 The Tom O'Brien Show is produced every business day. Tom takes your phone calls toll-free at 1-877-927-6648. Internationally at 727-873-7618. Let's go to Eddie and Bookarton. Hey, Eddie, what's going on? Hey, Tom, how are you, man? I'm doing great, man, yourself? Good, good. It is a treasure to have TFNN every hour during the trading day to be there to help you to guide you. And even to give you some peace of mind or like if somebody else is there with you while you're trading this crazy market, these are up or down. Well, listen, we appreciate you growling and prowling us out here, because we wouldn't be out here, folks, if we didn't have all you guys, gals, tigers and tigers as clients. And the market teaches you every single day, man. Now, folks, this is Jacob Shoup filling in for Tom O'Brien. So we have my last day with you all. We are out Monday. The market is closed. And Tom, we'll be back Tuesday for some of that great Tom O'Brien show goodness. The market is exhausted. We are down a little bit. The buying is kind of done for right now at least today. GDX is up. The gold contract is actually moving down a little bit right now. So we'll see how that pans out at the end of the day. Gold is in this just strange kind of position right now, where a lot of things might suggest on the superficial that it should be going up, but we're getting just kind of a mixed signal from it. So again, I always defer to Tom. He's got the gold report. It is a phenomenal publication. Would really recommend checking it out. Navidia is still up at 4.30. We were talking a little bit beforehand. We'll get into that at some point in the show regarding some of the smaller guys. And I really want to focus a little bit on AMD as well and how I think that, while AMD might be getting battered right now, relative to Navidia, I think it's still a positive choice on the long term. We'll take a look at Microsoft. That's down today, but it's been doing pretty well on the long term. And this is really done by its implementation, I suppose, of AI. Obviously it acquired chat, GBT or at least invested a large sum of the chat GBT to kind of add it into its Bing search. But one of the big things that Microsoft does, you know, they have Microsoft Azure, which is its cloud computing system. This is a pretty, I have a little bit of experience using Azure and I've studied like how to use a little bit and what you can spin off the different kind of like networking options you have, you know, data storage and everything. And I have a close acquaintance of mine who works basically on Azure, right? He works for another company doing security, but he does Azure implementation. And what's going, these guys get paid in immense amount of money. Like they get compensated very well for the skills that they have, right? One of the biggest, you know, victims of AI will be like knowledge-based workers, okay? And so, you know, of course he doesn't just work on Azure, but it's a major part of his job in securely implementing it. But the way that it's going now is there are more and more AI options for Azure to the point, you know, that it'll be someone who doesn't really have any experience with Azure security is gonna be able to implement secure Azure environments because the AI is just getting so good at it. According to this article here, the company could pick up 10 billion more in annual artificial intelligence revenue from developers using its Azure cloud or open AI models. JP Morgan analysts raised their price target on Microsoft stock Wednesday. Of course, that rose quite a bit to 348, trading off that just a little bit at 343. Microsoft is a major beneficiary of the rise of chat GPT and tangential products on top of its hefty investment in open AI, which will pay off. The company provides the underlying computing power. Microsoft also has exclusive licenses on open AI's models, including the chat GPT for large language model that can spit out natural sounding words and responds to humans text input. We all know this. And of course, you know, the name of the game with this and before chat GPT had been acquired or at least, you know, a large portion of it had been basically taken over by Microsoft via their investment. What it was being used for was just very standard searches, right? And what it will soon really take over is you're just not gonna have the need to have all these micro specializations, right? Like all these new tools that come out and you know, I would have focused a bit on the cloud with that, it's not gonna be as much of an investment on the individual. And I mean, you know, time to learn how these tools work because AI will really control a lot of it, right? There'll still be security around the servers that control AI and you'll have to have the knowledge of how that works. But very soon, you know, it just, in a way it kind of just lowers the barriers to entry, I would suppose. A lot of this AI does. In the past four quarters, Microsoft has generated almost 208 billion in total revenue. It went deeper onto it because it is really good, excuse me, because it is really a very good platform, we have lots of different ways that 10 billion of ARR is going to show up first. Following the event, JPMorgan analysts go through the price target from 350, excuse me, just to 350. So, you know, we were right around there and had to sell off, but essentially these companies have so much cash flow and they just have enough to basically invest in any kind of program that they're just going to absolutely dominate the AI market. And from that, they'll dominate cloud and kind of expand it. We see that a little bit with Amazon as well. We can pull that up. You know, they just recently acquired, they're expanding in interesting ways into different kind of sectors in general, right? You know, they're doing pharmaceuticals for a while and then, you know, today we're down a little bit. Again, this is kind of just an exhaustion in the market, but they purchased, let's pull it up here for you. The Roomba, the Roomba maker iRobot. See if I can pull it up. And this was up today significantly, up 20% almost. That got the UK approval. You know, basically those are antitrust regulators and they have to observe and see if there's any kind of, you know, monopolization occurring. The competition and markets authority in the UK said it decided not to escalate its initial investigation because it included that the deal would not result in substantial lessening of competition. And that's really how Amazon's doing it, right? When you buy into these different sectors essentially or, you know, different kind of supply chains, it's a little bit hard to get hit by these kind of antitrust laws. Consumer groups have always concerns, however, that Amazon's purchase of iRobot, which makes room of course, would widen the e-commerce giant's dominance in the smart home market. The acquisition is still facing review in the US by the Federal Trade Commission amid worries about Amazon's growing market power. It's also under scrutiny by the European Union's executive arm, which opened a review of the deal this month. It said iRobot has a modest UK market position, already faces several significant rivals and Amazon would have little incentive to give its product special treatment over rivals in its online store. But just being able to have these, you know, what may essentially become like Amazon generics, right, is a positive for the company as a whole. And so that obviously enjoyed a really positive increase as well. Take a look at Meta. Meta's up a little bit today, been up and down, trying to figure out, I think at least a positive look for the company as everything's being sold off pretty substantially. And that's, of course, we're still down a little bit, nowhere near that downdraft we saw on the open in a lot of other companies. Folks, stay tuned, we will be right back. Currencies, commodities and bond markets are as important as ever right now with how they're driving the volatility in equity markets across the globe, which is why it's a great time to try out Teddy Kegstad's Tiger Forex report. Teddy Kegstad breaks down the Forex markets every Monday using his 30 plus years of experience as a trading veteran of futures, Forex, stocks and options. Teddy releases his weekly Tiger Forex report every Monday morning with coverage of all the major currency pairs, including the Dollar Index, the Euro Dollar, Pound Dollar, Dollar Swiss, Dollar Yen, as well as many more. 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Expect notifications from Larry on market movement you need to act on at any time. First time subscribers also get a 30 day money back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. Subscribe to the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter today, TFNN.com Educating Investors. Toll free at 1-877-927-6648 internationally at 727-873-7618. Welcome back folks, take a little bit of a look at Tesla. Give me the bigger picture on this one. Obviously had an extraordinary run up since, I mean, let's see. I mean, this is really quite impressive, right? The other day I was saying that one of the biggest, you know, attractors to Tesla, you know, is not really like the car production, but it's gonna be that they're mapping all these routes in order to achieve self-driving, essentially, right? And then just the self-driving itself is so positive. And so Elon today was actually speaking in France and he says that the Tesla's market cap is directly tied to whether it solves autonomous driving. Now he's looking at it as well, you know, you can tell he wants to get into automated shipping with the cargo trucks that he developed, but also you think about it as well, this is a major data opportunity for them. And if there's anything in the future where they really have a market dominance regarding autonomous driving and there's some kind of antitrust thing that occurs, they will be able to at least sell their data to other companies who are gonna be entering the market in that competition. So you're speaking in Paris, the younger adult who is speaking with Antoine Arnold, ribbed musk about Tesla's 827 billion market cap, noting it dwarfed the story to luxury conglomerates valuation, of course. The Tesla CEO responded that valuations are a strange thing. He also suggested that Tesla's market cap was tied again to whether or not the company could perfect autonomous driving technology. The potential for autonomy is that the value of autonomy is so high that even if you have a discount, a percentage profitability of autonomy happening that is extremely valuable. He also reiterated the idea of Tesla owners turning their vehicles into a fleet of self-driving robo-taxis, an idea that he once said would be implemented by 2020. Of course, we are off of that. But if you think about it, it goes beyond just the cars driving themselves and people making robo-taxies so they can get some money from it, but it's just this idea that we now have something that's relatively intelligent that can move around our infrastructure and perform tasks. So that capability, while it's positive, could get, in my opinion, hit by some kind of antitrust situation, but the data for it is so positive. Moving on and some kind of sticking with the tech, at least, I was speaking again how important it is that our country and companies understand cybersecurity and invest more into it. And we read yesterday that companies are actually de-investing from it currently. And I said this is not a positive thing and it will be a mistake. This is from today, from the AP, and it turned out that a Russian ransomware gang breached the Energy Department and other federal agencies. The Department of Energy and several other federal agencies were compromised in a Russian cyber extortion gang's global hack of a file transfer program popular with corporations and governments. But the impact was not expected to be great, they said. So yeah, that's the takeaway from it that they're giving is that it was relatively superficial and they compared it to the SolarWinds hacking campaign, which was very advanced and maintained persistence for quite a while. But the point is, is not that it didn't have an extreme impact or anything like that, but it's the fact that, again, it just occurs. And these are government agencies. This happens to city agencies out in Texas. This happens a lot, it happened in San Francisco where there were ransomware gangs essentially targeting the infrastructure. And in some ways it really is a cat and mouse game, right? Hardening can only go so far, but it is important to keep in mind that this is an arms race, right? So while there's gonna be losses a lot of the times, there will be just as many wins if investment continues. If the Department of Energy is getting hacked, it's certain that a lot of large companies will be targeted by this kind of stuff as well. And this was from the Klopp gang, basically. Based on discussions we've had with industry partners, these intrusions are not being leveraged to gain broader access, to gain persistence in the targeted systems, or to steal specific high value information. And some, as we understand it, the attack is largely an opportunistic one. But this is how cyber gangs operate, right? You kind of poke your target and get some information that's called the reconnaissance phase. And you see what works, what doesn't, and how they respond. And so these, they're brazen. And now of course there's evidence as well that this isn't, excuse me, there's no evidence that they're connected to any kind of state actor from Russia. But that can be sometimes have its own bit of issues, right? Where they are just fully focused on getting money. And this really takes a lot from companies. And it'll continue to be an issue. And seeing that de-investment from cybersecurity solutions is not a positive one. And it really should not be in the back of anyone's mind. And I'm not saying this stuff to scare anyone or be like the whole system's gonna collapse. It's not the case. But there needs to be at least some kind of public education regarding it, and there's not. And kind of on that point, and I'm gonna take a turn here for a second. And I was watching some kind of YouTube short of a guy using something called a PV hook, or I can't hook, and it's used basically just to give the operator leverage and basically move logs, right? And someone was bringing up something about it being a fulcrum, and I didn't think it was. So I went down this long rabbit hole of just kind of general like mechanics, right? And I started thinking about, when I was young and before the internet, we had like seesaws and all these kind of, really simple mechanical machines and in a way that was a method that the society we were in was teaching us how things worked, right? You know, nowadays we've focused, we've basically adapted into the digital, right? But UI, user interface has gotten so good that nobody really on average has a great understanding of how programs work or how computers work. And we don't have that opportunity that generations in the past did of learning how basic technology operates. I think young people understand how algorithms work and how to beat them and so on, but understanding what a file directory is and how that works or understanding how to keep yourself and your machine safe is just not there. And so it's resulting in kind of a more like ignorant population. And I don't mean that in a negative way, it's just there's not any real learning there. Where in the past you could see it in front of you, there's no way to really simplify a CSOD, it works how it works. But with user interface, you can kind of simplify the experience for the users and it just kind of becomes, you know, a second thought essentially, right? So I don't know, I was thinking about that last night and maybe, you know, of course it's a rambling, but just some food for thought regarding that. We'll go into this a little more, this headline a little more when we get back from the break, but this is one of the Fed officials kind of echoed what Powell was saying, where they still see an issue with inflation and it's not coming down. And nobody kind of, I guess, listened to that for a while, I know we're down today, but I think again, that's more of like an energy issue. The US Federal Reserve officials struck a hawkish tone in their first comments since the central bank held its policy interest rate steady at its meeting this week, but signaled that rate hikes will likely resume. And this is the quote that core inflation is not coming down like I thought it would. And that's Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller. He said this at an economics conference in Norway. These videos are always so interesting to watch, right? These kind of big international discussions. And it seems like people talk a little bit more freely at them than they do when they're speaking to, you know, not necessarily their constituents in this case of the Federal Reserve, but you know, people in the country that they're overseeing at least. Folks, stay tuned, we'll be right back. The Gold Report as a precious metal gold is still king. It continues to hold the most effective safe haven and hedging properties across the global major trading hubs of the London OTC market, the US futures market and the Shanghai Gold Exchange. The Gold Report. Tom O'Brien publishes his weekly Gold Report every Monday morning for subscribers, consisting of coverage of the XAU, HUI, GDX, the Dollar, Bonds, the South African Rand, as well as 25 different mining equities with specific buy-sell recommendations. The Gold Report. New subscribers get a 30-day money back guarantee so you have nothing to risk. Subscribe to Tom O'Brien's Gold Report newsletter now at TFNN.com. 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This segment is brought to you by Think or Swim. For more information, just click the Think or Swim banner on the front page of TFNN.com. All right, so we'll look a little bit more into this. You know, one of the things that Powell had said, I think maybe two meetings ago or maybe three, basically saying they're gonna wait to see how credit tightening from the banks affected inflation, right, and would they need to take more action. This Federal Reserve official here said, it's still not clear that the recent strains in the banking sector materially intensified the tightening of lending conditions. The US economy was still, quote, ripping along for the most part with the underlying pace of price increases moving sideways. Of course, recent declines in headline inflation have been driven largely by food and energy prices. Volatile commodities whose price swing can mask underlying inflation trends. Excluding those goods, the personal consumption expenditures price index of April was increasing at a 4.7% annual pace more than twice essential banks targets. Demand to the US was weakening somewhat, he said, but quote, I am still looking to be convinced of a plausible story that slowing the man returns inflation relatively quickly to the 2% target. That's a really interesting comment, right, because the whole thing essentially that they're trying to do is decrease wages and in some way that decreases demand for certain things. And then that results in, you know, just through basic supply and demand would decrease the price, essentially. And it's interesting to just hear him bring that up, right, because is that really the way to do it? Is that really the best way to do it? Are the people who are getting wage cuts and they bring this up all the time, but are the people who are having their wages cut? Are they the ones really contributing to inflation? The Fed this week ended its run of 10 consecutive rate hikes when policymakers decided to keep the benchmark overnight interest rate, of course, of a range of 5% to 5.25%. Fascinating anyway. I think, again, we are still in the woods. I'm gonna be really curious to see like when the dust settles after this kind of skip, you know, if there's any kind of better insight into really why they did it. So, you know, the European Central Bank just decided to go ahead and deviate from what the Fed is doing and just raise rates even higher. So, you know, we'll see kind of how that peels out and if there's any kind of real consequences for us not doing that currently. And again, if we hit some situation where, you know, of course there are droughts that are occurring and that's gonna impact some of our food stuffs. But if energy, if something goes weird with OPEC or, you know, whatever, if an increase in that, you know, obviously we'll increase the general CPI. And then what is that gonna do to the market, right? So, again, I think this is just more of like see how it plays out over time. We stick kind of with this IT talk that we've been doing. I thought this was super interesting and quite a way to move forward. This is 930 million in grants announced in President Biden's effort to expand internet access to every home in the US. The massive federal effort to expand internet access to every home in the US took a major step forward on Friday with the announcement of 930 million in grants to shore up connections in remote parts of Alaska, rural Texas and dozens of other places where significant gaps and connectivity persist. And this is an interesting point where you're seeing government step in to do this. I know that Starlink was essentially attempting to fill these gaps as well, which was a pretty noble pursuit. And it's crazy seeing them in the sky as well. Very sci-fi, I would say. These networks are the workhorses carrying large amounts of data over very long distances, of course. White House's infrastructure coordinator said this. They're the ones that are bridging the gap between larger networks and the last mile connections from tribal lands to underserved rural and remote areas to essential institutions like hospitals, schools, libraries and major businesses. And unless you're living out there in order to get away from the internet, this is a positive. Having access to the internet does result in higher income. It results in, I guess this is arguable in some sense, but better education in a lot of ways. The largest grant of nearly 89 million was awarded to an Alaska-based telecommunications company that hopes to build a fiber network through a remote section of the state where an estimated 55% of people lack basic internet. The expansion is one of several initiatives pushed through Congress to expand high-speed internet connectivity to the entire country. And as we go on, this will just become, this is just a game of getting the whole globe connected, right? And that's been the goal for quite a while. We have the undersea cables, which are very important for connecting the continents. What's interesting about that is there's some talk and I like talking a little bit about some news that occurs with the war that's going on. But I guess the Russians had moved their missiles to Belarus and that caused an uproar and everything. But they're now also talking about maybe sabotaging the undersea cables, which is just would be absolutely horrible. But just to keep you in the loop of what they're talking about very interesting stuff and maybe a little bit worrisome. All right, obviously we've had a lot of money flowing into these equities. We had so much sitting in money market funds for a while. This is a report from Reuters that the US equity funds registered the biggest weekly inflow in 28 months. US equity funds saw their most substantial weekly net purchases since early 2021 during the seven days leading up to June 14th. As concerns over a potential rate hike during the Federal Reserve's policy meeting this week were alleviated by cooling inflation readings. Again, I just think this isn't 100% correct and you just heard from the Fed as well. The Fed left interest rates unchanged on Wednesday in line with investors' expectations and broke a streak of 10 consecutive rate hikes. According to definitive Lipper data, US equity funds drew a net of 18.85 billion worth of inflows in their biggest week, excuse me, weekly net buying since mid-February of 2021. You can see this here. US large, small, and multi-cap equity funds attracted 7.76 billion, 3.33 billion, and 1.93 billion worth of capital. And that flow will most likely continue to some extent, right? There's still a lot of money that's kind of sitting out currently. Among sectors, obviously tech secured an immense amount at 1.73 billion, the biggest inflows since December of 2021. And investors also racked up financials, consumer discretionary, and industrial sectors, fines of, excuse me, 581 million, 517, and 460 million respectively. The money market funds witnessed net withdrawals of about 10 million after observing net purchases for seven weeks in a row. And again, as those get drained out, there's just a bunch of money that's still waiting to get in to the market. Data showed US bonds received a net of 3.96 billion in inflows during the week after having a net of 577 million worth of outflows the previous week. People are trying to restructure what's going on. Investors exited 374 million worth of inflation protected bond funds in a ninth straight week of net selling. Yeah, the like I bonds obviously, you know, those can get sold out. But again, I'm like concerned reading these kind of things and reading like sentiment that people have. And it's always like, it's the small voice that's saying, I don't know guys, like there is still inflation. What is essentially occurring right now that is telling you that inflation is going down. And like you heard it from the guy's mouth himself that inflation is still persistent and there's still a risk to the upside. So we might see a real pullback out of these. If anything comes out that kind of dashes, you know, whatever mirage a lot of people have currently folks, stay tuned, we'll be right back. If you're looking for potential trading setups in the stock market, then Rocket Equities and Options Report is a newsletter you should try. Tommy O'Brien delivers options and equity trades when the markets present them using a combination of fundamentals and technicals. Sign up for Rocket Equities and Options Report today with a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to risk. For all the details and to start your subscription today, visit the front page of TFNN.com. 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TFNN.com, educating investors. The Gold Report. As a precious metal gold is still king, it continues to hold the most effective safe haven and hedging properties across the global major trading hubs of the London OTC market, the US futures market and the Shanghai Gold Exchange. The Gold Report. Tom O'Brien publishes his weekly Gold Report every Monday morning for subscribers, consisting of coverage of the XAU, HUI, GDX, the Dollar, Bonds, the South African Rand, as well as 25 different mining equities with specific buy-sell recommendations. The Gold Report. New subscribers get a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to risk. Subscribe to Tom O'Brien's Gold Report newsletter now at TFNN.com. This program is brought to you by Vista Gold, traded on the NYSE American and TSX under the symbol VGZ. Welcome back folks. I was looking over the break a little bit at Cava, right? And that was the new IPO for the restaurant at Cava. And not much to say on it right now, but it dropped 15% after its IPO. The IPO was hyped unbelievably. And it just still blows my mind. One of the first things we really talk about in any kind of investments class that we had in college was don't buy IPOs. Like if it is a bloodbath in the beginning, it shoots up every time. And if you're buying at that top there, you're gonna get hurt pretty badly. So West of Pharmaceuticals gained 2.3%. I only say that because my granddad worked for them. And so I thought that was pretty neat that they're still in the game. Virgin Galactic, I think it was a few months ago that we were talking about how they were just closing doors entirely. Give me a second. What is their ticker? Thought it was space. Aha, obviously. Oh yeah, four. So that just said, what's up? Give me 16% increase. So yeah, they're gonna put some Italian scientists on it. Virgin Galactic announced Thursday that monthly commercial flights to the edge of space will begin for ticket holders in August following a research flight planned for the end of June. Those will be Italian scientists up there. Space Tourism Company will be taking a team of specialists with the Italian Air Force and the National Research Center of Italy to conduct, excuse me, conduct microgravity research. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So I mean, that's kind of a neat little comeback story for them when they were definitely like they released that really sad update a few months ago saying they were done. So, and it's kind of a novel way that they're doing it as well. How they have, you have like your aircraft and your rockets on the side and it just essentially sends it off, which I think is, that's kind of neat. We were talking about how some of the dock workers in the West were striking and they reached a deal. Well now UPS workers are thinking of striking this summer and they're scrambling supply chains and home delivery. You know, these guys like just take a second to like, you know, really think about how integral they are to our society. They don't have air conditioning in these vans. They work a lot. So, you know, it might be worth giving a little bit to them. The unionized UPS workers voted overwhelmingly on Friday to authorize a strike, setting the stage for a potential work stoppage if the package delivery company and Teamsters can't come into an agreement before their contract expires next month. The Teamsters said 97% of unionized workers voted for the authorization, which the union urged for in order to have more leverage during negotiations with the company. If the multi-billion dollar corporation fails to deliver on the contract that our hardworking members deserve, the UPS will be striking itself. And it's just the supply chains, whatever energy is surrounding it, they're just, you know, we had a COVID plague them terribly and then all these strikes that exist in so many countries as well. You know, especially during a time where like the Federal Reserve is trying to lower wages and a lot of these guys are arguing for better time off and better wages as well. If a strike occurs, it would be the first in a, first since the 15 day walk, excuse me, walkout by 185,000 workers that crippled the company a quarter century ago. So, pretty impressive. And obviously they have a lot of bargaining power with that, right? So, Tommy was saying earlier today, you know, he was bringing up and we were speaking about it a little bit as well about the interest rate payments for loans that are about to flood back in, right? And it is yet to see what's gonna happen and collection agencies are probably gonna be booming around that time. This article came out, it's just, you know, I think probably look at this as like a society, people who live with each other, to kind of figure out what's going on and is there a different method of doing things, you know? The interest rates on education is so expensive, excuse me, they're so high because you can't really like revoke it. You see what I'm saying? You can't take away that education. And so in order to kind of offset that risk, you know, with like a house or whatever, the bank can seize the house with a car, you can repow the car, but it's kind of possible to do with an education. So this headline is, bankruptcy experts claim it may be your only option if the 20K student loan forgiveness plan fails. Obviously the president was talking about forgiving up to 20,000, I think he said he was gonna do all of it when he was getting elected, but now we're down to 20,000 here. So that would be in federal student loans debt per borrower and this could soon reach end game if the US Supreme Court rules against the plan this month as many predict that it will. If the plan is struck down, at least one legal expert says bankruptcy might be the only option for many borrowers. Let's be real, that is absolutely going to occur, right? So many people have had to like, you know, we've adapted to having this money, right? After three years or whatever of not having to pay it. And so I don't know if people are gonna be able to pivot that quickly and what they're gonna lose and things are so expensive now as well and some people are just gonna outright not be able to afford this whatsoever. About 20% of student loan borrowers have already defaulted on a loan. According to Jonathan Pett, CEO of Upsolve, the total amount already in default is more than $124 billion. That's just intense. This demonstrates a clear need for a plan to help borrowers facing challenges with paying off their debts. He said the Biden forgiveness plan is likely to be struck down by SCOTUS, which means both loan payments and interest will resume not too long after. Relieving the debt through bankruptcy will be an option that many borrowers may be able to turn to instead. But before considering bankruptcy, obviously there's a lot of things that you as an individual can do. If you are an individual who's worrying about this, definitely check out your options. So bankruptcy is always the last resort for that kind of stuff and obviously has implications. We're talking to Gen X isn't saving any money at all and there just seems to be a lot of issues on the individual level within the American economy, right? The average balance in employer-sponsored savings planned last year was 112,000 and that's a massive decrease, almost 30,000 from the 141,442 recorded in 2021 and this is for the 401Ks. From this latest reports, from Vanguard combined have nearly 5 million participants with a median age of 43 and that's such plans as 401Ks and 403Bs as well as much smaller universe plans. Vanguard participants average account balances decreased by 20% since the year end of 2021 and that's driven primarily by the decrease in equity and bond markets over the year. The numbers look worse if you consider the median balances which was just 27,376 last year. It's insane down from 35,345 as well. Of course, the market corrected quite a bit and so there's something like with that that you kind of have to keep in mind when, excuse me, reading some of these numbers. But not all is so bad. The factory boom is occurring. This Yahoo Finance article is saying under President Biden, the manufacturing boom finally seems to be getting started but we had lower output or at least the output didn't according to the last kind of documentation on this, like American factories weren't putting out as much. The manufacturing boom, of course, finally seems that it's getting started. Since the beginning of 2022, construction spending on new factories has more than doubled from an annualized rate of 91 billion in January of 2022 to 189 billion in 2023 and that's the biggest jump by far in data going back to 2002. In April, a factory construction accounted for 9.9% of all construction, which I thought was pretty impressive and that's the highest portion in Census Bureau records, going back to 1993. Private sector firms are building more US factories to cash in on unprecedented spate of legislation. Yeah, and that's the big thing, right? Like this kind of production is coming back to the US. Now it's for national security reasons but the economy will adapt to that and hopefully we'll all be a little bit better at the end. Folks, stay tuned, we'll be right back for a short segment. Are you looking for a way to consistently add winning trades to your portfolio? Tom O'Brien is here to help. 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You know, one of the big issues with pushing the solar panels and everything like that is gonna be the waste that this has been spoken about since the kind of solar craze went up and it just makes me wonder sometimes if these large publications, you know, even listen, right, or think about these things, right? At least today that is now being pushed and this is recycling, quote, end-of-life solar panels. Wind turbines is about to be climate tech's big waste business. A wind turbine is recyclable from the steel tower to the composite blades. That's a cumulative mass of 2.2 million metric tons of waste by 2050. 90% of end-life or defective solar panels also end up in landfills, largely because it costs far less to dump them than to recycle them. Isn't that the story? And that waste is pretty nasty. I mean, you're talking like heavy metals like cadmium and all that kind of nasty, nasty stuff for the environment. So any kind of solutions for that will be a positive and quite welcomed for our little science thing of the day. It is about to be summer in Florida and the state bird becomes the mosquito during that time. Well, luckily it seems like scientists might have figured out a new way to repel them. When using deat, you use a bunch of nasty chemicals that your skin absorbs, but apparently you can use cellulose nanocrystals and you put them in some kind of aqueous solution, it creates actually a pretty significant barrier and that decreases bites on humans for about 80%. The effect was further confirmed by artificial feeding on the Egyptian species, wherein the nanocrystals appears to act as a chemical camouflage to the many cues sought by insects. And you know, there's so many different alternatives. It turns out people just don't like spraying whatever the market currently has on themselves because you have the tiki torches that repel them. You know, you have the little lights, but all these things kind of affect the rest of the environment as well and you kind of end up killing, you know, other species indirectly, which is bad for the environment. So this weekend I'm gonna bathe in that stuff and hopefully can avoid the bites that I get consistently. Folks, thank you so much for joining me this week. It was so awesome to be with you guys. We're out Monday. Tom will be back Tuesday. Stay safe and happy Father's Day to all of you tiger fathers out there. Thanks so much guys, have a great weekend. Bye.