Orbiting the Economy
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #241
Orbiting the Economy
Welcome to another out-of-this-world episode of Our 2 Cents! Today, Steve and Gabriel explore the latest headlines, key market trends, and what the 2026 economic outlook could mean for investors. Listen in using the link below.
- Blast Off!:
- A 322-foot-tall rocket is rolling into position as NASA gears up for its next big launch into orbit.
- Inflation Grocery List:
- How has inflation impacted everyday grocery prices? Take a look at what a recent price check at Walmart reveals.
- Precious Metals Shining Bright:
- Gold and silver are stealing the spotlight with record highs and major investor interest.
- Economic Optimism?:
- Steve is wearing his economist hat and breaking down what 2026 might have in store.
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Podcast Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Our 2 Cents with the team from SGL Financial, Building Wealth for Life. Steve Lewit is the President of SGL Financial, and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest in financial news, trends, strategies, and more.
Gabriel Lewit: Welcome everybody to Our 2 Cents.
Steve Lewit: This is going to be a great podcast.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, my gosh.
Steve Lewit: I can tell you right now.
Gabriel Lewit: Steve, I’m laughing because Producer Gabby usually does the countdown for the show, right? Three, two, one, let’s go. She starts saying three and Steve just starts saying two, one.
Steve Lewit: And let’s go.
Gabriel Lewit: Because he totally overtook her, stole her thunder.
Steve Lewit: I’m sorry, Gabby. I know I ruined your day.
Gabriel Lewit: It really threw us all off.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: You can’t do that.
Steve Lewit: Well, I’m an ambitious high achiever.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Well, we’ve got a great show for you. Of course, you’ve got Gabriel Lewit here. You’ve got Steven Lewit. You’ve got Producer, Kabby, Gabby. Katie and Gabby in the background, just blend you two together.
Steve Lewit: It’s going to be a great show.
Gabriel Lewit: Kabby or Gatie?
Steve Lewit: One of the two. We’ll figure it out.
Gabriel Lewit: Anyways, we hope you’re doing well. We are. Yes, we’re ready to jump into our show here for you today. What a day.
Steve Lewit: What we’re ready to jump into is 13 degree minus weather.
Gabriel Lewit: We do have that coming up tomorrow.
Steve Lewit: With a wind chill of minus 40 and a high of minus two.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s like a beautiful winter day.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Producer Katie said it’s warmer, it’s colder than Antarctica.
Gabriel Lewit: Antarctica?
Steve Lewit: You know Antarctica?
Gabriel Lewit: Antarctica.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Antarctica. I’m pronunciating.
Gabriel Lewit: We can do it.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Yeah. Supposed to be very cold. So bundle up. Put your wool boots on.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, be really careful.
Gabriel Lewit: Wear a hat. Don’t stay outside. Don’t lick any telephone poles or whatever the metal.
Steve Lewit: Oh, my God.
Gabriel Lewit: Don’t do crazy things. Okay. Be safe.
Steve Lewit: All right. What do you got for us this morning?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we’ve got a small variety of little items here just of interest for you because we try to be connoisseurs of interesting things in the world for your review and pleasure. We’ve got NASA rolled out in an 11 million pound moon rocket in preparation for astronauts launch.
Steve Lewit: Now to me, see, folks, this is something I love. If I could get on a spaceship on a rocket tomorrow to go to the moon, I would go.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: It’s like the one thing in life that you say, “Gee, I really wish I could do that.” I really wish I could do that. And this is just extraordinarily amazing that this thing weighs 11 million pounds.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it is 322 feet tall. Okay. Now I happened to tune in. I did turn on YouTube when I saw this article because when I saw the article, it was live. They were physically in the process of moving this rocket from its building area right down this mini railroad track to the launch area because they’re going to do warmup tests. Okay. Because the actual launch is…
Steve Lewit: February 5th. Around February 5th, 6th, 7th, something like that.
Gabriel Lewit: So, they were doing tests of this. And so they’ve got to get this 320. Do you know how tall that is?
Steve Lewit: How many stories is that?
Gabriel Lewit: 32 stories, right? Isn’t there 10 feet per story?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, that’s about right. It’s 32 stories high.
Gabriel Lewit: You know how tall that is?
Steve Lewit: It’s like a building.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: And they’re going to lift this thing off the ground.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it’s on a moving platform.
Steve Lewit: No, it’s on a moving at one mile an hour is what it goes. But imagine that this thing has to take off.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, that’s why they use rocket fuel and all sorts of stuff there. But I was watching it and first of all, it was incredibly boring watching it on TV because it moves at one mile an hour.
Steve Lewit: One mile an hour.
Gabriel Lewit: So you literally can’t even see it moving. They were just doing interviews of the astronauts and stuff. But it reminded me, now they’re not actually going to the moon, okay? They’re going to go or attempt to go around the moon.
Steve Lewit: They’re going to go around earth first and then go around the moon, but they’re not landing on the moon I don’t think.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So it’s Artemis two. I don’t know if you can still, where you can see the launches. I know it’s going to launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, but it’s on February… Could lift off somewhere between February 6th and 11th, but there are people that actually take trips down to these things to watch the rockets take off, which is on my bucket list to do at some point.
Steve Lewit: Maybe I’ll do that. I might do that.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you’d get away from the cold too.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: But anyways, it just reminded me how crazy it is, right? How much money, the billions of dollars that go into building this thing, the complexity of it and the risks that are involved. Look, Musk’s last few rockets, some of the bigger star ship ones he’s trying to test keep blowing up. And it’s like, how do they make sure this thing has such a high probability of success? And even then it’s not guaranteed, but pretty cool. I think it’s exciting because at some point we’ve got to figure out how to get out of our world and into other worlds. I’m a big kind of sci-fi space nerd, right? So I watch a lot of shows that have stuff like this, but this is the first start, right? We’ve got to figure out how to get a rocket off the ground.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: I think they’re trying to get people back on the moon, which seems crazy that we could do it so many decades ago and still haven’t been able to consistently do it since.
Steve Lewit: Well, they’ve got no reason to go there, I don’t think, at this point.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah, there’s budget constraints and stuff like that, but that should all be moot because this is…
Steve Lewit: Cool. So what fascinates me, Gabriel, and this has to do with other parts of human living is the capacity of the human being to do great stuff, just to do a… I mean, in medicine, in financial planning, the world that we live in, I mean, there are certain people on earth that really have this capacity to develop and create things that are really good for humanity.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, I agree. I think you got to do something cool like this. And if this one’s successful, they’re planning an Artemis three flight in 2027, which would land astronauts near the moon South Pole.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I put in my application, but I haven’t heard back yet.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, I don’t think they want you.
Steve Lewit: No, I don’t think so. Sorry, no.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Don’t you have to be some PhD and some super astrophysicist and physically fit to the extreme?
Steve Lewit: To the extreme.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s like it’s a crazy rigorous thing to become an astronaut.
Steve Lewit: And guess what? You can’t be afraid of heights.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. That’s probably not going to serve you well. Yeah.
Okay. Well, anyways, yeah, just thought that was interesting. And if you’re interested, there you go. Go tune in and watch the rocket launch off into space. Okay. All right. Well, moving on, we wanted to talk a little bit about inflation, right? Our favorite friend and story from 2025 is still here. We haven’t forgotten about you inflation. In fact, there’s some new data from NPR that actually tracked at their… They picked a Walmart store, if I’m reading the article right, and they tracked 113 or some odd items, and they physically went back into the same store over a period of time to reassess the prices to get sort of a true boots on the ground assessment of how inflation is impacting real people, right? Which I think is a cool research project because you always hear all these reports, right? Inflation, CPI is up some odd percent, right? But the reality is every single product…
Steve Lewit: Doesn’t go up.
Gabriel Lewit: Doesn’t go up. Some are flats. Many do go up, right? And so I thought this was a really cool take on assessing inflation. We want to share some of that data here with you guys.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And then there’s something called shrinkflation, which is even more interesting, which we’ll get to.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, so what does this study show? Well, I’ll give you kind of the summary version. Stuff is going up. It is getting more expensive on the whole.
Steve Lewit: Well, I think everybody knows that prices are going up.
Gabriel Lewit: Now, they interviewed somebody here, Greg. Okay. Greg Reyes, so he’s famous now on this article. Lives in Savannah, and he and his wife keep a close eye on their budget. She’s retired, he’s disabled, and he says that their grocery list is always the same and that let’s see. A couple of years ago, they used to pay $40 for their typical grocery bill, whatever they bought. They’re buying the same exact things, and they’re now paying $60.
Steve Lewit: By the way, that’s a 50% increase in cost.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Now you might say that sounds kind of crazy because the data just says the cost of living in the US rose 2.7%, right? So how could that be possible? Well, we’re going to give you some examples from the grocery basket for you to compare to your own experiences, and you’ll see how that could occur depending on what you’re buying. Okay. So of course a big part of this could be inflation and obviously, that’s just a general thing that happens over time, but also tariffs we’ve talked about can accelerate inflation.
Steve Lewit: Supply chain issues.
Gabriel Lewit: Yep. But it also could be things like weather and drought. There’s so many variables that do go into this.
Steve Lewit: Like coffee, for example, is up. I believe it said 50%. A cup of coffee 10 years ago was a buck. Now it’s $4. And part of that is weather factors, climate change.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. Well, so I’m not going to go through all 114 items with you.
Steve Lewit: Please don’t.
Gabriel Lewit: I thought you would not prefer that?
Steve Lewit: No. No, nobody would prefer that.
Gabriel Lewit: But let’s give you some of the highlights. Okay. So of those 114 items, there’s about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, seven, 14, about 20 of them that actually have gone down in price.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So that’s good news, right? Two in particular, you have one dozen eggs is down 29.7% year over year.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Just a year ago, eggs were like through the roof and now all of a sudden the price is down because there’s more supply.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So that was one of the things that was kind of going through the world last year was just kind of complaining about egg prices. It was all in the TikTok sphere, which I’m not on the internet sphere there.
Steve Lewit: That’s called making bacon out of egg prices.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. The other one that’s down is Kleenex tissues, down 11.2%.
Steve Lewit: Very happy about that.
Gabriel Lewit: You couldn’t ask me why, but they are down. Bounty paper towels are flat. So there’s another list here of about 20, 30-ish items that are flat.
Steve Lewit: I’m happy about that.
Gabriel Lewit: Year over year.
Steve Lewit: I use Bounty.
Gabriel Lewit: Bounty.
Steve Lewit: That’s good.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s the quicker picker upper.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Right?
Steve Lewit: Yep. I’m a Bounty man.
Gabriel Lewit: You know, once you go with Bounty paper towels…
Steve Lewit: You can never use another kind.
Gabriel Lewit: You can’t use the store generic brand.
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: It doesn’t cut it.
Steve Lewit: I tried Whole Food’s towels. I’ve tried the store towels. We should do an advertise. I’ll write them and see if we can get on air.
Gabriel Lewit: Have fun with that. Okay. Next up is obviously the rest of the items. So about 70 or so of these items are up, of course, year over year. We’ve got Coca-Cola is the highlight of the ones that are only up zero to 10%. So a Coca-Cola two liter bottle is up 7.6%.
Steve Lewit: That’s amazing.
Gabriel Lewit: Head and Shoulder shampoo is the example given from the category up 10 to 20%. So that is up 17.5%.
Steve Lewit: These are items probably not made in the United States.
Gabriel Lewit: I couldn’t tell you. Walmart Super Colossal Shrimp is up 31.1%.
Steve Lewit: Darn.
Gabriel Lewit: So if you’re a Super Colossal Shrimp fan, you’re paying a bit more, which is also probably why Red Lobster got rid of their endless shrimp deals a couple of years ago. A little bit pricey there. Okay. And then you’ve got in the, let’s see, the 40% plus category, a couple items, Pen+Gear pocket paper folder is up 46%.
Steve Lewit: Whatever that is.
Gabriel Lewit: Whatever that is, yes. Okay. So yeah, bottom line here is a lot of things are going up. Some things are staying flat.
Steve Lewit: I was researching, I was on WGN the other night talking about Japan and all that kind of stuff and price increases. So I was researching this. New York, major metropolitan cities. I don’t think this has happened in Chicago, but in New York City, overall food, everything is up like 25% and that has been very tough on many New Yorkers.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah, I would imagine. I mean, it’s already very expensive there. A couple other notable things. If you buy Swai fish filets from Vietnam, those are up 34%.
Steve Lewit: Well, why?
Gabriel Lewit: Because of tariffs.
Steve Lewit: All of these that you’re going to read are imported.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Schwinn’s infant bike helmet is up 18% because it got moved to Vietnam. It used to be made in China. Farberware’s plastic measuring spoons made in China up 19%.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil up 13%. Okay. They’re blaming tariffs and supply pressure, as well as rising energy costs, as a side note. And then of course you’ve got coffee, as you mentioned, beef and coffee is up. K-cups through, what’s that brand? The Keurig. Yeah, the Keurig cups up 34%.
Steve Lewit: Ouch.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And a pound of ground beef up 30%. Okay. So yeah, lots changing. And then of course, as you mentioned, the devilish one, shrinkflation because it’s so sneaky.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So what they do, folks, is instead of raising the prices, they reduce the amount of goods in the bag or in the box. And most people don’t even realize that. I certainly didn’t. I was looking at a… I was buying Tide cleaner for washing in the washing machine. And I used to have these big bottles, and now I can only get the smaller ones at the same price.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah, shrinkflation, to me, it’s kind of the dirty way of not raising prices, right? But you’re actually increasing your cost per ounce, right? So in other words, if you look at this Tide here, right, the total price, $12.97, maybe it stays the same. You think it hasn’t gone up in price, but…
Steve Lewit: There it is.
Gabriel Lewit: In ’22 and ’23, 92 ounces for the same price was 14 cents an ounce. 2025, your same bottle is now 80 ounces instead of 92 ounces, right? So you lost 12 ounces for the same price. That’s inflation.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, and it upset…
Gabriel Lewit: It’s called shrinkflation because your volume is shrinking.
Steve Lewit: My whole rhythm of washing and keeping it on time and buying, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Sometimes you have a box here and like, “I swear this thing is smaller.” You go back and look, and it’s definitely smaller.
Steve Lewit: Where’s all the food?
Gabriel Lewit: So that’s kind of the frustrating one.
Steve Lewit: Where’s the cereal?
Gabriel Lewit: Yep. And I don’t know if there’s data that says one’s better than the other, but I don’t like the companies that do shrinkflation, so I tend to boycott them because I think it’s a bad practice.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. It’s like they’re trying to hide something from you.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly.
Steve Lewit: Say price is higher, and this is the way life is. And so I read another article, Gabriel, that said, I can’t think of who it was, somebody famous, but it said that 94% of the tariff increases have been absorbed by the consumer.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I mean, you’re the economist, but that is what happens with tariffs.
Steve Lewit: Well, yeah, the companies don’t eat them. They pass them on. Early on, I was talking to a very high level executive at the aluminum company, what is it?
Gabriel Lewit: Reynolds Wrap?
Steve Lewit: Reynolds Wrap, sorry. At Reynolds Aluminum, right. And they have the market on aluminum. And what this person told me is that absolutely every cost will be passed on to the consumer without a doubt.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s how it happens. By the way, if you’ve ever seen a how it’s made for Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil, it’s pretty cool.
Steve Lewit: Is it?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. All that stuff always is interesting to me. Well, anyways, that’s the story on inflation. So if you’ve kind of been curious, where’s that at? Well, that’s where it’s at. Still going up, some things still higher than others. On average though, it’s up about 2.7% year over year. Still a story and a theme for this year, right? So we’re going to talk about that.
Steve Lewit: Definitely. Especially if interest rates come down, the president is lobbying, wants interest rates down at 2%, that’s going to create more buying power. And what does more buying power often produce because there’s not enough supply, produces more demand. And when there’s more demand over supply, guess what goes up?
Gabriel Lewit: Prices, sir.
Steve Lewit: Yes, sir.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, indeed. Yeah. So there was your macro or microeconomics.
Steve Lewit: That’s macro, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Class for today brought to you by Professor Steve.
Steve Lewit: Dr. Steve.
Gabriel Lewit: And his infinite wisdom.
Steve Lewit: Dr. Steve to you.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m not calling you that.
So yeah, let’s talk a little bit about gold and silver is what I wanted to switch to here.
Steve Lewit: This is just amazing. How many calls do you get, Gabriel, every day?
Gabriel Lewit: I mean, not that many every day, no, but I’ve gotten…
Steve Lewit: During the month. Should I buy gold?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. It’s in the news. I think we talked about it briefly last year. I just wanted to retouch upon it because it keeps rising. It’s at 4,700 an ounce for gold and $90 an ounce for silver. Again, hitting historic highs. That question keeps coming up. “Hey, Gabe, should I buy gold? Hey, should I have gold?” Definitely pops up frequently right now because of how prominent this is in the news.
Steve Lewit: And it keeps going up.
Gabriel Lewit: And it keeps going up, right? And so I just want to reiterate our position here is not that you shouldn’t buy gold, but you should understand gold and silver before you buy them. Okay. And there’s a lot of data, and we’ve got more data here that just continues to justify. And just to reiterate, gold should be bought in one or two circumstances. Okay. One is if you’re going to hold it a very long time, like 20 plus years, because it is very much subject to big booms and busts cycles.
Steve Lewit: Well, there was a long period of time. I don’t know the dates from 19… I’m going to say 1990 to 2010 or something like that, where gold was flat.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, there is one date here in the 1970s, right? Both gold and silver climb dramatically peaking around 1980, and then they were down substantially for a long period of time, rose again from 2008 to 2011 during the global financial crisis. But if you had bought at that time, you probably didn’t make money until almost 2022 or 12 years later.
Steve Lewit: 12 years later, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Because it was in a big bust cycle, meaning the price dropped dramatically and didn’t get back to where it was at the previous high till almost 11, 12 years later.
Steve Lewit: Well, let’s face it. Look, when there’s turmoil in the economy and the markets and the dollar is under pressure, which means it’s losing value in relation to other dollars or other currency, people buy gold because they think that if everything went to hell in a hand basket, that’s another. Are you familiar with that one?
Gabriel Lewit: That’s just one reason. There’s also others, right? There’s other countries buying gold for their balance sheets for many of the same reasons. But here’s the thing, right? History has shown us time and time again, buying gold while it’s in the midst of its very high run-ups is generally a bad idea. And I hate to say it, you could buy it if you have a very short time horizon, you’re more of a risky gambler, you’re expecting to go up 10, 20, 30% and then sell out. That would be the only other reason to buy it. But the worst time to buy it if you’re going to hold it long-term is at an end of a very large run up cycle, right?
Steve Lewit: Exactly.
Gabriel Lewit: Could it go up a little more? Sure. But just be cautious with it, guys. I know FOMO is a thing. You don’t want to miss out. You want to be able to tell your friends you made 200% on gold, right? But the time to have done that would have been a long time ago, right? Getting in now is riskier than it definitely seems.
Steve Lewit: It’s riskier, yet this year looks like gold will continue to rise. So you could pick up some growth, but as you said, it’s not right or wrong. It’s just be careful and be aware of what you buy.
Gabriel Lewit: Here’s the thing. I mean, gold is like anything else.
Steve Lewit: And silver too.
Gabriel Lewit: Silver, yeah. Can you look at the year ahead and say gold is going to go up this year? How would you know that? Well, I mean, you could want it to. You could say there’s things out there that position it where it could, but you have really no way definitively of knowing that. That’s what makes something speculative, right? I mean, it’s the same extent with the stock market and the portfolio of 20 ETFs, but that’s far more diversified across thousands of different companies and there’s a good chance some of those might go up. But just keep that in mind, right? You can sit there and say,” I know gold’s going up. I know silver’s going up.” But we don’t know and that’s what makes it special.
Steve Lewit: We don’t know know.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So you’ve got to be cautious with it.
Steve Lewit: And all the indicators and the unrest in the world and the economy and the wars and inflation and tariffs and so it indicate that gold should go up, but that could settle down in a two-month period. And then the dollar strength sinks a little bit and when gold goes down, it goes down fast.
Gabriel Lewit: Exactly, yep. So we just wanted to just kind of confirm with y’all out there, if you’re thinking about gold and silver, doesn’t mean don’t buy it, just do so prudently. And if you have questions on that, obviously we are here to help you at 847-499-3330 or info@sglfinancial.com and we can answer your gold and silver questions, but we’ll probably give you an answer pretty similar to the one we just gave you. But we can answer other parts to that if it’s helpful for you. It’s funny, every time I give that answer to a client, I feel like they’re looking for me to give them something else.
Steve Lewit: I just had this conversation yesterday.
Gabriel Lewit: Like how could you not tell me, Gabe, that gold’s still going to go up and tell me I should buy it?
Steve Lewit: I had this conversation yesterday.
Gabriel Lewit: And I always feel bad because…
Steve Lewit: I have a client calls me, “Steve, I want to buy $100,000 worth of gold.” I said, “Okay, let’s talk about that.” And basically gave him the same speech that you just gave and he says, “So are you telling me not to buy it?” “No, I’m not telling you. I’m saying just be careful. You can afford it. Just buy it and be careful. Understand what you’re buying.”
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Anyways, anyways. Yeah, folks, our crystal ball doesn’t work any better than yours, so just keep that in mind. All right. Well, let’s talk a little bit to round out our show here. One of two topics I’ll let you decide, Steve, we could talk about the economy, which we’ve talked a little bit about already today with gold and inflation, or we could talk about financial awareness month for January, a little bit of a softer, less technical subject. Any preferences from your side? Well, sorry, financial wellness month, not awareness month, but yeah.
Steve Lewit: I’d like to talk about the economy because I think that’s what’s on people’s minds is the economic conditions in the country, what happens with unemployment, what happens with tariffs. Japan just had an unraveling of their bond market. How does that affect us? The EU wants to retaliate on tariffs to the US because of Greenland, and it goes on and on and on. So I think if we focus a little bit there, it might help folks plant their feet on the ground a little firmer and not worry as much.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we definitely can. Folks, in case you’re wondering, Steve picked all the topics for today’s show. So if you like the show, it’s kudos to him. If you don’t, it’s his fault.
Steve Lewit: Listen, folks, listen folks. What I do, so I suggest topics to Gabriel and Gabriel really takes the lead, and I love that he does. Usually, I get maybe one out of four and he wants to do… So I want you all, please. This is very important.
Gabriel Lewit: The whole show today is Steve’s Show.
Steve Lewit: I want you to write in and say how much you really, really, really enjoyed the show today.
Gabriel Lewit: And no surprise, it’s all about the economy from the economist.
Steve Lewit: Well, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Plus rockets.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. And rockets.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. All right. Well then lead us away, Sir Steve. Or no, Dr. Steve. Is that what I’m supposed to be calling you?
Steve Lewit: Professor Steve.
Gabriel Lewit: Professor Steve?
Steve Lewit: Professor Steve. Well, look, there’s a lot of things going on. What is very positive about the future year, this coming year? First of all, consumers will have more money. Interest rates are lower. What are you doing, Gabriel? Folks, I’m so sorry, but Gabriel is child-liking out.
Gabriel Lewit: No, I have a bad back and I’ve been leaning forward this whole episode and it’s starting to hurt me. So I’m now tilting the microphone backwards towards me as you take the lead. I’m just relaxing while you run point on this topic.
Steve Lewit: Is that what that silly smile is?
Gabriel Lewit: That’s how this is.
Steve Lewit: That’s what the silly smile is all about.
Gabriel Lewit: And my back’s feeling much better sitting backwards versus leaning forward.
Steve Lewit: Give that man two Tylenol. Yeah. Look, a lot of tax policy is aimed at putting more money in the consumer’s pockets and I think that’s going to happen. When consumers have more money, the economy moves forward. And the other side of that is prices might go up, which has a secondary effect, but we won’t get into that today. Businesses will also have more money, Gabriel.
The whole corporate deduction tax-wise on equipment is much better. The policies that this administration is putting in, releasing all the rules and regulations have all very positive for business and industrial development in our country, which is the whole idea of what the administration’s trying to do is make us more independent from the rest of the world, instead of depending on countries for what we need. His idea, and this is not a comment of positive or negative on my part, but it is his idea, is that we should become internally self-sufficient. So we’re going to see businesses have more access to lower cost funds. You’ve got to say something because either you’re sitting there in pain or you’re just not interested in this.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I think what people are trying to figure out is where is the economy headed this year, right? Is that what you’re kind of walking through from a high level?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, so the feeling in the industry and…
Gabriel Lewit: Well, because I had a client…
Steve Lewit: Myself as well is that the economy is actually in very good shape.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah, I had somebody on a review meeting last week say, “Gabe, how are things going in the economy?” And I said, “They’re actually going pretty good, all things considered.” And they’re like, “They are? What about inflation?” So you’re kind of on point here, which is of course you are, you’re a smart guy. We talked a little bit about inflation, but that’s not the whole story to the economy. And I actually gave an explanation about how there’s unlikely to be a recession this year, right? Recessions require multiple quarters of negative GDP, but GDP isn’t negative right at the moment. The economy seems to be doing okay. And what you’re doing, I think, is giving some context to that statement.
Steve Lewit: Meat on the bone.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Which might be very helpful.
Steve Lewit: Look, interest rates go down. People have more money to spend. Businesses have more money to develop and create, and they’re willing to make investments that they’re not willing to make when interest rates are high. This is all positive. Energy could be cheaper. There’s a lot going on with gold, but we’ll see greater supply of energy. That’s all predicted. So those prices should go down. And I think the biggest thing on this list is that there will be more certainty as we get into this year about tariffs. That’s all going to settle down. And it’s the uncertainty that causes unrest and fear when people don’t know what’s going to happen or it’s outside of the balance of their comfort zone. So that’s what happened with Greenland. It’s like, “Wow, this guy’s going to invade Greenland.” And the whole world reacted to that and the market took a tank for a day. Came back, right?
Why? Because the markets don’t like uncertainty, businesses don’t like uncertainty, and we consumers don’t like uncertainty. So uncertainty is what caused the Japanese to have a credit crunch on their bonds because the leader of that country was going to institute tax changes and so on that the country didn’t like. And so there are uncertainty there. So what we try to do and what I try to do when I look at all of these things and say, “Where can I plant my feet? What can I be certain about in this era of uncertainty?” And if you want to get to the heart of it, what I look for are changes in unemployment and productivity. Those are the keys, guys, is that if we see changes in unemployment and productivity, and then we see inflation ticking up higher, all of this whole scenario, this whole story goes away, then it’s a whole different story and the expectation of A pullback or a depression or a recession, whatever it might be, becomes much more possible.
Gabriel Lewit: How do you feel?
Steve Lewit: And Gabriel, thank you for your assistance.
Gabriel Lewit: I really wanted to let you run this one.
Steve Lewit: This isn’t running it. This is doing it.
Gabriel Lewit: You did great. You did so good.
Steve Lewit: Phew.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, folks, I thought you did great. I hope you did too. Well, yeah, I think you hit all the key points, right? Not to over… I think talking about this for a few minutes is good, right? General consensus on the year. Obviously, to monitor all these things, but at least at the moment, economy feels relatively stable. So these are themes to monitor for the year.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Despite all the headlines, guys, don’t listen to the headlines because you got to look at the data and not listen to the headlines because the headlines just kind of freak me out. I read a headline and say, “Oh my gosh, the world is falling.” It really isn’t. We’re not nearly at that point. Now, Gabriel, while I’m leading this show in a far better way than it has been led before, I should get the peace prize for this or the show prize or something like that.
Gabriel Lewit: You can manufacture your own if you want. No problem.
Steve Lewit: But here’s the deal. This is why financial planning is so important because what financial planning does is it gives you certainty about the future, gives you a path to follow and a road and something to hang your hat on. And a good plan will take care of a lot of this noise that is surrounding us.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. I don’t want to minimize Steve’s economic prowess here, but…
Steve Lewit: It was a terrific speech.
Gabriel Lewit: The way we build your plans are kind of, I wouldn’t say disregarding the economy at any given point in time, but they’re built with short-term components, medium-term components, long-term components so that you win, essentially in any market environment, we might get both short-term and long-term, which is why they work so well.
Steve Lewit: I think you’re jealous.
Gabriel Lewit: Of what?
Steve Lewit: I think you’re jealous. I think you sat back not because… I think you’re jealous.
Gabriel Lewit: Whatever you say, sir. Sir Steve. All right, folks. Well, that’s what we got for you today.
Steve Lewit: That’s it.
Gabriel Lewit: Little trip down rocket lane, inflation lane, and tariff economy lane.
Steve Lewit: Economy lane.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Okay. If you have questions on that, please give us a call. 847-499-3330. If we can help set up a time to talk to you about your finances, positioning you for better success this year ahead here in 2026, we’d love to do so. Set up a time anytime, and we’ll have that complimentary call together. You can also email us info@sglfinancial.com or go to our website, of course, sglfinancial.com and click contact us. Stay warm. Most importantly, stay well. If you’re a Bears fan, I’m sorry. I’m with you.
Steve Lewit: I’m with you too.
Gabriel Lewit: But there’s always next year.
Steve Lewit: There is.
Gabriel Lewit: So have a wonderful rest of your week and weekend. We’ll talk to you on the next show.
Steve Lewit: Be well, everybody. Stay warm.
Gabriel Lewit: Bye-bye.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at 847-499-3330, or visit us on the web at sglfinancial.com and be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.
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