Smart Investing with Brent & Chase Wilsey

There are many headwinds for short term interest rates to drop in 2026 It is no secret that the President wants our interest rates to drop dramatically to improve the economy, which as a sidenote is really not that bad. However, even though he gets to appoint a new Federal Reserve Chairman, that doesn’t guarantee lower short-term interest rates. The Federal Reserve Chairman's term ends May 15t...

What the recent changes in Venezuela means for consumers Without getting into the benefits of less drugs coming into our country, there are economic benefits from the large amount of oil reserves that are in the ground of Venezuela. The current daily consumption worldwide of oil is about 100 million barrels per day. Venezuela has in their ground over 300 billion barrels of oil. That alone would ke...

Financial Outlook on 2026 Companies Discussed: Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (VAC), NIKE, Inc. (NKE), Micron Technology, Inc. (MU), Lennar Corporation (LEN)

How did China’s trade surplus hit $1.1 trillion this year? The United States purchased around $450 billion of manufactured goods from China in 2024, but trade has dropped between the two countries so how did China have a record surplus of $1.1 trillion through November 2025? The current tariff on goods imported from China is around 37% according to the Tax Policy Center and imported goods from Chi...

Another lawsuit against generative AI company Perplexity for copyright infringement The New York Times has had enough, and they have filed a lawsuit in a New York Federal court. In October 2024, the Times sent a notice to stop accessing and using their content and then followed up with another notice this past July. Perplexity continues to ignore the warnings and a spokesperson for the company, Je...

We have gone through four industrial revolutions in the US, why does the AI revolution scare us the most? Industrial revolutions are nothing new in the United States as we have had four including the current one we are in. The first one came in the mid-18th century when changes came for waterpower, steam engines, and textile manufacturing. The second industrial revolution was in the mid-19th centu...

Fast food restaurants like Wendy’s are experiencing a slowdown in business The fast-food restaurant Wendy’s is planning on closing hundreds of locations throughout next year because they continue to see a slowdown in spending from their customers. They said most of their low-income consumers are cutting spending and making fewer trips with smaller purchases at the restaurants. Wendy’s increased pr...

No surprise to me that there’s a glut of apartments on the market I saw the potential for this oversupply happening in San Diego a couple of years ago. It seemed anywhere you drove within a short distance you would see the construction of new apartment buildings. It is not just here in San Diego though as the glut of apartments is happening around the country. With the dynamics of supply and deman...

Apple CEO Tim Cook pulled three rabbits out of a hat Pulling a rabbit out of a hat is a pretty good trick, but pulling three out of a hat is nothing short of a miracle. In the spring of this year, Apple stock fell below $170 a share as it was faced with enormous tariffs on iPhones, the potential loss of a $20 billion per year payment from Google, and sales for iPhones seemed to be stuck in the mud...

The big brokerage firms are fighting for your investment accounts Our investment advisory firm over the years has never been a favorite of the big brokerage firms because we generally only do three, maybe four trades on average per year. But the big brokerage firms are now acting like the casinos in Las Vegas and are doing everything they can to get you on their platform. They will give you all ki...

Inflation report likely solidifies Fed rate cut this month The September Consumer Price Index, also known as CPI, showed inflation climbed 3% year over year for both the headline and core numbers. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, came in better than both the estimate and the previous month's reading; both stood at 3.1%. It was a surprise to get this data with the government shutdown,...

Will gold hit $5000 an ounce? With all the excitement surrounding the run up in gold this year it seems to be an easy target. However, as investors pour money into precious metals, such as gold, people have to remember that President Trump has pledged to stimulate the economy through tax cuts. The run up in gold has been due to investors that worry about the future of the dollar and other major cu...

Do stock dividends give you better returns? With the S&P 500 currently paying a dividend of only 1.1%, which is the lowest in about 25 years, people may wonder if they should even care about dividends. In 2024, dividends were only 36% of profits, which was 20 points below the average going back nearly 100 years. Looking at return figures, if you go back 65 years, reinvested dividends did accou...

Is a reduction in cardboard demand a warning sign of a slowing economy? The simple answer is yes, but it also is one of many indicators we are seeing. Cardboard is used in many items in the economy from pizza boxes to the multiple items you get delivered from online stores. The numbers show that box shipments after reaching record highs during the pandemic are now down to levels not seen since 201...

Investors have a false sense of safety in the stock market A psychologist by the name of Gerald Wilde came up with the term homeostatic years ago and I believe this is totally relevant in today's market. It essentially means that when the environment comes to feel safer, people’s behavior becomes riskier. A great example he used was that people will probably drive faster in a big SUV than in a...

Retail sales are still surprisingly strong Although the labor market has been softening and consumers say they are worried about inflation, people are still spending money. August retail sales were up 5% compared to last year and if the annual decline of 0.7% in gasoline stations was excluded, sales would have increased 5.5% compared to last August. Strength was broad based in the report and outsi...

Should members of Congress be allowed to trade stocks? I recently saw there was a bipartisan bill presented in the House that would ban lawmakers from trading individual stocks. I feel like we have been hearing about this for years, and according to NPR, “For more than a decade, a series of bills have been proposed to address such trades, but differences about the details and a lack of support fro...

You don’t always need to pick the hot technology stocks to get great returns Investing is very emotional and it’s always nice to be part of the crowd and buy the hot stocks like Apple, Alphabet and Amazon, but they are not always the top performers. Sometimes your boring, undervalued companies can do very well. As an example, Apple over the years has performed nicely, but over the last five years...

Yet another warning on private investments! I remember hearing about a company by the name of Yieldstreet a few years ago and how it was a new way for smaller investors to get access to private investments and diversify away from stocks. The company promoted their platform with the tagline, “Invest like the 1%.” Unfortunately, it is now coming out that several investors may have lost everything th...

How much will EV car makers lose in credits? The nations Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards are still in place; however, penalties for violating those standards have been removed. So obviously there’s no incentive for any car maker to abide by them. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is focusing on standards to try to make cars more affordable again. But the big EV...

Unfortunately, more Americans are using their 401(k)’s for financial emergencies I’m sure some will disagree with me based on the headlines arguing they were so happy that they had their 401(k) to tap for whatever their financial emergency was. In my opinion, people are thinking short term and not thinking about the long-term crisis when they retire in 20 or 30 years and then might be living at th...

Will the stock market crash? With the market continuing to march higher and setting record high after record high, I do worry more and more that a crash could be coming. It doesn’t mean it will happen tomorrow, next week, or maybe even this year, but I do believe the risk to reward of investing in the S&P 500 at this point is not favorable when you take all the data into consideration. I have...

Should you be concerned by the jobs report? The July jobs report showed nonfarm payrolls grew by 73k, which missed the estimate of 100k. Unfortunately, the news got even worse as you dug into the report. The prior two months saw major negative revisions as June was revised from 147k to just 14k and May was revised from 125k to just 19k. This amounted to a total negative revision of 258k when looki...

Big bank earnings give a cautious green light on the economy Every quarter we get excited about listening to and reading about how things went for the big banks in the most recent quarter as they release their earnings. I’m primarily talking about JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. We have held a couple large banks in our portfolio for years and they have provided very us...

Are tariffs impacting inflation yet? The Consumer Price Index, also known as the CPI, in the month of June showed an annual increase of 2.7%, which was in line with expectations. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, came in at 2.9% and was also in like with expectations. It was slightly above May’s reading of 2.8%, but given all the news around tariffs I think most would be surprised to see t...