Smart Investing with Brent & Chase Wilsey

Inflation continues to cool, creating more hope for rate cuts.

Largest US Banks 

May Retail Sales

May retail sales showed the economy is continuing to decelerate, which is exactly what I think we need to see. The release showed retail sales were up 0.1% compared to last month, wh…

May CPI

I would say I was very optimistic after the May Consumer Price Index (CPI) was released. Headline CPI increased 3.3% compared to last year, which was below the estimate and last month’s readi…

Jobs Report 

The Jobs Report showed the labor market continues to remain on good footing considering nonfarm payrolls rose by 272,000, which easily topped the estimate of 190,000. Strength occurred i…

PCE

The core personal consumption expenditures index (PCE), which is the Fed’s preferred measure for inflation did not show much progress in the month of April. Year over year core PCE was up 2.8% wh…

AI Boom

You may have missed the AI boom in NVIDIA, but for patient longer-term investors there could be a good investment opportunity in energy going forward. As more companies begin to use AI, the d…

PPI

Initially the Producer Price Index (PPI) looked problematic as it increased 0.5%, which easily topped the estimate of 0.3%. Looking further into the report though, the March reading was revised f…

Cash & Money Markets are not Long-Term Investments 

With many companies in the stock market more expensive than we’d like to see, we have been sitting on more cash in a money market than we normally …

Labor Market payrolls

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 175,000 in the month of April. While this was well below the estimate of 240,000, this may actually be a big positive. Having that type of growth s…

GDP

First quarter GDP was a large disappointment as it grew at an annualized pace of 1.6%, substantially below the estimate of 2.4%. I will say, considering there is a lot of data to collect the firs…

Retail Sales

People may be complaining about higher interest rates, but it does not appear to be slowing down the consumer. Retail sales climbed 0.7% in the month of March, which is easily topped the…

March CPI

The March Consumer Price Index (CPI) report spooked investors and sent the likelihood of a Fed rate cut in June to around 20%, which was a sharp drop from the greater than 50% chance that w…

March Jobs Report 

I must say, I was very surprised by the strength in the March Jobs Report. Nonfarm payrolls increased 303,000 in the month, which easily topped the estimate of 200,000. Unlike prio…

Electric Vehicle Sales

Electric vehicle sales have really not kept up with expectations and I’m concerned for the smaller companies such as Lucid, Fisker and Rivian, which besides Tesla may be the on…

Lawsuits Against Apple

On Thursday, March 21st, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an anti-trust lawsuit along with 16 states against Apple. The DOJ claims Apple’s iPhone ecosystem is a monopoly t…

CPI

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in a little bit hotter than expected as the headline number for February showed an annual increase of 3.2% versus on expectation of 3.1% and the core CPI showe…

Labor Market

While the headline number of 275k jobs created easily topped the estimate of 198k and sparked concerns the labor market remained too hot, the details of the report showed a much softer l…

401k Loans

It was nice to see that retirement assets saw a nice increase in 2023. According to Fidelity, the average 401k was up 14% from a year earlier to $118,600 and the average IRA was up 12% to …

Commercial Real Estate

We hear that commercial real estate properties are having problems, but how bad are those problems? After the 2008/2009 financial crisis, by the second quarter of 2010 commerci…