In fact, I told a friend of mine, her I walked her through negotiating for a used Jeep Grand Cherokee had like 13,000 miles on it She got it for a song-lung and like just tell the girl you're gonna go by new There's lots of incentives scared the tar to the guy in the used car life
What's up everyone? This is car dealership guy you're listening to the car dealership guy podcast Which is my effort to give you access to the most unbiased and transparent insights into the car market Let's get into today's episode
Danielle DiMartino Booth is CEO and Chief Strategist of QI Research a research and analytics firm Prior to QI research Danielle spent nine years at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas where she served as advisor The president Richard Fisher throughout the entire financial crisis In this conversation we discussed Danielle's biggest concern for the US economy The time Warren Buffett randomly reached out to her Danielle's current stance on inflation and what's to come The state of the auto lending market And how the Fed makes decisions and why sometimes it doesn't make so much sense
We're living through interesting economic times to say the least I hope this conversation helps you make some sense of all of it Here's my conversation with Danielle DiMartino Booth
All views of car dealership guy and guests on this podcast are solely their opinions None of the views expressed should be treated as financial advice This podcast is for informational purposes only
Danielle DiMartino Booth on the pod Danielle welcome Great to be here I'm so excited to talk to you I've met I'm a third generation car guy and my kids are fourth How about how so what's the connection? So my Italian grandfather immigrated in 1923 from Italy The US army trained him to be a mechanic in World War II He was never deployed He was in Great Britain the whole time he came back opened up to Sonoco stations on each side of I-95 outside of New Haven, Connecticut He was a car guy my father was a car guy There's pictures of me with a wrench in my hand and a diaper off And my kids are all car guys so instead of listening to like you know the latest hot topic Whatever we'll go down the highway with my oldest son going you know name that engine Like mom that's the Aston Martin it's not street legal so total car guys I happen to be here I love it well the good thing is we're not talking about car shit at all
So well we sort of are but we'll get there Yeah we'll get there Yeah
嗯,我们有点这样,但我们会走到那一步的,是的,我们会走到那一步。
so I think what's really interesting is that I you know I've had this podcast not for about 90 days or so And we really haven't had someone come on and just talk about Lending to a depth automotive lending just you know the markets I have had an economist on the podcast John Smoke from Cox on Motive But that was much more you know focused strictly on a motive And I think zooming out a bit just the market's superfluid right now A lot of change
I can tell you that dealers are contacting me on a daily basis Asking me many many different things you know specifically because they're assuming that I'm crowdsourcing all this information from the market I would choose certain degree I am but I'm definitely not an economist or an expert in that sense
And so anyways tons of questions teed up before we even get started on that Can you just give us your background right tell us about you know QI research a company how you got to this point I just think of a very interesting set of experiences so we'd love for people to know about that
So I'm in New York I'm in New York where I'm up here for media I lived I started my career in New York after I got my MBA in finance I went to an investment bank called Donald's and Lufkine and Gen Rhett There was a huge private equity presence at this bank which made it different than Goldman or Lehman or Morgan Stanley I was truly unique because we helped provide mezzanine finance or leverage buyout financing But it was really cool to be around before private equity was this huge thing I also went to Columbia at night and I got my second degree in journalism
所以我在纽约,我是在纽约,我来这里是为了媒体工作。我在纽约开始了我的职业生涯,我在获得金融学硕士学位后去了一家叫做Donald's and Lufkine and Gen Rhett的投资银行。这家银行有一个庞大的私募股权存在,这使得它与高盛、雷曼或摩根士丹利不同。我真的很特别,因为我们帮助提供中间融资或杠杆收购融资。但真的很酷能在私募股权成为如此重要之前待在那里。我也在哥伦比亚大学晚上上课,并获得了新闻学学位。
I thought when I retired off Wall Street I was going to write for a living That happened earlier than I anticipated after 9-11 so I ended up signing a non-compete leaving the business Giving my mostly at that point junk bond business back to the the junk bond trading desk I learned a lot there about spreads and lending to the lesser credit worthy which will round around to when it comes to cars And I ended up leaving the industry thinking I'd never go back had a daily column within a few months of starting at the Dallas Morning News It was like the oldest unpaid intern they'd ever had because it worked really well with their budget the free part
When the internet was taking over you know the old fashioned reading the newspaper and Warren Buffett reached out to me He's like you're writing some crazy things and eventually I got to go out to Omaha that was awesome And the Dallas Fed had a new precedent Richard Fisher and he ended up reaching out I ended up being one of his closest advisors on all things macroeconomics monetary policy the market And I was preparing a briefing for him before he would go off to the FOMC needy the Federal Reserve when they went meet eight times a year And when he retired I retired I was no bureaucrat still I'm never going to be a bureaucrat But I followed him into retirement I started QI research and I've published ever since I've published first time I published six days after I left And I said I'm a workaholic but I really love what I do and I just try and provide my clients with as many insights as I possibly can About not just the macroeconomic data not just where the financial markets are but how all of this is going to intersect with monetary policy And what the Fed's going to do next and everybody seems to be interested in that subject so I just keep talking
And I think that this is probably wondering like when am I going to be able to buy a car for less or you know if you're a dealer, when is my floor planning Tris going to go down and just a lot of questions are going to be super relevant before we get to that. Why did Warren Buffett reach out to you? I didn't want to cut you off on a super treat. No, so I was writing so I wrote that actually Forbes found me after the fact because they were looking for anybody who had written that the subprime housing crisis was going to be both global And it was going to be a nature. So it wasn't going to be contained in the United States. It was going to be a global phenomenon. It was it led into international the international banking system. And what year is this? This was 2000 or 2005 that I was writing about it. And I was watching people take equity out of their homes and use their homes as picky banks that And I was also writing about the dangers of the US government selling so many of its treasury securities to the Chinese. So there was Warren in my inbox one day. And what was his ask? And come see him.
He's like you're writing crazy things. The dangers of America, you know, mortgaging the farm. And what's going to happen one day if, you know, China's not the frenemy that it appears to be. And this was this is almost 20 years ago. And why did he care. Why did he care about what you were saying. I mean, play people say stuff online or that not online at least at that point but play people say something in the newspaper and I was, I was saying things that at the time nobody was saying. Right now everybody knows that China is not our friend. But years and years ago, it was a very symbiotic relationship when Americans first began buying cheaper products that were imported from China. So it was, it was kind of a maverick radical thing for me to write that we might one day regret the fact that we were selling so many of our sovereign bonds off to another major nation that looked like it was going to be the second largest country, the second largest economy in the world at the time it wasn't. And of course now it is. But but Warren appreciated my conservative approach and my concern for the country.
So you also mentioned you spend a decade at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Before we even get into the more nitty gritty kind of deeper details explain for us people that are not smart like you. What, why do we have, you know, all these different federal reserves to all the states and specifically like what is the state level Federal Reserve Bank. Like what, you know, level of authority do they have what decisions do they make relative to the, you know, the overall Federal Reserve and what we see, you know, when the Federal Open Market Committee makes their decisions on TV and we see, you know, Jerome Powell in this case, you know, kind of telling us what interest rates are going to be at and blah, blah, blah.
Can you explain how that whole relationship works. I'll make this as the same, this possible in 1913. The US economy was nothing like it, what it is today. There was justification for a Minneapolis, a St. Louis, a Kansas City and a Chicago Fed at the time. There was so much of the nation's economy that was centered on the manufacturing industrial base that wasn't what we now call the Rust Belt. And that was started by Oh, I don't know, Henry Ford. That's why there were four districts when when the Federal Reserve system was conceived, they said, well, we're going to need information on the national economy. But we also want to make monetary policy for the entire country. So we want to have feedback from from all of the major economic at the centers. And at the time that the 12 district, which was based out of San Francisco was an outpost.
There really wasn't that much economic output such that when you look at the map of the Federal Reserve districts, you're like, well, gee, that's like a huge chunk of the country now. Whereas way back when it was really nothing economically and that's why Janet Yellen's district has had so many blowups in her backyard. It's not supervised enough out there. But back in 1913, it was as far as who's voting and when the federal government is voting. So all of the members of the Federal Reserve board their email addresses and in dot GOV. It's a formal federal agency. They have a permanent vote on the federal market committee. The only district that also has a permanent vote is New York. That's because it is the epicenter of the banking and financial system. So the president of the New York Fed has a permanent vote on the federal market committee. Cleveland and Chicago were deemed to be the second and third most important economies in the country. That's why their presidents get to vote every other year. That leaves the eight remaining, excuse me, the nine remaining districts. They rotate in every three years with a vote, which is why last year when Jim Bullard would say something they'll be like, Oh, what's Jim saying now because he was voting. And he doesn't, he's not up for voting rotation for the two years. So he can say something, but it's harder for him to rattle the market because he doesn't have a vote.
And that's kind of how markets view, you know, this group of 17 voters. They put them in a packing order, depending on how close they are to the chair. Are they in Jerome Powell's ear. Do they influence him, or does he not listen to them at all, and or are they not voting. And unfortunately, you know, this is, there are people who are closer to watching every little detail than I am. And I interpreted easily.
How does Fed policy get, how does it get decided? Like, how do all these things work, right? How do interest rates truly get decided? Yeah, I get that, you know, they're being fed some data but walk us through that process. And that really work you've been so close to it. So if the Fed thinks that the economy could be performing better, or if the economy is being held back by prohibitively high finance costs, and that therefore the unemployment rate is going, or inflation is coming down too quickly. Then they'll say, you know what, it's time to ease monetary policy. Let's lower interest rates. But what do they look at when they're making these decisions? Well, they're looking at the labor market. They're looking at banks. They're looking at what kind of lending is being done. If credit worthy borrowers are being denied credit, they're they're looking at jobless claims. They're they're looking at all of the things that that that say whether or not the United States is in a recession, industrial production. They're looking at inventory levels. Do people have too many too little inventories, whether you're talking about a clothing store or a card dealership lot. They follow every single small all the way down to it. As long as the data series is very long and seasonally adjustable, they follow it. They have 786 at last count PhDs on staff. They probably need about order of them. They've got way too many cooks in the kitchen. And one of the reasons I wrote Fed Up and Insider's Take on why the Federal Reserve is bad for America is because of how monetary policy. is made, which is simply too cumbersome. Sometimes you can just open your eyes, look around and say something's not right here with the economy. And that I think is a major downfall of the Federal Reserve is they don't have more lay people who are part of the leadership.
Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I will get to labor, but you know, they unemployment 3.7%. Wall Street Journal put out a stat the other day that average auto repair is taking more than 70, 70 days to complete last year. And that's up from around up around 65% from 10.3 days in 2019. I can tell you that hiring to technicians, auto technicians at the dealership has never been tougher. How do you how do we reconcile all this with interest rates have gone up? I don't know, like 45% or so in the last year, year and a half. How do we reconcile all this? So that, you know, there are several factors that plan to this. I we we paid for our lifelong housekeeper son to go through a Toyota training program. It was also partial associates degree to where he got out. He was automatically working as a mechanic. There are a lot of great programs like that, not enough. Such that you have a deficit of the skilled workers you need, whether you're talking about auto technicians or you, or you're talking about electricians HVAC plumbers in the current dynamic. People bought so many lemons during the pandemic that the demand for auto repair is multiples of what it's been historically. Because you've got so many more people out there paying loans, put their upside down on these loans, and these cars are breaking because they paid way too much money for high mileage cars that now have to be repaired as any older, the older the car is, the more repairs it needs. And that's why you're seeing this massive demand supply mismatch between the number of technicians you have and the amount of demand you have for their services.
So, do you think you do not think this is representative of the broader economy. No, I don't know. I mean, when was the last time you waited too long in a restaurant. I don't anymore. It was pretty fascinating once you saw the emergency, the public health emergency. Reversed months ago, and, and the food stamp program therefore. It's emergency injection. I think the average household was getting, I think, an extra $100 a month. A lot of Medicaid funding that was deemed part of the public health emergency. And all of a sudden you see this huge spike in the labor force participation rate of unskilled limit.
And that's, you know, if you pay people enough to not work, they're not going to work. People can do math. When when the cares act was first passed, a single working mother of two. Her income was 61,900. Let's just say theoretically she was a home health aide. Making $25,000 a year. Why in the world would she ever go back into the workforce until she was forced to do so because what the state and the federal government were paying or wasn't enough for her to put food on the table and or my husband lost his job.
There are a lot of businesses closing left and right. And we're seeing that, especially with small businesses, but we're also seeing large bankruptcies companies with $50 million or more in liabilities. We're seeing more of those at the outset of 2023 in the first six months that we've seen since 2000 and nine. So there are a lot of job losses going on right now. But I think what you're looking. out right now is a skills mismatch that is being kind of hyper driven by all of the lemons on the roads.
What's the core data sets that you use as part of your company. What data set do you rely on? Where do you get your information from? Oh gosh, I mean, we have hundreds of data sources. You know, one that I look at very closely was was one that came out of the pandemic, light cast. They have weekly job postings. So, you know, when you're in a pandemic first hit job postings for individual individuals with minimal levels of education, went through the roots, you could not pay people enough to work in a hotel. You know, change of bed, clean a bathroom, bus tables, you couldn't pay people that that's where you saw the fastest wage inflation. And that number is now negative. Benchmarked against January 2020. We have a little replenishment of the deficit of workers that we had in the lowest skilled lowest paying jobs. We've also had a white collar reception going on. That's going to be very problematic when student loan repayments resume, the white collar recession aspect because the biggest, the biggest bills out there are among those who would be considered a white collar profession. And they're about to get shellacked if they don't have a job, if they're paying too much for their car loan, if they have a fat mortgage, and then they get the student loan on top of it.
How do you define a white collar recession. You define a white collar recession by by looking at the, the, the pay, the pay levels of the fastest growing levels of unemployment. Professional and business services. And then there's a lot of openings in that particular area, which would be considered to be management. Good paying jobs. Job openings are down 40% over January of 2020. Because you have so many people in Silicon Valley. So many startups that people just threw money at them. Oh, you said, Jen, January of 2020. January 2020 is your benchmark. So job postings in business and professional services are down 40% since January of 2020. You're seeing it play out. It's like a microcosm or a macrocosm of Silicon Valley bank. You know, it doesn't matter what your business model is. We have billions and billions of dollars because the Fed's but interest rates down to the zero bound. We're going to fund any startup that can fog a mirror.
So piggyback you off that topic. What's next for inflation? And I'll tell you where I'm coming from car prices, record highs, service department prices, record highs, interest rates, multi deck and highs. What's the deal here? Right. I know on one hand, you know, so like cost to produce a new car has also gone up. But what do you think is happens next when it comes to inflation?
So it's interesting you ask. I follow this metric called trueflation TRU. It's been around for a few years here. And I learned about it from bond traders. So I actually reached out to the company and asked if I could use their historical data to run a correlation and see what is that 2.2% that is based on 30 million prices in real-time compared to 4.0% for the CPI headline. What is the correlation between these two data sets? 97% with 100 being perfect.
In other words, inflation is coming down inflation is coming down quickly. We're seeing incentive spending at OEMs on a nationwide basis double over last year. You're seeing used car prices come down much more rapidly than anybody would have thought. I think there's there's a fresh Manheim data. coming out to that effect as well, despite the fact that there still aren't enough cars coming off lease. So, and add that to the fact that you're seeing ordinary events.
American households in the aggregate are spending less money year over year on food. Then they were 12 months ago. Food, you have the CEO of Tyson Corporation come out and say, we've never seen beef pork and chicken sales down at the same time. But here we are today. All three of them. Households are increasingly squeezed, especially those in the middle. So you think why is this going to be inflation can do.
Yeah, I think on the car front, just to just to double click on that, I think that with used cars, what I've been seeing is that putting putting that data aside because I don't think that that is. It's a perfect picture. I think we're seeing that on the on like the higher end cars. We're definitely seeing an accelerated decrease there. I think what you're looking at the really kind of bread and butter stuff that I just needed, you know, something to get me from A to B. That's definitely there's like almost no movement at all. Those things are staying very steady. So I think, but definitely, we are seeing an acceleration on the luxury segments. You know, when you started to get to 40, 50, $60,000 cars, I would agree with you there. We saw what Hyundai sales went up. 9.9%. I think in June, I think Pia sales went up like 11%. So your point A to point B. That's happening in the real world.
Yeah, well, I think again, if we're looking at new cars, even the price today of like, you know, you look at a, like, you know, the Kia carnivals, the Kia tell your eyes, very hot cars and they're not, you know, they're not, they're not cheap anymore, relatively speaking. But, but again, putting all that together. So what do you think using inflation at this point is just like, it's behind us. The feds, the data is maybe a bit late in or they're just, you know, they're not.
Right. I think the data are playing catch up. If you, if you incorporate. Morgan Stanley put out some interesting data this morning that showed that we've. We've caught back all of the jobs that we lost and then some. So we've recouped all job losses. And in addition to that, if you look at. Average income across the entire income spectrum, the United States, all workers. You're actually back to 2019 levels.
So at this point, again, because companies continue to close because the Fed has no intention. Of stopping any time soon. What do you mean by that? No relief in sight. Because that's the case. You're going to see continued business closures. Companies, but it's not accurate. Is that accurate? I mean, just like they told us, hey, inflation was transitory. I didn't lower behold, great started skyrocketing. Like how accurate do you really think that is?
Well, you know, I mean, I know for a fact that the minutes from the Fed meeting can be massaged after the fact. Today we learned that there were, there were descents threatened by people who were. Who did not agree with pausing at the June meeting. That's the message that they chose to convey. And I know it surprised me. What's something that surprised me as an outsider here, right? Like I'm absolutely not from this space. I was just surprised to see that the way rates went up so quickly. So, you know, consistently. I don't know. I found that bizarre. I just figured that, you know, the boards of these, you know, massive banks would have some more poll with the government. Not saying that it should be that way. I'm just saying that I was thinking is it's called me a little bit off-cars at how like they're like, Hey, look, to your point, SVB, first republic, all these banks that they just got decimated by some, you know, you could say there was, you know, better reasons than others. I don't wish I'd upon anyone. But nonetheless, I just found it very surprising how quickly they were able to pull that off.
Well, the Fed is supposed to be an independent and a political institution supposed to be supposed to be. Wall Street has always had undue levels of influence. Big banks have as well. The fact that Jerome Powell has for as long as he has managed to stay higher for longer is a shock. It's a shock to the banks, to the bankers, to the investment community, to borrowers, to lenders. It's a shock to everybody unless he's got what I call a higher colleague, if he's trying to break the tail wagging the dog syndrome, where in the banks and the private equity firms would influence monetary policy. If you're trying to say that that relationship no longer exists, that the rules of engagement have changed that the Fed's truly going to go back to being an independent entity that then you've got to stay higher for longer. You've got to prove your point, which, you know, Alan Greenspan took office in August of 1987. You know, it hadn't happened since then. This live experiment that we're witnessing.
You tweeted about 5th, 3rd, a few days ago, pulling out of certain areas. The entire western region. The third just pulled their entire wholesale mortgage division just close down today. So, you know, do you think that's a proactive measure or do you think that's a really active measure? I think that if banks can't do math in terms of what the Supreme Court's just said, if banks don't understand that in the aggregate, you know, S&P global has told us that if you add up, not, it's not just a subprime phenomena. If you will get across the entire spectrum from super prime to to subprime. That that the starting point from a 3.7% unemployment rate is the highest in history. That was data that came out last week, I want to say that's your starting point. So, banks see the writing on the wall. They know that charge-offs are going to be historic. They know that people are going to be walking away from their cars. And they know that people are going to be able to walk away from their cars and do just as you said months ago and get another car loan.
But do you think do you think that gets us to a point where it's like a crisis or do you think it just gets us back to like a mean reversion, right? Because we definitely had very low the fall three possessions over the last couple of years. People were flush with cash. So, like, to what point does that pendulum swing? Where do you think? And based on what? So, I think we do overcorrect when it comes to repossessions. And that has more to do with the fact that I speak to people in the world of boats and ATVs and everything else that everybody was able to get access to way too much credit for after the pandemic because lending standards. They more than collapsed. I mean, you don't walk off of a lot with a new car. Excuse me, they used Carlo with 140% LTV. I mean, like on planet Earth, that should be impossible. And yet, here we are. So, charge-offs, what people lose on car loans is going to reset history. And if you're prudent and you want to be well positioned to come back in when this party is over because at last check, you know, monthly payments are still setting new records. So, people are still falling down this rabbit hole. They just, you can't tell the average person who wants a car that they need to wait. They're not going to do it. Cars are emotional purchases. And as long as the financing's there, people are going to buy them. You can say, but hey, commercial and industrial lending is declining. That means that businesses are going to keep closing. If they don't, if businesses don't have access to financing, they're going to close. They're going to have people as a result get laid off. And the ability to, you know, to hold up the economy is going to become increasingly impaired. People don't care if they want a car. I want a car, I want a car. Somebody will finance it for me even better. Give us the status quo on auto lending, right? What's your current perception of auto lending and what also what happens next? Tell us about that.
So it's interesting because just today there was an article out that said subprime auto ABS investors can get burned for the first time, possibly since 2009. There was a little chart that went with it.
I think, I think because securitization itself and you have to look at commercial mortgage backed securities, which. Issuance is down, I think, 85% you over a year on commercial mortgage backed securities. I think you have to be able to see over the horizon after student loan repayments are resumed that you're going to see a similar phenomenon in terms of auto-backed asset-backed securities, auto loan backed, also being similarly impaired. And I think that that's why a lot of banks are stepping back from saying, you know what, I don't want to play that warehouse space. I want to try to sell off that bundle of car loans. I'm just going to sit this one out and wait and see where the dust settles. But I think you will see lending increasingly impaired as we approach this student loan cliff.
Do you think that's going to have a big impact on auto loans. I think it's going to have a big impact on delinquencies and therefore lending capacity. I still have a red cup for 4th of July for for the audience that doesn't see the video on holding a red. Cut out in it yesterday. Not quite just some plain and good old water, but there you go. That's the cameo for the red cup.
Okay, so I mean, I think we can all agree dealing with this will rise, but the question is how much. And again, you as, you know, having watch a space very closely like what's your prediction there and why.
You know what I can't tell you where delinquencies are going because the starting place is record highs. And again, this is not a record eyes though, because like what I saw. Yeah, and S&P it is this was fresh data. And this what what that are you would that are you looking at. Standard and poorest. Sorry, what's specific.
Like, for example, when last I looked was a just auto securitization data in the public markets. I saw that the all the 60 days, 60 day past two loans that were deep subprime were above. Oh, nine levels, right. But then I saw that, you know, when we looked at the other. The other delinquencies across the table, it seemed really it has been rising for sure last year and a half two years. But it's still not. It still wasn't above 2019 levels. It was sort of it looked like a mean reversion. What's your take on that.
So I think what S&P is looking at is auto loan as opposed to ABS. So you're not getting it. Different tranche of explain the difference just to the audience. There are there are some banks that make auto loans. There are some banks that sell loans that are made such that they're pulled into securitizations and sold off as separate securities. Those separate securities are going to be divided up into your absolute most pristine buyers with the highest FICO scores all the way down tranches in between two year, you know, super subprime whatever the heck, whatever the least credit where the borrower is. As you go down that tranche ladder, the yield investors get is much higher. And it is very rare to see losses on these securities, even in the least credit-worthy tranches. Yet here we are today, mainly because so many student loan borrowers a new study came out showed have taken on additional forms of household debt. While this large line item in their budget has been on on hold for all these years. They've taken on incremental debt. So it's not like they've been setting aside that $400 a month. And they're ready to resume payments with the extra savings. They've gone the other way. They've taken on extra debt. And that's why you see 65% of people who bought homes in 2022 and 2023. Say, I can't I bought my house. I can't afford it. I didn't know about all this. What what percent. 65% of home buyers who bought their homes in 2022 and 2023. Peak prices for homes. Now say, I'm struggling to make my payment.
And where's that? Where did that survey come from or the data? Well, I, it came from a Bloomberg story that I read that cited the survey data. I'd have to go back and look. Yeah, no problem. But another one at the same time said 62% I think specifically of millennials couldn't afford their house payment. I don't think people quite understand what's happening in the States of Florida, where these insurance premiums are going up for their homeowners insurance, quadrupling, but doubling. People don't understand the cost of replacing a new air conditioning system. So for a lot of first-time homebuyers who bought at the highest home prices in the history of mankind. These, it's a huge rude awakening to have to carry the cost of the home. Property taxes have gone through the roof. Got to pay them.
So, given all that, I mean, what's next for consumption? I think I've heard you speak about de-stocking. But what's your thoughts there? How does all this kind of trickle down and impact actual consumption in the market?
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So this is, to be continued. a de-st... I've been doing this for a long time. De-stocking is not a word I ever had to use. What does it mean? It means companies are taking inventory levels below where they need to continue running the same levels of production. And where is this happening? Where are you seeing this happening? Across the industrial sector.
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It was interesting. There was a German company that reported a few days ago, German Chemicals Company. Chemicals are considered to be the very forefront of the production process. Because chemical through your rawest input. But this German company said we thought de-stocking was going to end by the second quarter. It's not. So we're going to cut our workforce slashing our forecast, taking down our estimates. And you're hearing the same word de-stocking, whether you're talking about any of the regional Federal Reserve Manufacturing Surveys. And you're even hearing services firms say, we don't have enough of a backlog. We don't have enough demand to justify having all these lawyers on staff. So we're going to push through and fire some lawyers because we don't have enough casework. So it's not simply an industrial manufacturing factory floor phenomenon where you're seeing this.
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Do you think car prices will actually deflate? I mean, we under-produced, again, I think S&P or an experience, but I want to say, but we under-produced around like 8.6 million cars, new cars over the last three to four years. Now, you could say, well, did we really under-produced because people are now keeping the cars longer? So I think there's definitely some margin of error there. You could say, okay, well, deduct some percentage from that. But there's no doubt about it. We have under-produced cars and car prices went up and there was a shortage. Do you think that there is a world where car prices deflate meaningfully? And we can define meaningfully as, let's say, 25% to 30% more than expected? Or do you think just given the fact that new cars are cost more to produce nowadays, we've achieved a new baseline and we may see some accelerated depreciation versus what we've come to expect over the prior decade, but it's unlikely that these cars will really depreciate or the prices will deflate a meaningful amount. What's your thought on that?
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So you're asking me how long and how deep the recession is going to be? You're asking me, how many people are going to lose their jobs? How much demand is going to be destroyed? How many more adult males are going to move back in with mom and dad? It's a really hard question to answer. Using a year ago with Mary Barris said she was going to hold the line, and the minute her competitors started doing incentive pricing, that's about how long her resolute stance lasted, because you can only do that unless you're willing to simply sell less than your competitors. Otherwise, you got to follow them down that rabbit hole.
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Ford Motor is an interesting case study right now. They're trying very hard to be EV compliant because they want to get their hands on all these low in the government that are cheaper than they otherwise would be. But every time they do this, they're having to like, we just cut off, we just fired more engineers. We just fired more salaried workers. You know, I mean, I wouldn't want to be like at a foreign downtown deer board today at all, because of the steady drumbeat of layoffs. And I think we're going to increasingly see this. A lot of people, and maybe it's my age, a lot of people have no intention of ever buying an EV. But my point is we are going into a very, their car loans with 125, 140% loan devalue ratios never existed. Used car loans never, ever. And you're seeing it. This is COTS data. And you're actually seeing the same phenomenon on the used cars. I'd your average used cars got 104, 105% loan value ratio. It's just extraordinary.
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I mean, your average new car buyer comes in upside down anyways, especially from my home state of Texas, where we come, Texas is like, whoo, for the most upside down car buyers on the planet. It's always been number 51. Is that so? Oh, yeah. Texas loves to live beyond their wall. Well, about what they do. Well, it's all trucks and stuff. So I guess it doesn't surprise me that much. And these trucks are costing like $60,000 plus nowadays. Plus, more McLarens are sold in the city of Dallas and then they're sitting on the planet. People are like, show off in Texas. They like to afford.
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But you sent out, I think, the most telling of all statistics, you know, it's not a small hiccup to go from 500,000 to 400,000 auctions. Cars bought an auction. Oh, that was an auction. That was actually a, it's a peer to peer, a dealer to dealer marketplace. Yes. Whatever it was, it was naked. And that means that what the dealers are seeing on the ground is demand being destroyed and a lack of financing. Yeah, I think lack of financing is the biggest one. I think that's, well, it's also inventory. I would say both of them. But like margins are holding strong. Margins are great. Arguably, they're even a little bit better, arguably.
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But the problem you're running to, it's sort of a, it's sort of a survivorship bias, though, because if I sold all the cars that I did not sell because the margin was not there because their financing was so trash and not competitive, then my margins would be lower. So it's, it's not really accurate because you have that survivorship bias where you're just selling a lot less cars. And then what you are selling is holding its margin. And again, I want to be very clear. Like this is not new car.
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Like new car, especially the Japanese companies are just killing it. It's like 2021 still. They are flooded with business. They have no supply. And everyone in their mother wants to drive, you know, whatever, like a Toyota. It's when it's starting, we're seeing most of it on the luxury side on the more expensive vehicles. Also on the vehicles that just don't have the type of demand that these, you know, bread and butter Japanese do. So like Jeeps, they have crazy incentives that are continuing rising and stuff like that. But again, it's just very important that, you know, my goal is I want to share like very transparent view of the market. And it is, I call it like a tale of two markets right now because if you go to Toyota dealership, those salespeople are super happy. They're still getting their markups. Now, try going to a Jeep dealership. It's a very different story.
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No, absolutely. In fact, Cox runs a chart, you know, a few weeks that shows incentive spending by OEM and cheap. The tallest bar. In fact, I told a friend of mine, her. I walked her through negotiating for years Jeep Grand Cherokee had like 13,000 miles on it, something barely anything. She got it for a song lump. I'm like, just tell the girl you're going to go by go by new. There's lots of incentives. Scared the tar to the guy in the used car lot. And I'm like, and take the financing and then pay it off tomorrow. Oh, Danielle, you're bad. I have never, I have never financed a car in my life.
不,绝对不是。实际上,科克斯有一张图表,你知道,几周显示了原始设备制造商和廉价设备的激励支出情况。那个最高的柱形图。实际上,我告诉一个朋友,她。我给她讲解了如何协商购买一辆拥有大约13,000英里里程的Jeep Grand Cherokee,几乎没有什么问题。她以很低的价格买到了它。我说,告诉那个销售员你打算买一辆新车。有很多激励措施。那个家伙在二手车场吓坏了。我说,然后使用分期付款,明天就把它还清。哦,Danielle,你太坏了。我这辈子从来没有贷款买车。
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Tell me, tell me you mentioned earlier about, you mentioned about a fat hikes. So, you know, some things that we're seeing more specifically, again, on the use side. Definitely on the new side right now. But we saw that the used only chain of Echo Park stores just closed, like, I think, seven, eight, nine locations. Earlier in this year, we saw American car center and another company called US auto sales shut down. Those reasons were for, you know, one of them failed to securitize their auto loans. Another one failed to maintain their inventory floor plan. All roads sort of seemed like it leads back to interest rates. In a way, again, I could also make the argument for the use car stores.
告诉我,告诉我你之前提到过的,你提到过一个大幅度的增长。所以,你知道,有些事情我们特别是在使用方面看到的。目前确实在新方面也有不少情况。但我们看到了Echo Park的二手车连锁店刚刚关闭了,好像是七八九个分店。今年初,我们看到了美国车中心和另外一家叫做US auto sales的公司也关闭了。其原因是,其中一家未能确保其汽车贷款的证券化,另一家则未能维持其库存平面图。从某种意义上说,所有的问题似乎都与利率有关。而且,我也可以为二手车店提出相同的观点。
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And I think it's going to be a very close with all that said, what do you think is next for interest rates? I know you mentioned like the term higher for longer. Well, what is what do you think is going to happen next? Where are we heading from here?
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So I think barring Armageddon with the next jobs report, we definitely see another quarter percentage point hike at the end of July. And then I think it really becomes data dependent. To see if we see a subsequent one in September, but the key is the Fed intends to continue shrinking its balance sheet. And that really speaks to, you can't do one. You can't shrink your balance sheet. You can't run this quantitative tightening policy. While you're lowering interest rates. Doesn't work. Why? You can't tighten and ease at the same time. They're inherently conflicting policy levers. Either you're in a tightening stance or you're in a loosening stance. You can't be both at the same time. Then you're like, you've got multiple personality disorder. Got it. So pretty much you're saying like you're not like you're not really. chattling towards like a targeted outcome. Like if you were to do that, it doesn't even make sense. You're saying no, it makes no sense at all.
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But the minutes from the June meeting reiterated today, we have every intention to plow forward with plans to reduce our balance sheet, which means that's that Fed code speak for. We're going to get them up to five and a quarter, maybe five and a half percent on the overnight rate and they're going to stay there for a long time. Yeah, I think we. I just think we can all debate, you know, what's going to happen for a long time to future. That happens. They have to back off. Yeah. Pretty simple.
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But again, I never in a million years thought that the stock market wouldn't perceive the fastest run rate of chapter 11 filing since 2009 is not being a bad thing. But yet, as long as the stock market is up, as far as J. Cowell's concerned, he's got license to continue tightening policy or at least keep policy tight.
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I think the most important question that I've been waiting to ask you this entire time is what would you need to see to change your mind. Right. What data, what indicators would you need to see to come back on this podcast and give me the entire just do a complete 180. So I think I would need to see a spike in the unemployment rate, which given it how corrupted the official data is right now. I'll be surprised to see that. But I would need to see a spike in the unemployment rate or I would need to see some stop gap measure, not come through for these student loan repayments. If that really happens come October, watch out.
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No Christmas. No stop gap measure, no spike in unemployment rate. If we were to see the markets fall out of the credit markets fall out of it. Something really bad happening. Like what, what caused Powell to pivot. The last time he did was the no junk bond were sold for a record 41 days in a row. That caused a pivot. That is a complete freezing up of your financial system. That means credit. When was that? When was that? It began November the 14th, 2018 on Halloween, 2018, October the 31st, 2018, the death of general electric was downgraded by Moody. And all hell broke loose. Why? No, we're how we have the most over leveraged corporate sector on the planet. And it looked like that was the aha moment. If you're if you're going to stop issuing debt in a system that requires constant issuance of debt, it's called a part of these things. I mean, we should. I'd say whatever I like. I'm the boss. But if you ever stop issuing the debt, replace the debt, game over. And Powell had to pivot.
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Now, that hadn't happened yet. We haven't woken up to see, you know, the largest to hide high yield exchange traded fund in the world is no longer taking redemption. And it's not just a thing like that. So far, the term that I use with the most regularity is it's a controlled demolition, which is reflected in the stock market. And as long as that's the case, as long as nothing really breaks, he can he can maintain higher for longer. So you think as a dealer, you think I should expect my floor plan line to be a little bit higher for a little bit longer at the minimum.
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So I think that the as prudent as you possibly could be. Okay. And your inventory for the love of God, move your inventory, always always prudent advice there. I'm not going to argue with that one. Expect rates to be a bit higher.
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Friend who watched some Tahoe used Tahoe sit on a lot for 120 days. Yeah, it's. Look, I think people have gotten more efficient. If you just look at the auto just, you know, inventory analytic software. You know, days on days in stock has come down. I don't know. I don't have exact numbers. And also, you know, turn time is. You need to have. Yeah, you got to move the cars. Yeah. And then as a consumer, I guess, you know, be similar type of advice.
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You know, you're basically be on what you're saying is don't expect rates to come down on financing that vehicle. But potentially you're thinking that we're going to see more incentives prices will come down. Yeah, I think so. I mean, look at what the home builders are doing. You know, you can, you can get into a mortgage for three and a half, one half percent with a new home builder. They're buying down the rate. A lot. Wow. I should have known them. And that's, you know, but they're keeping prices high. Yeah. So if you start to see more zero percent financing, but prices not come down much. You know, God help those buyers.
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What's the best signal you're seeing right now? If we can, you know, call it best. And what's the worst signal? I kind of want to juxtapose this before we wrap up here. So what are you seeing that you're saying? Okay, this is a glimpse of hope versus what concerns me the most.
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So the glimpse of hope is it really a glimpse of hope as much as it is. There is a huge IRS run program called the employee retention credit. Get refunds.com innovation tags. It's pumping about June set a record 28.8 billion in one month. To put that in perspective, your food stamp program is about 10 billion. So it's pumping in the month of June, which was a record of pumped about three times as much money into the economy as the entire federal food stamp program. Going into the hands of well to do. It's supporting, especially international travel. So your planes to Paris and London are full. Because a lot of this money is being spent. It's a massive, far-fysical stimulus. Oh, interesting. Levitating the US economy. I mean, this has been going on since July of 2020. Humping billions and billions and people always talking, you know, there's this hand up between good spending and services spending. Well, I can tell you why. It's Uncle Sam's still writing some pretty big checks and the IRS doesn't know what to do because now people who don't qualify. Everybody's filing claims. People are forming businesses to file claims. Yeah, I get I get these emails every single day. It's just spam at this point. It's crazy. But what do you get $20 billion in the month of June? There's a lot of money. So that is really helping to support consumption in America in a big way. But at the end of the month, you're not receiving end of this. Your life's getting a lot more painful. And that's why you're reading more and more about the middle getting squeezed. Because they're the ones getting hurt the most because their car insurance is. I mean, just we just change car insurance companies because we put a night, our 19 year old boy on it. Oh, excuse me, our car insurance company dropped us. Wait, just add to go get new car insurance because we had an 19 year old or a policy. Those in the middle are really getting squeezed as long as they keep the slush fund up and running. It's going to help prop up consumption. Is it real? No.
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And then talk to me about the second part, which is like, what's what's the biggest concern or most concerning indicator that you're following. So in September of 2022. So last September, there was not a single state out of. The 50 plus Washington DC. Every state in the nation had declining continuing with jobless claims. You're a very that's what you want to see. We have fewer people collecting an appointment. Great. Wonderful. Now we have five states that are still down year over year. 91% of the US population. However, as of June lives in a state with rising continuing jobless claims year over year. And the biggest states are the highest up on that list like California and Texas. Most popular state. So. 91% of the US population is living in a state with rising continuing jobless claimants. That's, and it's been going on for three months in a row. And I'm just going to tell you, one month does not make a trend. Three months does. So we've got that going for us.
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I like to do a side. This has been fun. I can't say that the content is too much fun because it's never, you know, it's, we definitely want things to go well, but.
我喜欢做这个工作。这是很有趣的。我不能说内容太有趣,因为你知道,我们肯定希望事情顺利进行,但是。
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It seems like you really, you really think we're about to take some medicine. That's for sure. You're, you're giving the future survivors the right guidance and that's what's important. Right. Lift tell your, look, you're much younger than I am, but, but the whole idea is live to tell. Horn your business through scenario analyses, plural, and make sure you come out on the other end and watch your competitors go away and know that, you know, when we come into recovery, you're going to be that much stronger. I might have to call you for some card negotiating advice.
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Yeah, it's pretty simple for me. Take the financing, get the price lower, add up the next day. There you go. All the alpha you need. David, this has been awesome. Where can, where can the audience learn more about you and QI intelligence? So come to dmartino booth.substack.com or follow me on Twitter at dmartino booth or Google QI research. Many ways to find me, but love to have you read my research. We get deep down in the weeds. We look at all kinds of data sets that a lot of people don't. Every single day we publish 13 times a week and I'd love to have, love to have some of your listeners come on and join me.
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I love it. Danielle, thanks so much for coming on. This has been great. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.