do. Don, what about the climate scientist who apparently has trouble with second grade
02:34arithmetic? Yeah, this is a, some research supposedly has come out that the Arctic ice has been decreasing
02:43at 23% a year since. Per decade. Per decade, yeah, since the 70s. And of course, if that math
02:51was to be calculated, that would mean there would be no ice, and we'd all be having beachfront property
02:57at the North Pole. But obviously, that hasn't happened. And the thing that they continue to get
03:03wrong, and that they continue to misrepresent, is that indeed, the Arctic is warmer. But the Arctic is
03:12warmer in the winter. So there has not been the melting of the ice that they were predicting.
03:18And this is what's led to all of these forecasts of doom and gloom of the ice caps going away.
03:24What they ignore is the fact that temperatures during the summer have been, well, pretty steady.
03:30So when it's one or two degree warmer in the Arctic in the winter, doesn't matter. Would you rather
03:36freeze the death at 40 below or 38 below? It doesn't matter. Okay. And so that's, that's why
03:42when Al Gore and James Hansen and a lot of other of these folks have made these predictions, like ice
03:49free by 2010, ice free by 2020, they're, they're, they're basically accepting data from that article
03:59that you had referred to, Gary, is, is that it's not melting away at the rate that they're predicting.
04:05In fact, it's been very steady, and very steady state, and will continue to do that.
04:11I, what aren't the, isn't the ice in general, for instance, at the South Pole getting thicker?
04:17Yeah, the thing to remember with both polar ice caps, is, is that they shrink and expand,
04:23they go back and forth. They are not steady state. It's like the argument with glaciers. It's just like,
04:28well, some glaciers have retreated, you know, the end of the world. Glaciers are not static.
04:35In fact, if glaciers started to advance, that's bad news. That is really bad news. So glaciers are
04:44moving all the time. The ice caps are dynamic, have been and always will be. So you never want to get
04:50too excited when they expand or get too excited when they contract. Hey, Don, congratulations on
04:56hitting the forecast this past week. Midwest was terrible with storms and tornadoes.
05:02And you were in Cancun.
05:03Everything that you said last week came to pass.
05:06But what happens next?
05:08But we were prepared, weren't we, Bob?
05:12Yeah, I tell you, you know, from a major ice storm in Michigan and snow in the upper Midwest to
05:17the flooding and the severe weather in the South, you know, they're not out of the woods yet.
05:21But through the weekend, it is going to pour, pour, pour rain in the South Central United States.
05:28And there's going to be significant flooding from Arkansas to Missouri to Southern Indiana,
05:32Southern Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky into Southern Ohio.
05:37There'll be areas before the weekend's over getting a foot of rain.
05:40Is this going to hit the Carolinas? North Carolina has been beaten up this year.
05:47The far eastern edge of this rain will clip the Western Carolinas, but they'll miss the worst of it.
05:52That part is good.
05:54Oh, how are you looking at what's happening for the next week or so?
06:00Well, what you're going to see is this back and forth, which is typical of spring.
06:04There'll be a break in the weather next week.
06:06Then the following week, the stormy weather will return again.
06:10And we're going to kind of go back and forth like this through the rest of the month.
06:14Okay.
06:16Isaac, the world has changed with the newly declared trade war with China and Canada.
06:25How much of our shipping and our economy, if you can tell us, is dependent upon China and Canada in terms of what you're seeing?
06:34Well, let me start by saying this.
06:36The trucking community is not too excited about all these tariffs and trade war talk.
06:42China and Canada are significant.
06:44China's been consistently the number one exporter to the United States.
06:50Mexico took its spot in a couple of months in 2023 and 2024, but consistently been China with over 400 billion in exports just in 2023 alone.
07:01When you say exports, you mean China exporting to us?
07:04That is correct, yeah.
07:05Imports.
07:06So we're importing.
07:08Absolutely.
07:08Yeah.
07:09So we have a lot of key goods, electronics, machinery, textiles, furnitures, toys, plastics.
07:14It's a lot of shipping that comes out of, a lot of exports, imports for us that come out of China that really keep a lot of trucks busy, especially the drage community.
07:25A trade war with China will decimate the, in a very big way, the intermodal import, export, drage community in terms of truck drivers.
07:33A lot of the West Coast ports are heavily reliant on China, Long Beach, Los Angeles.
07:40If these, you know, if there's some significant, and there are, tariff talk going on right now, we're going to see a big slowdown in shipments coming in the West and in terms of big slowdown in transportation for us.
07:51How much do we have in the pipeline that won't be impacted by tariffs?
07:58Do you have any idea?
08:00No, I don't.
08:00I'd have to get back to you on that.
08:02In terms of product, you're saying, correct?
08:04Yes.
08:04Yeah, no, I'd have to get back to you on that.
08:06I'm not, I'm not that well-versed on that.
08:08Okay, so with the shippers, the shippers, well, the shippers, people are worried about the volumes in your industry.
08:17Absolutely.
08:18Yeah, there were, I was at a ITA event about a month ago.
08:21They're expecting a 5% dip second half of the year when it comes to import volumes in our industry, which is significant.
08:28Mind you, our industries, we announced a freight recession back in November of 2024 to be over.
08:34We were in a three-year freight recession, and freight waves just announced that they're rethinking that declaration and that we might tailspin into another year, year and a half of a recession.
08:45And that's going to be four, four and a half years of freight recession.
08:48Not a lot of industries can sustain that amount of time in a recession, as you guys all know.
08:53Okay, Bob Gnetsky, with everyone talking about tariffs this week, how did stocks and interest rates do?
09:02Well, stocks did miserably.
09:07We are, anyone who looks at the market knows that as of today, because the downturn continued this morning, we've got the S&P 500 down more than 15% and the NASDAQ down more than 20%.
09:23Say down 15%, you're talking about from the highs.
09:26Highs from the highs, from the highs that occurred back at the end of February, before the tariff talks all started to become more prominent.
09:36And the only fortunate thing is, and we talked about this each week, our short-term momentum model in the stock market turned negative back at the beginning of March, on March 4th.
09:48And we've had a sell, a bearish signal, a sell signal consistently on the five-day average of that indicator ever since.
09:59So our indicators have been saying, you know, this is not a good market to be in, you ought to get out.
10:05And unfortunately, for those who have stayed in, our indicators were correct.
10:11So, but before, we've been discussing this, and it seemed that the stocks were overpriced to begin with before the tariff issue.
10:19Weren't we due for a pullback?
10:22Sure, but the pullback only occurs when people reassess the likelihood or the value of the companies that they're investing in.
10:31And there's been a major reassessment.
10:33And you can say, well, it had to happen anyway.
10:37But it only happens when there is something that changes the momentum of the market.
10:42And the thing that seems to be obvious to me is that the market's momentum has changed because of the sharp increase in trade barriers that were hinted at by Trump until two days ago.
10:57And on April 2nd, he no longer hinted at it.
10:59He said, this is what I'm doing.
11:02What he's doing is very significant.
11:04It's an increase in tariffs that were basically comparable in many ways to what the Smoot-Hawley tariff was in 1930, which sent the economy, and that was one of the key factors that I believe contributed to the Great Depression.
11:21Because when you all of a sudden change the rules of the game, and you have a very abrupt shift in the economic situation because of things like tariffs, you've placed a major tax on the U.S. economy, on U.S. people, and that is highly disruptive.
11:43And I suspect that's what's happening to the economy, to the stock market right now.
11:48It's trying to digest just how destructive this tax is going to be.
11:55Bob, but it's not like we're taxing, that we're the bad guys, and we're putting tariffs on countries that had no tariffs against us.
12:03The fact is, China and Canada had significant tariffs against our goods.
12:10So how does that work?
12:11As President Reagan often said in trying to describe the damage from tariffs, everyone cheats on tariffs.
12:20Everyone tries to protect their industries in one way or another.
12:23And we did protect our industries.
12:27Taxes on imports of sugar have been artificially high in this country.
12:33The point is not who's fair or who's unfair, but when you change the rules of the game abruptly, businesses are affected, and they're affected immediately in terms of losses and a change of the terms that they expected to exist when they made their contracts for their business.
12:52So it's highly disruptive, regardless of who's at fault or who's the good guy or bad guy.
12:57So what we're seeing now in the market is a fall-off as a result of that disruption.
13:02And the question is how this plays out from here.
13:06A lot of people believe that Trump has a stronger card because the U.S. economy is stronger than China, stronger than Canada.
13:14And both of those countries have just put major tariffs on all U.S. goods coming into their country.
13:21So this is a trade war at this point.
13:23If that trade war were to continue, this would result in a major downturn, not just in the U.S., but throughout the entire world.
13:34So something is going to have to give here.
13:37And we just have to wait and see what it is.
13:40Is it possible that in terms of the stock market, that it's something else other than tariffs?
13:46I mean...
13:47It's always possible.
13:48It seems obvious to me, though, that the change in the sentiment, the change in the momentum of the market has been driven primarily by, first, the perspective that we might have serious tariffs in a trade war.
14:03And now the reality that not only do we get those tariffs, but we got the trade war.
14:08And no one knows what comes next.
14:11But what I'm saying is so long as this condition continues to exist, the prospects for the economy and the stock market are certainly not good.
14:21Well, there are other issues, such as the Russia-Ukraine war.
14:26The fighting in Gaza is continuing.
14:29There's a whole really serious, possibly positive...
14:34All of those existed before.
14:35The Horn of Africa.
14:36There hasn't been a change.
14:39And then, of course, the left is reacting to the idea that Trump just might want a third term, which I think is a shiny object that they're all looking at.
14:49There's a great...
14:50You know, there's a great...
14:51Go ahead, Don.
14:52I just want to say there's a great...
14:53Yeah, no, I think he's...
14:54I just think he's having fun with that.
14:57I think he's just trolling the media with that.
14:59Well, Don, you're right.
15:00There's a great cartoon in the press, and it's a picture of Trump throwing out a ball.
15:07And on the ball is third term.
15:09And there's a dog labeled the press that are all running after that ball.
15:13So you're absolutely right that the third term is just to discourage the press and just send them off in the wrong direction.
15:23Well, that part is pretty clear.
15:26Okay, our usual question, which now has a little bit more meaning.
15:31Don, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the economy and the country going forward?
15:37Well, I'm optimistic, but as I mentioned before, this is a very rocky next three months I think we're heading into.
15:44And it's kind of like when you're driving a car and you go into a tunnel, you know pretty well that, you know, you're going to get to the other side, but it's dark in there and you can only see as far as your headlights go.
15:56That's kind of how I feel right now.
15:58And, you know, you're optimistic you're going to come out of the tunnel okay, but you just hope there isn't something coming your direction.
16:04Isaac, are you optimistic or pessimistic?
16:08I'm definitely still optimistic.
16:10Do I like the trade war talk?
16:12Do I like the tariffs?
16:13Absolutely not.
16:14Do I think Trump has a plan?
16:15Yes, I'm still confident in his decision making and I'm looking forward to seeing what the next three to six months looks like.
16:23Dr. Bob, your view, optimistic or pessimistic?
16:28I'm extremely optimistic.
16:30I think this thing is going to turn out fine in the end.
16:34The only question is, are we looking at a one week or one month or a three month period where we have to continue to go through this painful adjustment?
16:45Well, I agree with all you guys.
16:47I'm optimistic.
16:48And I believe that Dr. Bob's time frame of one to three months, I think that works.
16:55And we'll be setting that up in our forecast coming up.
16:59Okay, with that, everybody have a great weekend.
17:02Pick who you want to win in the final four.
17:05That's this weekend.
17:07So be well and God bless America.
17:25And we'll be setting that up in our forecast coming up in our forecast coming up in our forecast coming up in our forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming up in the forecast coming
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