 As I told you before the break, and of course you already knew this, the United States is officially in a recession, you know that of course, and revised GDP numbers from last quarter prove it, even though the media says that's only according to one definition, as if there's multiple definitions of recession. What is that going to do with the stock market? Will we get a relief in the near future? With me to discuss this is the CEO and founder of the Stock Swoosh, Melissa Armell. Melissa, good to see you again. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Alright, so here's the question. I saw a poll here. Yesterday, I guess, a lot of Americans, millions of Americans actually believe we're not only going to go into a bad recession. They think it could be almost like a depression. A lot of people are scared, Melissa. What do you say to that? A lot of people are scared, and that's one of the reasons why you're seeing so much selling in the market in 2022. When you go back to January, which seems like a long time, but it was really only nine months ago to the last day of September, the market made brand new all-time highs to start out the year. We've sold off pretty much most of the year of 2022. So yes, when people open up their statements for their 401ks, they're seeing a drop off since even last year, go back 12 months ago. One of the things that people are scared about is that the Fed is going to continue to raise interest rates, which actually they said that they are going to do. They think that that's going to curb inflation. And personally, I think part of the issue that we have right now with inflation is that gas prices are still way too high. So the Fed can raise rates, but if gas prices are still too high, that affects everything that we buy. So people are scared, therefore they're selling, and actually people are going into 2023, not as optimistic as they were in prior years. Yeah, you know, you look at the gas prices, they're up dramatically since just last week, 12 cents. The national average up to 380 a gallon again, and it dropped to 368, but now it's at 380. So up 12 cents, I guess. When Joe Biden took office, it was two and a quarter. You look at the mortgage rates, they were about two and a quarter as well. They're now at 7% and climbing. So that means housing sales are basically coming to a stop for a lot of folks. But just as important as all of that is the price of diesel. Because I want to stick with that, Melissa. The price of diesel, it impacts freight trains, it impacts over-the-road truckers. It impacts everything delivered to your grocery store, the box store, Amazon, everything. And it's still close to $5 a gallon. There's no relief in sight. There's not going to be some break in inflation in September, is there? No, and I think that's one of the reasons why I'm saying I disagree that the Fed stands on raising rates as good of carbon inflation. Because every single thing that you buy, even if you drive to the grocery store and buy something in the store, you have it delivered to your home. It could be furniture, it could be food, it could be virtually anything that you get. How does it get to you? It gets you on a truck and diesel fuel, again, is very costly right now. So we've seen an increase in virtually everything. Part of it is, again, we're not drilling in the United States. We shut the budget and the emissions shut down the Keystone pipeline. Part of it is also what's happening with the conflict in Russia and Ukraine. And I think that that could escalate. It could escalate a lot more than people are really discussing. And that's going to affect the entire world. And of course, it's really affecting Europe, actually, going into the winter months. But that could go into 2020. And that's going to affect fuel prices as well. Well, here's the problem. The stock market now has gotten down to 29,000. It dipped just below 29,000. Briefly today, it's barely above that, down 210 points already. And something you just touched on, Melissa, is extremely important. The CEO of Aramco last week, the biggest energy company in the world from Saudi Arabia, he said, look, 10 years ago, we were spending more than $700 billion a year in infrastructure for moving energy. Today, it's less than $300 billion. He said the problem we have is that the infrastructure is maxed out. So even if we wanted to have more oil and more gas on the market and available, there's no way to move it. It's maxed out. If it gets more demand, the price is going to go up. That's the only reaction there can be. And that means American consumers, European consumers, consumers globally are going to get punished, which means inflation again will spike no matter what the Fed does. Correct? Well, right. Well, here's the problem. Again, if half the world wants to go into this green energy, we can't get there. Even with electric vehicles, we can't get their lickety-split. It's going to take time to do that. And there is a cost involved. Not everyone can even afford electric vehicles right now. Even Elon Musk came out and said, listen, this has to be a transition. And obviously, you know, he's the CEO of Tesla. So you get to the point where you say we have to transition in a way that's economically beneficial for people because not everyone can afford to do it. And even the regulations are so, so strict and they can change like on a dime if the administration changes and the policy changes, which we saw from Trump and Biden, that no corporations, no companies are going to want to invest in infrastructure if they know that the regulations are going to transition in two years from now. So again, I don't think much is going to change to the upside in the economy overall. I'm talking about globally and also in the United States until after the next presidential election. We don't even know who's running yet, let alone who's even going to win the next presidential election. And that is so far away from now for people that are trying to pay their bills week by week that I think that that is what is upsetting people. But people have to take an optimistic outlook and know that things can get better in the future. Why things may not look so good in the next two years. Things can get better in the future. People can vote people in and people can vote people out. That's exactly right. Where do we go from here, Melissa? I don't know. But if we don't get our energy policies squared up, at least Liz Truss in the UK is trying to figure out how to get energy flowing. The French are building 14 nuclear power plants. There's a brand new pipeline from Spain to France through the Pyrenees giant pipeline that's going to move energy from Spain to France. They're figuring it out. I wish people here would. At any rate, Melissa, I appreciate you being here. Thank you as always. Thank you for having me. I always appreciate it. All right. After the break.