 The following is a presentation of TFNN. The morning market kickoff with your host, Tommy O'Brien. Good Friday morning, everybody. I'm Tommy O'Brien, company alive from TFNN. Thanks for starting your trading day off here at TFNN. We got markets this morning following some producer price indexes, negative territory, but barely in the red. We're talking about basically where we were at the lows of yesterday. S&P's off by 12 right now, 44.73. You see the volatility on that 830 PPI number, a little bit of lower price action across the board. NASDAQ 100, you're off by 87 points. And I should mention quite the slide yesterday, all the indices kind of getting right below the lows we had intraday yesterday. NASDAQ 100, right at those lows as well, we're off by more than half a percent than NASDAQ 100, 15,115. The Dow off about one-tenth percent, the Russell off about one-tenth percent as well. It's so interesting, right? You got the S&Ps off a quarter percent. The Dow getting hit off six-tenths percent and the Russell and the Dow barely in the red. Crude, 83.15. We're up by 33 pennies this morning. You jump over to gold. Pretty calm action so far. We're flat for the session. We were up to 1,953. Gold catching a little bit of volatility on that data as well. And what do we got? So interesting how notes and bonds are trading, man. Right, so interesting. This is the most interesting part of what's going on in this market right now. You've been backing things up on a 10 minute. You back it up to the jobs number. One Friday ago, you're at 109.24. You trade up two full points and we almost got it all back. Two full points up, two full points down in the last five days almost folks. We again have a lower price and higher yield with a 10-year off by 13 ticks. You see that acceleration going on in the PPI number right now. And what do we got? We got a little bit of a hot PPI number. So what's that doing? That's boosting rates. That is boosting the dollar and that is weighing on commodities and it's weighing on the equity market right now. And let's just jump right over. Why not to that number? Producer price inflation picks up on boost from services. Seems like this article could be written for the last 18 months, right? Services, et cetera. This is PPI, so it doesn't always translate down to CPI, but to some degree, it's inflationary pressure just a little bit higher on the supply chain. Picked up in July, primarily due to certain strength in services categories after downward revisions to the prior month's figures. Excuse me. Producer price index for final demand rose 0.3% last month. The PPI advanced 0.8% from a year earlier, reflecting a less favorable comparison with the index a year ago. Check out where we at. A little bit of a spike there. July increase reflected pick up in services costs while goods prices barely rose. And you look at the change. That's the first time we've had a little bit of a pickup on that curve in a while. We're up by 0.3%. Services costs rose by the most in nearly a year, reflecting increases in categories, including portfolio management, outpatient care, and passenger transportation. So I guess it is a little bit of a different story in terms of services. Several categories from the PPI, notably healthcare, seems to be the big one there, are used to calculate the personal consumption expenditure's price gauge, which is what the Fed prefers to follow for inflation. That's gonna be released later this month within healthcare, you had inflation in hospital, outpatient care, and nursing home care accelerating. Meanwhile, physician care costs were little changed, brokerage services, and investment advice category that also feeds into the PCE jumped in July. So what you see in this here, the reason why I read through all of that, this could translate into the PCE, which is the Fed's preferred inflation gauge. Okay, so you've got some hot areas of the economy right now, which could translate to a PCE number that we're gonna get later this month for July that the Fed most closely follows when it comes to data points that illustrate what inflation is doing. So here are the numbers, PPI, month over month, a little bit hot, 0.3 versus 0.2, excluding food energy, core, 0.3 versus 0.2, year over year, 0.8 versus 0.7, and then core year over year, 2.4 versus 2.3. So you get a little bit of a beat there, they go over those numbers yet again, that number out at 8.30, and yeah, we're gonna get a whole extra data point of months or a month before the Fed meeting, which is so interesting, right? All of this data coming in right now for July, we're talking about right now, it's August 11th, this PPE number is probably gonna translate into a PCE number that we're gonna get later this month for July. Meanwhile, we're gonna get August before that September meeting as well. So don't make up your mind just yet, think the numbers are probably in line just enough for them to be able to pause one more time. They would never tell you, Chairman Powell, if they were gonna go every other meeting, right? But I think that was probably a reasonable guess when you are hiking, you pause, you hike again, very reasonable to say that you could pause again, still leave the door open for a hike if needed, and that gets you like three or four meetings down the road almost from where you go. So that's the PPI number this morning, and you're seeing a little bit of volatility, and yeah, we got a stronger dollar yields, so interesting as I said on this one, man. You jump over to the 10-year, we're off by 13 ticks right now, you jump over to the 30-year, we're off by 19 ticks right now, and we jump back to the volatility index with the VIX right now, back above 16 at 1607. All right, checking back to those commodities too. Yeah, crew dropping a bit, we got a strong dollar, and the gold contract dropping a bit. All things considered, we've had quite a bounce, like so compare gold right there, right? It's been a one-way trip, man, from 2010 to 1957 recently, and you jump over to the dollar index though, going back 10 days, and look at the volatility we've had, right? Not exactly a trend in the same degree, so something's going on there beyond just the dollar index, because the dollar index right now is back to where we were trading at, basically last Thursday, and compare that to the gold contract when you were 20 to $25 higher from where we're trading at right now almost. So something's going on in those, whether it's the currencies or the commodities themselves, because if it was just trading off of the dollar index, it wouldn't be doing that same comparison. You jump over to the yen, that's part of it as well, but even the yen, not quite where we're at right now compared to where we were last Thursday, so there's part of it. The yen, it's interesting that not all the components are as big of a factor into the gold contract, and the yen really illustrates the thing in the end. Yet again, we're getting higher price action for the yen up to 144.81. You take a look at that thing on a daily, coming right up to those recent highs that we had back in the end of June, for the yen at 145 almost. All right, let's check out how some of the fang stocks are trading this morning. As we got a little bit of negative action in the market, we got Amazon shares down almost a dollar right now, still hovering pretty much where they spiked to on their earnings about a week ago, sitting at 137.64. We jump over to Apple shares. Yeah, barely in the red this morning, Microsoft shares right now trading down, Microsoft down about a couple bucks, and we jump over to Google. Google shares right now down about a dollar as well. I was watching a YouTube video last night and just had part of, I believe it was Larry Page, it could have been Sergey Brin, I forget which founder it was of Google, and he was talking about when he was at Stanford, starting Google, and the way that he started it is that they just realized nobody was tracking URLs on the internet, him and one of his professors. So you know, that'd be pretty cool if we start tracking URLs on the internet. And then from there, they used all that data because he loved data points, he said, and I think they got like five, 10 billion data points or something like that. I'm sure it's many, many more now. But that illustrated that they took that data and from there, they were able to generate a search function of the URLs that were on the internet because what did he do? Because he had the data and it made me think, you know, it's all about the data, right? He started it as a project. He said, I thought it could be a good dissertation, maybe for my PhD, I track all the URLs. What did it turn into? The data turned into one of the wealthiest people in the world, starting Google. We're gonna talk a little bit about Google's cash pile when we get back, stage inputs. 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. 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Visit TFNN.com and try Mastering Probability 30 days risk-free today. TFNN, educating investors. TFNN has launched the Tiger's End, hosted at Discord. TFNN has been educating traders for more than 20 years, with live programming hosted by a variety of professional traders during market hours, the Tiger's End, available to all tigers and tigeresses for just $1 for the year. There's no catch or added costs when you join our community of traders. Sign up today and become a part of this educational community of traders. Just visit the front page of TFNN.com. Welcome back, folks. We get markets trading a little bit lower this morning following a little bit of a hot PPI number. As I mentioned though, we got a lot of data before that September meeting. Rates popping around right now. We got the tenure pushing about 4.15% right now, the yield on the tenure. We're taking a look at Google. Google shares off about a dollar right now, $1.2950. We back things up on a daily. Quite the acceleration on their last earnings. They hit quite a number in terms of accelerating on the AI craze as well. We're off of lows to start the year at about $88, we're trading at $130. Now I go over that in the context of $108 billion cash pile. Quite a problem to have. And take a look at how this thing is accelerated, man. So last quarter brought in nearly twice the cash spent on buybacks. Apple's capital return strategy is less defined than its peer, excuse me, Alphabet's capital return strategy is less defined than its peers, right? You have Apple with huge buybacks, all those plants that go out of many Microsoft, I'm sure to the same degree. Google not quite the same deal right now in terms of how much cash they have and then what they're gonna do with it. Google is left with $118 billion. They generated nearly $29 billion in cash in the 90 days of their last quarter. Absolutely remarkable, man. Apple has 167 billion, crazy that you got Google, man, pushing on the heels of Alphabet when you're talking about those types of numbers. However, unlike Apple, which aims to get back most of its cash to shareholders via buybacks and dividends, Alphabet has a less clearly defined capital return strategy leaving investors seeking more detail on its plans. I bring it up because you know the market loves when they just give that cash back to you and take a look at this chart. That is cash from operations. And do you notice a trend there? Boy, that is quite a trend. Now, here's all I'll say. That is some growth priced into this equity, man, okay? You don't have to go back that far to the years of 2015 and 2016, okay? For some context here, folks. Yeah, I have to do it on my own head yet. Trump was elected in 2016, it just pushes, right? So he serves four years to 2020. It just brings back events to no degree because I look at the market where it was then, right? Everyone says, oh, the market's in so much trouble. No, I think the S&P was at like 2200 at that point. And it was like, oh, Trump's getting handed over this amazing economy, the S&P's at 2200. Meanwhile, Google was only generating five, six billion dollars in free cash flow from their operations. They're now pushing 20 to 30, 25, 20. They've been over 20 for a couple of years now since the pandemic. Does this mediate a bit? I don't know, but that is a lot of cash, to say the least. And they get into it a little bit more. Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft, all of them, $84 billion in the last quarter. You're talking about a billion dollars of cash every single day just between three companies, yeah. Alphabet has stepped up buybacks, expanded its repurchase authorization to $70 billion in April, but last quarter, the firm spent 15 billion on its own shares, barely half of the cash it brought in. By contrast, Apple in the last five fiscal years has returned almost five billion more than the $454 billion in cash it generated. So take a look at how that's probably gonna change, right? They're reaching the levels and all the talk is about Google potentially losing that monopoly. The numbers last time did not say it. They're still pumping out ads and they probably will be for years to come. But Apple gives back basically even more money than they generate, right? Because they already have $167 billion. Why did they need to grow that cash pile? They don't. The same thing's about to happen with Alphabet. They just brought in $29 billion. They only gave back 15. It grew by $15 billion. They're at $118 billion. So look for some bigger numbers for them pushing out that more. Yeah, and they even say here that Microsoft, right? They purchased Activision Blizzard, Google, not so much in the same degree. They're gonna have to give that cash back at some point and the market loves it and maybe it's coming the next earnings season. Yeah. Could they initiate a small dividend? We think it's more like to stick to a buyback approach. Buybacks give you more. Yeah, dividend could send a perception that growth opportunities may not be as strong. The cool part about this conversation, right? And I remember having this conversation with my friends in terms of when Apple started giving their dividend, right? Let's back it up if we can even find when they started giving their dividend, when they start giving their dividend. Or they ended, it's been happening in a while because they've had so much cash. Is that when it started? Did it start all the way? No, here it did. Yeah, probably started back here in 2012 or so, right? They really had a good run. You ran it from like six bucks up to 26. There's their cash pile. That's probably where the dividends began. But you can make a very real case, man, that a growth company should be using that money to grow. And theoretically that is correct, right? Like, come on, man. You can't do more for those investors if you're Steve Jobs at the helm of Apple. I think Steve Jobs probably had some good quotes, I think is what I'm thinking of, right? Maybe somebody in the den's got some. I'm pretty sure he had some good quotes about dividends versus using that money to grow. A visionary like that, man, is not in the business of just handing back cash instead of using it to grow and innovate. But, and it's always great when the butt comes, very difficult to do, to almost impossible to do when you start reaching that level of cash to use it in a manner that is not wasteful to a certain degree. Now you say that, right? Except, why was Apple not the first company to come to market with OpenAI style chat, et cetera? There's just been innovations where you could do that. Nonetheless, I digress, you take a look at Google shares, it's interesting to look at that cash pile. And when you compare it to some of those other equities, I found it especially interesting that they're gonna have to start giving some of that money back, man. Those ads aren't gonna be drying up anytime soon on Google. They might lose some of that market share, but they are going to be a huge player for some time to come. And they're gonna be around on AI. We are at the very forefront of AI and there's no way they spend the billions they do, they're Google, and they're not gonna be a competitor when it comes to that to some degree. I don't know how the ad scenario is gonna get shaped though because it's gonna be a different scenario when you're chatting with a chat GPT style chat bot because it's not like a search function where you just list a variety of searches and within that search display is embedded ads. I don't know how you do that with an interactive chat bot and that's what they're gonna have to navigate, but $118 billion is what they have between the three biggest companies out there, you're talking about almost a billion dollars a day in free cash flow, pretty remarkable. All right, let's jump back and see how we're doing as we come into the open right now. We got markets sitting down, basically where we were, NASDAQ 100 chilling off a bit, we go back to a 10 minute chart, dollar index pushing near the highs right now at 102.75 market, little skittish on that hot PPI number and we got yields right now. What are we pushing? Let's see. We're talking about a 10 year. Yeah, 4.15% yield on the 10 year as we're coming back to basically the lows of last Friday. I tell you what, folks, Wednesday or even Thursday on the spike higher on the CPI number, did you have that we might be the push in the lows of last Friday? Did you have it? Always interesting how this market can defy what you think can happen. And look at the NASDAQ 100. You talk about lower lows and lower highs. That's a 10 day chart. Let's back it up 20 days. Get up on a four hour. Boy, I don't know. That looks like some lower lows and some lower highs from that high of 16,062. What's that mean? Talking about the 19th of July. Yeah, you make that run up to the highs at the beginning of August. August, not bank content of the market so much. You're talking about 900 points or 1,000 points off of the highs that we made just a few weeks ago. Stay tuned, folks, we're coming back for the open. Tigers, candlestick pattern analysis is a primary tool among successful traders and you should be no different. Candlestick patterns can demystify buy points, sell points, general price movement, and so much more. At 4 p.m. on Monday, August 14th, trader Teddy Kekstat will be hosting a live hour long webinar on Japanese candlestick patterns. 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And it's not just dry, tedious tech, either. TFNN airs live financial content streamed live on TFNN.com and TFNN's YouTube channel with Tiger TV, live every market day from 8.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. Eastern for free. Each host is an experienced trader and gives their take on the market while taking calls and questions live from around the world. From the moment the market opens until the closing bell sounds, Tiger TV has eight different shows with expert hosts to help you make the right moves with your money. Watch online at TFNN.com or on TFNN's YouTube channel and become the investor you were born to be, TFNN. Educating investors. Don't forget, you can listen to TFNN live on your mobile device 24 hours per day. Go to TFNN.com and hit watch Tiger TV. That's TFNN.com and hit watch Tiger TV. Welcome back, folks. We got the markets open and you're pushing basically session lows. You opened on the Nasdaq 100. We traded a little bit lower. We're off by 9.10% right now trading at 100, excuse me, trading down 125 points at 15,070. S&P's off about half a percent, 44.65. You get the Dow right now of 64 points, trading down just 2.10% and the Russell down about 3.10%. We jump over to commodities, crude, 82.69. We got to keep our eye on the dollar index today following that PPI number. Yep, dollar shift in higher. So what do we have? We got higher yields. I'm guessing the 10-year is even lower. There it is, 1.10.08. And what are we talking about right now, man? We are talking about. Yeah, just that quick, 4.16 rounding up. On the 10-year, so we have higher yields, dollar strength, market like that at all with the S&P off 23, Nasdaq off about 126. Google off 9.10%. Apple shares down about 4.10%, Microsoft shares almost a full percent of the red. We jump over to Amazon off 6.10%. Jump over to Tesla shares down 2% so far right now. We're going to jump to the car companies in a second. So why not GM? Yeah, you talk about a trade lower. Not sure why there was a wake-up call yesterday for the potential of this strike to be a problem, man. But it was a wake-up. Nonetheless, check out the price action, right? GM trades lower, Ford trades lower. We jump over to the headline. GM forward slide has $80 billion union risk. It's confidence. Automakers among the biggest declineers in the S&P 500. Yesterday there was a big sell-off, but boy they had quite a wipeout across the board. Companies maybe in the penalty box for a while, one analyst said, yeah, they got to get it resolved. And can you imagine the execs at the car companies when the UPS deal comes across that the drivers are making $170 grand a year? And listen, I think it's great folks. UPS is making money, hand over fist, okay? There's no reason why. Full-time, column-tenured employees, okay, should be able to make a great livable wage for companies that are crushing profits. It didn't used to be the case that you were a lifetime employee for a company that was crushing profits and dominating the world and you couldn't provide for your family. Somehow it's become like this thing. So don't be afraid to question the norm as these are coming down the line. These car companies have made an obscene amount of money recently and their employees want to get paid. So, I mean, all this stuff, right? Talking about even I talked about earlier in the week. Question what you see as the assumed reality just because it's always been that way. The five-day work week, even that, okay? If we grew up in a four-day work week and somebody said they want you to work five days, you'd say you're crazy. Who came up with five days? We're at four, we still work four and we only get to rest three, right? Can you imagine the conversation if that's how we grew up? Why five versus six? If five is so important, why aren't we working six? Would be okay, the human beings could work six days a week and then just rest one day a week. I'm digressing, but all that stuff, okay? So there's all this stuff, five days, ah, you don't want to work five days a week, you're lazy. Question what is going on, man? The amount of money these car companies are making is obscene, literally. This article, okay, is going back to their last earnings because I was just looking at it. I want to know, right, how much are these companies making out of curiosity? We know they've been crushing it. This article is from last month on their earnings, okay? They raised the four-year guidance, announced deeper cost cutting, that's GM in there. They're cutting by $3 billion. The earnings included an unexpected $800 million charge for some action that they have going on, but the bottom line is, they took in almost $45 billion and when they talk about how much money they're bringing to the bottom line, for the four-year, GM is raising its adjusted earnings expectations for 12 to 14 billion. That's for the year, up from a previous range of 11 to 13 billion. They also increased expectations for adjusted, automated, automotive free cash flow, seven to nine billion, up from 5.5 to 7.5. That's an extra billion and a half dollars, just like that net income attributable to stockholders, somewhere in the range of 10 billion, up from somewhere in the range of maybe nine billion. Right, so huge numbers, that's just for GM. It doesn't encompass Ford. You got 150,000 employees, what they're talking about as part of this deal. And their college for wage increases that could add more than 80 billion in expenses for each of them. There's the kicker, right? That's quite a price tag, no matter what kind of earnings you're talking about. When you're talking about $80 billion, yeah, nonetheless, some of these numbers, I think they might even state in here how much these companies have taken in, man. Now, the kicker is, right? These forecasts that GM put out on this article that I just cherry-picked from last month. Contingent on a deal getting done and no big stoppage. So that might be a problem, man, as that is a very real threat. The guidance increase is contingent on GM successfully negotiating new labor agreements with the UAW and the Canadian Uniform Unions this year without a work stoppage or a strike. I mean, that's totally in play, man. So I think the market, waking up to that yesterday, it has been waking up. You put this thing on a daily and you talk about a rip-roaring pullback on Ford shares from 1550 to 1218. You take a look at GM and yeah, it's been a rip-roaring pullback as well. We just lost 20% on this equity in the span of a month. And the battle's on. And probably rightfully so. These companies are crushing profits. Hopefully they can get a deal done. Last time they had a problem, it was a 40-day work stoppage, I believe. They might even mention it in this article. Let's see, during the last round of bargaining in 2019, yeah, a breakdown in negotiations, 40-day strike against GM. The automaker said the strike cost at $3.6 billion. I think the workers got a lot more pull this time around, man, that UPS deal is gonna be around in a big way. And we'll jump to that. That'll be the next article. So then we go to FedEx. You think it's tough being just the United Auto Workers, excuse me, the car makers, right? In terms of the UPS deal gets done, oh man, those car makers, they know it's coming. How about being the FedEx execs? How about them, right? UPS pay hikes for package handlers, raise pressure on the FedEx. Teams through deal gonna make it tough to reduce turnover. Maintaining labor levels has already been difficult for FedEx and the tough dealers here, they're already having a problem FedEx is in this article, in terms of especially part-time handlers, right? You're making 16 bucks versus 21. Folks, that's over a 30% pay raise if you're making 16. Percentage-wise it's bonkers. And it's a 15% pay raise if you're a full-time driver and it goes well up from there. The salaries of the unionized UPS drivers will make under the tentative, five-year agreement have grabbed headlines. That's because at year five, they're making 170 grand. Here's the kicker, though, of that, right? I was playing with this yesterday. You only gotta put that number to about 130,000 today. You push it out at 5% a year for the next five years, you get to 170 almost. All parking numbers, okay? And 130 is still a great salary, I get it. But what's wrong with workers that are at the higher echelons of a company making $130,000 a year when they've been working there for an extended period of time and they're the backbone of the company? That's where I just never understand how that happens. Ones with a few years' experience could earn 50 bucks an hour. The bigger problem for FedEx, okay? And we're gonna finish this conversation up because taking a look at these two-man FedEx, they have a different business model and it's gonna be a little difficult for them. The workers in the sorting centers are getting even bigger pay hikes with some increases hitting 55%. Those employees are often part-time. So you're in the sorting center, got a sneeze, excuse me. All right, we're gonna talk about this when we come back, folks. We're gonna take a look at UPS, we're gonna take a look at FedEx. We have car companies lower as well. Parkets in the red, stay tuned, folks. I'll be right back. 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We jump back to UPS shares this morning, talking about UPS versus FedEx, UPS shares off about half a percent right now. We jump to FedEx shares off about six tenths percent. So jumping back to that story for a second. As FedEx navigates this landscape of a UPS deal, it's interesting when you look at who they're paying, what they're paying and how they're going to approach the competition that they have coming from UPS. The part-time employees got some of the biggest pay hikes out there. Some of them almost 55%, okay? Those employees are part-time. They work in the sorting centers and they've already been difficult for FedEx to recruit. During the pandemic, the company had to run facilities at partial capacity which drove up costs and hurt its on-time delivery performance, okay? Meanwhile, better pay and benefits helped UPS maintain its labor force, okay? And you take a look at these charts, man. You talk about some volatility and they've both done well, okay? But you back it up five years now. Back it up, put it on a monthly, right? Check out UPS versus you put FedEx. Now this chart going back to about 2000. The FedEx chart going back well before that to 1980 but even zooming in since 2000. The volatility we've had since 2013, up, down, up, down, up on FedEx much more so than if you zoom in from UPS where it's basically been chopping around and then the acceleration during COVID and we've chopped around pulling back from the highs of 233. And that volatility, okay, is a factor in terms of a little bit boom and bust in terms of having trouble keeping staff on on difficult times without paying them competitive wages versus what UPS is paying. Now, they've already had problems and it's gonna get even tougher, okay? The ground unit, which does not have unionized workers for FedEx, they've been attempting to lower turnover. And listen, I know we're going through a lot of this but I gotta get to the last part which is that they're basically competing with themselves because they don't pay higher wages across the board, okay? The UPS contract's gonna make it more challenging. A FedEx exec told new contractors during a meeting in Orlando last week, okay? This is the quote, we're gonna have to sharpen our pencil a little bit and understand what's going on in specific markets specifically for package handlers. That's the senior vice president of Western Operations for FedEx Ground. Here's the kicker, the ground unit cannot raise wages for package handlers too much or it risks luring away delivery drivers that are employed by the contractors. So if they start paying package handlers too much money, the delivery drivers that are working for the contractors are gonna say, hey, that's not that bad of a deal because I'm not even getting paid that well. I'll become a package handler and then the delivery drivers for the contractors will be the ones that they can't get, right? If we start, if we get too aggressive, then it starts to compete with what you've got going on with your drivers. So we have to be cognizant of that instead of just raising wages across the board to a certain degree, they're careful not to raise wages in one job too much even though markets dictate that they probably need to because if they do that, they're gonna actually pull workers away from the other areas of their business where they're not paying them as much money. Not making it up, folks. That's how it's going right now at FedEx. The UPS contract is gonna start wage for handlers at 21 an hour up from 16 and by the end of the deal. So in five years from right now in the year 2028, if you've worked as a part-time handler for UPS for 15 years, you're gonna make $36 an hour. Folks, if you've worked for a company for 15 years in the year 2028, I hope you're making 36 bucks an hour. You should be, okay? Even if you're part-time. You're talking about 15 years of work for a company that's crushing it. You're talking about the year 2028. So again, don't be wowed by some of these numbers. One really, we should be wowed by the fact that the federal minimum wage hasn't been raised in forever. Those types of things are really what should wow people. Not that workers for companies that are crushing it are finally getting real livable wages because we have an unemployment rate, folks, very low. But as I think we all know, a job is not what it used to be in terms of the level of pay and what came with it. Delivery drivers hired by FedEx ground typically make $15 to $25 an hour. Delivery drivers, 15 to 25, 15. And you got UPS, those guys are crushing it, man. Yeah, so that one's gonna play out as it goes forward. FedEx is gonna face some heat, man. And it'd be interesting to see how that goes. So can you imagine showing up at FedEx, right? And you know that you got your coworkers over at UPS crushing it. You're making 15 bucks an hour and they're making 170 grand a year. Exaggerating a bit there, but you get the point. All right, we'll get off FedEx and UBS. What else are we talking about today? Let's see what we got pulled up here. What do we got? Yeah, this one's interesting in terms of the Supreme Court blocking the Purdue farmer $6 billion Sackler opioid settlement. The Justice Department is gonna examine if bankruptcy courts can force claimants to sign away their legal rights in a settlement. And it is interesting in terms of talking about what the Justice Department's argument here is that it would create the ability for companies to declare bankruptcy, okay? And then extinguish legal claims that even have to do with tort law and being liability, right? In terms of a release from liability as a condition of paying that $6 billion settlement, I don't think that should happen either, man. You know, defendants and mass litigation have long used Chapter 11 to drive a resolution and get a fresh start by offering these third parties a release from liability. Bankruptcy courts encourage settlements that can be forged anywhere else. Yeah, the government and other critics argue that by granting releases to third parties, bankruptcy courts are overstepping their mandate of rehabilitating troubled businesses and becoming an alternative to the civil justice system where alleged wrongdoers can avoid jury trials and pressure plaintiffs into settlements. I agree 1 million percent, okay? That opiate deal, they knew about it, they knew what was going on. If you look at the numbers, folks, I'll tell you a quick story about that deal because this is how quickly people get in trouble in that opiate deal. I had a surgery in about 2004, 2003, and everything went well. Small surgery and bottom line, I needed some pain pills because it was a surgery on my spine and I was at Brigham and Women's Hospital, outstanding hospital. Because it was on the spine, I had a neurosurgeon, okay? The neurosurgeon had a Harvard business card. I'm just trying to say, I had some great doctors, okay? This wasn't people peddling pills. I was at Brigham Women's Women's Hospital with a neurosurgeon that taught at Harvard with a business card that had the Harvard emblem on top of it, okay? And these were just coming about, right? Oxycontin was just coming about. And what happened was, is that they gave me some Oxycontin and they also gave me some Vicodin, okay? And I was taking both, I believe, at the hospital, I'm not sure, but nonetheless, I was in a lot of pain and I was doing okay, but when they pushed me out of the hospital, I said, you know, Oxycontin, even at the time, it was tough to get from pharmacies sometimes. So I said, I want you guys to give me those pills here in the hospital from that pharmacy so I don't have to fight with them and wait days for it to be delivered. Bottom line is, they gave me a huge bottle of Oxycontin. They gave me a huge bottle of Vicodin. Thankfully, the pain wasn't that great and I can't stand really taking those pain pills anyway. You just want to feel good, so I got off them. But I went back for the two week meeting and I had been taking Oxycontin for about six or nine days. It really wasn't effective. And they said, oh no, you were supposed to try and stop taking those and then take the Vicodin. Yeah, you shouldn't have been taking those. You should have been, said, nobody told me that. Yeah, nobody even told me that. I'll finish it up. There's a lot of liability to go around. Stay tuned, folks, we'll be right back. TFNN has just launched their new trading room, the Tiger's Den, hosted at Discord. TFNN has been educating traders for more than 20 years with live programming hosted by a variety of professional traders during market hours and now they are expanding their reach with the Tiger's Den, available to all tigers and tigers for just $1 for the year. There's no catch or added costs when you join our community of traders. In the Tiger's Den, you can look over the shoulders of Tom O'Brien and the other TFNN hosts while they analyze charts during their live Tiger TV programs and join an interactive trading community with hundreds of members exchanging ideas, interact with other tigers and tigers as they share trading ideas, news analysis and discuss the market action all trading day, even at night and on the weekends. 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Google shares off about 8-tenths percent right now. So I was talking about the conversation in terms of Purdue Farmer and the Sacklers and how I was prescribed oxycontin. I think 2003, 2004. And just how casual and that nobody had even told me how addictive it could be. Thankfully, I didn't even like it. It really wasn't anything that I felt was that great. But I remember leaving that being like, I can't believe they weren't clear to me that I should try to stop taking the oxycontin as quickly as possible. And if I need pain medication, go to the Vicodin because I just never did that. I took the oxycontin and then I stopped which made no sense that they had been that mismanaged from messaging. And then of course it makes sense when you see what happened in the hindsight of that. Now, I was cherry picking a few articles here in terms of the Sacklers. And what's crazy here, right, is that it really shouldn't make sense that you do something that's so illegal even civilly. Not even talking about the criminality and boy, that could be a conversation. I'm sure that many see the criminality of pushing out these pills, claiming they're not addictive, opioids infecting everybody, okay? Is that this family's worth probably 10 plus billion. They have 11 billion in here. The settlement's only six billion. You gotta pay that six billion over a number of years. And the case here is saying, how can a bankruptcy judge have the authority to prevent plaintiffs from taking legal action against the owners of a company who had not themselves sought personal bankruptcy protection. And that is one of the kickers of that, okay? So the family doesn't have to declare it. You just have company declaring it. The family has their value. The company goes BK. That money gets facilitated. Yeah, I had 11 billion dollars. I'd pay six billion dollars to get rid of all that stuff too, because they probably shouldn't have anything. We'll end on that one, folks. Stay tuned. We got Basil coming up next, folks. Have a great Friday, everybody.