4th of July travel, investing for beginners: Wealth!

On today’s episode of Wealth!, Host Brad Smith breaks down some of the key themes impacting the markets (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC), from a struggling housing sector to record travel July 4th weekend.

New home sales for the month of May fell over 11%, according to the US Census Bureau. KPMG senior economist Yelena Maleyev claims that it will be a while before the housing sector sees relief, only estimating one interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve by December: “We’ve pushed that forecast out into December, so we do expect one rate cut in December, which will help bring overall mortgage rates to perhaps around 6.5 by the end of the year. That’s probably not what people who are waiting for those 3% mortgage rates are wanting to hear, but unfortunately, those days are behind us.” She adds that a few more rate cuts in the pipeline could bring mortgage rates to 5.5%.

US equity markets have hit record highs in 2024, largely spearheaded by the growth of semiconductor and chip stocks like Nvidia (NVDA). BlackRock US Head of Thematic and Active ETFs Jay Jacobs sits down with Brad Smith on Wealth! as part of Yahoo Finance’s ETF Report to discuss several of BlackRock’s notable iShares ETFs in relation to the growing AI landscape and the energy and digital infrastructure demands that come with mass adoption.

The number of US households with direct stock ownership increased by 6% between 2019 and 2022, according to a Federal Reserve study of consumer finances. JPMorgan Wealth Management head of self-directed investing Andrea Finan says her biggest tip for beginner investors is to “find the experts … Go to credentialized places to get information and learn. I really strive for people to become curious in investing and learn and use the tools…”

Finally, as more than 24 million people are expected to fly out of US airports during the 4th of July weekend, Hopper Lead Economist Hayley Berg gives an overview of thee busy weekend ahead. She explains that summer travel prices have decreased, as airfares are down 18% in the US and hotel and rental car prices remain in line with previous years: “So those travelers who are getting away are definitely able to expand those travel budgets into things like activities and maybe some nice dinners out rather than spending as much on accommodations and flights.”

This post was written by Melanie Riehl

Video Transcript

Welcome to wealth everyone.

I’m Brad Smith and this is Yahoo.

Finances guide to building your financial footprint.

Our community of experts is going to give you the resources, tools, tips and tricks that you need to grow your money.

Story continues

Hey, on today’s show, the new home market is hitting a six month low as high mortgage rates.

We on buyers will talk to an economist about when you can expect mortgage rates to fall plus 50 for one stock split just went into effect.

We’ll talk about what it means for you, the investor and whether or not now is the time to consider adding on a little bit of some exposure to the burrito maker plus having the money talk discussing.

Finances can be a tricky subject.

Our personal finance reporter Carry Hannon is going to give you the tips and tricks.

You need to talk about money with your own family, all that much coming up during today’s show.

But our top story this morning, more troubles in the housing market here.

New home sales in May plunging 11% from the prior month to 619,000 analysts on Wall Street expected 633,000.

So that’s a big miss there.

The drop in sales activity also leading to an uptick in available inventory, which means more homes are sitting on the market.

All of this largely an impact of high mortgage rates which continue to weigh on home buyers here with more reaction.

We’ve got KPMG economist Yelena Malayev.

Yelena.

Great to have you here.

We wanna just get your broad read here on what we’re seeing in the housing market considering some of the moves that we’re now tracking both week over week on the mortgage rate side and then month, over month on the sales side as well.

Definitely, thank you.

Uh The housing market is definitely in the fragile state right now.

This higher for longer interest rate environment is weighing on potential buyers, uh those who own a home and are thinking of selling, they’re locked in with a significantly lower mortgage rate than is available currently in the market.

And then of course, builders are facing a lot of hurdles with, you know, still tight labor market for the construction industry, uh the need for land materials.

And then of course, they’re also facing uh financing costs that are going up due to the higher interest rate environment.

Uh around the end of last year, we the market was expecting for interest rates to be lower by now.

And of course, that hasn’t happened yet.

So this kind of longer uh time frame of high interest rates is really starting to take a toll on the housing market.

When do you expect the housing affordability squeeze to perhaps abate a little bit.

It, it’s, it’s a great question because, uh, we were expecting interest rates to be lower by the second half of this year.

Now, we’ve pushed that forecast out into December.

So we do expect one rate cut in December, which will help bring overall mortgage rates to perhaps around 6.5 by the end of the year.

That’s probably not what people who are waiting for those 3% mortgage rates are wanting to hear.

But unfortunately, those days are behind us barring any sort of crisis or anything that would require rates to go back down.

Uh that low.

Uh By the end of next year, we could have a few more rate cuts in the pipeline, maybe bringing mortgage rates to 5.5.

But the other side of the affordability puzzle is the housing costs, right?

So the home values have still been rising very significantly because of that demographic tailwind for millennials, uh aging into their prime home buying years, baby boomers wanting to age in place and this significant lack of inventory both in the newly built and resale market, uh meeting these demographic uh demands that is going to keep a floor under home prices for quite some time.

But the mortgage uh question, uh we should have some reprieve into next year.

Certainly.

And, and so one of the huge things that we’re considering within the existing homes and new homes kind of combination to really round out uh the entire housing picture, not the entire housing picture, but at least uh part of large line share of it is really where on the new home sales side, we’ve continued to see new home build outs actually account for more percentage than some of the historical averages.

What is your anticipation for how that will continue to moderate as we move on throughout this mortgage rate environment?

Definitely.

And this period of higher interest rates, especially when we first started to see them pick up quickly in 2022 should traditionally have made builders pull back on building.

But instead due to the demographic tailwinds, they’ve ramped up building, of course, with significant hurdles, they can’t ramp up that quickly to meet demand, but they’ve been really benefiting from the tight supply in the resale market by being able to build homes uh offer mortgage rate buy down.

So instead of the 7% in the market, they might offer something like six or 5.5 and they’ve also scaled down, they’ve been able to uh change their building so that they’re building smaller homes, something more fit for a first time home buyer.

Uh Now that’s not the case across the entire country but definitely in some pockets of the country where it’s easier to build.

And then of course, uh continued tightness in the resale market is just going to help keep uh that balance of more newly built homes on the market to be on the higher end rather than traditional um time frames.

But of course, as mortgage rates come down, more sellers will start to, you know, re-enter the market.

We have seen a pickup in inventory.

It’s still quite low in the resale, but it is picking up.

So if mortgage rates come down, people feel less uh constricted by that lock in effect, uh we will have more of that balance where newly built homes could be more of that share of the market, let’s say 20% rather than the 35 or so.

We’ve seen lately KPMG economist Yelena Malayev.

Thank you so much for taking the time here today and breaking this all down for us on the housing front.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Stocks are mixed about 90 minutes into the trading day, the dow and the S and P 500 both trading a little bit lower here.

The NASDAQ holding on to gains though right now.

But off of today’s session, high stocks have been doing well all in this year in large part due to strength in NVIDIA, over 38% of the S and P five hundred’s gains so far are due to semiconductors, also known as the chips that power Artificial Intelligence and a bunch of other things.

So is there more room to run for the A I trade this year to discuss how you can set yourself up for success in the second half of the year.

We’ve got good friend of the show, Jay Jacobs Blackrock us, head of thematic and active ETF S here as part of the ETF report brought to you by investigative QQQ.

Jay.

Great to see you here today.

Great to be back, Brad.

Absolutely.

So let’s, let’s dive into this.

I mean, when you have so many, much of the markets gains thus far concentrated in one core theme, what does that mean for potential broadening and what etfs could investors consider adding to their portfolio if that broadening does start to take even more shape?

I think investors have to look at the big picture with artificial intelligence and really try to understand what’s the next shoe to drop.

What’s the next part of the market that could see similar run ups that we’ve already seen thus far in some segments of A I. Um what we’re focused on is really what are the picks and shovels in artificial intelligence.

So we believe there’s gonna be more adoption of A I full stop.

It’s a huge technology.

It’s transformational.

We believe that about 5% enterprise adoption that we see today is gonna move to 80% adoption in the next few years.

But what are the companies that no matter whether you go with Clad, whether you go with Chad GP T, no matter what A I platform you go with are going to benefit from this build out.

And what we see is about a trillion dollars that has to be spent on A I infrastructure that is digital infrastructure that’s like data centers and cell towers which you capture in our ID GT ETF uh that’s semiconductor companies and not just GP U manufacturers but a broader ecosystem of semiconductors that we capture with our SOX ETF.

So it’s really focused on that next layer, the picks and shovels that will benefit from the build out of this core technology.

And so where does that point investors attend towards?

Is it things like everything that has to power the data centers?

For instance, you think about utilities, you think about the need for even more cyber security as well around some of these data centers too.

Absolutely.

I think energy is a really important aspect here because uh you’re gonna see a massive incremental demand for energy, not just from artificial intelligence, but you think about the growth of electric vehicles.

Uh You think about uh renaissance and us manufacturing that we’re seeing recently as well as driving energy demand.

So our electrical grid and power generation just isn’t really designed to see 2% 3% compound annual growth.

Meanwhile, I’m getting texts to turn down my thermostat or my ac and knowing all these data centers are gonna be built up tapping the grid too.

So that’s the point right is that we don’t have capacity yet to build more electric generation.

So this is going to impact the whole energy infrastructure.

This is going to mean more generation is gonna mean upgrading power lines.

One of the key components that I think the market doesn’t quite recognize yet is copper.

Whether you are building renewables, whether you are building transmission lines, whether you’re building data centers, all roads lead through copper and it’s already a metal that’s in uh structural undersupply.

So this could be a choke point within the physical build out of A I and energy.

Is there a commodity or copper kind of ETF play that investors?

You’ve seen some volume kind of clearly flowing into?

Yeah.

Well, we’ve seen that uptake in our copper miner A TF IC LP OP and it’s specifically for that reason.

These are the companies that are taking copper out of the ground and making it usable in things like power transmission.

All right.

Some of the original mining and then ultimately putting that to use here.

Thank you so much, Jay Jay Jacobs Blackrock us head of thematic and active ETF great to see you.

I don’t know if you get those texts too about turning down your ther it, it hits me a little bit harder sometimes I’m just come on text text the companies across the street from me, commercial real estate.

It is a tough week for that.

It is great to see you man.

Good to see you absolutely.

Have you had the talk yet?

You know, the one where you have to talk to your loved ones about handling their wealth when they pass.

Well, nearly half of Americans plan to leave an inheritance, but less than a quarter, feel prepared to pass on that wealth according to Edward Jones.

To break down how you can have the talk.

We’ve got Yahoo Finance.

Very own care.

Hannon here with us.

Hey, Carrie.

All right.

The dreaded talk.

Well, what’s the, what’s the, I mean, do you slide, you know, a cup of coffee across the table or?

I don’t know, maybe a, a hard liquor in this case.

Well, money is such a taboo subject and parents are incredibly private about how much they have and in many ways, they don’t want their kids to know because they don’t want to, you know, quell their ambition or, you know, in any way, um, get them their own, uh, desire to think they’re inheriting.

They’ll slow them down with their own passions.

And also they wonder how much am I gonna need?

How much longer am I gonna live?

They wanna be careful about that equation.

So, here’s a good way to get started.

I mean, there’s some certain inflection points that you can start that conversation with your parents if you don’t already have an open money, uh, environment.

And the one I like is the first one is downsizing.

If they, if your parents are downsizing to a smaller home or moving to an assisted care, natural moment to bring up some of these topics.

And you start with sort of, um, little things like, oh, you know that grandfather clock you have or that beautiful silver bow.

Hey, mom.

Hey, dad, can you tell me a little bit about that?

What does it mean to you?

What’s the family story and express that you’re interested in that?

That would be something that you really would value also.

These are just little things to open the door.

The second thing would be if there’s a family holiday and you’re all getting together in this nice little environment and you start things like, you know, compliment your parents say this is the first, you know, the most important money lesson you taught me when I was a kid or this was my first memory of money.

Thanks to you.

And what was yours?

Mom and dad get so open up that, you know, that sort of icebreaker.

Let’s talk about money here.

So you start moving that direction.

The third thing is if you’re doing your own financial plan, this is fabulous.

You’re doing your own, you’re working with your wealth advisor, you’re excited.

You wanted to tell your parents about it.

Look, I’m doing this and I’m asking questions about what will I regret if I didn’t do this with my time and my money and so forth during my lifetime?

And I say to them.

Have you done that?

How did you plan for your stage of this life, this chapter of your life.

How did you go about it?

And you slowly drawing.

Yeah, and your adviser is talking to you about leaving, you know, paying for higher education for your kids.

Hey, would that be something that they might be interested in helping out with?

So you start doing it that way, get them pull the into your own planning and say, yeah, now I’m stretching out down the road and you know, you think about what assets I might have in the future, be subtle but be direct on a certain level that this is coming down the pipe.

The final thing people can do and many investment houses uh offer this, I think Fidelity does vanguard might that you have a formal family conversation where you have somebody impartial, sit down with your family and let’s have this discussion in an environment that’s safe.

Bring all the kids in mom and dad and you know, you start by pulling maybe a jar, you pull something like words out of like legacy or money.

What does that mean to you when you get touchy feely?

But it’s nice and, and parents might really be surprised to find out things like their kids don’t all wanna inherit equally like they feel like one child, one sibling needs more than another.

This is kind of cool stuff or the parents might say you know what I really want to see the rewards of what I can give while I’m still alive.

So, it gets the wheels turning in all these sort of situations.

But the important thing is get it started.

Don’t be afraid to start it because it’s very important in your own future.

Wealth.

Those are all great ice breakers.

So, so once you get the conversation out of the way, how do you manage?

Inherited wealth?

Yeah, you know, Brad, the important thing is here is to not be sort of frozen by this idea to really, you know, bring your own financial advisor in on this to help, you know, rash moves.

This is something that needs to be, especially if there’s tax planning involved in this, this is a process.

So if you can get your parents on board with you, then work with your own adviser and perhaps even theirs to sort of make a plan.

This is a blueprint.

So be cautious, you know, take your time and just, you know, enjoy the process.

Don’t get so worried about it, trust the process.

Uh Philadelphians have heard that for many years, Carrie spreading the good word more broadly here.

Appreciate it.

Thanks Brad.

Thank you.

Coming up on wealth, storing your money.

Yahoo Finance’s very own personal finance reporter will reveal how much money you should be keeping in your checking account.

And this week’s tech support, we’ll talk about internet search browsers and whether or not Google should still be your number 10, it’s gonna step on some toes.

Plus Chipotle’s 50 for one stock split.

Yahoo finance took to the streets of New York City to ask if people would invest in the burrito joint.

We’ll reveal their answers right after this break.

I go to Chipotle Order.

It is a brown rice bruto bowl to go with black beans.

I add guac and some medium salsa and romaine lettuce, no cheese, no sour cream.

It’s always a bruto bowl.

Tend to skip the guac.

Don’t like to pay for extra guac rice beans.

A little bit of meat like a bowl, but they don’t have nachos option.

I basically kind of make it into nachos.

I like the tacos, white rice beef.

Get the lettuce, tomatoes, hurricane finch off.

Shake it up some unhinged orders.

You just heard from a number of folks out on the streets of New York City, they all sounded pretty good and they were all talking Chipotle Yahoo Finance’s Brooke Dipalma went out there yesterday to talk to people about Chipotle’s 50 for one stock split just went into effect at the market open today.

We should note Brooke, tell us a little bit about the stock split and what you asked these patrons of Chipotle.

Clearly, these patrons, these customers is very loyal customers.

As you noted, Burrito Chain, Chipotle conducted a stock split.

Now, that means if you own shares as a market close on June 18th, you receive, as you can see here, 49 additional shares for each one house.

And when the market opened today, those shares which were worth over $3200 as of third, Tuesday’s close are now trading around 64 bucks a share.

Now a reminder, a stock that does not affect a company value, it simply creates more shares, reducing the cost of each individual share.

Generally, stock splits are used to make shares more affordable for investors.

And yesterday, as you saw, I went out into the streets of New York City to ask people what they thought of Chipotle and whether they consider investing.

Now, we didn’t run into any current shareholders, but I essentially asked people what they knew about stock splits.

And if they consider investing now that the price of each individual share has gone from upwards of three grand to just around $65.

Here’s what they had to say.

I think stock splits make it more available for retail traders to be able to afford it, but it just really depends on the health of the company.

But now since they’re affordable, I might as well.

So I’ll definitely buy maybe a few and just hold on on that and hope that it goes up again and then I can make something from it.

Um I’ll have to look more into it.

Is it going to go back?

That’s the question, right?

Like you’re diluting it.

So you’ve got a whole load of new shares that doesn’t necessarily mean that the business is worth more.

I probably wait till they have another e coli scare and then I’ll buy in then again, why not?

I mean, a lot of people are going there so it might be a good deal.

Definitely.

I’m gonna go buy some Chipotle stock.

Open up the Robin Herbert.

Let’s go, why not make more money?

Right.

Probably not because I’m a Bogle head.

So I just prefer a very broad diversified type of portfolio.

So I don’t typically go out and just buy individual stocks.

I think Chipotle is one of those companies.

It’s gone through a lot and I think it comes back so much stronger every time it goes on A L it’s worth it long term.

So most people said they’d consider it.

Chipotle is one of the top trending takers on Yahoo finance and I definitely wanna make note of that.

Lots of excitement around the stock split.

All right, waiting for hazardous events is not an investment strategy, but that guy also waiting for the E coli is, is clearly um he, he’s got some type of portfolio strategy.

Anyway, some of the people in your video, they were wondering if the stock price was going to keep going up.

Stocks tend to perform after some of these stocks.

But historically, yes, historically, what we’ve seen is that stocks are typically bullish for companies and when they do happen, they do see a good average return.

And according to Bank of America, average returns one year later, following stock splits are about 25%.

And that’s compared to an average or turn of roughly 12% for the broader market.

I do want to point out one stock that I follow closely as well.

Wal Mart, they can to the stock split back in February and what we’ve seen in the last three months is that stock rise roughly 12%.

And so there is lots of excitement following a stock split and as we noted earlier and also does allow more investors to jump in at a lower price.

Absolutely, Brooke, all right out there in the streets, get it, getting it all, getting all the takes from, from all the New York City folks indeed.

And some investors out there, Yahoo finance his own Brooke Deer.

Brooke, thanks so much.

Let’s stay in the food theme here.

Another big food company in focus today.

It’s General Mills, investors seeing shares of the cereal maker fall today as its latest quarterly results reveal just how much consumers are pulling back on spending high grocery prices have remained a sticking point for consumers even as inflation data shows that prices are easing.

Now, consumer confidence it ticked lower in June as Americans said that elevated prices, particularly food and grocery prices weighed on their views of the economy.

And this is weighing on companies like general mills, the maker of Cheerios saw lower volumes in its latest quarter, which means that grocery stores are ordering less inventory because consumers aren’t buying as much.

General mills overall volumes fell 2% year over year in its latest quarter with volumes in its biggest unit with American retail down 6% overall net sales were down 6%.

And still General Mills remains optimistic that consumers will indulge in snack foods again soon saying in the earnings release that it quote, expects volume trends in its categories will gradually improve in fiscal 2025 end quote.

Well, the median households checking account balance is $2800.

That’s according to the Federal Reserve Board.

But how much money should you keep in your checking account?

There’s no hard and fast rule but stowing away enough cash is crucial to be able to handle any prize bills that life throws at you to discuss this further.

We’ve got our very own Molly Moorhead here in studio with us.

So, Molly $2800 is what the Federal Reserve is seeing.

What should the real number be that most people can set at least as an ideal target?

Well, as you can imagine, there’s not really a number that applies to everyone.

It’s all in uh what, how much are your bills, your income, your spending habits.

And so the good uh couple of rules to follow are you want enough that you’ll never be overdrawn?

And enough that you have a cushion and the cushion if you can do it is two months worth of, um, your expenses.

So, if you have $4000 in bills every month, if you can keep eight, that’s good.

If you can keep six, that’s good.

Um, but you just wanna know that you’re never getting too close to zero.

Absolutely.

So once you have the right amount for you in that account that two months of all in expenses, what do you do with the extra?

Yeah, the, so the, the reason you don’t want to keep it all in checking is that it’s not making any money for you.

So you wanna put it in something that’s gonna be interest bearing um a high yield savings account.

Those are paying like 5% right now a CD A money market account.

Um Those are all good options that are liquid and then um we always wanna be socking money away for retirement.

So if you have um a regular income every month, a salary and you get that healthy amount in your checking account, then put it away for retirement.

That’s always a good play.

Molly Morehead.

Thanks so much for breaking this down for us.

Joining us here in studio, Yahoo Finance’s Zone on the other side of this short break.

I’ll speak to Alibaba dot com’s president on how business leaders are discussing and supporting small businesses with the right A I tools don’t go anywhere.

The World Trade Organization, the WTO as you know them in your hood kicked off its 40th Geneva Week on Tuesday.

It’s a twice annual week long event where business leaders and executives travel to Geneva Switzerland to weigh in on recent developments in international trade.

Now, one point of interest this year is the potential of micro, small and medium size enterprises also known as M SME S. Now M SME S, they currently account for 90% of businesses, more than 70% of employment and 50% of GDP worldwide and more experts believe that they are the backbone of many global economies.

Joining me now live from the conference for this Yahoo Finance exclusive is quote Z who is the president of alibaba.com.

Quote.

Great to have you here and thanks for stepping away for a hot second from the discussions taking place to hop on with Yahoo Finance.

What are international business leaders pledging to do to protect small business growth from the conversations that you’re having?

Sure.

So hello from uh this, this quote from alibaba.com and now I’m in Geneva and uh actually, you know, kind of a discussion with uh WTO S with T CS about our kind of ongoing program to help uh to either help or incubate or empower SME S. So our business uh I talk a little bit about alibaba.com.

We are founded in 1999 by Jack Ma actually in day one, we are focusing on working or serving for SME si mean SME S for the both sides, both the sellers and the buyers.

Actually, now we are serving more than 200,000 of suppliers all over the world and we are serving more than let’s say 50 million of the SME S as buyers all over the world.

So, so in a simple word is that we are using all the digital tools to transform the way they do business and help them to lower the barriers to kind of entry the global platform.

What do you believe that the health of small businesses is worldwide based on the interactions that you’re seeing with alibaba.com, right?

So I can, I can give you an example first that when Alibaba founded in 1999 at that time, I see the numbers, you said that the 50% of the GDP kind of global trade GDP contributed by SME S. But at that, at that time in China, actually that number is less than 2% back in 1999.

So now actually that number in China is more than 62% of the kind of global trade GDP is contributed by the SME S you can see in the last 20 or 25 years, the SME S actually they are have more and more power in the global state and now they are the backbones of the global business and that the similar things that happens all over the world, both in Europe, in us, the developing countries as well as in developing countries like uh such as Asia, like Latin America, like Africa.

So we are using our digital tools to empower them there.

What is the ability for SME S and, and, and micro and small and mid size enterprises to make the digital transformation like some large enterprises and multi billion dollar conglomerates are making as they’re spending heavily on everything from Blockchain to generative A I seemingly to make sure that they’re staying ahead of the curve technologically.

Yeah, sure.

So what we are doing actually take A I example.

So what we are doing is democratize A I.

So we are heavily investing on the other technology side and we want to using the technology to empower the sme.

So especially for this year, we are focusing on two things.

One is A I to using A I, we can improve the efficiency for both buyers and sellers and also transform our platform from a kind of sourcing engine to a creative engine.

And the other is to kind of upgrade our supply chains, which is called Alibaba Guarantee.

The meaning that when the buyer buy a product or source a product from alibaba.com, we will take care of all the logistics of the extra payment financing services as well as after sales services.

So that’s greatly kind of lower the barrier and help the small SME S to build the trust between each other.

So this is basically what we are doing.

Quote.

I I wonder especially considering the environment for elections this year with more than half of the world going to be participating in elections of some sort or another that could change what globalization looks like that could impact companies like alibaba.com as well.

How are you positioning yourself to navigate what the outcome of some of these elections could be knowing that it also impacts your core customers, both consumers or end consumers of products but also other small businesses and mid size enterprises.

See.

So um from our perspective, actually, you know, alibaba.com is uh funded for more than 25 years.

So there’s a lot of the elections, a lot of change um during this kind of uh time period period.

And what the latest change or the challenge is the pandemic.

Actually, after the pandemic, we see that actually more and more SME S now is a power time for them to change, to embrace the digital.

And you’re talking about the elections actually, what we are focusing on is the things that does not change.

So take the SME is a bi example, if you are an entrepreneur and you want to build something, build your own brand and sell.

There are a bunch of things that you need to focus in on what product I’m going to build, who are the customers, what are the targeting market and how we can find a kind of best partner to manufacture it and with the best price quality and what kind of employees I’m going to hire.

And in the end, probably there’s a tax and the tax tariff is the part of the tax.

So they need to consider a lot of things.

But we are back to the fundamentals is the demand of supplies, how to provide all the buyers with a variety of supplies, high quality with a competitive price and delivering time.

And the we just keep, keep kind of doing on that and perfecting the tools and make sure that we can empower SME S and to make it easy to do business anywhere.

So these are the things we think is not going to change for 100 years.

So, and that is what we’re focusing.

If, if there were more tariffs that were ratcheted up, would that have a net impact on your business?

So, uh first of all, we are kind of uh a platform which supports global supplies and the supplies not only from one country actually, now we have supplies from uh 200 different countries and for example, in Eu in Europe.

So there are kind of wines, there are fashions, there are machineries and there are also a lot of other tools from Germany, from France, from Italy.

And we have lots of uh suppliers from Southeast Asia as well.

So that this number one, the second part is that as I mentioned.

The fundamental rule for global trade is uh demand and supplies.

So always find the better supplies with better kind of price and adding together is a kind of uh competitive uh strength for the supplier side.

What we are doing is just lower the barrier and letting them easy to kind of uh go to the global to uh do business with each other.

So that is uh basically what what they are doing and that is what we are focusing to do.

Quo Zhang alibaba.com president quote.

Thank you so much for taking the time here with us today.

I really do appreciate it.

Thank you.

Certainly.

Coming up, we break down how you can be an educated investor even if you’re just starting out.

That’s right after the break, a rising number of Americans directly own stocks, about 21% of us households owning equities and that’s up 6% from 2019 according to the Federal Reserve Study of consumer finances and to discuss best practices for do it yourself.

Investors, Andrea Finnan, who is the JP Morgan Wealth Management head of self directed investing is here.

Thanks so much for taking the time here with us today.

Thanks for having me.

Ok, so where is kind of starting point number one for the D I wires of their own portfolio?

Who are saying I want to be a little bit more active in my own strategy, sir.

I think it’s important for uh our D I wires to understand where they’re at in their financial life.

Right.

How much do they have to invest and what’s right for them?

Right.

So getting started early is a really important tip.

But I think acknowledging where the industry has evolved, right, interest rates have risen over the past few years.

And so people who were investing in both equities and some options, activity really need to think about the full continuum of asset classes, right?

All the way from cash and FDIC insurance, all the way through um to fixed income bonds, money market funds, ETF S you know, and mutual funds.

And I think now we’re landing at a place where people really need to think about where value is in equities and really build a portfolio around that.

So say after you’ve defined your goals, you say, all right now, I’m ready to get started.

I know what my time horizon is.

I know what the reality of how much I can invest is.

Where do you get started from there?

Yeah, I think there’s a ton of great tools.

Um I would find the experts, right?

Go to credentials, places to get information and learn.

I I really strive for people to become curious in investing and learn and use the tools.

We have a great um value prop within our JP Morgan experience that allows you to explore ideas and think about what could be next tap into the analyst ratings.

Tap into, um, cib research pieces that might be great for you.

Um There’s also lots of screeners and different kind of news articles that you can read to get smart about the risk you’re taking.

You know, it’s interesting when, uh you were saying, stay curious, it naturally popped into my head that curiosity finds community as well and, and vice versa in that, you know, there are more forums that people tap into now where they may not feel like they have a financial advisor to lean into and they go to perhaps social media.

How do you strike a good balance between saying, ok, I’ve got this professional person that I know is, you know, going through their own charting on a day in day out basis and it has some know how in managing several different accounts versus the community where you’re discussing and tossing around ideas.

Um How do you kind of strike a good balance there?

Yeah, I think it’s a good question.

You know, they is many sources where you can get information and ideas the next place you need to take that though, is validating those ideas, right?

What criteria makes that company that index actually make money or lose money and be aware and comfortable with that.

And so use the tools that are available but use all of those destinations for inputs but not really the golden source for where you where you transact.

There have been several moments this year that can really kind of point to and say, OK, that changed how I might invest, whether that is um one of their favorite names at Chipotle, for instance, seeing a stock split or maybe it’s a, a theme that’s taken off.

What are some of the ways to stay grounded?

Even when you do have major events like that happening either in single names that you enjoy or themes that have really caught your attention to.

Yeah, I think it is really just looking in and staying uh keeping the pulse on your portfolio and the ideas you have.

There’s great tools and self directed like watch list, like alerts that might draw you back in when you may be paying attention to something else in life, right?

And so it’s your money, take the time to care about what, where you’re putting it at and use the tools that are available to you to help do that.

All right, I have too many alerts to fire off on my phone.

Um and a lot of investments that I haven’t made yet just continuing to keep an eye on for right now.

Thank you so much Andrea Finnan, who is the JP Morgan Wealth Management head of self directed investing.

Appreciate the time.

Thank you.

Well, turning now to our new weekly segments, tech support, we talked to experts about the latest tech headlines and what they mean for you as both a consumer and an investor and today, we’re talking about search engines.

Google is such a dominant force that searching something up online is commonly called just Googling no matter what the site someone is using actually.

But recently users aren’t feeling so confident in Google’s ability to find what they’re looking for.

Interestingly here.

Now people on social media and journalists finding in their usage that Google has quote gotten worse and as feelings toward Google sour reddit is one reaping the benefits here.

Worldwide desktop and mobile visits to REDDIT jumped 39% year over year in May while Google visits decreased 2.2% in the same period.

That’s according to similar web.

So why are people choosing Reddit?

And how well does it really work?

Joining me now is someone who compared the two personally, Anne Marie, Al Cantara, who is the Wall Street Journal, personal tech reporter, Anne Marie.

Great to have you here in studio.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

OK.

So you, you took a look at both of them just to see which one actually gave you better search results here.

Uh Walk us through what the research really showed you here.

So it was kind of a tie what ended up happening.

So it’s not really clear cut.

Um But basically I for a week I spent my life Googling as I normally would Google and then adding Reddit to the end of my Google searches, which is what people commonly do.

And so for things like, you know, restaurant recommendations.

Google was the best because it showed me the menu and images whereas Reddit was telling me not to eat there, which isn’t that useful.

It’s like getting straight to the reviews that Google would also compile as well, but perhaps uh a little bit more of that kind of personal flavor peppered in too to, to some of those search results.

I mean, as we’re thinking about both of these different platforms, one of them we know has a lot of advertisements that take up above the fold results and then you eventually get to the, the nitty gritty, the things that are valuable, what you went there for versus another, which is very much leaning towards kind of the reviews, the personal community kind of side of things too.

So how does this change where people might tend to search in the future too?

So we’re seeing this happen across all social media sites, not just Reddit, but people are turning towards more real experiences, you know, things that feel like it’s coming from a person versus a publisher or a journalist that they might not know.

Uh So it’s people are just looking for that, you know, extra personality, something that feels real versus just another website that tells them what to do.

What is the best way to use reddit to search because I mean, I, I run my own searches as well if I’m going on a vacation and I wanna know, OK, what are the, the top spots that I have to visit when I get to this destination that I’ve, I’ve never been to before.

What are the top ways to search on Reddit right now?

So most of the people I spoke to for this story said to definitely add Reddit to the end of your search.

You don’t have to do anything fancy, you can just do that and you know, it’ll pop up on your Google.

Uh And then, you know, go through the results, see what’s been uploaded, which is the term on Reddit.

You know, that basically means this is the comment that one on Reddit on the Reddit post.

Uh And usually that’s the best comment you’ll find for whatever you’re looking for.

Um But also it is social media.

So people tend to write about their bad experiences the most.

So if let’s say you’re going on vacation and you wanted to go visit a museum, if there’s a bad review, you know, maybe take it with a grain of salt because you might still enjoy it and this person just might have not liked it a lot.

What are other social sites that people are using to, to find the, the the results that they’re looking for when they run a query, essentially Pinterest is a big one thinking of your vacation search history.

Uh tiktok, of course youtube, Instagram, you know, people wanna see what the place even looks like what this museum, whatever it might be, product, et cetera, what it might look like in real life.

Um, so it’s across all social media.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for breaking this down.

All right, I got some searches to run here.

So we got a jet.

Thank you so much, Anne Marie Alcantara, who is the Wall Street Journal, personal tech reporter here in studio with us coming up.

Are you traveling for Fourth of July?

Well, guess what?

You’re probably not alone.

We talked to Hopper’s lead economist.

Coming up about everything you need to know about the busy travel day that’s coming up whether you’re hitting the road or flying high in the skies.

Americans can expect a hectic travel weekend for this Fourth of July.

More than 24 million people are expected to fly out of us airports from July 3rd until July 9th.

That’s a 7% increase from this time last year according to Hopper data and here to weigh in on the busy travel a week ahead.

I’m joined by Haley Berg Hopper, lead economist, Haley always enjoy our conversations here.

They’re aspirational, they’re real and we gotta dive into some of the nitty gritty data here on the expectations.

What are we expecting for this July 4th week and holiday kind of all in when we think about travel, we’re expecting most travelers to have gotten really good prices, which is the best news about this.

Fourth of July weekend.

After a couple years of very expensive summer travel airfare is down 18% in the US.

Hotel prices are very much in line with previous years as our rental car prices.

So those travelers who are getting away are definitely able to expand those travel budgets into things like activities and maybe some nice dinners out rather than spending as much on accommodations and flights.

Ok.

So let’s talk about some of those last minute deals that might be able to save people some money on their trips.

What are some of those deals that people should be leaning into or looking for?

If you are planning to fly and you haven’t booked yet for Fourth of July, you do need to book now.

It’s pretty late in the game here, but there are still deals available.

I just looked this morning, we’re still seeing Nashville, Charleston, Myrtle Beach under $100 round trip over the long weekend from major cities like New York.

So there are deals available.

You need to be flexible, fly on the fourth.

That’s when airfare will be the cheapest and lines will be the shortest and try to come back midweek on the seventh or eighth, midweek following the long weekend, fewer crowds.

And that’s where the best deals will be.

Ok.

So with this type of volume, let’s let’s be real Haley.

We can expect some travelers will face a few disruptions this Fourth of July weekend and the travel weekend, upcoming, what should they do if their flight gets delayed or canceled?

You’re absolutely right over weekends like this where there’s so much capacity flying oftentimes, we do see spikes in delaying cancellation rates, whether it’s weather or just those domino effect delays if you are impacted by disruptions.

The best thing to do is actually plan ahead before you even get to the airport.

So know what other flights are headed to your destination on the same or next day.

If you can’t fly out of the airport that you are planning to, are there regional airports nearby?

Could you rent a car and drive on to your destination?

It’s also important to know if you haven’t booked yet.

Book the first flight of the day early bird gets the worm.

If you leave before 8 a.m. you are less likely to be delayed or canceled by about half.

It’s interesting, I mean, it seems like there’s always some type of disruption on the way to, I don’t know, airports in New York like JF, ok, where it’s just like an act of God will keep you from being able to get there to make your flight on time or at least before you’re supposed to check your bag to go on your flight.

All these things considered.

And I know it sounds like a personal problem but there are other people that have brought this to my attention.

So where should you be leaning into travel?

Insurance policies as well that could cover you in these events.

It’s really important when you’re planning a trip and make making a substantial financial investment, especially in these bucket list trips.

A lot of Americans are taking to Europe and Asia.

It’s important to look at what protection insurance products are available.

We’re all I think pretty familiar with traditional travel insurance can help you if you happen to break a leg, get sick in another country, help cover medical expenses.

Sometimes we’ll cover things like lost baggage.

But there are more specific types of protection products that are really important for travelers in the summer months and over the holidays, if you’re thinking ahead and those are disruption assistance tools.

If you’re delayed, canceled, you miss a connection, you can rebook yourself immediately with the value of your ticket on any available airline.

So you’re not beholden to the airline that you had flown on, that maybe doesn’t have another flight out that day or for the rest of the week, we offer these on the Hopper app, but also on some of our partner airline websites, capital one travel.

So you can find them where you are booking travel already.

Haley, appreciate the insights as always some actionable tips and also thanks for enduring my uh travel rant a moment ago.

Haley Burke Hopper, lead economist.

Great to see you Haley.

Great to see you too.

Thanks.

Let’s do a final check of the markets here.

Everyone as we are closing out this 11 am hour, the Dow Jones industrial average flat barely to the upside S and P 500.

Same NASDAQ composite up four tens of percent.

That’s it.

For wealth from Brad Smith.

Thanks so much for watching.

Market domination starts at 3 p.m. Julie Hyman, Josh Lipton.

Got you covered there.

You don’t want to miss it.