- 3 days ago
Gary Meyers is joined by Don Day, Meteorologist with Day Weather and The Meyers Report, and economist Robert Genetski. Topics include weather, the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, fuel prices, interest rates, inflation, financial markets, and the Question of the Week.
DISCLAIMER: All opinions expressed by the presenters in this video are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of The Meyers Report, its directors or officers.
DISCLAIMER: All opinions expressed by the presenters in this video are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of The Meyers Report, its directors or officers.
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00:07Good morning. Welcome to the Myers Report Friday Fast 15. It is Friday, October 16th,
00:132026. The world-famous Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta is over and Don is back as a new day
00:22Don's. Don's going to tell us what he did down there besides look outside and say it
00:28isn't raining and the wind is okay. Also with us is Dr. Robert Genetsky, our chief economist,
00:35who's going to give us a follow-up in the markets. In the meantime, welcome back, Don. First, the
00:41mundane stuff. When will the Western United States stop getting hurricanes and what should we expect
00:49in terms of what's coming out of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of America? Well, right now,
00:56the Western United States is going to catch a little bit of a break from all the hurricane
01:00and tropical storm activity. We do have Hurricane Trudy that is going to be crawling up the far
01:05southwest coast of Mexico here in the days ahead. But so far, it looks like that's not going to
01:10affect the U.S., but we'll need to watch it for those folks down there. Of course, we finally got
01:15a hurricane to come inland into the U.S. coming out of the Gulf of America. And right now, it's
01:21gone back
01:21to being very quiet again. But we still have time for the Atlantic to produce something, but certainly
01:28the days are running out. We will have a pretty good storm off the east coast developing over the
01:33next week or so, but it's not going to likely become a hurricane. Okay, now for the fun part.
01:39Don, how was the balloon fiesta, and how big was it? Well, this was a very big one this year.
01:47They had record crowds, and one reason why you can get record crowds is if you have good weather,
01:54and fortunately, we did for most of the event. We have 14 separate events that happen over nine days,
02:02and those go from what we call mass ascension, where over 500, almost 600 balloons lift off.
02:10Then we have what's called night glows to where the balloons are set up. They don't fly,
02:14but they set up in the dark, and so they will put on a glow, so to speak, that's quite
02:21fun for
02:22spectators to see. And then we have evening concerts and evening firework activities that
02:27span the whole nine days. So we're very busy. And what you're seeing here in the photo is what we
02:33call
02:33the pilot's briefing tower. I start my day at 2.30 a.m., and we need to be all prepared
02:41to go to meet
02:42with safety and planning and operations, and then the pilots by 6 a.m.
02:46Is that you up in the tower?
02:48No, but you'll get a picture here of me in the tower in the moment. So there's the pilots
02:53waiting to hear the weather briefing, and then that's me talking to a duck.
02:59Why a duck?
03:01Somebody took this photo, which is great, because that balloon is part of what's called
03:07dawn patrol, where they actually take off in the dark and help us see what the winds are doing.
03:13But I give about a 10-minute briefing to the pilots every morning, and that's probably the
03:19fourth or fifth briefing I make by 6 a.m. in terms of what the weather's going to do.
03:25And then, of course, if all goes well, here's a good picture of mass ascension.
03:31Your eyes are drawn to all the balloons, but if you look at the ground, you can see the mass
03:36of
03:37humanity. During these mass ascensions, we will have sometimes as many as 100,000 people or more
03:46come and are at the site. So, in fact, we had some mornings where the parking lots got full,
03:54and they had to turn people away. So it's a massive event, and it's all outdoors. And so that's why
04:00the weather's so critical. That's what I call the dawn patrol, the first set of balloons that takes
04:05off in the morning. And we actually had a very unique situation. We had somebody fly what's called
04:11a cluster balloon. That's 94 weather balloons that are colored that this gentleman named Jonathan
04:20Trapp took off from, and he flew for just about nine hours and actually landed in Arizona. And he took
04:28his girlfriend with him and proposed. So it actually became an engagement flight. I happen to know this
04:36pilot. Wait a minute, Don. Don, is that out of the movie up?
04:40Yes. In fact, this pilot there had a contract with Disney, and he helped promote the movie
04:49actually across the country. I joked with him that I said, well, any girl's going to say yes if you
04:55have her at 12,000 feet and the balloon is under your power. So, yeah, it was fun. And then
05:03the evenings
05:04are done with a big, really huge firework display. We also have parachutists come in, so there's a lot
05:11of moving parts. Well, Don, besides reporting that the weather was okay, and then once everything's
05:18fine, you're heading to the beer tent, just how complicated is your job? Well, in Albuquerque,
05:23it's the margarita tent. No, it's very long days. And, you know, the weather is difficult as the
05:31weather gets it to be. The thing is, there's a lot of assets, people assets. You know, I talked about
05:38100,000 people on the field. We also have almost 600 balloons, and we have pilots, you know, that
05:46many pilots with differing sets of skill sets, some that are very experienced, some that are not.
05:52And then we've got these balloons landing all over Albuquerque, and we've got to worry about power
05:57lines, light poles, fences, landowner relations. We have a very large Indian reservation to the north
06:06of the field that we try not to send too many balloons to. So there's a lot of different factors
06:12that come into very big decisions, like do we fly or not? Or if we do fly, do we only
06:20send up some and
06:21not others? And then we have all those people on the field, and we have thousands and thousands and
06:28thousands of gallons of propane in those balloons. You know, so we have to take into account all of
06:34these things to make sure that everybody is safe as possible. Yeah, it would seem with that many people
06:39on the ground, if a balloon comes down, it could come down on top of people. Right, exactly. So we
06:46coordinate the launches, and sometimes the landings very, very carefully.
06:53Okay, that was really interesting. Now to a fuel report. Oil prices rose to $97 this week, but are still
07:05lower than the $112 we saw. During the past two weeks, diesel prices have fallen by 35 cents a gallon,
07:13and
07:14regular urban gasoline prices are down by 8 cents a gallon, and rural regular gasoline is down by
07:2115 cents a gallon. As well, diesel stocks are falling slightly, though they're generally stable, and
07:31gasoline stocks are rising at this juncture. Diesel inventories are largely stable, as said. In terms of
07:42interest rates, the interest rates, mortgage rates are down, or actually flat, from the last week, and
07:52the 15-year fixed is at 6.71, and the 10-year, right now, the 10-year treasury is at
08:015.08.
08:04Dr. Bob, this week, the Iran war threatened to get hotter, and oil prices, as we saw, rose.
08:14The inflation numbers are out, and they came out higher. How bad were they?
08:20They were pretty bad. Now, most people, including us, expected them to be bad for September, because
08:27the oil prices had spiked to an average of $97 from $90. That's huge. And so we expected bad news.
08:36The
08:36news was even worse than we and most others expected. The increase in prices for the total CPI was like
08:452%, which is a 26% annual rate for one month. And the real surprise was core inflation. If you
08:55take away
08:56the fuel and food components, that was up, instead of being up 2%, or at an annual rate, which is
09:06what
09:06most people expected, it was up 4% at an annual rate. So the numbers were just absolutely horrendous.
09:14Okay. What was the impact on interest rates?
09:18Fascinatingly, I mean, you would think, with all that bad news, interest rates at the long end would
09:23go up. They went down about a quarter of a percentage point, which is simply inconsistent.
09:31But sometimes markets behave in a very strange way. My hope is that the decline is characteristic
09:40of the fact that we're pretty much through with the real spike in interest rates. We've got
09:45most of the bad news on inflation behind us. And so the markets are kind of anticipating that things are
09:52not going to be as bad as they expected.
09:55How did the stock markets take all of this?
09:58Oh, interestingly enough, the stock market in the course of the past week has been pretty stable,
10:05which given all the bad news, it's kind of nice, the stable market. The very little change,
10:12the S&P was down maybe half a percent over the course of the past week. And that kind of
10:18offset
10:19a half a percent increase the week before. The unique thing about the stock market right now,
10:25it's at a very precarious position. Now, my short-term stock market model says that it's the,
10:33and that's based on momentum, suggests that the momentum is still positive, which means that the
10:39odds are that in the next couple of weeks, we are more likely to see stock prices go up than
10:44to go
10:45down. However, the market is at such a precarious position because it is right at or slightly above
10:53or slightly below, depending upon which one you look at, key support areas. Now, what does that mean?
11:00Well, it means that there are certain areas where when the market goes down below these support areas,
11:05the odds rise very rapidly that we'll have additional downturn. Or if we get significantly above
11:13these support areas, things are more likely to move in a positive direction. The bottom line is we are
11:20right at those support areas. So we could go in either direction very quickly based on a shift in
11:27momentum. Of course, we always hope that the changes are going to be in the positive direction,
11:32but that's something that no one knows.
11:34Bob, which way do you think it's going to go?
11:41I believe that we're still going to get some good news on the wars, on peace in the Ukraine.
11:48There are lots of interesting developments there. And if we do move in those positive directions,
11:53we'll see that shift, the next shift being up, not down.
11:57Hey, Don, when you were out there with all the other folks, were any of them talking about,
12:03did you get any sense of their feeling of optimism or pessimism about the economy? Or are they just in
12:09a party mood?
12:11More like a party mood. I mean, the thing is, is by the number of people there, the crowds that
12:17were coming,
12:18didn't appear that anybody was deterred for either spending money on gas or spending money, period.
12:25So maybe that's not the best marker of mood, but it is called fiesta.
12:32Well, I should say, just to add, the indications on the economy continue to be positive.
12:39Just again, adding to what Don just said, if you look below the surface, if you look at the fundamentals,
12:46there are some very positive things occurring. The inflation and the high interest rates are
12:51negatives at the moment, but I believe that there are more short-term negatives than long-term
12:56serious problems.
12:58Okay, guys, our question for the week. Ilhan Omar's house was raided. What are the odds that she will
13:06be indicted, expelled from Congress, deported, or nothing happens at all except she gets a cleaning bill?
13:13Don?
13:15Well, I think where there's smoke, there's fire here. And I don't think they would have
13:20aggressively pursued this unless they think they have the goods. So, you know, maybe in an indictment.
13:27I think it's going to be a while before they get an indictment. And if they get an indictment,
13:32it's going to be a challenge. The indictment would probably come from Minnesota, where things are
13:38pretty comfortable in terms of the Democrats and in terms of the Somalian community. So I think it's
13:47going to be very difficult for them to get. I don't have access to what the evidence is. So if
13:53the
13:53evidence is strong enough, we'll get it. But I'm not sure it's strong enough.
13:58I also am unsure. I'm hoping that there may be a resignation from Congress, which would be, I think,
14:06a good thing. The odds makers, however, have it that 96.5% that nothing happens to her at all.
14:15Well, there's that. Okay, folks, on that, I want to wish you a happy week. Have a good weekend.
14:22Stay safe and God bless America. Have a great week, guys.
14:44Have a great week.