SpaceX Wireless Network vs. Verizon and AT&T: What Satellite Competition Means for Telecom Investors

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 I'll be with you on this Monday, October 19th, 2026. As we talk about all the moving parts in the market, as well as the important financial news, and most importantly, answer your finance and investment questions. Now before we move forward, I do want to give you a quick reminder that our first in-person Invest Talk retirement summit, sorry, is, well, it's just five days away now, and there are very limited spots left. It is a free event, but you do have to head over to investtalk.com and register. So if you are interested in going to the Invest Talk retirement summit, I encourage you to sign up today. All right, and just a bit, I'll talk about today's market performance and run down our show topics. But why don't we tackle this color question now? Hey guys, this is Derek Schollop. I've got a quick question for you. So I'm looking at Celenese Corporation. Take a simple C-E, be a good opportunity to get in right now. I'm just curious what you thought, so I appreciate it. Thanks. So we'll get Celenese Corporation, that is ticker C-E. It's a roughly $5.2 billion market cap company, puts it in the higher end of the small cap range. And what it does is it has a bit of a focus on specialty materials, as well as global chemical. So they have high performance plastics, which is used in electronics and auto production, medical production. They have saccassid vinyl-related products as well. Recently, it's kind of been ranging here for a bit. If you look at the chart, if you look at the price movements. At the end of 2024, there was a huge drop-off. Volume started to spike far beyond what you saw going into 2020. And it dropped from about $150 a share to where it trades today at $47.88. Now, with this drop-off, you've had many quarters of disappointing earnings until this most recent quarter. Company actually had its highest adjusted earnings per share in three years. Revenue was a hair-below consensus, but it was still at net sales of $2.28 billion, 18% growth year over year. One thing that the market obviously didn't like, though, was guidance. Guided, I couldn't think of another word, downward, pretty sharply, because they're seeing some supply-related benefits fading. And generally, just seeing raw costs rise. We're seeing that across the market. And so, shares fell about 7% on this guidance, on some of the leverage concerns that they have. I mean, total long-term debt is $11.65 billion. And so, in spite of this earnings power recovering, in spite of what was record margins in their largest division, that engineered materials division, in spite of all this, I think that when you have a company whose debt levels are high, whose dividend was just cut, whose business is cyclical, and whose trailing 12-months gap earnings is still pretty deeply negative, doesn't give you a lot of confidence that now is a time to enter a position. So, for C, Selene's corporation, I'm going to have to pass. Thanks for the call. We had a great show for you on Friday. We looked into this story about the Supreme Court taking on your 401k. We also answered a listener question on Tigger Symbol GE, which is GE Aerospace. So, if you want to learn more about that Supreme Court case, and more about General Electric, I encourage you to check out Friday's episode of Invest Talk. And remember the best way to never miss an episode? It's to subscribe to Invest Talk, wherever you get your podcasts. On to today, where my main focus point is about SpaceX, not the rocket division, but instead about their desire to take on the big voice in wireless networks, take on Verizon and AT&T. And so, what does this potential satellite competition mean for telecom investors? Verizon actually sought stock suffer its worst single day since 2002, after this report came out of SpaceX planning a US wireless network. It, for a lot of reasons, sent some shockwaves through the entire telecom sector. And so, this could be a lesson about when a disruptive competitor threatens your core business model of really companies that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, what are the structural implications? Not just for these companies, but for you if you are invested in telecoms. We also have a couple more stories to bring you today, including one on the difference between, or rather how even the wages are growing, wealth is not. A lot of that because fewer Americans are owning stocks. Another story on credit union rules being rewritten and should we have time at the end of the show, talk a little bit about what is happening in the heartland to America's farms. We also have some voice bank calls rated playing, including one on short interest and another on Curtis Wright Corporation, that's Tigger CW. So, some questions that came in from the comment section of the Invest Talk YouTube channel, and hopefully some live calls throughout the show. We're going to do a quick break. Please remember you can call anytime and leave your questions on the Invest Talk voice bank. If you're listening via our live stream or possibly on AM 12, 20 in the Bay area, give me a call now at 8-8-99 chart. When we come back, we'll talk about today's market activity. It's official. Total lifetime downloads for the Invest Talk podcast are now more than 63 million. Luke Guerrero is here now taking your calls live. Invest Talk, 8-8-8-99 chart. Overall, it was a positive day in the markets, with the exception of the Dow, which was down 7 basis points. We saw the S&P up 41, the NASDAQ up 111 Bips, and the Russell 2000 up 25. So overall, I mean a lot of the market was higher. You know, you did see the equal way to actually lab lag the cap weighted index by about 70 basis points of breadth because that was negative. But a lot of the trends that we've seen over the past couple days kind of were reversed a bit. You saw a tech was mostly higher. You saw semis and memory leading the rebound. Then you saw hardware software, biotech names, those names that rely heavily on debt doing pretty well. On the flip side banks, insurers, chemicals, some of the worst performers on the day. Look at the bonds. Treasuries were a bit weaker across the curve. They did end the day near their worst levels. You saw yields up about 5 to 6 basis points on both ends of the spectrum. The dollar was up 20 Bips, gold finished down 50 silver, pretty much flat on the day. And crude oil finished down 50 basis points. So a bit off of its worst levels. Keeping in mind for the past seven sessions, we've actually seen a rise in crude oil. But the big story, you know, I think it's like I mentioned, we saw a big bounce in the AI trade. A lot of that was probably because a bit cleaner positioning than there has been over the past couple weeks. You know, the market is moved into a bit of a oversold conditions area. You saw a couple firms release reports defending core weave, which has been seeing some debt related issues that have been driving the price and the market downward. I think for a lot of people, they're seeing that this week has a hyperscaler earnings. And hoping that there's going to be a bit of a shift that will help the AI narrative back towards the demand for compute and the demand for CapEx as well. Interestingly enough, this bond yield back up that we saw that came despite oil's pullback. And I think there's been a report or there was some reports that there's some traction in negotiation with the US and Iran. But the market seemingly just looking past that saying, hey, we've heard this story before. We're not going to see a big downward move in yields unless we actually see something come through this. On the day to front, I mean, it was fairly quiet. It's going to be pretty quiet week, especially because the Fed is in a blackout period ahead of the 28th of October, FOMC announcement. But we did get October NAHB Home Builder sentiment. It printed at 29. That was below September's 32, which is also the consensus estimate. And it's lowest headlines since 2012. What caused it? Well, they're at least talked a little bit about mortgage rates, elevated costs, and a big one, weaker consumer sentiment. Looking ahead to the week, Tuesday brings ADP weekly private payrolls, as well as September housing starts and building permits. Nothing on the calendar for Wednesday. Initial claims is going to be the highlight for Thursday then rounding out the week on Friday. We'll see October Flash PMIs and the final University of Michigan consumer sentiment and inflation expectations for the month of October. Why don't we keep things moving and get to another listener question now? Hello, gentlemen. Listener from New Hampshire. I have a question about Curtis Wright. I've been watching this company for quite a while. It's in the industrial space. It was around $800. It's now down to $500. Looking for an entry spot. If you feel it's a good company, it's been around since all over in Wilbur Wright. So I feel it's good. And I think the entry point would be around $450 or so. And I'll be listening on the podcast for what do you think about the company and the entry point. Thank you for a great show all the time. Bye now. Kind words, let's dive into Curtis Wright Corporation. That's ticker CW. It is almost $19 billion market cap company, very little debt on its balance sheet, only $936 million of debt. And what it does is it makes engineered products for aerospace and defense. So for naval defense, that's its biggest division, naval and power that includes nuclear markets as well. It's about 43% of its revenue. Then pure defense products is about 29 and then aerospace and industrial, that's about 28. What you saw, really since 2020, was a continual march upward in this day. And that path kind of hit a bit of a rock, a bit of a boulder in July of this year, picked out about a price of near $800. Now it's trading back down at $4.97, $11.29. In the past three months, down 8% over the past year. I'm looking at earnings. You saw revenue in line. You saw adjusted earnings per share. Actually, beat consensus. You're seeing margin expansion across the board. You saw a full year sales and free cash flow guided to a record. And so despite the beat and raise, it slid 4% after hours after their port. It slid roughly 33% in the subsequent months. And really, I'm not really finding anything company specific in what moved this negative. A lot of what has been going on is the aerospace and defense industry broadly, it was just a overbought. And so it's still trading at 30 times price to for looking earnings, which is still above its average. Meaning that there is a bit of downside risk here in buying this name. I think it's a high quality name. I think the nuclear component is something that diversifies it away from a lot of aerospace businesses. But from a momentum perspective, it looks pretty poor. Could head down below 450. When that gets below the moving average, rather below the five year average price earnings, that's what I'd start to look to pick it up. Thanks for the call. All right, it didn't do break. When we come back, more stories and more answers to your finance and investment questions, you're on Invest Talk. The investment business, it's a trust business. But you shouldn't have to just trust that your advisor will hold your assets safely. At KPP Financial, we use established custodians like Charles Schwab and Fidelity. They hold your assets. KPP provides investment management and financial advice. Learn more about working with us at KPP Financial. It all starts with a free portfolio review at investtalk.com. (upbeat music) If it reserve, they really like to make reports. And they recently released their survey of consumer finances. It's the SCF. It comes out every three years and it's the most comprehensive look at what American households actually own, what they earn and what their debt looks like. And the headline finding, it's a bit uncomfortable if you're a financial advisor or a policy maker. The median family income rose about 7% to $82,000. That's fine. But median net worth rose just to 215,000. And mean net worth rose 7 to 1.24 million. When the mean pulls away from a median like that, it tells you the gains, they're concentrating at the top. That's just basic statistics. The people who already had assets are the ones whose assets are growing. And if you break this down further, you can actually look at this in the report by quartile. So the bottom 25, the lowest quartile households by net worth, saw their wealth drop by 56%. The middle two quartiles, they were essentially flat, down about 1% and up about 4%. 75th to 90th percentile gained 12%, the top 10% up 19%. I think one finding that actually jumped out at me the most is that the share of American families who own stock, any stock, including through retirement accounts, actually fell from 58 to 56 direct stock ownership dropped from 21 to 19. Fewer Americans hold equities than three years ago. But among the families that do own stock, the median holdings rose 36%. And so I think people need to kind of sit with that for a second. We've had one of the greatest bull markets in history. S&P is up enormously over the past three years. And the result is that fewer people own stocks. So the wealth gap white is. In a lot of ways, the market didn't democratize wealth. It concentrated it. There is another important ratio that you can look at when you're talking about wealth gaps. It's the upper to lower income ratio. It went from 6.8 in 2001 to 7.3 in 2024. But the upper to lower wealth ratio went from 31 to 49 over roughly the same period, a 58% widening. Wealth is diverging seven times faster than income. And across 204 metro areas, the income ratio ranges from 5.7 to 9.7. College towns tend to skew these ratios 'cause you have a large population of students. And so it's important to look at this in a way that statistically makes sense. Now the honest counter argument here, and I think it's important is that this measure is marketable wealth so assets you can sell, it excludes defined benefits, plans, social security. But from an investment standpoint, I think this exemplifies exactly what we've been talking about. This K-shaped economy that keeps coming up. And so as you see a bifurcating economy, it makes sense from a retail perspective, tilt towards those areas of the market that benefit when the upper level consumers are spending, and maybe stay away from those that hurt when those in the bottom aren't doing as well. Let's see if we can drop another listener question before the break. - Good evening guys, this is Chris from Atlanta. I wanted to see what you thought were on starting to dollar cost average into Pepsi. I know that it's forecast to have low growth over the next year, but as a dividend king, think it maybe you can start investing now over the next year and collecting the dividends while waiting for it to hit another growth spread. You're interested in seeing what your thoughts are on this? Thank you guys, have a good day. - Okay, so Pepsi, I don't think I gotta explain to anybody what Pepsi does, and I wanna attack this question from a couple of things that were said here. Waiting for it to hit another growth spread, there is no guarantee that it will. It is in an incredibly competitive industry. It has done really poorly from a price return perspective. Going back to 2023, in fact, in the past five years, it's only outperformed the market one time, and it's underperformed, it's industry twice. You know, they did recently have good earnings, but it wasn't enough to help the stock price. I mean, it's down 6.93% year to date, down 13% over the past 52 weeks. So let me take a look at total return here, give you a good idea. Takes me a second, so if we go back five years, the total return from a price perspective is negative 3.56%, add in the dividends, and the total annual return is negative 0.37%. So holding for the dividends doesn't bring your total return anywhere near the overall market, which was at 12.7%. Don't just invest because of dividends understand that while you're getting that 3, 4, 5% dividend yield, the assets that you own can be losing value over time and you end up far worse. Thanks for the call. On the next Invest Talk, we'll look into this story. Tax Loss Harvesting explained how wealthy investors cut tax bills and how you can, too. Schwab is rolling out a new tax-ware investment strategy designed to attract billions from high-net worth investors by minimizing the drag of capital gains taxes on long-term wealth. So we'll talk a little bit about this and the tax-loss harvesting in general and how you can improve your after-tax returns in your portfolios. That's tomorrow, but we still got plenty of show today. I'm Luke Graham and we are ready to take your calls any time at $88.99. 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. The Invest Talk Retirement Summit is coming to Irvine, California on Saturday, October 24th. You are invited to join KPP Financial and guest experts in tax, estate planning, real estate and financial planning for an exclusive in-person event. It will focus on five key decisions that can shape your financial future. Attendance is complimentary and seating is limited. Reserve your place now at investtalk.com. Two weeks ago, SpaceX made an announcement that wiped about $45 billion in market cap from the three biggest wireless carriers in a single day. And I think there's a reason why the market reacted the way it did. You can question whether or not that reaction was appropriate, but I think this is one of those stories where the panic to sell and the reality of the situation are in very different places. So after the close on October 8th, SpaceX made this announcement and agreed to buy a nationwide portfolio of 800 megahertz low-band spectrum from investment firm called grain management. It's about an $8 billion deal and SpaceX essentially paid triple what grain had paid two months earlier from T-Mobile. I don't know what that tells you if it was overvalued by them or what, but it does show you how much they wanted it. Now next morning, you saw T-Mobile falling 13%, AT&T dropped 10%, and it's worse days since 2000 Verizon fell 10%. And so combined, they lost about $45 billion in market value. So essentially by making a $8 billion purchase, about five times that was destroyed in the market. The reason why investors found this alarming is because SpaceX is wireless ambitions. They weren't really secret. They've been offering direct to sell service through T-Mobile since mid 2025. The financial times had reported a couple months earlier that SpaceX was planning a full consumer mobile service. You had various analysts writing notes saying that SpaceX would attempt to disrupt the $1.6 billion communications industry, so none of it was new. What was new was what the spectrum purchase allowed, right? This low-band 800-megahertz spectrum is the gold standard for wireless coverage. Because it travels long distances, and most importantly, it penetrates walls and buildings, so it works indoors. And without it, SpaceX could do satellite-to-phone and open fields and rural areas, but with it, they can start building a hybrid network. Satellites for coverage everywhere, terrestrial antennas on towers and rooftops for urban capacity, all running on spectrum that reaches your phone inside your house. So in a lot of ways, it was a critical piece for solving their inability until now to move forward in the telecommunications industry. And unsurprisingly, the FCC ruled that SpaceX does not need leasing agreements with ground-based carriers to offer service. It can go direct. Now Evercore estimates SpaceX now holds about 79-megahertz of spectrum total. That sounds very small, right? Because the big carriers each hold between 280 and 380. But the analyst at Evercore said the carrier's best argument just got weaker. The old argument was satellites can't compete without ground infrastructure, but now here comes SpaceX owning the ground infrastructure. Now there's a little bit nuance here, right? Because I think this sell-off priced in a lot of fear, without a lot of understanding of what's going on. First, it's going to be expensive, right? Building a terrestrial network to compete with the big three, $80 billion, right? The big three spent roughly $650 billion in CapEx over the decade ending 2023, so it's kind of hard to imagine SpaceX being able to complete the build-out within the decade. So it's not really a one or two-year threat, this would be a long-term threat. Secondly, speed, right? They do have a modest network size, and so you can't really run with that 79-megahertz 5G networks and dense urban areas. And this is a bit of a business model challenge. Running a wireless carrier, it's not just towers, it's not just on the ground things, it's customer service, it's billing systems, it's hands-set subsidies, it's retail stores, promotions, device financing, there's decades of infrastructure for these other companies that would essentially have to be built from scratch. So if you're an existing telecom shareholder, I think the sell-off was a bit overdone on the near-term fundamentals. These telecom names, because of rising debt levels, had already been beaten down a bit Verizon. It was trading about eight times earnings with nearly 7% dividend yield and 14% free cash flow yield. But I mean, these names are already beaten down to the point where it seemed a bit excessive to me. Now, me going forward, I don't think the overhang goes away. I think there's a lot that needs to be clarified about what the scope and plan is for SpaceX to build this out and when they can actually offer services. But it also opens up a lot of different interesting trade ideas, tower companies, right? You saw Crown Castle jump about 13% on the news, you saw American tower rise 8.5%. The reason being, because of SpaceX starts to build out these networks, network seemed towered. So the same infrastructure that incumbents are leasing, more companies will lease as well. So I think the core of this here, which was a pretty big news story that I wanted to help explain a little bit, is that there is probably the most significant competitive threat to what has been an oligopoly in U.S. wireless since the team mobile sprint acquisition, but it's measured in years in maybe even a decade. And so if you own these telecom stocks and your thesis was about dividends and steady cash flows, I'm not really seeing much change in the near term. But if your idea was that this is going to be a three player wireless market forever, that's never going to face a different competitor, I think then you might have to reposition your ideas and price and size your positions a bit differently, moving forward. It's keeping us moving and drop in another listener question now. Yeah, I just want to leave a inquiry on two things, Mark from Trainiago, take two interactive TTWO and flip-flas and really moved around much during that grand that thought was coming out and somebody saw wound up about it and the second one is just your views on palladium. I know there's some factory ETS and some people feel it's like copper and the value right now could be the next one or metal. So thoughts and those two things, I appreciate it, those are non-line, thank you. Okay, Doug, let's take a look first at Take Two Interactive. So Take Two Interactive is a video game publisher, so they are the force behind Rockstar Games, so Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, your 2K series, Borderlands, they have some mobile games as well. It is a roughly $40 billion market cap company. And in spite of Grand Theft Auto 6, which has been in development for 13 years at this point and is certainly going to be a multi-billion dollar franchise. In spite of that coming out in a couple of weeks now, Steve is now 21.59% over the past 52 weeks. Now, you saw the stock rally a bit, right? It was trading at about 197, and then it started to rally into a more defined launch date announcement. At 282 was where it hit a peak, and now it's back down to 204, and I think one of the reasons why is there has been some rumors about the game's monetization with the PC release Windows specifically fell about 5% on that rumor. You know, this is also the fact that before something comes out in spite of the pre-orders being what the company described as exceptional and unprecedented, you still have an issue that pre-orders can be canceled. Demand could be pulled forward, and so when a lot of investors wanted to see guidance move higher in its most recent earnings where there was solid growth and solid numbers, you didn't see that because management was being a bit cautious. I think that from what analysts are modeling, they are expecting $3 billion in the first four months from Grand Theft Auto 6, I mean, it is, in a lot of ways, the biggest entertainment launch, I think, in history. But you can't ignore the fact that in spite of this drop-off, stock's not cheap. Trading at 23 times price to four-looking earnings still well above is average of 15.9, and so as we were getting close to this announcement knowing it was coming out in 2026, you saw a lot of the price move higher, so you're buying the rumor, you're selling the news here. The upside can come from really beating this analyst estimate of $3 billion in four months, that's a heavy load here, and so it kind of be hesitant to enter a position given its current valuation. Now your other question, palladium, undervalued maybe, I think it being the next rare metal to make a move is a bit of a stretch, it's, supply is very concentrated, and in elastic, I think that's something that is certainly good for it. You saw the Iran War periodically spiking because of supply chain fears and analysts moving things forward, but I think that the, it's primary use is for gasoline engines, catalytic converters, and so as you're seeing a growth in EV demand and electricity demand, you might see it falling off a bit, you're also seeing the deficit here shrinking, and if you've flipped to a supply surplus, I mean, that's certainly not good for prices, so it's cheap relative to its own history, but I think that oftentimes commodities get cheap for a reason, and into the future, as commodity use, demand can arise and supply can increase, we see this all the time with commodities, it's not necessarily the case that commodity prices will increase over time. So I'll take two interactive, definitely keep it on my watch list for now, and on your palladium question, doubtful that it will be the next earth metal to see a big price move. Thanks for the call. Let's grab another listener question, maybe one about short interest. Hey guys, Chance from Knoxville, Tennessee, calling back in about some ETFs in the commodities realm. I own URA, I'm down about 13%, I own GDX and COPX, I'm up about 5 to 7% on those. All three are between 9 and 11% of my portfolio, but all three pulling back, which has the best buy-the-dip from a long-term standpoint, or should I be trimming here because you guys. Ooh, that is a good question, oh that's tough, I think they all, it can benefit from a secular perspective long term, but for fundamentally different reasons. So URA is about uranium, it's about nuclear power, I think the power demand of these data centers of clean, efficient power in general is in a long term going to be a boost to uranium certainly, that's why we still invest in uranium names in spite of the drawdown that we've seen over the past year. I think that gold from a secular perspective you're seeing, all of these central banks diversify away from just denominated assets, bit more uncertainty in the world, I think structurally gold, still likely to continue to make new highs in the medium to long-term. And copper, I mean the demand for copper for the AI build out for the EV build out, electricity build out for what a grid that needs to be updated, that is tough, I think it's tough to say which one has a higher propensity to move higher more quickly, but I think from a long term perspective, all these themes are likely to be beneficial, thanks to the call. I want to grab one more listener question before the break. >> Hi, it's Andrew from Buffalo, I'm going to take on Red Cat, ticker RCAT, stocked in the drone space, and stuff, so you guys think about, so Red Cat is a $720 million market cap company that does not make money, it has not ever had profitability, it's gross margins, were positive back in 2021, then they flipped to negative, it is a defense drone company, I think that from a thematic perspective, you are likely to see drones as a comprehensive new vehicle used in warfare, in policing, in all sorts of areas, but it's an incredibly volatile name, it's down to $4, it's down 60% in the past 52 weeks, down 40% over the past 10 months or so, I think that your best bet for a company like this is an acquisition here, you're seeing a pretty decent cash cushion, here at least, I mean, that's the one positive I see about, it's balance sheet, but the debt levels are very high, it seems to me to be a bit of a risky bet here, rather than an investment, you got thin margins, you have missed earnings in Q2, so for me, I'm going to have to pass, thanks for the call. This is Invest Talk, I'm Luke Guerrero, we have one goal to help you achieve your financial freedom, our work continues after this final break, so get your questions in now at 8 99 chart. Invest Talk, tell your friends they can listen live, download the free podcast, or watch Invest Talk on our YouTube channel, and they can leave their finance and investment questions anytime on 888 99 chart. I think one of the things we pride ourselves in here is trying to bring you stories that flew a bit under the radar, and I think this one might qualify because it affects 146 million Americans, about 2.5 trillion in assets, so the NCUA is the National Credit Union Administration, they're a federal regulator for credit unions, just announced its 12th round of deregulatory proposals in a single year, federal register published new proposed rules on October 15th, and the public comment deadline is about 56 days away. Now the scope of this is important, right, the NCUA's deregulation project page currently lists 22 proposed rules and at least 9 final rules, all part of phase one running through from 2025 through 2027 under an executive order. 12 rounds in one year is roughly, well, one new proposal a month, and a regulator that is in charge of institutions that 150 million Americans use for checking accounts and car loans and mortgages. Now in this latest round, the proposal was over fidelity bond and insurance coverage requirements, what's called incidental powers, the rules governing what services credit unions can offer beyond traditional banking and central liquidity, which is basically the backstop that keeps credit unions liquid in a crisis, and so the real question, because it's not really about any specific rule. The real question is whether a cooperative owned by its members need the same regulatory framework as a shareholder owned bank, because credit unions are nonprofits. They are owned by their depositors. There's no outside equity or earnings announcements or pressure from Wall Street. There's no incentive to take outsize risks in order to beat a quarterly number. The theory has always been that this structure makes them inherently safer and therefore justifies this lighter regulation. And there's a lot of evidence for that. I mean, credit union delinquency rates are running about a percentage point below, and that's well below commercial banks. But the counterpoint to that isn't has always been the number of federally-insured credit unions has dropped to about 4,000 down 150 in a year, down about 4% so they're consolidating rapidly. And as credit unions get bigger, through mergers, they start to look more like banks that were supposed to be an alternative. Some of the largest credit unions now have assets in the tens of billions. And so at that scale, the argument that they are just neighborhood cooperatives starts to strain a little bit. So what this actually means for a credit union member, probably nothing directly, at least in the near term. I mean, most of these rule changes are about the institution's reporting requirements. It's insurance obligations. The ancillary services it can offer, they'll be plumbing of kind of prudential regulation. So you won't notice them when you go to use these services. But I think that's a good teachable moment. Prudential regulation isn't designed to be visible to the customer. It's the structure that keeps the building standing. You don't think about, you know, the foundation of your house until it cracks. But the question isn't whether an individual rule changes dangerous. It's got about the pace here, 12 rounds in 12 months. It's being driven. The question is, is it being driven by careful analysis of which rules are generally outdated? Or is it being driven by the need for speed? And so if everybody out there for investors, I think that watching this space is important, especially if you tend to want to invest in bank stocks that aren't those mega banks. You know, every power the NCUA gives credit unions to offer new services is essentially a bit of a competitive incursion into the territory of the banks that currently hold those powers. So expanded lending powers, broader investment authorities, all that comes at the expense of market share of banks that you may be invested in. All right, folks, that does it for another episode of Invest Talk. Justin and I, thank you for listening. And we encourage you to tell your friends and family members about our free podcast downloads. As always, you can find those at iTunes and Spotify and while you're over there, we'd really appreciate it if you left us a rate and review. I also want to remind you, it's only five days away, October 24th. You were invited to join the KPP team and guest experts for our in-person Invest Talk retirement summit. We're going to cover tax strategies, estate planning, real estate investment strategies, financial planning. It is free, but you do need to pre-register at kppfinancial.com/retirement-summit. Do not delay. There are just a few spots left. 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. Technically, 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 advisers, 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. [Music]