Diesel Prices Hit a Record: The Inflation Wildcard Wall Street Is Underestimating

This is Invest Talk. From KPP Financial, helping investors make sense of the markets one day at a time. Here's your host Luke Guerrero. Good afternoon fellow investors and welcome back to Invest Talk. I'm your host Luke Guerrero and it's Tuesday, September 8th, 2026. Now I hope each and every one of you listening out there had a restful and relaxing weekend. I know over here in Southern California it has been particularly hot and humid. In a shocking turn of events Wednesday I read the real feels supposed to be 117 due to humidity so not looking forward to that. But I digress because today's show is in the same way every other show is about you, about your finance and investment questions, about your education and because that's the case before we talk about the market today, before we run down our show topics, why don't we tackle this color question now? I was just wondering what you think of PIMCO Dynamic Income Fund BDI as just as a dividend play. Listen for your answering our podcast. Thank you. The PIMCO Dynamic Income Fund is a fund that we actually get pretty decent amount of questions on although it has been quite some time since I have at least received them maybe Justin has but it's a bond fund. It is actively managed by PIMCO. It is 1.1% in terms of its expense ratio and people like it because of the income component. Now it's 30-day SEC yield. Some reason this number is not on here right now. Interesting. Either way. It is about 14-15% is what it's forward yield is so that is definitely one of the highest in the market right now. It uses a bit of leverage to amplify returns. It holds high yield bonds. It holds emerging market debt. It holds mortgage-back security so there's a little bit of credit risk there as well. But the most important thing to know about this fund is it is a closed end bond fund and so the difference between a closed and open end fund is it closed end fund as a fixed amount of shares meaning you were buying shares from another investor. Meaning as opposed to an open end fund where you're buying directly from the mutual fund and a share is created at net asset value for you. Meaning you can actually get this thing at a premium or at a discount. Now this particular fund typically trades at a premium. It's currently at about seven to eight percent. It looks like it's premium to nav. That is definitely below its five-year average. But because of the manager being PIMCO this fund typically does trade at a premium. Another important thing to note which we always mention as well as that net investment income only covers about 45% of the distribution. What that means is that in effect more than half of the payout comes from a return of capital or unrealized gains and nav has been in a long-term downtrend. The high yield looks great but your principle is slowly shrinking. So that 14% yield it's not a 14% return. It is a meaningful portion of it. Is your money being handed back to you. Now if you're income focused if you understand what nav erosion is and the trade-off of nav erosion maybe this might make sense for you. But if somebody seeing this thing and sees 14% yield that's well the 40% yield and thinks it's risk-free it's not. If you're worried about a downtrend in the economy this is a heavily leveraged high yield fund. It is one of the riskier places to be. So understand what you own is always the number one rule. In this case understand the dynamics of closed-end fund and what that means for your share of its net asset value over time. For most people I don't think PDI makes sense. That is the PIMCO dynamic income fund. Thanks for the call. We had a great show for you last Friday and of course yesterday we brought you a best of episode but last Friday we talked about something that is thorned in the side of a lot of Gen Z people and they don't realize it yet and that's because sports bedding and investing have started to compete for a lot of Gen Z people for their finite capital. We also answered a listener question on ticker SPY so if you haven't missed it go check it out the best way to get every show is to follow invest talk wherever you get your podcasts. Now on to today where our main focus point is about something close to home diesel prices because they hit yet another record and in a lot of ways fuel inflation specifically diesel pricing is a bit of a wild card that Wall Street is underestimated. This is as a result of both the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran and because they're knocking critical refineries offline and that pain ripples far beyond the gas station from trucking costs to grocery store shelves diesel is in a lot of ways the hidden inflation driver that could complicate the federal reserves next move. Also we'll touch on the profit recession taken a little bit of a dive into the NFIB survey that was released last week. A bit of a discussion on the 8.6 billion that Americans lost an investment fraud last year and should we have time at the end of the show we'll touch on the feds plumbing problem. We also some voice bank calls ready to play including one on how we manage our watch lists and another on intuitive search surgical ticker ISRG. There's also some questions that came in from the comments section of the Invest Talk YouTube channel and hopefully we hear from some of you live throughout the show. We are headed into a quick break. Please remember you can call any time and leave your questions on the Invest Talk voice bank. If you're listening via our live stream or on AM 1220 in the Bay area I encourage you to call now at 888 99 chart. Up next we'll talk about today's market activity. Luke Guerrero is here and he's ready with answers to your finance and investment questions. Call Invest Talk 888 99 chart. Talk a little bit about the market today of course the market processing all that happened over the long holiday weekend and the net result was everything a bit lower. We saw the Dow down 117 the S&P down 58 the Nasdeck down 32 and there are also 2000 down 52 basis points. Monks the sectors health care was probably the weakest amidst some broad based poor trial data poor results. You saw housing and autos and software as well being some of the worst so those names that are particularly hit by rising rates and inflation. Interestingly enough though momentum. Semi's memory names AI infrastructure companies that generally are reliant upon debt financing. Did particularly well energy of course doing well on oils strength and then industrial commodities like copper some of the best performers on the deck. On the bottom side we did see treasuries a bit weaker yields were up one to three basis points in the curve generally flattened across the board. Dollar index was down 30 bits gold finished down 80 silver up 40 and crude oil up 1.7%. What caused this? I mean it was a bit of a defensive tilt you know you saw some more hawkish moves with respect to the situation in Iran you saw a ramp up in kinetic activity earlier you saw that the Houthis attacked Saudi oil facilities the US struck Iranian tankers in your carg island and then of course there was a previously undisclosed report that said Iran attacked attack US Navy ships on Monday and so understandably Brent is now not far from its earlier highs holding just below $100 barrel while diesel prices which we're going to talk a little bit about later on in the show continue to be flagged as concerns for global growth that being said I think a lot of what the market is waiting for is CPI on Friday it's probably the most important that it has been in some time given its implications for next week's FOMC decision on the date of front and FIB small business optimism fell to 98.7 in August from 99.8 in July. We saw weak sales, we saw supply disruptions, and we saw inflation weighing on sentiment as well. New York Fed's latest SE showed unchanged one-year inflation expectations at 3.6, though the three-year horizon was down 10 basis points at 3.2. Over 12-month unemployment rate expectations, it's highest level since April of 2020. Speaking ahead for the rest of the week, we get ADP private payrolls as the loan released tomorrow while we have PPI and claims, the highlights on Thursday, and of course, as I already mentioned, CPI, as well as the preliminary University of Michigan consumer sentiment, caps off the week on Friday. Alright, let's shift gears and go over to the YouTube comment section, Question Bank. Or a ticker for a ticker. For a question about ticker A-C-W-I, it says, "Hi Justin and Luke, Kenny from Philly Goberts, can you tell me your thoughts on ticker A-C-W-I? I heard your thoughts about international emerging markets. Does this fund help you track any larger trends and is it a good fund to have in your portfolio? Thank you and love this show." Alright, A-C-W-I, which we in the industry also call AQUEE, stands for All Country World Index. What does that mean? Well, you guessed it. It means it's tracking every single stock in the world, every country, developed markets, emerging markets, frontier markets, it's based on MSCI global equity classifications, meaning it's subject to the MSCI breakpoints, i.e., the limits that it is willing to include it in the portfolio from a size perspective. And this particular ETF is managed by eye shares, of course, reputable, large manager. How it attacks global markets is really through market cap waiting. So it takes each individual country and wait stocks based on the waiting within those individual countries, and then gives each country its weight based on the overall global marketplace. And so there are no active bets being made here, really, it's expense ratio, although you would be saying, is a bit expensive at 32 bips, it's because it's giving you international and emerging market exposure, typically funds do that in order to, or rather, typically funds that do that cost more than just US funds. In certain areas, it is going to exclude small caps. It may do some sampling, I actually think this particular fund might exclude frontier markets as well. Generally what you're going to get is an ETF that is slightly larger than the benchmark, but isn't doing anything crazy for you. So if you're tracking the global stock market, this is the type of funds you want to be in, but it's not going to make any bets here, it's not going to make any plays on emerging versus international. It's just going to give you what the market gives you on a market cap waiting basis. But either way, certainly a cheap way to go about investing globally. That is ACWI, the eye shares MSCI, Acque ETF. Thanks for watching. All right, our 24/7 voice bank never closes, so you can leave your finance and investment questions anytime on 888-99 chart. Our work continues after the break. A smart financial strategy isn't just about what your portfolio earned this year. It's about whether your money is supporting the lifestyle you actually want to live. KPP Financial combines professional investment management with comprehensive financial planning to help clients make better informed financial decisions. Learn more at investtalk.com. The August NFIB Small Business Optimism Index came out this morning at 98.7, down about 1.1 points from July and just above the 52-year average of 98, which sounds fine, right? It's mediocre, it's not alarming. But we always say this, don't just read the headline, dive in. And when you do dive in, it tells a bit of a story that really matters for people that invest in small caps or own a business. There was a net negative 19% of small businesses reporting positive profit trends. Negative 19, that is down 3 points from July. That's the measure that tells you whether small firms are making money. And according to it, they're not. A net 6% expected a higher real sales, only a net 10 expected conditions to improve in six months, and that's down 5 points from the previous report. The most interesting number though, a net 28% plan to raise prices in the coming months. That is unchanged from July. Small businesses are losing money. And in order to deal with that, they are going to charge you more anyway. That doesn't really make much economic sense. I think a lot of it comes from an area of desperation, right? They're not raising prices because demand is strong, which typically allows one to raise prices. Because their input costs are getting higher, paying more to employ people, more for insurance, more for fuel, more for materials, and it's rising faster than their revenue. And they can't really seem to get out of that. And the credit picture is a bit of a twist as well. The average rate paid on short-term loans actually fell to 7.5%. Credit availability is net negative 2%. The borrowing cost went down, even as we started to price in more rate hikes. The reason being, banks may be cutting rates to attract small business borrowers because loan demand is weak. So when a borrower has leverage over the lender, understandably, it usually means the borrower doesn't want to borrow. It's not bullish. So just seeing rates falling isn't necessarily good. The number one problem, according to small businesses, labor quality, 35% can't fill open positions, 62% have supply chain disruptions. There's some structural constraints here that rate policy can't fix. So essentially, the Fed can hide rates forever, and it won't solve the fact that a small business owner can't find help. So if you don't run a small business and you instead own small cap, or small cap fund, these are names that we have been pretty bullish on and you've seen a bit of a rotation this year, the data is not what you want to see, right? The Russell 2000 is up over 22% this year, but roughly 40% of its constituents face a $360 billion maturity wall of debt that needs refinancing and rates for them removing higher while this survey tells you the underlying businesses are in a profit squeeze. So this valuation gap, maybe it keeps the rally going, but the fundamental foundation underneath is a bit softer than what we've been seeing. This all feeds into what we should be looking at this week ahead of the Federal Reserve meeting next week, because all this goes into not only the path of inflation, the strength of the economy, but really what the Federal Reserve has available to it as an option. Let's keep things moving, and squeeze in a listener question from 888-99 chart. Justin and Lu, this is Gary from Benbridge, Louisiana, longtime listener, first time caller. I wanted to know when you mention a watch list, if you have a way of automating that as to get price changes and news for those companies you might put on the list, listen to the podcast, enjoy what you all do, take care. So the short answer to your question is yes. It is very difficult without using automations generally to track all of the information you need to track about your watch list, especially is that list expands and you start to scale that to various sectors and various markets and what have you. Now, for us personally, we use a mixture of external tools and services, like FACSET, sometimes we use internally created tools to maintain our watch list, to pull data, various data providers through API, so that's all to say yes, we do do that. Now for a investor such as yourself or a listener, there are tools available to you. You could certainly use some of the free options. The Y charts is a good option that tends to be cheap. There's a bunch of things that you can look at online, I would say, to help you maintain that. Now, that being said, is it necessary to see pricing every single day? Probably not. You really care more about trends, about profitability, about valuations, all those things, and looking at that each and every day becomes a bit of noise. So, even though we do have these things, I'm not checking the name on a watch list each and every day to see what the price is, because there's not much explanatory power there. But tracking those things certainly is a critical part of deciding when you want to kick them off the list, or maybe include them in your portfolio. Thanks for the call. On the next Investoc we'll look into this story. World food prices hit four-year highs. Is food inflation already baked in to the next CPI report? That's tomorrow, but for now I'm Luke Guerrero, and we are ready to take your calls any time at 888-99 chart. At KPP Financial, accountability means more than advice. It means we invest alongside you. Through our parallel investing approach, when we recommend an investment for clients, one or more KPP principles invest their own capital at the same time. Same day, same price, same percentage. If your portfolio moves, ours does too. That is alignment. That is transparency. That is the KPP difference. Visit InvestTalk.com to get your free portfolio review. In the early days, InvestTalk was Jerry Klein and Steve Peasley. Now the torch has been passed, and a new generation of hosts is on the job. Justin Klein and Luke Guerrero. So when you've got finance and investment questions, don't forget to call InvestTalk, 888-99 chart. On Friday, the average price of diesel fuel in America hit 585 a gallon. That was an all-time record. It was up $0.7 from the previous day up 60% from a year ago. And in California, where I used to have to commute in a diesel car, $0.770 a gallon. The reason I wanted to spend some time talking about this is that most people watch, unleaded gasoline prices. Most of the financial media talks about gasoline. Most consumers use gasoline. It diesels the fuel that actually drives inflation, and that matters right now more than it has in years. Even if you never leave the house and work from home and only order things on Amazon, or Walmart, or however you would buy things online, it still comes to your house in a truck. Things move around in trucks. There's absolutely no way in a modern economy that you cannot be exposed to diesel prices. Everything you buy that is not grown in your own backyard, and that you don't make for yourself moved because of diesel. It's not just trucks. It's trains, it ships, farm equipment, construction equipment, all of it is diesel. So when diesel prices surge every single link in the supply chain, it gets more expensive in those costs flow through to consumer prices, but I'll be it with a bit of a lack anywhere between three and six months. And back when I bought my diesel car in 2020, diesel is actually cheaper than gas. The reason why it's more expensive than gas right now, well, there are wars on two continents that are simultaneously destroying refinery capacity. In Russia, UK and drone strikes have knocked more than a quarter of the country's refining capacity offline. Russia, the world's second largest diesel exporter after the United States, extended an export ban to the end of September because it's facing a domestic shortage. Then in the Middle East, you have Iranian strikes on tankers and infrastructure, new destroyer for moves, and that's shut down refineries and also cut off raw material imports to others. There was a earnings call that Valero COO did on January 30th saying that refining fundamentals are tight and they're getting tighter. They have idle refineries, representing about 5 million barrels per day of capacity. It's roughly 8% of global diesel demand being disrupted. Now, the prettiest record for diesel prices, $5.81 was set in June of 2022. And that fell in an entirely different environment. In 2020, crude oil was spiking and diesel was moving with it. This time, crude is elevated, but not at records. There's a huge premium above crude for diesel. It's called crack spread. And it's at historic levels. It's clear it's not just an oil problem. It's a refining problem. And the issue is primarily that oil problems, albeit not easy to fix, are far easier to fix than refining problems because you can't build a refinery overnight. You can't restart one that was bombed in a week. Now, this inflation transmission, it's already visible. We saw last month's CPI should energy prices up over 18% year. We have diesel-specific costs flowing into transportation, which is embedded in the price of food and building materials and retail goods. And for rural and suburban households, predominantly those in the Northeast, I mean, you feel it all too well because the households that heat with oil, I mean, diesel's record means heating season is going to get very expensive. For the Fed, diesel is maybe the spoiler that could force their hand. And I saw a piece in the Reuters that essentially put this case to the test because if diesel keeps driving transportation costs higher, those costs flow into core goods prices, the category that Fed watches most closely. So I think it becomes harder to avoid not because wages are surging or consumer demand is overheating, but because the cost of moving everything from point A to point B becomes more expensive. Now, from an investment perspective, what does this mean? It means energy stocks, midstream operators, refinery operators specifically doing well. These companies earn the crack spread. So when the spread is at records, they're margins are at records. It also supports the case for commodities as inflation hedges, reinforces that staying short in terms of duration with respect to fixed income positioning, something we've been recommending for multiple years at this point. But for the real economy, for consumers, this is a tax. It's a tax on consumption, on business investment, on farming, on construction, on everybody who needs something delivered anywhere. And unlike a government tax, there's no vote. There's no exemption. There's nothing you can do about it. The numbers that the pump are just going to, at least for the foreseeable future, continue to go up. All right. Why don't we tackle a fresh collar question now? Hi, don't you from New York. Thank you for all that you do. I'm looking at stock ticker, ISRG into a surgical. Looks like it's been going down for a little bit. And I know that the PE ratio is so high, but their fundamentals still look good. Their return on equity is almost 20 percent. Their return on assets is 10 percent. I'm looking to, for an entry point here. And I guess what I'm also looking for is I want to put this in two accounts. One in my Roth IRA, I think this is a good long term hold. But two, I'm thinking about putting this in just a brokerage account, taxable account. Just think about my considering my value play or something like that. But yeah, just looking to see what you guys would say. And thank you very much. Have a good night. Now, let's take a look at an intuitive surgical that is ISRG. It is a robotic assisted surgery company. So they have that flagship DaVinci surgical system, which I don't even know when they create a thing. It's on its, I think it's fifth generation now. My sister is a surgeon. She is familiar with and operates with them. She likes them for what it's worth. But this company's had a rough year. It is down 38 percent year to date. It's down 25 percent over the past 52 weeks. It was down another four and a half percent today. So it's now sitting at $129 billion in terms of its market cap with about 132 million in debt. So in terms of debt, really not much there. I'm seeing a lot that I like. I mean, revenue has exploded. I'll be at it slowed down. So on a five year look back, the annual growth rate in revenue is about you. 18%, but 25 to 26. That's fallen sharply to about 10. Free cash flows grown from 1.1 billion to 4.3 billion from 2020 to this upcoming year. That's certainly good margins have expanded. Gross margins have stayed relatively the same. And return on equity looks pretty solid. Now with respect to its competitors, I mean, its PDE is pretty high. Its price to book is pretty high. Its trading at 7.1 times price to 4 looking earnings. So is it a value play necessarily probably not? But as tends to be the case, I mean, this is a name that has had good earnings, good revenue in the most recent quarter, beats on both fronts. But it's falling, you know, I think a lot of that is slowed down. Growth, you had guidance at the end of last year that had 2026 as being slower the expectation that 2027 is likely to be the same as well. And I think you can't over extrapolate what one strong quarter means, even though they did beat on revenue and earnings and by pretty wide margins. I think the question is, is there newest iteration going to be adopted? Is there going to be procedure growth that reinforces the idea that's been questioned earlier in the year that kind of spearheaded this four year guidance? It's still trading at a premium. This is not even though it's been falling really a value play. Just because it used to trade at 77 times price to 4 looking earnings and 14 times price to book value and it's now half of that on both fronts doesn't make it a value play. Now where should you house this thing? I mean, you could keep it in your brokerage account and your Roth. It doesn't pay a dividend so you don't get the tax hit, you know, with respect to keeping it in your brokerage account if having to pay income taxes on dividend yields. So, you know, I think wherever you want to custody this thing or rather where you want to put this thing is fine. If you think it's going to be a big grower, that's certainly a reason to put it in Roth. But again, I want to reorient yourself because just because something has fallen down doesn't necessarily mean it's a value play. For me, falling revenue, just one good quarter after poor projections, still a bit too expensive, so I'd probably keep it on my watch list. That is, forgot the tigger, ISRG Intuitive Surgical Ink. Thanks for the call. Let's make it two in a row from 888 to 99 chart. Hey, Justin Luke, I am trying to get some more information on Nike and Kee. I know the retail market is brutal as it is and especially with shoes and there's so much competition. But Nike has been down, has been going down for a very long time, coming all the way from 165, 167 to 31. Do you think now is a good long-term buying opportunity looking at the PE ratio in somewhere like 18 or 22 forward PE? I would really appreciate your information. Thank you. Interesting that you ask about Nike because this is kind of an ongoing debate between me and a colleague in the office. Nike is, of course, one of the most well-known athletic apparel, and really apparel companies on planet earth. And it has had a rough, rough five years. It has been down significantly from its highs in 2021, where it was trading at roughly $175 a share, a little bit over that actually, and now it's trading at $3810. It's down 48% in the past 52 weeks. It's down 40% year-to-date margins have compressed. Return on equity has fallen. Revenue growth has absolutely flatlined to the point where it's actually fallen off of peak revenue that it saw back in 2023 and just started to potentially correct. That issue this upcoming year. Now, it did beat on earnings in its most recent quarter by about 50%. So it extended its beat streak. It had revenue essentially in mind with estimates. There's a little bit of a revenue surprise there. But it's an issue. It's had a lot of issues. It's had issues within the Chinese market. That was a huge source of revenue for them. And it's now come to the point where it is trading at the lowest it's been in five years from a valuation perspective. Now, when you look at valuations like at price earnings, that number moves for one of two reasons. Because earnings expectations change or because prices change. So something is at a bottom line PDE of its five year range. And earnings expectation goes down. What happens? PDE goes up and then prices may fall as well to meet those earnings expectation changes. So just because something is at the bottom end here, it doesn't mean the price can't fall because there's both a numerator and denominator in that equation. I can't get past revenue declining over the trailing two years on a nominal basis. And a lot of their EPS beats have just been at least in the most recent quarters. Certainly inflated by one time tariff related benefit rather than core operating strength. They might have a long road to recovery is what I'm trying to say here. Because there's just so much competition. You have different segments that have popped up now. You have ATHLEESURE. You have wider, better technology amongst competitors in terms of the actual sports shoes. And so even if it does well, does it ever go back to the behemoth it was? My thinking is probably not. It is the name that we used to hold for clients. But at a certain point, we had to sell it because the writing kind of seemed to be on the wall here. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that the stock doesn't price doesn't move up from here. But I think a lot of people are hoping it goes back to 177 a share. And I just think we live in a fundamentally different world than 2021. And a lot has to go right for a long time for Nike even begin to claw its way back. So what I think is one thing with the market has been telling you over the past couple of years with this persistent downtrend that has never broken is that they don't quite believe it either. So for me, it's still a falling knife. I would still stay away from Nike. Take your N-K-E. Thanks to the call. This is Investoc. I'm Luke Guerrero and we have one goal here. That's to help you achieve your financial freedom. Our work continues after this break. It is our final break. So get your questions in now at 888-99 chart. Luke Guerrero is here and ready to tackle your questions. I wanted to pick your brain about apples. What do you think about their earnings calls? Is this a good time to add to my position? Call Investoc, 888-99 chart. There are a few things that make KPP financial special. One of them is parallel investing. This means they invest right alongside their clients. Here's how it works. When KPP financial makes a trade for their clients, Justin Klein makes the same trade for himself and KPP. On the same day, at the same price, and same percentage. No front running, no special treatment. Learn more about parallel investing at investtalk.com. In July, the SEC formed a retail fraud working group. Why do they do this? Well, Americans reported losing more than $8.6 billion to online investment fraud last year. Cryptocurrency scams accounted for $7.2 billion of that total. The working group's mandate is pretty broad. It's covering offering frauds, pump-and-up schemes, market manipulation, and misconduct by both brokers, as well as investment. Advisors. I think this raises a uncomfortable question. Forbes pointed this out. What exactly was the SEC not already doing? The agency has always been responsible for policing investment fraud. Creating a working group to do the job you're supposed to be doing raises some questions. The announcement was five paragraphs long and said the group would use clothing. "data and technology" to find wrongdoing, but that was pretty much all it said. I think a lot of this connects to our focus point on Friday, which I encourage you to check out on Gen Z in sports betting. Finra's research has consistently shown the most confident investors are the worst at spotting scams. The people who rate their own financial knowledge as very high or more likely, and not less likely to fall for fraudulent investment pitches. And as because confidence reduces skepticism, if you believe you're savvy enough to evaluate any opportunity, then you are less likely to say, "Hey, what's going on here?" Ask the basic questions that catch a scam. Is this registered? Is there a track record? Why is the return so much higher than anything else available? You also gotta keep in mind that nearly nine billion, that's only reported losses, meaning the actual figure is definitely higher because many victims don't report it, either because they're embarrassed or they don't realize they've been defrauded until years later. I mean, the FBI noted that investment fraud losses have risen from $3.3 billion in 2022 to $8.6 in 2025. That's a not good 160% increase in three years. During a bull market, the scam industry is growing faster than the US equity market. And the crypto connection is critical to understanding this. 7.2 of the 8.6. And that came in the form as either a quote unquote investment or just a payment mechanism. I think crypto's combination of regulatory gaps of irreversible transactions, which is the whole point of technical complexity that makes it the perfect vehicle for fraud. Once you send somebody your crypto, it's gone. There's no charge back, there's no reversal, there's no middleman, that's how it's designed. You can't just call a bank. As you all know, if you've been listening to this show, I like bringing you these stories because I think this is also an important part of trying to help you keep your money safe. So the advice is pretty simple. If someone asks you, contacts you with an unsolicited investment opportunity by text, by social media, cold call, it's almost certainly a scam. If the return sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. If you're asked to pay in crypto or wire transfer, don't do that. If you can't verify the investment through SEC's Edgar database or Finn was broker-check, don't invest. The SEC's working group might improve enforcement of the margins, but the best fraud prevention, it's not somebody else, it's a healthy dose of skepticism, apply to every opportunity that arrives without you looking for it. The scams that work best aren't the ones that look suspicious to the ones that look legitimate. They use professional websites, fake testimonials, manufactured urgency, and they target people who think they're too smart to be fooled. If that fits you as a description, you need to be careful. All right, folks, that does it for another episode of Invest Talk. Justin and I, thank you for listening. It encouraged you to tell your friends and family members about our free podcast downloads and why you're over there. We'd really appreciate it if you left us a rate and review. Additionally, if you have not already, I encourage you to check out our YouTube channel, it's Invest Talk with Two Teas, where we have YouTube exclusive content, and also our website, where you can learn more about parallel investing, which is our process for investing alongside our clients so that we share the same risks and the same rewards, and you can schedule a free portfolio review. Independent thinking? Shared success. This is Invest Talk. Good night. Invest Talk is a trademark of KPP financial because of the nature of the interactive dialogue inherent in the format of this program. It's important for the listener to understand that not all comments made will apply to them. Specifically, nothing said she'll be taken to be investment advice, or shall statements on this program be considered an offer to buy or sell security. Because such advice is rendered solely on an individual basis, and at times, will require that the investor review a prospectus before investing. Invest Talk is a copyrighted program of client, Pavlis, and Peasley financial, a registered investment advisor firm, which retains all rights. For more information regarding KPP's investment advisors, call 1-800-557-5461. Thank you for listening, and your comments and questions are welcome on our 24-hour listener line at 888-99-Chart. (upbeat music)