Good morning. A retail sales report was released this morning and a headline on “Market Watch” might serve well to express what many are thinking as it states: “Consumer spending is booming, and the U.S. economy is continuing to expand” … even as Reuters warns that headwinds “loom” due to a softening labor market. Meanwhile, markets today are little changed as investors await the result of the 2-day Fed meeting which ends tomorrow. Right now, the betting money is on a 25-basis point (0.25%) cut … but what if it is something else? That’s the constant fear around tomorrow’s result as dissention among governors certainly seems to be increasing and the White House continues to call for as deep a cut as possible. And yet another interesting wrinkle has been tossed in by the Trump Administration … as there are calls to eliminate quarterly earnings reports and only have them come out every six months. There have been attempts to do this in the past … but this time it does seem to have (in my view) a decent chance. After all, a majority of the SEC Commissioners are Republican, and they do not need Congressional approval … though Congress might go this route with only a little prodding. Regarding this, companies and investors might have different opinions. Every 3 months a company goes through its books and updates its financial statements showing the organization’s financial health and outlook. The time and costs are high, and you might imagine that anything reducing this burden would be applauded. But the investor, on the other hand, seeks as much transparency as possible and this could result in less. And how long has quarterly reporting been going on? It stemmed from The Security Exchange Act of 1934 and was made law in 1970. What will happen? I suspect it, regardless of my personal disagreement, will change. Sorry. I don’t like staying on one topic too long, but this is an important one. I think I’m getting old. I started to write my note yesterday morning … realized I needed to put Power Points together for a class I am teaching … and completely ran out of time.to put out a note as the presentation prep took around 7 hours! Maybe next time I’ll ask ChatGPT (or one of these things) to create my entire teaching session. Speaking of this, a friend just sent information on “AI detection” (GPTZero) where you cut-and-paste items and it gives the view of whether it was AI-generated or not. I just plugged in my note (above) and am pleased to report it is listed as “100% human generated” as the algorithm realizes … … a computer couldn’t possibly be this stupid. Have a great day, Joseph G. Witthohn, CFA Have any questions? Please contact info@teamemerald.com
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