u/Onomatopoeia-sizzle

Advanced Auto Parts announced earnings today. The CEO expressed his concern over higher fuel prices. I’m not sure if he is talking about customers spending money on gas to come to the store. Or is he talking about the price of gas to deliver parts to gas stations or other DIFM outlets. If gas costs $10 for a delivery instead of $5, the store may not deliver the product under a certain price that covers the gas. Domino’s and DoorDash are experiencing the same issue. Thoughts? Also, out of curiosity, is there a mad rush to buy motor oil?

Everyone complains about the rich get richer. That’s true. The most talented, smartest people on Wall Street are there to make more money. It’s a living if you play your cards right. But over the last several decades the group hasn’t benefited. With pension funds, retirement funds, benefits unions of various kinds. Those are the people who had their money managed by the best and brightest. But those funds have disappeared in terms of representation. The few have the most, and the most have the least. If wealth was more equally distributed more people in the bottom, half of a K would have savings and not debt and would therefore be able to participate in the stock market going higher because as it is now market can go up very high, but it’s not taking all Americans with it and that’s just not acceptable. That system won’t work.

Is there an online retailer that is the best source for various types of products? I’m trying to learn along the way. What is the best medical kit? What’s the best way to clean water?

I think the reason the economy isn’t going down the tubes faster is because of the banks are doing. I’ll use auto as an example but I’m sure it applies to real estate and other things as well. So let’s say you have a $15,000 loan on a car in the car is only worth 5000. If the owner defaults on that car, then the bank has to retrieve the car via a repossession sell the car at auction for $5000 and then collect $10,000 from the consumer for the defaulted loan. But the consumer doesn’t have the $10,000 in fact many consumers are carrying $10,000 of extra debt when they try to come in and trade in their car. So the banks have realized that they would have to realize a loss on their financial statements if the consumer who’s defaulting on the car goes into repossession.

So what does the bank do to avoid showing a loss on the $10,000 to consumer doesn’t have? They make a deal with a consumer to allow them to pay a lesser amount and keep them in the column of current as opposed to delinquent on their financials. So the consumer calls up and says I can’t pay my $400 a month payment the bank may say OK can you pay us 200 a month? And the consumer will go for that not realizing or caring that all that extra money on the back end it’s gonna be added to the loan and there will be more interest later, but let’s forget that part. So now the bank has an extend and pretend loan with a defaulting consumer with a loss that they have not realized. The banks have a relatively small number of defaults because of this, maybe 2%. But the bank is creating another problem for itself if the car was worth $5000 at auction when they were supposed to repossess it, it may only be worth 2500 when they actually do repossess it later so they’re deferring a depreciation hit. This is economic stress on the balance sheet of the banks as they float the consumer. But there’s no regulatory body there’s no FDIC saying hey you’re doing this wrong there’s no SEC saying what are you doing? You can’t do that.