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The Meyers Report 5-16-2025 Fast 15
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00:00And a lot of people don't realize that the Fed has been taking money out of the economy
00:04for the supply side, and it has been doing that for the past three years.
00:13Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Myers Report Fast 15. It is Friday, May 16th,
00:21and it looks like the Trump train keeps on rolling with international agreements that
00:27are mind-boggling. There's no other way to describe it. In a future discussion, we will cover
00:34what he has done, which is very hard to keep up with. In the meantime, and we will go over this
00:40a little bit more, back in January 11th of this year, our team, Myers Report, including everybody
00:51on this call, had forecast that Fed tightening would continue until April. Well, we now know
01:00that as of April 16th, the Fed stopped their tightening. So that gives us a forecasting
01:06accuracy rate of 85 wins, three losses, for an average accuracy rate of 96. Don, your weather
01:16forecasts are amazingly accurate. That's the good news. The bad news is, you dumped a bunch
01:22of hurricanes, a bunch of tornadoes in Bob's lap. Anyway.
01:27Yeah, and we're going to, today in particular, and into the weekend, we're going to have a lot
01:32of severe weather. More severe weather?
01:35More severe weather today, especially in the Ohio Valley, southern Illinois, southern Indiana,
01:41Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri. They're going to get some of that severe weather that Bob
01:47experienced yesterday. And we're going to see some strong thunderstorms across the south
01:51as we get into the weekend. It's just that time of year, but we do have an uptick of severe weather
01:56here over the next five to seven days.
01:58Anything particular causing it that you're aware of?
02:01Spring. Yeah, the tug of war, the change of seasons. You know, this time of year, the atmosphere
02:08is still cold up high, but it's getting warm down low, and that stirs things up and gets
02:13those severe thunderstorms going.
02:15Do you see any weather-related challenges that could impact our food supply?
02:21I don't see it at the moment. I mean, we're at that time of year where folks have already
02:26planted or they're still planting. And, you know, we're watching good wheat conditions out
02:32in some of the winter wheat country where they've got some recent rains. And so in a few weeks,
02:37they'll be harvesting the first wheat crops in some areas. So things are looking okay at the
02:42moment.
02:43Anything happening in different parts of the world that will affect the ability of countries
02:48and people to feed themselves?
02:50Well, you know, Eastern Europe has been pretty cold here lately. That includes Ukraine.
02:55You always worry in late May about a late season frost or freeze, and that'll be one area
03:01we're keeping an eye on. But from a big picture standpoint, don't see any bigger, big global
03:07concerns at the moment.
03:09Okay. There was a drought impacting Florida and the citrus crops. How's that doing down there?
03:16Well, the good news there is that rains have returned. The pattern that made it a very dry
03:21winter in Florida has reversed. And so they've picked up significant rain, and they'll be getting
03:26more here in the week ahead.
03:28Okay. That's good news. Isaac, the president is running the table on tariffs. What's happening?
03:35What's the freight outlook for the next few weeks?
03:37Tell you one thing under this administration. What do we can do? What do we can do? Last week,
03:43we were reporting about carnage to come in the freight industry. Now we're bracing for a huge
03:50surge of imports to hit the country. So bookings have surged. Shanghai to United States. Prices
03:59across the ocean have already risen by 10%. They're expecting them to jump by 50%?
04:06Over what period of time, Isaac?
04:08I'm sorry?
04:09They're going to jump by 50% over what period of time?
04:12Over the next couple of weeks. Over the next couple of weeks.
04:15So wait a second. Over the next few weeks? Over the next period of days?
04:20Over the period of days. Some steamship lines are reporting 277% uptick in bookings over
04:29the last couple of weeks. You know what I mean? Ever since this announcement came Sunday from
04:33China and the United States, a lot of activity is happening right now. We're not seeing it just
04:39yet. Now mind you, there's about a 45- to 60-day lagging effect before these bookings actually
04:45make it to the United States and the shipments are here for truckers to handle. But we are seeing it.
04:52Bookings are at an all-time high. We're expecting surges in volumes similar to what we saw during COVID.
05:00Well, this brings up a question. First off, is this 45-day lag going to show up in terms of
05:08shortages in the supermarkets? We're in the stores of the country.
05:12I don't think so. I don't think so. Because, you know, we reported, you know, the smaller guys,
05:16smaller mom and pops, you will see, you know, some emptiness on their shelves. But Walmarts,
05:21the big box stores, these guys have been shipping product in the United States ever since quarter
05:26three of last year. So they're well prepared for at least four or five months. So 45 days,
05:33we're not going to skip a beat over here. Okay. If things are improving as rapidly as you're
05:39suggesting, when the surge comes, can our logistic systems handle the increased volume?
05:45Yeah, let me be very clear. I'm not suggesting. This is coming. This is happening.
05:49This is happening.
05:50Accept that.
05:51Yeah.
05:52Can we handle the volume, is the question?
05:55We can. We can. There's been a lot of efficiencies created on our ports and railheads since COVID.
06:00You know, we all saw the bottlenecks there. And there's, you know, in the last four or five years,
06:04there's been a lot of investment into the ports and railheads to be able to handle this. So the
06:09simple question is, absolutely. There'll be a little bit of bottleneck for the truckers,
06:15but nothing that we're overly concerned about. The American public shouldn't be concerned at all.
06:20So the American public probably won't even see it?
06:23Won't even see it.
06:26It says a lot about this.
06:27They won't see it.
06:28They won't see it, but the trucking will be very, very happy for the next few months.
06:36That's good news.
06:37Dr. Janetsky.
06:39Yes, sir.
06:40We were speaking about the Fed or the forecast that we had made as a group, that the Fed would
06:48loosen, excuse me, would stop tightening.
06:51And, you know, looking at this particular graph, which shows the Fed, shows Fed holdings, as
07:02as we know, when the Fed, well, the bottom line of it is, this is the Fed's holdings of
07:11securities.
07:13They stopped, they stopped dumping securities and pulling money out of the economy.
07:18This graph shows that since April 16th, they just stopped, they just stopped what they were
07:25doing.
07:26Do you want to explain what tightening means to the average person?
07:32Yes.
07:32There are different measures of money supply.
07:35A lot of people think just because the Fed changes interest rates.
07:40If they raise them, they're tightening.
07:42If they lower the target interest rate, then they're easing.
07:45That's one measure of ease.
07:48It's not the measure that I would suggest people look at and focus on more than any others.
07:54The two other measures of money, one is the supply side.
07:58That's the chart that you just showed.
08:00That's how much money is the Fed trying to either put in or take out of the economy.
08:06And a lot of people don't realize that the Fed has been taking money out of the economy
08:10for the supply side.
08:11And it has been doing that for the past three years.
08:15And it finally stopped doing that in April.
08:18Now, it's only one month, but it's one month where, fortunately, they're no longer taking
08:23money out of the system.
08:25That kind of relieves things a little bit from the supply side.
08:29There's another measure of money that's more popular than the supply side, and that's the
08:34demand measure.
08:35It's called M2, and it's bank deposits and currency.
08:38And that measure has been rising at 4% to 5%.
08:41And I've talked about this on past Zoom calls, that we have a conflict in the two money measures
08:51right now.
08:52And I said I wasn't really sure which of those measures would win out.
08:56It now appears that the measure that's winning out is more the demand side measure of the money
09:02supply, because the latest economic data are all showing that spending is continuing at this five,
09:09maybe even 6% rate of increase if you include inflation and real growth.
09:16And that's a pretty good clip.
09:18And I thought if the supply side indicator that you just pointed out was valid, that we could have a
09:25weakness in the economy.
09:26Well, there's no weakness in the current economic numbers.
09:30The latest numbers we have for April and even early May all seem to indicate that the economy
09:37is holding up very well in terms of spending.
09:40And, you know, at the moment, things are looking good.
09:45How's it looking?
09:46How's inflation looking?
09:47How's the CPI and the PPI?
09:49The inflation rate, you know, CPI measures year over year are in the 2% to 3% vicinity.
09:57So that is really close to the vicinity that the Fed wants to target.
10:02And the really interesting thing is we had some wholesale price indicators, which would be
10:08one of the early places that we start to see inflation building.
10:12And the indicators in the wholesale market for April were essentially unchanged.
10:19You know, some of them were up a little, some were down a little, deflation.
10:23But on balance, we're not seeing the sort of surge in prices that a lot of people, including
10:29I, would have expected from the tariffs.
10:32Now, if Isaac points out, we're going to see a 50% increase in prices from China because
10:39of the tariffs.
10:40That might still show up in the next month or so.
10:43That shipping, he was talking about shipping prices.
10:46That is correct.
10:47Shipping prices.
10:48Oh, shipping prices, not the prices for now.
10:51Shipping.
10:52Yeah, those shipping prices across the ocean from Shanghai over to Long Beach, California.
10:56Okay, interestingly, though, that is pretty much in line with the tariffs that Trump has
11:02put on China.
11:04You know, when he said he had to deal with China, the deal was he had raised the tariffs
11:10to 150%, 145%.
11:13And all he did was come down to 50%.
11:16So there are still huge tariffs, as I understand it, on most goods coming in from China.
11:22It's just he cut them by about two-thirds or half from an area that was just really, really
11:28high.
11:29So I would still expect that we're going to see some price pressure on those imports that
11:35are coming in.
11:37And that price pressure should show up, I would think, pretty early.
11:41Moving on, it appears that Trump's international successes are impacting stocks.
11:47The S&P 500 is now back to only 250 points below its all-time high.
11:55Right.
11:55We've had a great recovery.
11:58What does your model show for buying stocks going forward?
12:02Well, we have two models.
12:03The first model is the long-term model based on whether the market is correctly valued or
12:10whether it's overvalued.
12:11And the latest figures there show the market is overvalued by about 40% relative to what
12:19would be a normal situation.
12:21So stocks are very expensive.
12:25The short-term model, which had been negative, and it's simply a measure of how strong the momentum
12:31is, either up or down, that measure went negative in early March of this year.
12:38And, of course, we had the big downturn afterward.
12:41About a week ago, actually, four days ago, we got the strongest reading you can get, 100%
12:48reading, and that reading has continued for the last four days.
12:53And so we also use a five-day average.
12:55The five-day average is now over 90%, which means that, bottom line, the momentum has shifted
13:02dramatically.
13:03And at the moment, it's very positive in terms of a bullish direction.
13:07So even though the market's overvalued, from a momentum standpoint, people are very excited.
13:13And there's a great expectation that we're going to have continued good news on the chair
13:19front, as the president reports, new deals with Japan and India and the UK and other countries.
13:27So there's a lot of expectation.
13:29India and China, those are the biggies.
13:32Well, we're also seeing a couple of really encouraging things, at least from our perspective.
13:39The Russian economy looks like it's really in trouble.
13:43And China's economy is facing the same thing.
13:47And if these economies are as weak as we think, that's good news for the U.S.
13:52because it puts Trump in a better position to negotiate favorable trade agreements with both
13:59of those countries.
14:00I think he's, as we have been saying here for months, Trump is going to run the table.
14:06With that, Bob, are you optimistic going forward?
14:11Still very optimistic.
14:12I think all the bumps are going to be short-term bumps.
14:15And we're going to come out of this as strong as ever.
14:18Don, are you optimistic going forward?
14:21And do you particularly, not only on the political and economic side, how about on the weather side
14:26as well?
14:28From a weather standpoint, I'm always optimistic, but it's always changing, obviously, just like
14:34a lot of other things in life.
14:37But the overall general outlook, especially, I've been very heartened by what's happened
14:42over the past week.
14:43So that's led to increased optimism for me.
14:47Isaac, how do you feel about your industry, this country, and the whole bowl of wax?
14:53I'm excited.
14:54I'm optimistic, and shame on me for doubting Mr. Trump last week, right?
14:58I'm very optimistic.
15:01It's an exciting time to be a trucker.
15:04It's an exciting time to be an American.
15:07I think he is absolutely running the table, and I think he's bringing our country back in
15:13a way that we needed it.
15:16With that, have a good weekend, be well, stay safe, and God bless America.
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