Smart Investing with Brent & Chase Wilsey

Jobs Report
Given the concerns around the economy, I'd say the jobs report was a positive one. It wasn't too hot which would've provided evidence for the Fed to increase rates more than anticipated, …

Consumer Confidence
I was happy to see the consumer confidence number come in today at 104.2 for March which was up from February’s 103.4. For me this is another positive sign that we will not have a…

Retirement Investment Rule
I was disappointed to see Joe Biden veto the resolution to overturn a retirement investment rule that allows managers of retirement funds to consider the impact of climate …

Volatility of Stocks
It amazes me how people believe that stocks are too risky and real estate is a much safer investment. Looking back nearly 50 years the truth is stocks have more volatility than r…

Jobs Report

The headline jobs number of 311,000 easily topped the estimate of 225,000 but marks a slowdown from January's level of 504,000. Leisure and hospitality remained strong with an addition o…

Economic News
Some people wonder why I don’t get so upset over the negative economic news that comes out. In the first half of last year, I kept saying yes it will be a difficult year but we’re not g…

Home Sales
For 12 months in a row existing home sales have been declining. Recent numbers coming out from December show a drop of 36.9% from December 2021, month over month we saw a decline of 0.7%. …

Short-Term Rentals
We've talked a lot about the affordability problems when buying a new home, but one area we haven't discussed as much is the real estate investor. The short-term rental craze I bel…

Labor Market

Even with all the negative headlines, the labor market data remains resilient. The recent JOLTs report for December showed job openings increased 572,000 to a 5-month high of 11 million…

Personal Consumption Expenditures
The Personal Consumption Expenditures index (PCE) for December came in with an annual growth rate of 5.0%. This is down from the November level of 5.5%. Looking at t…

Inflation

Big news on the inflation fronts today as the Producer Price Index (PPI) in December showed a monthly decline of 0.5% vs the estimate for a decline of 0.1%. Year over year the index showed …

Consumer Price Index (CPI)

As anticipated, the CPI report showed a deceleration in inflation as the index gained 6.5% for the 12 months ending in December. This compares to 7.1% in the month of Novem…

Job Market

The jobs report brought plenty of welcome news as the headline payrolls grew by 223,000 in the month of December, which easily topped the estimate of 200,000. This was a decrease from Nove…

Inflation

As expected, inflation continued to decelerate in the month of November. I was thinking there was a small possibility we might see a reading for the headline number in the high 6% range, bu…

Producer Price Index (PPI)

Although the headline Producer Price Index (PPI) number saw a gain of 0.3% compared to last month, I actually thought the report was in line with what we’d been expecting. …

Jobs

Job gains showed a nice increase of 263,000 in November which easily topped the estimate of 200,000. Leisure and hospitality remained a major leader with job gains totaling 88,000 in the month a…

Consumer Price Index
Even with all the fear, the consumer is still shopping. In October, retail sales were up 1.3% compared to September and up 8.3% compared to October 2021. This outpaced the inflat…

CPI Report
The market rallied this morning on news inflation was not as bad as feared. The headline CPI number for October came in at 7.7% compared to last year, which was lower than the estimate of …