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 century when steel became a big factor along with electricity and mass production. We also saw transportation…

Bitcoin holder Strategy should be getting nervous about the price of Bitcoin

The public company Strategy, which used to be known as MicroStrategy and trades under the symbol MSTR, should be getting nervous about its 650,000 Bitcoins that are worth around $56 billion depending on the day. The problem is the company has about $8 billion of convertible bonds outstanding that require interest payments and about $7.6 billion of perpetual preferred stock that also pays dividends. The cost to pay the interest and these dividends is about $780 million annually and since all the company’s assets are essentially in Bitcoin, they don’t receive any interest or profits from that…

Holiday shopping hits record levels!

We continue to see conflicting data when it comes to the health of the consumer. They continue to say they don't feel good, but the hard data and the actual numbers remain quite strong. In a positive note from the National Retail Federation (NRF), an estimated 202.9 million consumers shopped during the five-day stretch from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday. That is the largest turnout since data for the five-day period started being collected in 2017, and it easily tops last year's level of 197 million shoppers. Expectations for the period were also quite low considering the estimate was for just 186.9 million shoppers. While online shoppers increased 9% year over year to 134.9 million people, in-store shoppers still saw a nice increase of 3% to 129.5 million people. Adobe also provided sales data for the five-day period that indicated consumers spent $44.2 billion online, which was a 7.7% year-over-year jump. Black Friday in particular…

Financial Planning: When Tax-Loss Harvesting Makes Sense and When It Doesn’t

Tax-loss harvesting is often promoted as a smart tax-saving strategy, but investors should understand its pitfalls before hitting the sell button. Selling a position at a loss may reduce taxes today, but it could also mean missing a rebound in that investment potentially costing more in lost gains than the tax benefit received. For example, if an investor buys a stock for $50,000 and harvests a $5,000 loss when the investment drops to $45,000, and they are in a 24.3% combined tax bracket (15% federal + 9.3% state), the tax savings is just over $1,200. That means the investment only needs to rise 2.7% to wipe out the benefit of harvesting, something that could easily occur during the required 30-day wash-sale waiting period. Even if the position doesn’t rebound, repurchasing after 31 days locks in a lower cost basis, potentially increasing future taxable gains possibly in a higher tax bracket. Many investors…

Companies Discussed: Weyerhaeuser Company (WY), Netflix, Inc. (NFLX), Energizer Holdings, Inc. (ENR) & Valvoline Inc. (VVV)