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The Meyers Report_04_11_2025 Fast_15
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00:00When Alaska is warm and Canada is warm in the winter, the United States, the lower 48 states, is cold.
00:14Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Meyers Report Fast 15. It is April 11th, 2025.
00:22An update on our forecasting system. As of yesterday, we had our 172 forecasts made last October, November, and December.
00:32We are up to 83 forecasts that are verifiable. We have 80 wins, 3 losses, and our accuracy rate is 93.6%. Let's hope that continues.
00:50Going straight into, well, actually, there's one thing I wanted to mention.
00:56We had a discussion in terms of perspective with our friends from the London School of Economics, the students out there, on this past Sunday.
01:06And one of them said something very poignant, which was, no matter how bad things are over here, why are we unhappy at all?
01:16Well, because at least we have freedom of speech, because they really don't have it in the U.K.
01:21Okay, moving on. Don Day.
01:25Alaska and its Iditarod apparently was short on snow.
01:29What happened, and does it mean anything in terms of climate?
01:34Well, first of all, you are correct.
01:36They were short on snow this year for the Iditarod, and the map I'm showing you is basically the temperature anomaly for North America.
01:46Basically, this was from December through February.
01:51So you can see all the orange up in Canada, up in Alaska there.
01:55So it was certainly a warm winter up there relative to average.
01:58But notice the lower 48 states, there's a lot of blue, as we know it's been a cold winter.
02:04The thing that a lot of people don't know is that when Alaska is warm and Canada is warm in the winter, the United States, the lower 48 states, is cold.
02:16Now, that seems counterintuitive, but that's how it works.
02:19And the reason is that you tend to get an area of high pressure that develops in the Gulf of Alaska over Alaska and British Columbia, which makes them warm, while low pressure forms downstream of the high pressure, and you get the blue like you're seeing here over central and eastern areas of the United States.
02:39So as it goes, when Alaska is cold, the lower 48 is warm.
02:44If the lower 48 is cold, Alaska is warm.
02:47So that seems like it should be, but it's all based on latitude, longitude, and where things are.
02:57But it makes perfect sense that if the lower 48 was going to have a colder than average winter, Alaska was going to be warmer.
03:04Go ahead.
03:06So lower 48, cold, Alaska warm, correct, Don?
03:10That's correct.
03:11So should we start selling our vacation homes in Florida and get some over in Alaska?
03:15Hey, not a bad idea, because it could flip.
03:18You know, you could say, hey, instead of Fort Lauderdale, how about Fairbanks?
03:26Well, with the north magnetic pole, with the Earth's axis shifting, is it possible we are going to see a massive climate change because of the shifting of the Earth's axis?
03:37And if so, when would that happen, Don?
03:39You know, it depends.
03:41You know, I've actually followed that.
03:43You know, there's some people who are really on top of that pole shift who are claiming that the Earth will completely change its axis to where we are now would end up in the southern hemisphere, believe it or not.
03:56Now, a lot of people think that's bunk, but a pole shift historically, at least in the geologic records, shows a tumultuous period with the climate.
04:07But since there's no one alive or any written record of exactly what it was like, it's hard to make the prediction.
04:14Other than the fact that if we do have a pole shift in the next 20 years, which some people are predicting, there certainly will be some weather and climate effects from that.
04:25Within the next 20 years?
04:27Yeah, some people are predicting by 2050, you know, 20 to 30 years from now.
04:33The pole's moving.
04:34It's migrating.
04:35You cannot dispute that.
04:37It's moving right now.
04:39Okay, but we shouldn't start getting our vacation homes in Alaska for at least another 20 years, maybe longer, 1,000 years.
04:51Well, wait until the pole shifts, then prices will go down.
04:54It'll be a good buying opportunity.
04:55Kind of like the stock market.
04:57Don't sell that house in Kabul just yet now, Bob.
04:59Yeah, exactly.
05:01I'd say good, Bob.
05:02Don, as usual, you accurately forecast the aggressive weather we had this week.
05:10What's going on there?
05:11Well, if you take a look at the chart here, the red line represents the tornado count to date across the lower 40.
05:19And you can see that the red line, 523 tornadoes.
05:23The gray line shows what the average is throughout the course that we've been keeping track of these things.
05:30So it's been a much more active tornado season compared to average.
05:35And more than last year, the fatality count is also up.
05:38Now, this is the time of year where severe weather really gets going.
05:42And there's going to be more in April.
05:44There'll be more in May.
05:45Although a lot of the central and eastern United States in the next week or two is going to catch a little bit of a break.
05:53But you can see from the graph that we're well ahead of average.
05:56I see two numbers there, 523 and I think 311.
06:02Are those fatality graphs?
06:04No, that's the number of tornadoes.
06:06Okay, got it.
06:09Are you ready to forecast the hurricane season?
06:13Well, the hurricane season, real quick, it looks like there's a couple of things that are going to be different this year from last year.
06:19And this is based on what we're seeing in both the Atlantic, the Gulf, and also into the Pacific.
06:25This is that we will likely have a lower count of hurricanes this year.
06:29But there still could be some high impacts.
06:33And there looks to be a northern shift of the hurricane activity, maybe less in the Gulf.
06:40Not zero, but less in the Gulf.
06:42And I think the mid-Atlantic is under the gun this year a bit more from Virginia to the Carolinas to northeast Florida.
06:51That's an area we think that may have a little more activity, and we'll need to watch for landfall there.
06:57And that's basically because the Atlantic is actually cooling off a little bit, which helps.
07:02But out in the Pacific...
07:03But second, that helps what?
07:05It helps reduce the hurricane intensity and the number.
07:09Okay, so the Atlantic is getting cooler?
07:12A little cooler where it's been really warm, yes.
07:14Okay, does any of this mean anything in terms of climate change?
07:21No, it doesn't.
07:22It's just a reminder that the weather and the climate is very dynamic and changing and shifting all the time.
07:29So you expect these changes.
07:31The one thing, you know, you go out and you look out across the vast expanse of oceans,
07:36and what you really don't realize is how dynamic the oceans are in terms of how they change
07:42with the temperature of the water on the surface throughout the course of a season,
07:47throughout the course of a decade, throughout the course of a year.
07:50If you could see, if we could visually see the things changes, it would be much easier to recognize.
07:55But the oceans themselves are weather systems.
07:59Okay, moving on.
08:00Isaac, what effects have the recent tariff changes had on the import and export volumes?
08:07Well, unfortunately, negative ones in a very big way, Gary.
08:10How big?
08:11The industry is already adjusting to all these tariffs.
08:15Bookings out of China have dropped 35% in the last week and a half, which is tremendous.
08:23You have LA ports are reporting a 10% reduction in volumes for the remainder of the year due to these tariffs.
08:31So, yeah, very big way.
08:33Illinois, ITA, Illinois Trucking Association, pulls local truckers here in the Chicagoland area to gauge what their volumes look week over week.
08:43Last week, that index plunged 27%.
08:46So, volumes are already starting to nosedive, and we're only expecting it to incentivize.
08:53So, the trucking industry is basically, their reaction is they're hunkering down.
09:00Absolutely.
09:01Absolutely.
09:02Are these companies going to be able to survive?
09:04A lot of the drage ones most certainly will not be able to survive.
09:08Again, let me remind you, you know, we just came out of a three-year-long freight recession.
09:13Officially, Freight Waves announced it back in November of 2024.
09:17Freight Waves came out with a publication, I think it was last month.
09:21Well, I'm sorry, a couple weeks ago, once these tariffs, when all the tariffs start, tariff talk started to intensify, saying that this will tailspin the industry another year, year and a half recession at least.
09:33Mind you, after a three-year-long recession.
09:36Not many industries that I know of can withstand a four- to five-year freight recession.
09:42That's pretty grim.
09:43Bob Janetsky, the stock market seems to be recovering another day, in spite of the negative news we just heard from Isaac, and I guess the positive news about hurricanes.
09:57But I presume the stock market's not following Don Day's hurricane forecast.
10:03No, I wouldn't be too quick to suggest that.
10:07I think there have been a lot of hurricanes hitting the stock market, Gary.
10:11And, no, the market is basically down.
10:14If we look at it over the past week, we thought, or it looked like, with Trump coming out and putting a pause, that everything would be fine.
10:23Everything's not fine.
10:24It kind of kicked back up from there, but now it's back down again.
10:28And for the week as a whole, we're seeing losses.
10:32The most discouraging thing to me in the market today is the upward movement in the long-term interest rates.
10:39Now, usually, when things go bad for the economy, and Isaac talked about some of the adjustments negatively that occurred because of the tariffs, when things go bad in the economy and the stock market, usually investors will go to fixed incomes for security.
10:59And when they buy the fixed incomes, they raise the prices of those fixed income securities.
11:05And the yields go down.
11:06And yields go down.
11:08We're seeing the opposite.
11:10We're up 40 basis points in a week.
11:13Yes.
11:13Big jump in interest rates in the long-term area.
11:18So we've got a couple of things working here that are not positive, that are very negative for the stock market.
11:24Now, I've talked about our short-term momentum indicator.
11:28The idea is that momentum in the market, whether it's good or bad, tends to continue until something comes along to knock it in the other direction.
11:39Our momentum indicator in four out of the last five days has been at 0%.
11:46One day, it jumped up to 10%, and anything below 50% is negative.
11:52It doesn't go below 0%.
11:54That's the worst negative, the worst momentum you can imagine in the stock market.
11:59So we are absolutely close to as bad a momentum situation in the market as we have seen ever.
12:06And that's not good.
12:10I'm not forecasting momentum one day out because anything can happen to the stock market.
12:16But I'm just saying up to the current period of time, our momentum continues to be extremely negative with, you know, like a 2% chance that the market is actually going to turn around and go higher.
12:29That's really bad.
12:32So I'm not encouraged at all when I look at a momentum indicator, when I look at the technical indicators that affect the stock market.
12:40Right now, things are pretty negative, and I see nothing at the moment that's going to turn them.
12:45We all hope this thing turns around very quickly.
12:49But there is so much that this market has to go up just to get a neutral position with respect to momentum.
12:55That the current outlook at the moment is certainly not positive.
13:01Isaac, overall, are you feeling optimistic?
13:05Last week, all of us were feeling optimistic about the country going forward.
13:11What's your feeling about that today?
13:13With the recent pause, it's the extension that he put on pretty much everyone except for China.
13:17I'm still optimistic.
13:18I still think this is definitely a negotiation, a bargaining tactic.
13:21I'm just really, really looking forward to see how the next two to three months plays out.
13:25So my answer is going to be optimistic.
13:28Don Day.
13:30Well, certainly it's really easy in the short term to be pessimistic, especially if you look at your portfolio, which I haven't done.
13:39I'm not going to for a while.
13:41No, don't.
13:41But the long game, and I think that's the thing here, is that the long game, the six to 12 to 18-month opportunity for being optimistic, I'm still am.
13:55So I'm still optimistic.
13:57But like I said last week, it feels like we're going into a tunnel, and we just hope it's bright and sunny on the other end.
14:04Robert?
14:07I'm optimistic, tremendously optimistic.
14:11These are short-term bumps in the road.
14:14I believe that Trump does know what he's doing.
14:18But he's made some moves on tariffs that are definitely negative, that are definitely hurting.
14:24And the latest escalation with China has the potential of being very, very serious.
14:29So we're all hoping that this thing gets resolved quickly.
14:33If it doesn't get resolved, we're going to have to deal with these weak markets until something very basic changes.
14:40And right now, at the moment, there are no signs of that change coming.
14:43It's interesting, because China just put on some additional tariffs.
14:49They put a 60% tariff on soybeans when before they had nothing.
14:53But they also had a 20% tariff on pork, which is now going up, which really surprised me on both cases, because they need those two items to feed their people.
15:07This is very bad for China.
15:10It's bad for the U.S.
15:12That's what happens when you end up getting into a war on tariffs.
15:16You do damage both to your opponent, but you also do damage to yourself.
15:21In the case of some of the input we've seen from China, China's damage is four times greater than the damage to the U.S.
15:30Now, that doesn't make it any easier for us, but it does suggest that Trump has the leverage here, and hopefully we'll be able to use it to come up with a reasonable solution.
15:41I think I'm also optimistic, though it's a little shaky.
15:45Because during a negotiation, if you are really going to be successful, everything looks like it's going to fall apart right before you get to the successful point.
15:57Everything's pushed to the edge, and this we're seeing both in tariffs, we're seeing it with Russia and Ukraine.
16:05As far as the Middle East, I have no clue as to how that's going to play out.
16:10But be that as it may, Russia, Ukraine, and the tariffs, I think there's tremendous opportunity for success there.
16:19But we shall see, because the way things are going now, with our next session, it will be, a lot can change.
16:29With that, I want to say thank you to everybody, have a good weekend, and God bless America.
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