Meme stock trading, home prices, small business optimism: Wealth!

In today's episode of Wealth!, Anchor Brad Smith walks you through the biggest trends impacting consumer savings and expert opinions on the top strategies to build your personal wealth.

President Biden deployed a swift series of tariffs against Chinese imports, expected to place new tax rates on up to $18 billion worth of goods, including EVs, semiconductors, and solar panels. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman and Pras Subramanian detail where these new tariffs will materialize most noticeably for American consumers.

Watch Yahoo Finance's broadcast of the White House event where President Biden spoke on the tariffs, or catch Executive Editor Brian Sozzi's exclusive interview with President Biden discussing what these new trade policies hope to achieve.

GameStop shares (GME) are leading the way in what many are calling the second coming of the 2021 meme stock frenzy. YouTube Host Matt Kohrs joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the re-emerging trend, calling it a form of "social rebellion" that has no respect for the fundamentals of traditional stock trading.

Chase Business Banking CEO Ben Walter also sits down with Brad Smith to talk about small business optimism and how small business owners are looking long-term to "cycle proof" their enterprises against any sort of economic variances.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

Welcome to wealth everyone.

I'm Brad Smith.

This is Yahoo Finance's guide to building your financial footprint.

Our community of experts will give you the resource of the tools, the tips and the tricks that you need to grow your money on today's show economic data this week shines more light on the price levels of goods and services.

We give you tips on how to protect your savings from inflation at every age and where in the world is the most affordable place to a home or housing.

Reporter reveals the location, location, location plus don't want to outlive your retirement savings.

Well, we examine one solution which could result in monthly payments to your wallet.

But first let's kick things off with a check of the US markets here as stocks are mostly flat.

You're taking a look at the three major averages here as of right now, investors focusing in on three big stories day, Biden's new tariffs, the president unveiling a sweeping array of new tariffs on Chinese goods that will raise duties on $18 billion in Chinese imports.

And the latest read on inflation showed producer prices rising more than expected in April but the price increased from March that was revised down to a 1/10 of a percent decline.

The previous reading showed about a 2/10 of a percent increase plus shares of GME stop the ticker symbol that's on everybody's hoodie at this juncture, they're up around 70% right now.

We're watching the increasing volatility around a renewed meme stock frenzy.

All that and much more here today that we are tracking here and playing out in today's tape.

Well, we're going to kick things off with a deep dive into President Biden's tariffs.

Biden is raising tariffs on clean energy goods from China that includes things like electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels even.

So let's take a step back and define what a tariff is.

Tariffs are a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country.

So why raise tariffs?

President Biden is concerned that China is using unfair trade practices to keep most of the global production and manufacturing in the country.

So in an effort to promote industry growth here in America, Biden is raising the rate of the tariffs on certain goods imported to the US from China.

Hoping American companies then will build more here at home.

Instead of buying from overseas for electric cars, the tariffs would quadruple from about 25% to over 100% on a Chinese made clean energy automobile.

So if you're in the market for one of those products how will higher tariffs impact the price that you pay?

Joining me now on this, we've got our very own process for many and Newman to break this down for pro let's start with you because tariffs of 100% on ev sounds like a lot.

How much could this trickle down to consumers?

Well, the issue is that there aren't really any Chinese made EV sold in America other than the Pulsar two, which is the, I mean, they, they sell a few 1000 of those every year.

Uh Pulsar hasn't gotten back to me on how they're going to respond to this.

But the fact of the matter is only basically less like 2% of evs made in China that are sold in the US 1.3 million sold in the US last year.

Only a handful of those are, are Chinese made.

So not really gonna affect you much in the near term.

But down the line, look, you're gonna be sort of robbed from cheap Chinese evs that are actually probably pretty good.

Uh I again, a wide swath of Americans would actually like to drive these and like to own a cheap EV, but I think let's get that because of these policies.

But on the flip side, if you're, if you're Joe Biden, you want to protect American industry, protect those jobs, potentially that could be kind of knocked out by the overcapacity problem of China's s. Yeah, and we're here the tariffs in semiconductors, solar panels, will they be significant for us consumers as well?

I think it's, I think it's the same story.

This is meant to keep those products out in the future.

So it's not going to have that much across the whole board.

And this is only about 15 categories of products just to put this in perspective when Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese imports.

Uh it was uh hundreds and hundreds of categories of products.

So this is very targeted.

It's only gonna be about $18 billion worth of products that are gonna get a new tariff.

Uh Under Trump, it was something like $300 billion.

Uh Oxford economics put an analysis out recently.

They said they think this is gonna push up inflation by one basis point.

OK, that's 0.01.

So what, but what it is gonna do is it is gonna keep cheap products out of the market in the future.

So to go to go back to evs, um there's a, there's a Chinese E VA pretty good one you can get for $12,000.

Um We're not gonna be able to buy that car or it's gonna cost um I don't know, $24,000 if, if, if the manufacturer would decide, uh you know, that, that's another thing they could do.

By the way, they might say, well, we're just gonna pay the tariff and send it here anyway.

That's what happened with some of the Trump tariffs is that the tariffs, the tariffs went on, the products kept coming or they went through third party countries.

Um, so there's a lot of gamesmanship here.

But, um, this is not, it's not gonna affect any product for the most part that people are buying today.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right.

Well, we're doing all this and tracking this in the March towards November as well.

We'll see where this plays out in voters' minds also here.

Pros and Rick, thanks so much for breaking this down for us and our viewers can stay tuned for our live coverage of President Biden's speech coming up at 1210 pm Eastern time.

You do not want to miss that.

Let's turn now to the latest read on inflation.

The producer price index known in your hood as the PP I that measures the average change in the price producers receive for their goods here.

That index came in hotter than expected in April and the reading slightly tempered by a downward revision in March.

But still the numbers throw another wrench into the fed's thinking about the timing of rate cuts and consumers aren't feeling too good about where inflation is heading a new survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Finding Americans raising both their short term and long term expectations around inflation.

Consumers see inflation increasing to 3.3% from 3% on a one year time horizon and 2.8% from 2.6% on the five year time horizon.

So how can you protect your money against the present threat of a inflation?

Joining me now in studio with some tips we've got Lisetta Braxton, who is the Lisetta and associates founder and CEO.

Great to have you here in studio.

Great to be here today.

Brad.

Let's talk about this a little bit more because a lot of people are trying to figure out, especially as they hear some of the stats like that from surveys conducted by the New York Fed, trying to understand how they combat money erosion from inflation.

What are you telling clients right now?

Well, let's look at this from two perspectives.

One is thinking about what you're paying for the price of goods and services.

So you're actually getting less but have to pay more.

And the other side we have to look at too is how do you grow your money thinking about right now and the future?

Because inflation, as we know is going to work it course now and in the future.

So if you're looking at those two aspects, I wanna start focusing on the investment side.

And so where in the investment side then can people begin?

Let's start with savings fundamental.

A lot of people still have their money in bank accounts that are just earning very minimal on the dollar, the high yield savings accounts now are earning somewhere between 4 to 5% according to bank rate.

So if you can get absolute interest on your money by just letting it sit in the bank.

Let's do that.

Let's move those monies.

So that's one baseline way of looking at investments.

Absolutely.

We're looking at some of the other tips here on screen as well here and one of the areas that you tap into is locking in short term rates with C DS and T bills.

Why is that?

So I just talked about how your savings account that rate can change daily.

But if you wanna lock in something short term certificate of deposit C DS also known as um it could be another tangible way of getting that interest for a longer period of time within a short period of time.

I wanna get personal for the Gen Z, the millennials out there like myself that are trying to figure out, ok, I I'm blocked out from buying it right now.

I'm paying higher rent in the near term period of time and I'm still paying down student debt as well.

So for the Gen Z and the millennials out there in combating where inflation is remaining the stickiest, especially on that services side, what are some of the tips that they can perhaps implore, I'm sure particularly for college students saying I don't wanna have a roommate anymore.

Been there, done that, but maybe for the next decade or so, you might have to sh share those housing costs.

I mean, there, there's been conversation about housing inflation, rents being around, you know, over $2000 you gotta earn a lot to be able to live on your own.

So that's a sure way to continue to cut costs.

And I'm going back to savings retirement as well to put $25 just something to get you moving or because you don't wanna be at Gen X's age or Z's, you know, looking at, I wish I had set aside some money lastly here.

We, we talked about and we set this up teasing the tips for retirees out there too.

They're trying to figure out even where inflation is remaining sticky right now, how they can make sure that the retirement savings don't get eroded as well here.

That's a tough one because once you're in retirement, you're living off of your nest egg.

So what's gonna be important to make sure your allocation looks great for what you can handle?

And that means still having stocks in that portfolio stocks over long periods of time have outpaced inflation.

And so that's gonna be an, an important consideration because people living like 3030 years in retirement are people asking you?

Uh And I gotta throw this your way because there's so much focus right now on meme stocks as well as we've seen a resurgence.

Are people asking you how much of their portfolio they should have exposed to meme stocks at any given juncture, uh, anticipating perhaps, or hoping for a pop like we're seeing.

So people who are afraid of inflation should be absolutely afraid of Maine stocks.

Right.

Because there's more risk with the main stocks than there is necessarily with managing inflation.

I mean, we're talking about, you know, now, 3.5% but when you're talking about dips that could happen on the downside of the main stocks that could wipe, wipe away a lot of wealth.

Yeah, an island reversal.

Uh Everyone should fear that especially when you're looking at a stock chart like that.

Lisetta Braxton, who is the Lisetta and associates founder and CEO.

Thanks so much for joining.

Thank you for joining us from Chicago all the way in town from windy city.

Thank you.

All right guys, shares of meme stock as we were talking about Gamestop ticker GME soaring over the last two days, up 200% here to remind viewers a meme stock is a company that has gained viral popularity online.

The excitement or frenzy around the company usually occurs on social media platforms and then the results.

Yeah, big price.

So the recent price action was spurred by this, just this, just a man sitting there then leaning forward, but it's because of who it was tweeted out by the return of Trader and youtuber roaring Kitty on X formerly Twitter after nearly three years of a posting hiatus, roaring kitty uh A K A Keith Gill is known for helping ignite the meme stock frenzy of gamestop back in 20 21.

0, by the way, that figure has a remote controller or the gaming remote in its hands.

But anyway, our next guest says that there's more to the frenzy than just the return of Royan Kitty here with more.

We've got Matt Course, who is the host of the Matt core show.

Matt.

Always a pleasure to speak with you.

Get some of your insight here.

Uh We should kind of lay it straight for a lot of the folks who are watching here, your, your position.

You're not in gamestop or A MC right now, are you?

Yeah, I actually, unfortunately, uh kind of missed the boat on this recent swing to the upside.

And as much as I get that, there's a lot of quote unquote degeneracy and YOLO and that type of thing.

Obviously, you still want to approach it with some semblance of risk and I missed the boat, but hey, the play is not over.

You never know if there's gonna be some sort of dip opportunity.

And so with that in mind, what should people be watching out for as they're looking at stock charts like GME, like a MC and particularly where some of the frenzy has pushed the uh price action higher by 200% in the past couple days here for GME, particularly a phenomenal question.

I think one of the main things to hear about this play.

What's going on is it's very similar to 2021.

This is the resurgence of me mania if you will, which means all the discussion about fundamentals is it fundamentally fair, overvalued, undervalued?

I would actually contend just throw that out the window right now.

This is much more of a social rebellion than anything else.

And then you have tickers such as GME and other ones that are just the representation.

They are the vessel of that social rebellion.

So I get that a lot of people want to dive into the fundamentals and that's great.

And I think that has a place in all forms of trading and investing.

But specifically investing, this is much more of riding that almost that meme social culture.

So for me and this is some of the harsh lessons that I personally had to learn from 2021 2022 and 2023 is ride the trend as long as the party is on, I personally have no issue with being at the party and keeping my position.

But the harsh thing that I learned in 2021 is when things turn, they turn violently.

So I think every single person, if you are willing to take the higher risk, higher reward, set up of getting into the play, don't just go with the start.

You have to have some sort of exit plan.

And I understand right now there's many people watching this.

There's many people who are gonna react to it.

We are gonna be angry that I'm just not, I guess singing the Accolades of Diamond Hands.

But in my mind, what's the point of taking such a risky play if you're willing to say, hey, I'm never gonna take the money no matter what.

But at a certain point, we're all in this to ideally improve our own financial situation.

So because of that, I wouldn't want anyone listening to this watching this to fumble such an amazing opportunity.

Here's the interesting thing and I'll lay this on because there's kind of a same, same but different, same, same in terms of the run up in price action that we've seen and a lot of people capitalizing or trying to hop in on the momentum trade and in the same names as before.

But what's different is we're not going to perhaps see Robin Hood hop in and say, all right, we're halting trading in these stocks once again because there's a different mechanism that's been put into place since then.

They've learned from that mistake.

There's also, of course, the added element of, all right.

Sure.

We'll see the volatility trading pauses like we saw out of the gate this morning that are typical, but at the same time, there's, it doesn't sound like a major or sweeping regulatory force that's gonna hop into it at this juncture.

I don't know.

Correct me if I'm wrong if you believe differently.

Yeah, I, I think you touched on quite a few things there.

Obviously, the game is slightly different.

Uh Just to take a, I guess, a step back and talk about how the narrative itself is slightly shifted.

I think it became a true viral phenomena in 21.

Just because people were getting stimulus checks, they were locked inside.

There was a desire a need for some sort of commu community.

And because of the rules at the time, it had to be a digital community right now, that's a little bit different.

And also the money situation is a little bit different because interest rates aren't at zero.

We're not getting quantitative easing, we're not getting stimulus checks.

So yeah, the money is different.

And as you alluded to, obviously, the players have learned hedge funds have learned regulators have learned the DTCC, there's a bunch of different rules, but on the flip side, so has the retail community.

And well, I guess I should say at least, I hope they learn how to play the, I guess round two, if you will a little bit better.

But with this, it's still uh inherently boils down to risk, reward, supply demand.

These are gonna be some axioms that are gonna be present no matter what.

So with that being said, I truly believe this is an opportunity but in terms of what you're going for, I think that's individual.

I think some people want this as an investment, which if you think of it that way, this movement means nothing to you because you're gonna be in it for 123 decades.

If you're just trying to make a stand against the man.

Well, obviously that a little because you're preparing for it to go to zero.

But then if you're thinking of it as an active trade, obviously, you have to be disciplined and stick to not only your entry but also your exit plan.

So I de depending on who you are, I think you have to play it accordingly.

If they're playing it as a trade, then where do you believe?

And we only have 30 seconds.

Where do you believe that that next investment post a momentum trade will kind of flow towards for a lot of these investors.

So in my opinion, these actually aren't investments, there's other opportunity and with respect to capital efficiency, I think there's better investments, but in terms of trades, these are prime and in the words of the late Great Jim Simons, the trend is your friend.

So as long as the trend is there and persistent, I would be in the play.

If I think that the trends over, I would take my money and move on to the next trade.

Matt co host of the Mac course show, Matt.

Always a pleasure to catch up with you.

Thanks so much, man.

Thank you.

See you.

We've got all your markets action ahead.

Stay tuned.

You're watching Wealth.

Let's do a check of the market sponsored by tasty trade.

As we're almost two hours into the start of today's trading activity.

The Dow, the S and P 500 the NASDAQ holding on to gains right now.

The dow flat just barely to the upside by about 20 points.

The S and P 500 is up by about 1/10 2 10th of a percent.

If you want to round up, nobody would fall to and the S and P 500 or the NASDAQ, excuse me, you're seeing that up by about 4/10 of a percent right now.

Move higher by about 69 points.

The Home Depot is out with its quarterly results and the numbers are showing signs of a bit of a consumer pull back.

Yahoo Finance senior reporter is diving into the details.

Brooke De Palma has more here.

Hey, bro.

Yeah, good morning, Brad.

In the latest quarter, Home Depot did see consumer pull back just a bit on how much they spend as high interest rates and inflation took a toll on consumers purchasing power.

Now, the home improvement retailer saw a 2.8% drop in sales overall and a 3.2% decline here in the US alone year over year as consumers really pushed off those larger discretionary projects.

And on a call with investors this morning, it's VP and merchandizing Billy based said that our building materials and power departments posted positive comps while outdoor garden, paint, lumber, plumbing, and hardware, well, all above the company average, but he did say that they continue to see softer engagement in those larger once again discretionary projects where consumers typically use financing to fund the projects such as kitchen and bathroom models.

Now, CEO Ted Decker did add that as high interest rates tick up, there is a direct impact on demand.

And earlier today, we spoke with the former CEO of Home Depot Bob Nardelli.

He believes this trend will only continue on the news.

You keep hearing.

Well, the consumer is strong, they're still spending, well, are they spending more because of volume that they're buying or are they really spending more due to inflation?

I I deal with businesses seven days a week and I would tell you that inflation, we'll see it tomorrow again, is alive and well, I think it's got a long tail.

Now.

All eyes are on Home Depot's competitor, Lowe's which reports uh in just a few weeks or next week, I believe, which has a larger base of everyday diy customers who once again were the ones that pulled back this past quarter again.

Yeah.

And, and so Brooke, what is the wider home improvement sector shaping up to look like here?

Yeah, Brad, well, Home Depot customers are not alone here in pulling back on how much they're spending on home renovations.

And according to the joint Center for housing studies at Harvard University.

Spending on homeowner improvements and repairs over the next year is clocking in at $451 billion right now.

Now it's slightly down from the 463 billion the prior year.

But the rate of decline is moderating here with spending declining by over 7% in the third quarter of the year to ease to a decline of 2.6% to Q one of 2025 something to watch out for.

Now.

There does seem to be hope among executives many hoping that with an easing in mortgage rates and a rebound in the housing market, the home improvement sector will also start to recover.

And brad, this is well, so a quick tidbit here if you're picking and choosing where you, I think you'll get the greatest return on a renovation that you might have been putting off because of this stuff we've got you covered according to the 2024 cost versus value report from remodeling magazine.

Here's a look at some of the best renovations for returns first, a garage door replacement that'll cost you roughly $4500 but you'll recoup 194% of those costs.

Another option, a steel entry door that is a similar return on investment and even more costly projects like at this, a manufactured stone veneer and a minor kitchen remodel has an even greater ro I So some things look into if you have been pushing off those options as well.

All right, I was looking at a Discover report just last week, Discover Financial Services and their survey saying amid high interest rates and inflation, American homeowners would rather renovate than buy a new home right now.

Brooke.

So very apt and, uh, timely report there.

Appreciate it.

Well, thinking about buying a home this year.

Realtor.com and the Wall Street Journal out with their latest housing market rankings and you might notice a trend here, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri.

If you're looking for the best, bang for your buck in the housing market, sounds like the Midwest might just be the spot for you for more on the Midwest housing trends is our own.

Rebecca Chen.

OK.

Welcome in Rebecca.

We're going to the landlocked part of the country here, I guess.

So, what's what's the big finding?

Hey, Brad.

So based on this latest realtor ranking, which where they named the best market for the spring, we are seeing half of the cities were dominant, were in the Midwest.

And this is pretty interesting because just a month ago, Zillow came out with a very similar ranking where they were listing the best ho best housing market for first time home buyers.

And that list was also dominated by cities in the Midwest.

So we are definitely seeing a pattern here.

And I think the reason is fairly straightforward housing affordability is definitely the top reason why so many of the cities are getting the spotlight, but also they have a thriving local economy and friendly, really good local communities that people will love to settle down in.

Um But I did want to kind of go back to highlight to talk about the housing affordability in the Midwest because that is definitely the top reason why these cities are so popular nowadays.

Um And so how much affordability are we really talking about here?

One of the studies that we saw is that in the Midwest right now, it's the only region in the US that you are paying less than 25 or 20% of your paycheck on a monthly mortgage payment.

So everywhere else in the US other regions, whether you are in the West or the South, you are paying more than 20% on a for your home cost.

But Midwest is the only place that you're paying less than that.

So it definitely has a housing affordability that a lot of home buyers are looking for.

Um And this data is based on the National Association of Real Estate of realtors.

Um This is their housing affordability index in March.

So I think according to all of this monthly average mortgage payment, we can see that just in the West, you are paying almost sometimes almost double of what you will be paying in the Midwest.

So I think as this affordability challenge continues, these Midwest cities will only become more popular as we go.

All right, we're gonna be watching this very closely.

A lot of people trying to figure out if they need to be Wolverines fans, Buckeye fans are fighting a lion eye fans here.

Rebecca Chen, thanks so much for the breakdown.

We've got much more wealth on the other side of this short break.

You're watching Yahoo Finance Google is hosting its annual A I developer conference kicking off today with a keynote address at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

And you can bet your bottom dollar A I will be in focus since the release of the company's Gemini model.

You can catch it live on Google's website or its youtube channel.

But, but we've got the inside scoop straight out of the heart of Silicon Valley, joining us live from Google IO outside the shoreline amphitheater in mountain view, California is our tech reporter, our DH Dan Halley Dan.

What's the mood?

What's the vibe on the ground there?

Yeah, there was just a string quartet at, well, it's 830 in the morning here.

So it's energetic.

I would say there's tons of people running around, obviously getting in here, a massive line, huge number of people.

And you know, I think anybody that you talk to is thinking about A I and how Google is going to respond to open A I and Microsoft and their dances over the last three last year.

And you know, obviously, yesterday, we had open A I announce their GP T 40.

And so that is basically a new type of model that can do uh audio visual and text search.

So it'll, it'll be interesting to see how, how Google kind of steps up here and, and how they respond overall.

OK. All right.

We're gonna be watching closely and seeing how investors are also tracking some of the investments that Google has made or alphabet has made into its own generative A II.

I mean, Dan, just while we have you, what's, what's the likelihood that we could see this show up in products or services that Google offers this year?

Yeah, I mean, look, this is, this is their huge event, right?

I mean, they have an event here and there where they introduce, you know, a new line of smartphones.

It's all great and grand, their pixel line, they're great phones.

Don't get me wrong, but they're not volume sellers like the iphone.

This is the event where you find out what Google is doing for the entire year.

They have their cloud event, Google next again, a great event.

But here is where kind of the rubber hits the road.

This is where you'll hear them talk about what they're doing with uh search in terms of generative, even something that they've been experimenting with uh in their labs uh offering uh they'll talk more about likely their Gemini model that they have that works with workspaces.

That's a work productivity as well as whether or not it, you know, works with Gmail for regular people.

Right now, there's a version of their Gemini model, that ones with Google's A I premium offering, which is $20 a month and a lot of people probably don't want spend that.

So we'll see if they're going to bring those more advanced models to the regular folks as well.

But this is really the event to watch if you want to know what's going on with A I AND Google this year.

All right, Dan, you're leaving a lot of people wondering what that string quartet was playing.

But uh we'll save that for another conversation.

Y finances.

What, Dan, how, I think it was cold play.

Cold play.

What?

OK. All right.

I can't really say much.

I went to a coldplay uh concert in Barcelona last year.

So, anyway, good for them.

Good for you, Dan.

We'll check in later on.

Well, if you're curious about getting into the crypto market but still wary of the volatility and the safety concerns surrounding owning digital assets.

Our next guest suggests that spot Bitcoin ETF S may be the right route for you.

Joining me now to explain, we've got Rick Edelman, founder of Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals and best selling author of the Truth about crypto.

Welcome in Rick.

Great to see you in person.

You too.

Good to be with you.

Today.

Absolutely.

So let's break this down a little bit further here.

Some of the pros and cons of investing in spot Bitcoin ETF.

So let's start with the pros.

Sure.

A lot of people have been very interested in this curious, but it's been cumbersome and hard to buy it.

But now these ETF S are out here and they're just like any other ETF which everybody is familiar with buying an ordinary brokerage account, they're incredibly inexpensive, 2025 basis points cheaper than going to say Coinbase or other crypto exchange and being in a brokerage account, you can rebalance, you can dollar cost average, you can tax loss, Harvard.

It's simple, easy to deal with just like any other asset class unprecedented and that's making it more available to everybody than ever before.

So, what about the cons here?

Well, the cons are, it's still Bitcoin, which means it's still very volatile.

It's still very risky.

You could still lose everything.

We have regulatory uncertainty.

Uh There are still lawsuits, there's still a lot of fraud out there.

So you've got to be very careful and a lot of folks just get in on this because of FOMO, you know, they're, they're afraid that, you know, all my friends are doing it.

So I really need to as well and that's a terrible reason to invest.

So keep your head about yourself.

Stay long term, don't over invest and don't invest for the wrong reasons though.

It's the poster child.

It's just one Cryptocurrency.

I mean, it really encompasses so much market cap for the global coin market cap.

But there could be other spot etfs for other cryptocurrencies to come about.

What's the expectation there, there are applications pending for Ethereum and where it's expected that the SEC will reject these applications later this month.

But by the end of the year, they may very well say yes after you have the Bitcoin ETF S and the Ethereum ETF S, I'm not sure how quickly you'll see anything else after that.

But these two will kind of open the doors long term.

Five years from now, there will be dozens, perhaps even hundreds of crypto efs.

What are some of the most realistic price targets?

I mean that you're hearing for Bitcoin, I mean, we've seen ranges from $150,000 by the end of next year to a million dollars.

Michael Saylor says 5 million.

So you're right.

It's all over the map.

But what I've never seen is how they get to those numbers.

So I did the basic arithmetic myself to try to figure this arithmetic that could get us to.

It's remarkably simple.

If you take a look at the world's global assets, the value of the stock market, globally, the bond market, the real estate market, the gold market, you just look at all the assets everybody in the world owns.

It's about $740 trillion.

That's global wealth.

If everybody who owns those assets were to simply allocate 1% to Bitcoin, that would represent a market cap of $7.4 trillion that translates to 420 grand per Bitcoin.

That's seven times more than the current price.

So just simple arithmetic.

Now, of course, is everyone going to allocate 1%?

Who knows?

That's the answer you've got to determine for yourself.

But theoretically, it's easy to see how Bitcoin could grow five X 10 X compared to its current price.

We used to see price action based on the utilization case for Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin.

It seems like that's one more just to the amount in, in production that we were gonna, we're gonna cap out at 21 million anyway.

And so at the end of the day now it's looking more like gold instead of like just printing money over.

You're exactly right.

The use case of Bitcoin.

Although it's strong for transmittal, it's not the strongest argument.

It's now like gold, a store of value.

We have Ethereum and Solana and Polygon and algon.

We have other coins for commercial use application.

Bitcoin is really increasingly being regarded as a store of value like gold, like artwork like collectibles.

And there's a lot of interest in that to the point where institutional investors are increasingly adding into their portfolios.

Rick Edelman, who's the founder of Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals and best selling author of the Truth about crypto.

Thanks so much for joining us in studio.

My pleasure.

Great to see you worried about outliving your retirement savings.

I mean, who's not?

You're not alone.

We explore one solution to ensure you get a monthly check for the rest of your life.

We're diving into that solution on the other side of the short break you're watching.

Well, on Yahoo finance, 60% of people are worried about outliving their retirement.

According to a Black Rock survey, the median retirement savings account balance is about $87,000 according to the Federal Reserve.

With people living longer and higher inflation.

It might be a tough squeeze to make that cash last during your golden year.

So here to break down how you can ensure you don't outlive your retirement savings.

We've got Nick Na fusi, who is the Black Rock global head of Retirement Solutions.

Nick.

Great to have you here with us in the studio.

Thanks for taking the time.

Thank you.

All right.

So let's dive into this because a lot of people are thinking about inflation more presently at the top of mind right now, where are you seeing that eat into retirement accounts at this juncture?

So inflation has always been a worry.

We kind of go through different periods of inflation.

What we're trying to do though, even before we tackle the inflation problem, what we wanna do is we wanna make your 401k look more of like our traditional pension plan.

So this is with some level of consistency of income within that context, then we want to start thinking about inflation.

Um So inflation is built into the portfolios or inflation protection is built into the portfolios that we but inflation is this very long term thing that eats away.

But we have to do is establish a great strategy first, which is why we launched this product life path paycheck.

Certainly.

And we're gonna get into this product as well.

People need to know and are wondering perhaps as they're planning for retirement, the difference between annuities and target date funds as well.

How are you breaking that down to clients?

So just to define what those are briefly a target date fund is what most Americans are going to save through within their 401k.

So about half of Americans have a 401k, the majority of assets are now going into target date funds, target date funds.

We tend to overcomplicate these, but simply they're just balanced portfolios of stocks and bonds.

When you're young, they have more growth assets as you get closer to retirement, they have more defensive assets, think of high quality fixed income and inflation protection.

So uh inflation protected securities, um what annuities are annuities are a special type of investment vehicle which an insurance company would write and what they will give you is when you buy it, they will give you a, a guaranteed payout for the rest of your life.

What we did is we merged the two of those together.

So we did is we took a target date fund and instead of just buying stocks and bonds, we're now buying stocks bonds and these uh insurance contracts.

So we start buying them around the age of 55.

When you start need to think about preparing for spending in retirement.

And then when you get to retirement, if you choose to, we can take those insurance contracts and we can turn them into a paycheck for the rest of your life.

What do, what do you mean by buying insurance contracts?

And, and I mean, what's the practice of making sure that you're removing any risk even from those insurance contracts as well that are being purchased?

So there's risk everywhere in finance and what we're trying to do is balance risk.

So this is diversification.

So when we say insurance contracts, what we're talking about are uh contracts that look like annuities.

So again, annuity is a thing you buy from an insurance company and it will pay you out a guaranteed amount of money for the rest of your life.

We start buying those early so we start buying them at age 55.

They're completely liquid when we buy them because it's a new type of contract that we've built with uh Bright House inequitable.

So you dollar cost average into those contracts over 10 years.

And then when you get to retirement really?

Any time between 59.5 and 71 you can take, that works out to about 30% of your assets.

You can take that, turn it into an annuity and then it will give you a paycheck for the rest of your life.

What is the biggest mistake that you see clients or, or, or people out there making early on in their retirement, uh, early on in their retirement or in retirement savings in their retirement savings.

Uh There's, there's a couple that they would make.

Uh one of them is how to claim social security.

So um where people where they are able to, we would like them to defer social security if they can.

But it's an understanding of social security would be one of the first points.

Um One of the second points which is linked to the first is about the longevity of their assets.

So the reason why people say try to defer social security.

Social Security is guaranteed for the rest of your life with inflation protection built into it.

So if you can defer that for a year or two, great.

But then we always have to think about how long the average American is gonna be living in retirement, which is longer than they believe.

Nick Nafusa, who is the blackrock global head of Retirement Solutions.

Joining us here in studio.

Thanks so much for the time.

Nick.

Thank you.

Well, small businesses.

They are the backbone of the American economy.

I mean, we all know this, many of us had our first jobs at small businesses and employing nearly half of the entire American workforce and representing nearly 44% of America's GDP in 2023 according to the US Chamber of Commerce.

So the way these entrepreneurs feel about the future is important, bellwether for the state of the US economy.

A recent survey conducted by Chase for small business or Chase for business found that small business owners are optimistic about future growth.

Joining me now for more on this, we've got Ben Walter Chase business, banking, CEO Ben Great to have you here.

What, what are you hearing?

What is the pulse of small business owners right now?

Good morning, Brad.

Thanks for having me this morning.

Uh Small business owners are telling us what we see in the economy more broadly, which is uh the gas is the foot is still in the gas.

So we still see robust demand in the economy.

That's great and small business owners are leaning into that.

They're investing, they're planning more capital outlays, they're planning more investment, they're planning more expansion.

Uh and that's particularly true for our customers.

So we're thrilled about that.

There, there is a little bit of tempered optimism though.

That, that, that you just heard uh in your last segment about inflation.

I'm afraid that continues to be a worry for small businesses.

Um So we see robust demand, but we also see continued inflation, particularly on the pricing side and the wage side.

So those two things are counter balancing against each other.

What are small businesses thinking about the employment situation, the labor market right now, they're still struggling to hire at wages that are affordable.

Uh They, they have great demand, they want to hire more people, which is fantastic as you said, you know, it it represents almost half of employment in this country.

So if you want to maintain a small uh sorry, a robust job market, you have to have strong demand for labor from small business.

And we do, they have demand for their products and services and they want to hire, but there's still wage pressure.

Um workers are demanding higher wages, understandably given the higher prices out there.

We're in a classic wage price spiral.

Um And so there is more competition out there for, for, for workers between big small businesses and other small businesses and between small businesses and big businesses.

So they're desperate to hire.

They just need to do it at a price that works for their business model.

You know, it's really interesting.

We, we talk so much about publicly traded companies and how they're deploying capital expenditures towards generative A I and more technology that could help them be more productive and their workforce, I improved productivity there.

What are we hearing among small businesses and how they use technology and, and the latest cutting edge technology when that can actually kind of trickle through to their, their own margins as well here.

Yeah, I mean, it will happen more slowly than it will for larger businesses because they don't have the same kind of capital expenditure budgets.

However, uh we do increasingly see demand from small businesses.

They've been going digital for a long time, just like individuals have been going digital in their personal life.

That's not new.

Uh We try to cater that through to that, through banking, we try to cater to that through our services.

Um But you see a wide range of companies providing digital tools to small businesses and that's increasingly true in the A I SPACE as well.

I don't think that's going to change.

Um They're not going to have their own implementations.

You know, if you look at the bigger companies, they're going to have their own large language models, their own machine learning models, small businesses won't have that.

But as these technologies get democratized, we see robust demand from small businesses to implement these tools into their day to day.

A as you think about where the optimism is coming from for the future from small businesses.

You know, how many of them are anticipating a, a massive shift even post election as we've talked about some of the different funding elements that help small businesses right now and what they're kind of looking out to over the next maybe 4 to 5 years.

Even IIII I don't think that most small businesses are planning for the next six months or the next three months, most of them are thinking much more long term than that.

And that's great.

That's what we want to see.

We want to see small businesses looking into the outer years planning for whatever economic cycle may come.

That's what we advise our clients to do.

We advise them to be prepared for robust demand or weak demand.

We we advise them to be prepared for uh inflationary environments or less inflationary environments.

And that continues to be the case if, if you look at small businesses, of course, you have winners and losers at any moment in the economic cycle, right?

So during the pandemic, people who were selling goods did particularly well as we came out of the pandemic, travel and other services rebounded with a vengeance while goods took a hit.

Now we see as things settle out, you know, uh verticals like trucking uh are suffering a bit more uh as people shift back to services.

So there'll be some of those shifts over time.

We like to see small businesses uh cycle proof their businesses.

Um But what we continue to see throughout all that is is near record breaking business formation.

And that's telling you that there's plenty of plenty of enthusiasm out there for the prospects for small businesses.

It's not quite at the highs that we saw immediately after the pandemic, but it continues to chug along at levels just below that.

And well ahead of where it was in 2019, I'm just going to ask you to expand a pound, something that you just mentioned a moment ago because I think this is gonna be a key for a lot of small business owners who are watching how they can cycle proof their business if there's one top tip that they can implore today, that ultimately positions them well, in order to cycle proof, regardless of the industry that they're in, I think scenario plan.

So if you're a small business owner, you are inherently an optimist.

And I understand that it takes, it takes guts to start a small business and you have to believe in yourself and your idea like no one else and I wouldn't take that away from any small business owner.

That's one of the things I love about my job is that I get to interact with such inspirational um self determined people.

Uh But you have to imagine, well, what if that doesn't happen?

And you have to scenario plan for, you know, what if you get a 20% drop in demand or a 30% drop in demand or what if you get a huge order and it's more capital than you have on hand?

Are you prepared to act on it?

So think about the things not just that you plan to happen and that you know that you expect to happen.

But what are the things that you don't expect to happen?

And that's where a great financial partner like Chase can help.

Uh That's where we can help you think, help you think through those scenarios, think through what contingency plans you might have in place so that you can react in real time to the situation on the ground.

Ben Walter is the Chase business Banking ceo joining us here today on Wealth.

Ben.

Thanks so much for the time.

Thanks for having me, Brad.

Certainly coming up, everyone, consumers are tightening their wallets, mid higher inflation and restaurants are responding.

We'll tell you how next ahead of a fresh read on consumer price index.

CP I as you know it on Wednesday, we're taking a closer look at chicken foul poultry as food chains seem to be pushing more poultry options.

And based on the latest results, it's barking here to break down this and much more.

Yahoo Finance's Brooke Dipalma.

The the business of fowl is what we're talking about.

The business of birds.

The business of chicken.

What we saw in this latest round of earnings is this trend as fast food chains realize that chicken tends to cost less and it also tends to entice more customers to come in.

And there's three reasons behind that.

Consumers are tightening their wallets, they're pulling back a bit and so they're going for those low cost protein options being chicken, mostly also consumer preferences are evolving.

They're looking for healthier better for you alternatives.

Many believing that chicken is what's behind that.

And also there's more room for innovation when it comes to chicken, companies are able to add more flavors and in introduce new products more quickly.

Now this did bode well, this did do well in the latest rounds of earnings reports.

And we saw Chipotle see sea source sales growth of 7%.

With the introduction of Chicken Al Pastor, we saw Burger King introduce a fiery buffalo crispy chicken wrap it on sea source sales grow roughly 4%.

Taco Bell introduced a chicken cantina and saw us sales jump 2% and wing stop had a stellar quarter.

It saw sales growth of 21.6% and that's largely because of innovation, particularly around that hot honey chicken sandwich.

And we could see even more innovation around uh chicken to come.

Tyson Ceo Donnie King telling Yahoo finance that traffic at QSR has been under a little bit of pressure and they're going to quickly respond to do something about that traffic and getting chicken on a menu there or promoting chicken is in his mind.

A very likely s so definitely something to watch as chicken tends to drive more consumers as they look for value, but also for some flavor as well.

All right, Brooke, very fun part of the business to cover here.

Very fun.

Thanks.

So much Brooke.

That's it for wealth.

Everyone.

I'm Brad Smith.

Stay tuned for our live coverage.

President Biden's speech coming up 12:10 p.m. Eastern time.

You won't want to miss it.

And later on, be sure to watch market domination.

Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton that's coming up at 3 p.m. Eastern time.

We'll see you later.