In this Episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon and Murs discuss retirement planning 2026 with returning guest Tom Siomades, chief market economist, for a mid-year Economic Check on everything that’s shaped the markets so far. From the Iran conflict’s effect on oil prices and inflation to a new Kevin Warsh Fed chair trying to find footing amid inflation and interest rates that refuse to cooperate, this Markets update covers the headlines retirees are hearing everywhere and translates them into what actually matters for your plan.

Listen in to learn about why stock market volatility has made 2026 feel like a tale of two markets, with AI stocks 2026 and tech stock names like SpaceX carrying much of the S&P 500 outlook while the rest of the economy absorbs energy prices US pressure and shifting consumer spending trends. Tom shares his honest read on recession risk, why Federal Reserve rate cuts have stalled out, and where the market uncertainty of the SpaceX IPO and the AI rally could go from here.

In this episode, find out:

• Why 2026 has followed a strikingly similar path to last year, and what that pattern means for retirement advice going forward
• How the Iran conflict pushed oil prices and inflation higher, and why gas prices don’t fall as fast as oil does
• What Kevin Warsh Fed chair is up against, and why Federal Reserve rate cuts have all but disappeared from this year’s forecasts
• Why Tom is cautious about chasing AI stocks 2026 and tech stock hype, including his candid take on the SpaceX IPO
• What Tom is watching for the rest of the year, and why he still sees a path to retiring comfortably despite the market uncertainty

Tweetable Quotes:

“We sit here in the middle of 2026, and it’s amazing how quickly it’s gone by, but there’s also been a lot of bumps in the road.” – Murs Tariq, Secure Your Retirement Podcast

“It’s amazing if you think about how important oil is to just making the world go round, not just gas, but manufacturing, shipping, and every cargo carrier out there.” – Murs Tariq, Secure Your Retirement Podcast

Whether you’re actively working on your retirement checklist or still in the early stages of planning retirement, this Economic Check is a reminder that a real Retirement Planning strategy has to hold up no matter what the headlines say. Retirement isn’t about predicting the next SpaceX IPO or timing the next rate cut. It’s about building a plan for retirement sturdy enough to absorb inflation and interest rates, tech stock swings, and everything in between.

Resources: If you are in or nearing retirement and you want to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you can do to achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting our complimentary video course, Four Steps to Secure Your Retirement! To access the course, simply visit POMWealth.net/podcast.

Here’s the full transcript:

Welcome back, everyone, to the Secure Your Retirement Podcast. We’ve got a great episode for you 

today. I’m very excited to introduce you, or some of you know this voice and this name very well, 

Tom Siomades. Tom Siomades is a chief market economist that we’ve had on the podcast. 

We try to get him quarterly. He’s a busy guy, so we’re very happy to get him as often as we had. to 

tell us kind of what’s going on in the markets uh things to be thinking about a lot of questions 

that people have he’s able to answer in a nice way so before i get any further tom thanks for 

hopping on with me today I’m glad to be with you and thanks again and hello everybody it’s nice to 

be with everyone again yeah so um you know tom in in his work uh he works for a very large 

wealth management firm and he sees a lot of the different strategies, he’s involved with a lot 

of the big picture type of macro evaluations of what’s going on in the economy so it’s nice to 

kind of check in with him and just say hey what’s going on and why is it going on this way and in a 

simple way what’s nice is tom likes to talk in a simple way, so it helps everyone understand 

it myself included so tom let’s do this uh let’s just start off with you know we sit here in the 

middle of 2026 and it’s amazing how quickly it’s gone by but there’s also been a lot of bumps 

in the road so maybe if you could for everyone just give us like a three- or four-minute synopsis on 

what all has happened thus far to get us to where we are today, you know what’s interesting 

it’s it it’s eerily familiar in trajectory to last year you can imagine that it’s feels like it’s 

been 20 years ago but remember last year we started the euro pretty strong and we had a whole 

tariff nonsense that cratered markets and then the markets recouped towards the end of the year. 

Well, same thing this year, right? We start out the year, and I don’t think anybody figured that 

the first thing we would do at the beginning of the year was to grab Maduro and, you know, 

intervene in Venezuela. And by the way, thoughts and prayers out to the folks down there, and they 

had the nasty earthquake, and hope those guys are okay. But, you know, at the end of the day, 

you had that. The markets kind of rallied, you know, there was a lot of momentum from over the 

year. And then… You know, come the end of February, we intervened and got into this fight with 

Iran. Ostensibly, you know, it’s to prevent them from having a nuclear weapon. 

Okay. It was supposed to be four weeks, then it became four months. And, 

you know, markets took a tumble. And instead of tariffs driving markets down this time, it was the 

price of oil and the fear of inflation down the road, right? A lot of that has been sort of, 

you know, recouped at this point. I mean, I think we dove down about close to 8% or 9%, 

and now we’re up about 8% or 9% of the year. So, we’ve, you know, we’ve had about a 20% swing, 

which is pretty amazing. But it has this same sort of feel as like, you know, you hope that it 

follows through like last year, because last year we were up about 18%. Now, that said… 

You know, we can talk, I know we will in a minute talk a little bit more about Iran. But, you know, 

at the end of the day, you’ve had interest rates go up because of uncertainty and fears of longer 

term inflation. Oil prices should shut up. And then, you know, when oil prices go up, obviously 

inflation goes with that. And then, you know, people start questioning, is the consumer spending 

enough? Is it going to lead us into a recession? And then obviously the darlings of the investment 

world, the AI and the large tech companies have been sort of exposed to this sort of buffeting. 

I think at the end of the day, earnings have been really good. The market really wants to march 

forward, but we’ve got this cloud of uncertainty that I’m sure we’ll talk about in a second. 

that it’s just difficult for people to make a commitment and to say let’s just push through this 

and markets have been kind of like you know on pins and needles even though we’ve punched through 

record highs I remember before the Iran thing if you remember everyone was talking about s p 7 000 

and we couldn’t get there we couldn’t get there we’re like 69 95 and then all of a sudden as soon 

as you know the Iran thing was over or thought the first time it was over we like popped through 

7000 7600 so you know i think there’s a bias in the market don’t want to go up but there’s just all 

of this stuff that’s sort of like you know these fog in front of us that you can’t see more than 

about 10 feet uh which is kind of causing us a lot of pauses and creating a lot of uncertainty for 

markets out there at least at least in the first half of the year right Yeah, I think that’s a good 

way to say that it is fog because, I mean, last year the tariff stuff and the tariff stuff is not 

fully resolved yet. But now everyone’s completely distracted from it by what’s going on right now 

with Iran. So, let’s talk a little bit about Iran. You know, like you said, it was supposed to be 

short term, you know, a couple of weeks. And now here we sit four months in and there’s been a 

treaty that that seems to be put in place. But then. I was driving in today and on one of the 

podcasts that I listen to about the market and the world, and you hear about another vessel being 

attacked as they’re trying to get through the Strait of Hormuz. So, tell me what your thoughts are 

there and where you see this whole war going. Yeah, I think when we talked about this last time, 

I’m going to still have the same reservation. Listen, if I own a tanker and it’s full of oil… I’m 

not sailing. I don’t want to sail because I don’t want to risk that cargo because, you know, 

some 15th guy in charge decides to launch a drone on my ship. 

Right. So that’s a problem. Now, wanting something and something actually becoming a thing are two 

different things. Right. And so, you know, how many times have we heard Trump say they’re going to 

sign a deal? They’re near to a deal. OK, so supposedly they’ve signed a deal. I don’t know why 

you use the word treaty, which is ironic, because that’s kind of what I call them. I don’t know 

where a memorandum of understanding, what is that, treaty light? I don’t know what that is. So, you 

know, at the end of the day, you have to look at the fact that the, you know, the Iranian regime 

does not want to comply. They want a nuclear weapon. They want to be left alone. They want to do 

whatever it is that they’ve been doing that we don’t like. Okay. The challenge there is that 

they’ll sign anything, but getting them to behave accordingly are two different things, 

right? And I think they smell the fact that we’re unwilling to go further. 

Right. We’re unwilling to commit soldiers because it’s the only way you’re going to get these 

people out of there. They’re religious fanatics. Right. They’re not going to they’ll agree to 

whatever they need to do to survive, but they’re not going to just willingly volunteer and say, 

yeah, we got free elections. Right. So, they’re going to do what they’re going to do. And they know 

that, you know, we don’t have the backbone at this point after 20 years of Afghanistan and Iraq. 

to go send soldiers in there which probably of these three conflicts this is probably the one 

that’s the most just the file but we can’t do it, so the challenge now is that we’re playing this 

nickel and you know this nickel and dime thing they shoot a drone we retaliate they do something 

else and it just again adds to what we just talked about a minute ago it adds to that level of 

uncertainty and at any moment if they you know they only have to we have to be right a thousand 

times they have to be right one time at any one time they if they successfully sink a ship or two 

in the gulf or in the scrape there, what happens? The price of gas and oil, 

which has come down, well, gas hasn’t come down, but oil has come down to about $3, I think, when 

all this thing started, that thing could just as easily shoot up to $100, right? And, 

you know, markets are kind of keying in on that. And so, to me, you know, no amount of talk of, 

like, you know, if they don’t behave, we’re going to blow them up, bleep, you know, whatever. I 

don’t know that that’s helping, right? So… the point of such that we actually have stability in 

that region, which I don’t know if that’s something that’s possible in the near term without 

escalation. Right. Not an interesting thought about, you know, the Iranians say they want all this 

money that’s being held. I would just use the money that we’re holding to fund our war against them 

and say, you want every day your balance goes down. The longer it takes you to make peace. 

the less, you know, the less balance, the less we’re going to give you back, right? I mean, 

leverage them. I don’t understand whether that isn’t happening. And by the same token, I wouldn’t 

have never stopped the bombing campaign. I would have said, listen, phones work, whether bombs are 

falling or not. You can call us whenever you want to talk, seriously. But I think they viewed the 

cessation of this war as weakness on our part, which I have to admit, 

it is. It feels weak. And now we’re all of a sudden, you know, trying to like… these guys into 

doing the right thing they’re not going to do that i mean these are you know these are very 

focused people on what they’re going to do so unfortunately there’s no good news from that 

because good news would be what that we send people in there nobody wants to see American’s go off 

and fight again right bad news is what we just let Iran go back to doing what they were doing 

before I mean, I guess the only thing is, is they can’t hate us any more than they already did 

before. So, it’s not like there’s some bad, there’s going to be any more bad luck. So that’s kind of 

where we are with it. I don’t see this thing just resolving itself, you know, 

in the next week or so. This is just going to be a thing that’s going to continue to go on. And I’m 

fearful that we’re going to have to escalate. I mean, I think, you know, Trump’s whole threat of 

the whole bridge and power day thing, just do it. I don’t know why Iranian TV is still on TV, 

spewing propaganda. That should have been the first thing that should have been taken off the air. 

But I don’t know. That’s what’s scary to me is that you don’t know. It’s nice to see three steps. 

If we accomplish A, then B, then C, we don’t have those steps. And that’s the challenge with these 

guys. It’s like they’re not going to go away. Right, yeah. And kind of talking about oil. 

It’s amazing if you think about how important oil is to just making the world go round, 

not just gas and the ability to go from A to B, but it’s the manufacturing, 

it’s the shipping, it’s all the cargo carriers, all of that stuff. And I know the U.S. 

has kind of started to use up some of those reserves that they had in place, and that’s an 

important thing, too. You said it a second ago. People sometimes think that if the price of oil 

comes down, gas automatically trickles down right there with it. So can you explain that a little 

bit? Because that’s what people are feeling right now. You hear about oil going down, but the gas 

pumps still expensive. Why is that? Well, that’s because you have really greedy people taking 

advantage of this question, right? I mean, honestly, it’s like when you see oil go up on the world 

market, by the way, that’s another one that’s an interesting point for a lot of folks, is we’ve 

heard a lot of talk about U.S. energy independence. And people are like, why are we paying so much 

for oil and gas? I don’t think people realize that, or some people do, but a lot of folks don’t, 

that oil is a global commodity, right? So, if Mr. Europe comes to somebody in Texas who’s making oil 

and says, I’ll give you $100 a barrel, the Texas manufacturer is going to sell it to them. 

He’s not going to say, well, golly gee, I’m a good American. I’m going to sell it to my U.S. 

refiner for 50 that’s not how it works so that said whenever these gas companies see or oil 

companies see prices go up you know they’re basically buying oil on the futures market right and 

then they realize that you know that’s a commodity that’s going to move up and down but there’s the 

uncertainty and they you know you literally will see the guy throw a ladder up and scramble up and 

change the numbers on the gas thing right but you know oil goes down and it’s like oh it takes 

weeks for it to come off and this and that and you know a lot of times you know it’s a function 

of what the futures markets are right because people will buy oil today but then you know for 

delivery whenever and but you know fundamentally it’s green right at the end of the day it’s like 

it’s easy to justify to people that listen I have to keep prices low or high because i don’t know 

when they’re going to come down again so i have to you know protect my business and it’s a very 

slow like it’ll go up in a heartbeat but it’s a very slow, you know, 

sort of decline. The nice thing about oil, as opposed to other inflationary things, oil and gas, 

the fact of it is, is you literally can’t get back to $2 a gallon gas. 

Right. You can’t do that with all the other things in our society that go up as a result of higher 

energy prices or, you know, silly government policies, right? That’s the challenge, 

right? It’s like, you know, you’re never going to see. $80 sneakers go back down $40 because 

there’s been too much invested in getting them to $80. 

They don’t want to give any of that back. Right, yeah. So then let’s talk then about inflation and 

where we think that’s headed. You know, we’re on this pace of it coming down and things are 

starting to look good again and people are getting excited about interest rates being cut this year 

and that hasn’t happened and now there’s threats of interest rates potentially going up. 

We’ve got a new Fed chair in to replace Powell. Wors is in. And some would say buddy-buddy with 

the administration. Some would say not. So, kind of tell me what you think. And, you know, with oil 

being as crazy as it has been pricewise, do you think that that’s been influencing inflation too 

much? Or is everything still inflating? Well, I think it’s a huge component of it, 

right? And I think a lot of times, you know, the academics want to strip out this or want to strip 

out, you know, this thing or that thing when they give you that preferred measure of inflation. 

Listen, things are getting expensive because energy is expensive, okay? And labor is expensive, 

okay? I just saw a politician here on TV not too long ago saying that $25 should be the national 

minimum wage. Well, when you give everybody $25, that’s $25 more than they had before to spend, 

they’re going to buy stuff. And unless you manufacture more and more stuff to offset the demand, 

prices are going to go up. Now, with respect to Warsh, his background is more hawkish. 

He doesn’t like easy money. He didn’t like the QE stuff. The problem is that Trump expects them to 

cut rates. And that’s one of the reasons why he pushed Powell out, because they didn’t get along. 

And he wasn’t willing to cut rates. Warsh’s problem is he’s on the fence now. 

Inflation is running nearly double what the Fed wants it to be. I think PCE last week came out at 4 

.1 or something like that. So, they wanted it to. It’s at 4. A lot of that is the oil component. 

We keep being told that oil and gas, you know, when this thing is over. But we just talked about a 

minute ago. I don’t think it’s going to be over, right? So, if gas can yo-yo or oil can yo-yo from 

70 to 100 and back down again. A lot of the people, like all those things that we talked about, 

you know, they go into the inputs of prices, not just gas. No one’s going to like, 

you know, how would you feel if you came to work and somebody said to you, well, this week, Merz, 

I’m going to pay you $1,000. And the next week you come in, I’m going to pay you $500. And the 

week after that, I’ll pay you $1,250. It’s like, no, you’re not going to do that because you’re 

not going to go to work there very often, right? And that’s the challenge with these people. If you 

have yo-yoing energy prices, you’re just going to worst case it. and charge that. 

And right now, the consumer is supporting, right? So, the challenge here is that, you know, the 

consumer keeps spending. We’re not anywhere near a recessionary environment. And so, prices are all 

across the border creeping up. But I think psychologically, and I think the difference between gas 

prices and everything else, like you go to the store, you look at something, it’s a little too much 

for you. Maybe you pick something else up, right? You know, every time you stop at a corner and you 

see the gas price and it’s got a three plus handle closer to four, 

you get pissed off. You know what I mean? It’s a visceral reaction. You’re like, you know what? 

Why is it that way? And that’s the challenge, right? Because I think at some point in time we get 

into a psychological deterioration of the consumer. It’s, you know, you get exhausted of saying, 

man, I’m just so sick and tired of paying. for everything so much, right? 

That’s the challenge. So, it becomes, it goes from the actual physical sort of actual price to a 

mental block of where people, that’s when you can have problems with the economy. Now, what’s his 

problem? I don’t know how he threads that needle, man, because honestly, Trump’s going to start 

yelling at him at lower rates. He’s going to say, look, oil is down to $70. Cut rates, cut rates. 

And he’s like, he’s going to be like, yeah, but we don’t see it in inflation because that’s… what 

we just talked about, how your gas price zips up, but it takes forever for it to come down on the 

back end. That’s the challenge that this guy’s going to have. And I think gone, 

we’re what, two rate cuts so far this year were expected? That’s out the window. Now the market’s 

discounted that completely. So, they’re not expecting any cuts whatsoever the rest of the year, 

which I think would be miraculous if we actually probably need a rate increase at this point. 

Right, yeah, I think a lot of the argument is to stay steady or potentially the economy needs rates 

to go up, which just seems a lot to handle, right? 

So, I mean, what is the risk then, I guess, if, say, he does buckle? you know, and he does cut 

rates, although most people don’t think that that’s likely unless he does buckle, right? So, what’s 

the ramifications there of just cutting rates when the math doesn’t make sense to do so? Well, 

inflation will continue to, you know, you’re going to make money cheaper, right? And if there’s an 

inflation that’s already running hot, it’s going to be, you know, you’re going to have that much 

more money chasing fewer goods, right? I mean, it’s Econ 101 at that point. It’s like, inflation’s 

at a minimum not going to go down. B, it’ll probably go up, right, which is a bad thing. So, it’ll 

just make things worse, and then it’ll just put more pressure on them to actually have to raise 

rates further. And if you raise rates further at that point, that’s just going to kill. 

Well, one of two things is going to die. You raise rates, it’s going to kill business activity. We 

go to a recession. You let inflation run too high and wages don’t keep up. You risk an exhausted 

consumer, and that can also run us into a recession as well. Right, yeah. you know recessionary 

type stuff I’m hearing more and more about layoffs um uh coming you know look regionally here in 

North Carolina, we hear some of the larger companies doing some layoffs but even across the 

country you’re hearing more about it and i know as far as job numbers, they’re still pretty good and 

we’re still bringing jobs in, but do you see us kind of at this tipping point of things could start 

to point more and more towards potential issues in the economy and jobs and recession type of 

language coming our way? Yeah, I think, I think, you know, I don’t think we’re, we’re, 

we’re 50 50 at this thing. I think we’re probably, you know, getting close to 50 50 on this 

because, you know, companies as they see earnings have been good. So that’s, 

there’s no pressure from that standpoint, right? The stock market is doing well. I think if we 

start seeing deterioration, in consumer spending you know layoffs things like that you start seeing 

that sort of like I mentioned a few minutes ago exhaustion right that’s the risk you run where now 

all of sudden companies are hey our profits aren’t there we need to lay people off a lot of them 

will use the whole ai thing excuse that oh well we’ve made our ourselves so much more efficient 

that we don’t need all these people That’s just the con. I think at the end of the day, I think 

it’s, you know, companies use whatever excuses they need to lay people off because if they’re 

profitable, they’re not going to lay people off, right? If their business is humming along, 

they’re not going to lay people off. You don’t want to, you know, obviously you don’t want to rock 

that boat. But I think, you know, the challenge right now is we’re in a very fine line, 

right? And a lot of it is, you know, some of it is kind of self-induced. Like, did we need to do 

something with Iran? Yes. Did we need to do it the way we’ve been doing it? 

I don’t know. And that’s added a huge, huge unknown, right? And the market wants to run. 

The consumer’s doing okay. But it’s all such a fine line at this point. Because if any of those 

things fall off, you can have major problems as we get into the end of the year. 

And I’m not saying we’re there. You know, we’re like that. You know that French guy that walks 

between buildings with the… with the stick right yeah, we’re kind of like that guy I don’t know 

whether we’re just starting that walk or we’re ending it you know you can literally like if you’re 

three feet away from the end of it you’re good to go but if you’re just starting it and it’s like 

holy cow look at that that rope is really small and it’s getting breezier and breezier up 

there yeah okay cool so um then well let’s talk a little bit more on the positive side of things 

which could be turned into a bit of a negative also is You know, tech and AI continue to lead the 

markets. A lot of people don’t understand, and it’s even in my role as an advisor, 

it’s hard to imagine that the markets are up, you know, whatever it is, somewhere in that 7% to 10 

% range, given all the stuff that we’ve just spent 20 minutes talking about. 

And tech is a big piece of that. You know, in the AI space, you just had, 

or in the tech space, you just had SpaceX do their big IPO, and that was hyped up quite a bit. 

And then you’ve got Anthropic and OpenAI probably coming down the road later in the year. 

But also, there’s some of this element of, well, we’re in energy crisis, and this is creating a 

whole other type of energy crisis in a different way than oil. So, you know, 

what are your thoughts on tech, AI, you know? the markets, how we’re getting kind of still, 

again, segmented in the markets because of these companies, fast-growing companies, and how does 

all this play out? Yeah, so I’ll talk briefly about SpaceX because I had a lot of people ask me 

that as it came on. I said, listen, my… philosophy, and I would say just from an individual 

investor, is don’t buy into the high. Okay? Everyone’s asking me, 

hey, you know, whatever, should I do this, should I do this? No, just listen. It came out at 

whatever it came out. It ran up, and now it’s come back down. And, you know, look, if we’re dealing 

with a company that Elon Musk is involved with, chances are he’ll put his foot in his mouth about 

something. And if you really like it… then wait until it goes back down to whatever it was when 

the IPO came out, if not low. If you really understand the business. And my advice to folks is stay 

away from these individual names because unless you’re in that business and really know that 

business well, aerospace, tech, medical, whatever, and you’re buying it for the long term, 

that’s great. But if you’re just jumping on board because you heard a bunch of people fluffing this 

thing up, and it’ll be the same thing with Anthropic and all these other guys. Now, what’s 

interesting about this is Yeah, there’s a lot of hype behind all of this AI stuff, 

right? But I also think there’s a misjudgment on what the value of these things are. 

And so, you know, the market is obviously overly, always overly optimistic, 

right? But until you’re slapped in the face with, is this company profitable? Or, 

you know, is it throwing, is it giving me a decent return on my investment? That’s where the 

challenge exists, right? And so, you look at the rest of the market, ex-tech, and they’re just kind 

of holding water. Why is that? Because of the things we just talked about. The consumer is getting 

stressed. Inflation is high. You know, the economy is not going great, right? And that’s kind of 

more of a realistic picture of the real world. 

And then you’ve got the SpaceX’s and the, you know, the NVIDIA’s and all those guys flying all over 

the place, right? But their subject… need to borrow, right? Because they’re not making anything 

today. It’s going to make them money tomorrow, right? They’re going to make money five years from 

now. So, they got to borrow money. So, when you see rates inching up, that impacts them. 

And that’s why you have this yo-yoing effect in those markets, right? Because one minute they’re 

like, oh my God, this is the next greatest thing. This is where all the growth is going to come 

from. Everyone’s piling in. And then they’re like, oh my God. Data centers are so expensive. 

Infrastructure costs are so expensive, like what we had last week, right? So that’s the yo-yoing 

effect of this thing. But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, the market still believes, 

right? It’s not like everyone’s walking in and throwing their, you know, hat on the ground and 

walking out and saying, you know what, this is, we’re screwed here. We’re not going anywhere. So 

it’s been sort of this tale of two markets. But I think at the end of the day, if you can get a lot 

of the other stuff that we just talked about, inflation energy prices out of the way we’re still 

primed for a good second half but again these things can go can turn on you in a second which is 

really frustrating and that’s what I think that’s holding us back right now I’m surprised actually 

we’re up as much as we are, so far, this year yeah, I agree So then I’ll close this out here with 

two questions of kind of forward-looking types of things. The first being, I guess, 

what are the things that you’re going to be paying attention to the most from now until the end of 

the year? So, you know, obviously you can’t stop looking at this around thing. 

I mean, it has to be resolved. And it could get worse probably a lot faster than it could get 

better. So that’s going to be with us, right? And what’s the impact going to be? Because they could 

say… They want to control the straight. We can say we control the straight. Will the oil flow? 

And right now, it’s flowing. As messed up as it is, there’s oil moving through there. 

But the question is, how thin is that option? 

The next thing is we’ve got to keep watching is, listen, if prices remain where they are right now, 

we actually get an improvement in inflation and we kind of crest. I think we could be in good shape 

for the rest of the year because that’ll give the Fed the cover not to raise rates, 

first of all. And actually, if we get a good enough improvement in inflation, it might actually get 

the conversation going again about potentially maybe a cut, right? Now, that said, 

I don’t know. I’ve heard the government has got like 12 days before they have to go away or 

whatever to pass another resolution package. We’ve got what that’s going to be like. We’ve also 

got, you know, elections coming up. That’s going to, like, take up a lot of the oxygen in the room 

come, you know, third quarter. So, you know, those are all the things that we’re kind of looking at 

right now. I mean, obviously, I love the fact that despite all these headwinds, 

all I’m thinking is if that headwinds stop blowing, where could we be if we’re already at 8% so 

far with all the nonsense that’s going on, you know? Right. That’s kind of leading into my final 

question for the episode today is, you know, we thought there’s obviously there’s a lot of negative 

things that kind of get focused on in the media, but there’s a lot of good stuff going on, too, 

that just unfortunately doesn’t get as much of the media time. And so, I guess tell me, 

Tom, what are you excited about as we enter into the second half of the year? Listen, 

I’m still really excited about the possibilities where a lot of these efficiencies and productivity 

can come out of this AI. And I’m not talking about the chip makers and the data centers and the 

nonsense that people use AI for these days, except for the fact that on Father’s Day, 

my family did get me a portrait of a French king with my face on it. So, AI was good for something. 

and I’ll show you the picture sometime when I see you but um yeah, it’s that’s what I’m excited 

about is you know where we’re going and frankly, I’m excited about the fact that listen our 

country’s been around for 250 years right and fourth of July right around the corner and that’s 

pretty awesome you know we forget about the fact that we live with you know the best country in the 

world and you know yeah, we got problems and we could easily get down on ourselves but fundamentally 

we’re an optimistic people and I think we’re going to be good so i think you know i think we’re 

always innovating So people that are afraid of the whole AI thing and all that stuff, you know, 

they’re also remember that 90 percent of the country 150 years ago worked on a farm. 

Right. And then they worked in factories and we don’t do any of those things now. So, this will be 

another change. Right. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think we should be optimistic. And I 

think we have a very good possibility if we can get some of these near-term things away from us, 

like inflation and the oil and Iran thing. I think we have a possibility to probably have as good a 

year as we did last year on the S&P, you know, this year. I mean, we could probably easily put on 

another 10% if we get rid of, you know, some of that other stuff resolves favorably, right? Right. 

Yeah. That’s who I am for the second half. I think it’s going to be okay. I don’t think we’re near 

a recession. I think we’re going to have a decent second half. Okay. Well, 

that sounds good. Well, there you have it, everyone. A couple of thoughts from Tom Siomades. Again, 

Tom, thank you so much for coming on and explaining things in a normal way, not full of a bunch of 

economic speak that can be overwhelming sometimes. So, thanks a lot for your time today, Tom, and we 

look forward to having you on again. Yep, thank you and happy for it.