Reflections on 2024: Economic Trends and Industry Impact | Dec. 16, 2024

Opening Host: 00:00:31

Welcome to Optimal Insights, your weekly source.

Jeff McCarty: 00:00:34

For real time rate data and expert.

Opening Host: 00:00:36

Capital markets commentary brought to you by Optimal Blue. Let's dive in and help you maximize your profitability this week.

Jim Glennon: 00:00:43

Welcome to Optimal Insights, your weekly source for timely market analysis and expert commentary from Optimal Blue. I'm your host, Jim Glennon, Vice president of hedging and Trading client services at Optimal Blue.

Our clients and industry partners have long relied on Optimal Blue for trusted insights and commentary and and these podcasts are an evolution of our commitment to keeping the industry informed. Let's dive into today's episode. Hey, welcome gentlemen. Jeff, Alex. Pretty good week going on here already on this Monday.

We got a really fun episode today, everybody.

happenings and some themes of: 2024

Alex will get into some of the economic numbers, but just looking at some of the data that we curate here at optimal blue, the OBMMI stubbornly flat 6.7. So conventional 30 year rates are being locked in, right? About 6.7 on average, really for the past couple of months.

% over December of: 2023

Jeff McCarty: 00:02:06

You know, rates did tick up at the end of last week more than anybody would hope, or perhaps limping into the end of the year just a little bit.

I think we were all hoping for a downward trend and raising like you said, it's just been pretty steady the past few weeks post election, if not a little bit of a tick up, unfortunately.

Jim Glennon: 00:02:26

Right. Yeah.

We'll talk a little bit about how we've, you know, we've had forecasts all year for where rates would be and we're pretty far above where we were forecasting back in, in January. But we are getting into the end of the year, so don't expect a lot of change in rates, especially with liquidity being pretty lean.

That's something to be aware right now as we go into the end of the year. A lot of, a lot of vacation trade, a lot of holiday trades. So beware, just slow volume in the capital markets.

Of course, we have our summit coming up. Can't forget about that. Please register if you have not. Our summit is our annual conference which will be in San Diego February 3rd through the 5th.

So we're making a push to get registrations finalized before the end of the year here.

So please hit up our website, summit.optimalblue.com and remember, there's a couple really high profile speakers that'll be joining us in addition to a ton of folks from our team and a ton of folks from the industry. But we still have Tony Hawk coming. Tony Hawk is going to be one of our main speakers. So really excited about that.

Jeff McCarty: 00:03:33

Yes, everybody's very excited about Tony Hawk. Come see him live and in person.

Jim Glennon: 00:03:38

That's right, Jeff.

Jeff McCarty: 00:03:42

Perhaps me, first and.

Jim Glennon: 00:03:43

Foremost, first among equals.

Alex Hebner: 00:03:46

Yeah.

Jeff McCarty: 00:03:48

But we're putting together, finalizing some of our other panels. A lot of investors, broker dealers coming in, some top originators, top capital markets experts.

So really shaping up to put together some really good content over a couple of days in San Diego.

Jim Glennon: 00:04:05

Yeah. Okay, let's check in with Alex, see what's going on in economic news.

Jeff McCarty: 00:04:09

All right, Alex, so we've got big day on Wednesday. Last Fed announcement of the year, right?

Alex Hebner: 00:04:14

Yeah. Yep. No, it's time to close out the year from a FOMC perspective. They'll be meeting on Wednesday the 18th. It's kind of just kind of business as usual.

It feels like we're heavily expecting a rate cut here, 25 basis points. Futures markets are showing north of 99% chance for a rate cut here. Kind of, I think this is, I mean it is baked in at this point.

But you know, I'm already looking towards next year and kind of like where the start of next year is going to take us. In the past three months or so we've had consistent rate cuts at each meeting and they need to see these rate cuts feed into the economy.

Same, same stories when we were seeing the opposite and we were seeing the rate hikes, it takes six to eight months to start seeing the effects of those rate cuts in the economy.

And so right now, and these are all subject to change, data dependent but right now we're kind of seeing a positive for January, potential for an additional 25 basis point cut in March. And then it looks to be that they'll, they'll pause there for quite some time.

Right now again these, these further out FOMC meeting future projections are harder to, to really gleam any, any meaningful takeaways from.

, if not into the fall of, of: 2025

Jim Glennon: 00:05:33

Yeah, I mean, that pausing there early in the year still leaves policy pretty restrictive, doesn't it? To where I guess we haven't really seen close to a 2% inflation number. So we're still fighting that number.

That's even stubbornly above two and a half, I suppose. But still, if we pause here or after the December cut, policy is still pretty restrictive, just in historical terms. Yeah.

Alex Hebner: 00:05:58

Historically speaking, especially recent history, it is still in a pretty restrictive space. That would leave us at 400 to 425 basis points with a March cut. And yeah, most people would consider anything north of 4 pretty restrictive.

But, but like you said, inflation is still rearing its head as we'll get into later.

You know,: 2024

CPI came in at 2.7% year over year, and the core number was even higher at 3.3%. So that core number tries to exclude very volatile factors like fuel costs and such. But core remained north of 3%. On the most recent release.

As Jeff was mentioning at the top of the podcast here, we did see some rate increases last week, which came in the latter half of the week when we were seeing those inflation readings. Yeah, we saw, I think it was eight or nine tick sell offs each, each Wednesday and Thursday.

And so each of those, I mean, yeah, we could see eighth to a quarter point increase in rates with that kind of a sell off, price wise.

Jim Glennon: 00:07:07

Sure.

Jeff McCarty: 00:07:07

And this is definitely one of those announcements where, you know, essentially baked in a drop in rates. Right.

But then depending on what the language is in the announcement, we could even see, you know, short term, an increase in Treasuries and mortgage rates, depending on, you know, what language is. Right. So you gotta be watching the language of the announcement super closely.

So that's where it can kind of get confusing with borrowers and, you know, as you're trying to accelerate, delivering a message to the market. Right. You know, they see, hey, the Fed dropped rates today. Why did mortgage rates go up?

Alex Hebner: 00:07:40

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think it bears repeating, of course, that when the Fed cuts rates, it doesn't necessarily mean mortgage rates will be coming down.

Any, any cut that we see on Wednesday is Already baked in. The rates that you're seeing in the market are reflective of the market adjusting for, you know, two to three months down the line from now.

Jeff McCarty: 00:07:59

Yeah.

Jim Glennon: 00:07:59

So watch the language. As Jeff said, I think the market is still hungry for some sort of conviction in some sort of clear path that the Fed is on right now.

And it still just seems to be very vague, very data dependent, very, you know, certainly they're focused on unemployment now a little bit, not 100% on, on inflation. But there's still not a clear rate path.

Alex Hebner: 00:08:19

Yeah, definitely. I think you see individual comments here and there.

We just had a funny one posted on our, on our all teams here by one of our team managers about how Waller was commenting that he feels like they keep getting inflation in a quote unquote chokehold and then it, it slips away from them.

And so that seems to be kind of the emerging narrative that inflation temporarily receded mid year this year, but it hasn't, it isn't permanently been lowered yet.

Jeff McCarty: 00:08:43

Good. All right, so anything else besides the Fed announcement Wednesday that you want to keep an eye on, even maybe through the end of the year?

Alex Hebner: 00:08:50

Through the end of the year, I would say this is probably the last really big one. We should get some GDP numbers into the month here to kind of round out the year.

And then this Friday there's a PCE inflation metric again, you know, all we've been talking about during this segment here has been inflation. So keep an eye on that on Friday.

But really the big one here is going to be the Fed announcement, the rate cut potential and then, and then any, any comments Pal makes. The last FOMC meeting was, was just post election.

I'd be interested to see if he gets any more politically charged lines of questioning during his press conference. I know he, he, he, you know, stood firm and says, you know, he wouldn't bow to any sort of political pressures.

But I'm sure journalists will, will want to press him on that again.

Jim Glennon: 00:09:28

Indeed. Looking forward to it. Okay, great discussion. Those are a few things to watch as we wrap up the year.

otal and memorable moments of: 2024

o the end of the year. I mean: 2024

But we did have some major events arise and we had some, some common themes that, that we could talk about. A big one, I think, in our industry.

And one of the big themes that we talk about a lot on our podcasts and our webinars, just generally around the desk is, is we've been wrong all year long, but we've also been right in a lot of areas, which is kind of a weird thing to say, but we'll talk through a few of those, few of the items we've been wrong and right about this year. And I think you'll. You'll kind of agree.

Jeff McCarty: 00:10:27

Yeah, you know, we were looking back at some webinars from January. You know, I think the same talking points are there today. I was thinking about a webinar you and I did, and maybe mid summer. We're talking about.

We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. We're just a little bit in this holding pattern, wait and see more. We've been in that really the entire year.

Maybe a little bit of clarity going into the year. Certainly the Fed has started cutting rates. But it is interesting that we've been in this wait and see mold for almost a year.

Alex Hebner: 00:10:56

Definitely. Yeah. I don't think a lot of people expected this year to be, as you called it, as quote, unquote, boring as it may have seemed.

I think at the beginning of the year, people were seeing this year as having a lot of potential for being a big inflection point, ratcheting down in rates back down to maybe not Covid levels, but happier times and lower rate environment, see some refi boom.

But yeah, as Jeff was saying, I think as soon as we started kicking the can on rate cuts, I think there were people in February who were expecting a rate cut in February. And we kicked the can all the way down to September before we saw any sort of change.

So I think that's just very conducive to, as we call it, a pretty slow year.

Jim Glennon: 00:11:31

for a recession to happen in: 2024

So that's led to some of the hesitation to drop rates further.

Part of the reason that you're not seeing longer term rates drop at all and probably part of the reason that we're seeing inflation remain above 2.5%.

Alex Hebner: 00:11:54

Yeah, I mean, inflation, say what you will about it, is an indicator of a strong economy.

And yeah, across the board, maybe there's Been some war signs here at the tail end of the year, but for the most part the economy's been very strong this year. Obviously the stock market isn't a gauge for the health of the entire economy, but I mean, the s and P500 is up, I don't even know, 30% this year.

Jim Glennon: 00:12:15

When setting records.

Alex Hebner: 00:12:17

Yeah, keep setting records.

Jeff McCarty: 00:12:19

Yeah. Just looking at those bullet points from our January webinar a year ago. Economy remains solid, core inflation still warm.

Labor market showing mixed signals. You could absolutely use those right now as well, right?

Alex Hebner: 00:12:32

Absolutely.

Jim Glennon: 00:12:33

Yeah. It could recycle those slides. And the yield curve is stubbornly flat. Right.

We were all hoping for a bit of a healthier looking yield curve this year, but we're still right about close to zero between the two and the ten year. Just stubborn.

Jeff McCarty: 00:12:47

Yeah. That's maybe one of the most fascinating points out there. Right.

We just cannot get, again, it points to not clarity in the kind of the long term outlook, or maybe that is the clear vision of what the long term outlook is. But it's interesting to see how flat it remains.

Jim Glennon: 00:13:04

Yeah, it's moving from negative to positive. You normally see that happen faster and it potentially should have foretold a recession by now and hasn't. It's just been a really slow moving metric.

Jeff McCarty: 00:13:16

The other thing I got to read off that slide is what to watch that we were mentioning in January. Developments around growth outlook and geopolitical risks.

Jim Glennon: 00:13:26

Yeah.

Jeff McCarty: 00:13:27

Again, recycle those as well.

Jim Glennon: 00:13:30

Oh boy. We've had some of those. Yeah. A lot of geopolitical changes over the last year.

Jeff McCarty: 00:13:36

Right. Yeah, huge.

You know, again, we probably haven't talked enough about those because we've been so focused on domestic growth, particularly for our industry. But so many things happening in the Middle East, Russia, Ukraine developments, China developments. Be watching it.

hat next week as we look into: 2025

Jim Glennon: 00:13:57

Yeah. I mean, but weirdly, geopolitical events overseas used to have a bigger impact on US Markets and they really haven't seemed to do that this year.

So one of the reasons we haven't talked a lot about it. Right.

Jeff McCarty: 00:14:07

We haven't had kind of that risk off play that we usually see with some of these escalations in some of those places.

Jim Glennon: 00:14:14

Right. I mean, just in terms of projections, we looked back at that too.

We said in January of this year, where did we see rates, where did we see volume and where did the industry see it? We came in obviously higher in rate and lower in volume.

As you would, as you would imagine, in beginning of this year, most projections wanted an interest rate of right around 6%. And as you know, we're about 6.7 right now. And projections for rates next year have also risen significantly.

year mortgage rate in: 2025

and then the year after that,: 2026

There's a lot of talk around the new administration and what that might do for things like inflation and rates.

trillion in: 2025

So continuing to see just numbers come in stubbornly high on the rate side than what projections are, but lower on the volume side as far as like what we thought the Fed was going to do this year. Alex, how do we come in there? Like if you look at the dot plot, beginning of the year versus now, pretty close.

Alex Hebner: 00:16:09

Yeah.

Jim Glennon: 00:16:09

Again, didn't get exactly what we wanted.

Alex Hebner: 00:16:11

But didn't get exactly what we wanted. Like I said, I think people were expecting the Fed to start cutting earlier than they did.

I mean the, you know, leaves were falling off the trees before they were started cutting rates.

he dot plot from the December: 2023

You could compare but I, I expect the December one to look similar. But I think there's, there's two trends you can see, you can see a consolidation of the dot plot.

So your, your most dovish and your most hawkish members have, have come in and then I would say on average you can see that that rates are expected to be a little bit higher. I think those are the two main takeaways. So just, just a consolidation.

So, so it means, I would say that there's greater agreement on the FOMC Council of where we are and what is needed from, from their policy guidance. And you can tell that, that, that that agreement means they're in agreement that the rates are going to remain higher as well.

Jim Glennon: 00:17:08

Right. All right, let's shift gears a little bit. What are some other things that happened that maybe indirectly affect our, our industry? Right.

There was the NAR lawsuit, National association of Realtors lawsuit that was settled in March, I believe of this year. Already starting to see some effects come from that.

I'm sure a lot of you who are originators are seeing, you know, you deal with Realtors every day and you're seeing some changes there and how Realtors service clients. And I believe the most recent stat showed that Realtor compensation was down pretty materially around 30 basis points since the settlement.

Jeff McCarty: 00:17:46

Yeah, I think everybody knew that was going to be somewhat disruptive. I think there's no explicit path, people are trying to forge their own path on how that gets negotiated out obviously on a deal by deal basis.

But obviously it is starting to have effect and that does help some of our affordability. Right. Decrease in fees leads to incentive to move, incentive to buy. So helps with supply, helps with our affordability issues.

So you know, any bit helps there at least from, you know, our origination side of the industry. Obviously Realtors probably are not very happy about it in my mind. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Jim Glennon: 00:18:25

Right.

Jeff McCarty: 00:18:26

Another one that trying to help the affordability crisis, helping low income borrowers. We had in March we had the first time homebuyer, $2,500 Credit for HomeReady and home possible loans for very low income borrowers.

So you know, $2,500 is significant certainly for, for those very low income borrowers that was just announced I think in the last week or two that that's going to be extended for another year, which anytime that type of thing happens, it basically means it's become essentially permanent. So you know, make sure, you know, you're taking advantage of that program where possible.

There was a lot of discussion around that when it came out, exactly how we were going to implement that. But you know, it's essentially become close to codified, if you will, where that's, you know, permanent staple.

Alex Hebner: 00:19:16

Definitely. Yeah.

And when you're talking about programs designed to, to help level the playing field, a Little bit and improve borrower affordability, especially on the, the lower end. You know, we, we saw Fannie and Freddie mission scores rolled out in the early summer, May and June.

Just, just two federal programs designed to, to help incentivize lending in areas down, down to the zip code, which I think is just shows how, how technology continues to improve and how we're able with a fine needle where we want to improve lending.

Jeff McCarty: 00:19:44

Yeah, I think that one's new enough. We're still trying to figure out how to get those incentives down to the borrower.

that continues to play out in: 2025

But that certainly some good incentives there if we can figure out how to push that all the way through.

Jim Glennon: 00:20:09

a little bit, if you recall,: 4210

You know, we didn't see much blowback from that. I think we talked about it so much over the last decade that we all pretty much have accepted it at this point.

know, worth celebrating that: 4210

It's always fun to watch especially I mean the US once again, fairly dominant, I would say, safe to say across the board.

Alex Hebner: 00:20:57

Yeah, USA came out number one in the medal count.

Jim Glennon: 00:21:02

That's right.

Jeff McCarty: 00:21:03

But it's always fun. I, you know, I feel like we still have recordings on our. Am I one of the few people that still use dvr?

Jim Glennon: 00:21:12

Yeah, I think the rest of us are streaming it, but that's cool.

Jeff McCarty: 00:21:16

Still, I'm still getting through the swimming events so we'll see if I can get to track and field here sometime soon. Always fun. Olympics are fun.

Jim Glennon: 00:21:26

Yeah. Feels like it was a long time ago. It was really just August, right?

Alex Hebner: 00:21:29

Yeah. All these points. I could have sworn they all happened June or later. But seeing things back from March, time flies.

Jim Glennon: 00:21:35

Yeah, it's been a wild year. Even the election seems like it was a year ago. And it's worth noting that the election did happen. It Happened about a month and a half ago.

You know, leading up to the election.

I think a lot of the anxiety and a lot of the news was around how the election could have been a bit messier and the aftermath could have taken a lot longer than it did. But it ended up somehow being very smooth, which is not necessarily rate friendly, but it was relatively smooth and something that will.

ld affect rates as we go into: 2025

Jeff McCarty: 00:22:11

One thing that did live up to the hype for me, at least in Texas, was the solar eclipse in April. That was super cool. That was, you know, there's so much talk about that. I was like, this is going to be a letdown.

But that was one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. That was really fun.

Jim Glennon: 00:22:28

Talk about captivating the whole country. This whole part of the world. You know, from Texas up to Buffalo, there was just a total solar eclipse.

It was pretty wild to see and to experience it even. Even here in Denver, you got to see a little bit of it with the glasses or the.

Alex Hebner: 00:22:44

It was. It felt like a very strong cloud cover came over all of a sudden.

Jim Glennon: 00:22:48

It's creepy.

Jeff McCarty: 00:22:50

It was amazing. The stillness of it all was really cool. Never forget that. Yeah, a few major disasters that we should mention domestically.

Obviously the Baltimore Bridge collapse, the Francis Scott Key Bridge. That was this year. Again, that feels like forever ago. Certainly a tragedy and obviously affected supply issues. We were all very concerned about that.

I think ultimately it was a little bit smoother than maybe people thought that would be coming out of that. A big one to talk about.

Alex Hebner: 00:23:19

Yeah. Initial projections on that one were pretty dire, but it seems as if other ports, I guess, were able to probably bring on that capacity.

Jim Glennon: 00:23:26

And then of course, we had the hurricanes Helene and Milton. This late summer, early fall also caused major damage disruption to certain regions, especially inland, which was interesting. This wasn't.

You know, these. Obviously by definition, these hurricanes come in on the coast, but they wreaked havoc pretty deep into Florida and other.

Other states along the Southeast.

Alex Hebner: 00:23:46

Yeah. No, the Carolinas were especially bad at both.

Jim Glennon: 00:23:50

Yeah. And some of the lowest risk areas, at least by previous measurements, which is also interesting.

Alex Hebner: 00:23:56

Yeah. Yeah. These storms definitely more than just a storm surge along the coast. And then. And then some just because of some. Some pressure patterns.

You saw them. Them actually increase in. In power even once they were. Had made landfall, which was something we don't often if ever see.

Jim Glennon: 00:24:11

Creepy. Yeah. Just the, the change in weather patterns the last decade or two have been a little bit creepy.

Jeff McCarty: 00:24:18

I think that'll be a theme going forward as well. Again as it affects our industry. Insurance, home values, all these different types of things. Things to watch going forward.

Jim Glennon: 00:24:29

Yeah, for sure.

Just migration, you know, with all the types of weather events like fires and hurricanes and floods, just where are people going to be living, you know, after the, some of the huge migration that happened during the pandemic, now some of it seems to be reversing itself. So there's definitely a story there that relates to mortgages and housing.

Alex Hebner: 00:24:47

Yeah, I think we could definitely see some accelerations of those trends we saw during COVID of the coast becoming less attractive.

Jeff McCarty: 00:24:54

So that's a big theme. A couple other big themes from the year. AI ubiquity, I think, you know, you can't get anywhere that's going to be on all the end of the year lists.

I'm sure AI is going to be at the top of the list for themes no different in our industry. We've certainly embraced it at optimal. Blue. We're doing some really cool stuff with it.

But you know, obviously there's, there's obviously concerns as well as a cause for job market concern. My take is always don't be afraid of it, run into it on these types of things. But there are some concerns out there.

It'll certainly change the dynamics of the job market.

Jim Glennon: 00:25:30

Yeah, I mean we're all still trying to figure out how to use AI in practical ways, whether it's in our normal, you know, in our day to day lives or at work or for our businesses.

And as you said, we're doing a lot of things at OB to use AI and it's, you know, it's still becoming ubiquitous and becoming adopted across the world. And as we go into next year, it is possible that we'll start thinking about and talking about some of the possible negatives in the long term.

Like, like jobs. Like, I mean you can get real deep into, you know, Terminator 2 type of discussions if you have your, your tinfoil hat on.

But yeah, generally just exciting things happening there.

But it wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't be a year in review if we didn't mention AI and its upcoming ubiquity and Nvidia and just everything that, that was big news around AI this year.

Alex Hebner: 00:26:17

Yeah, I definitely expect in: 2025

I don't think we've had time, especially from a government perspective to have the ethics conversations yet or who owns what when it comes to AI with these image generation models, these video generation models.

And I think we could see some, some like you're saying, maybe some backlash on, especially on the, the labor front as jobs could be automated away with it.

But I think we're just going have to have a larger conversation about the ramifications and I think that could lead to some legal developments as well.

Jim Glennon: 00:26:49

Sure. Yeah. Some folks have compared it to like the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, right.

Where machines started taking over jobs that people typically did with their hands.

But we got through that and there's, there's ways that you can, you could build strategies and social plans around how you navigate that, that huge shift in the labor force.

Jeff McCarty: 00:27:06

Yeah. There was a great comment from, I think they were from hud, perhaps fhfa at the Housing Wire AI conference in July.

They mentioned just because there's this cool technology exists doesn't mean it's an excuse to go around regulations. For instance, fair lending regulations in this case. So that's, that's certainly something to keep in mind.

We've got this cool technology, but it's, we still have to fit it into the framework of what exists today.

Jim Glennon: 00:27:37

Right. Oh, what else? It probably wouldn't be a recap without talking about other themes that wrapped around the mortgage industry.

And Recapture was a huge story this year.

Even though we didn't get rates where we wanted them, we did see rates vacillate at least, you know, late summer, early fall, where the recapture story started to heat up again.

There were certainly some servicers this year who are paying pretty heavy prices to accumulate servicing, whether it was in bulk or loan by loan from, you know, from our clients and anyone selling whole loans with the thought that, you know, they were putting value on these loans with the thought that they would be refinancing them as rates drop over the next couple of years.

that story will look like in: 2025

Jeff McCarty: 00:28:36

Yeah. Certainly affected the pricing on the secondary market.

Like you said, we had some really standout investors that really have put a premium on what they think Recapture is worth and it has affected how loans are sold in the secondary market and how loans are ultimately priced to the borrower because of that. I wonder if they're getting their value out of it. Yet I guess remains to be seen.

Jim Glennon: 00:29:00

I think there were certainly some assumptions have changed this year, as everybody knows. All right, let's change gears a little bit. Obviously a lot has happened at Optimal Blue over the last year.

We had a lot of fun events here, a lot of informative industry events that we, we held. We have our road shows, which we'll continue to do in the future. Appreciate everybody who, who has attended those.

We had our Capital Markets forums this year as well, which is hosted by our group, the Hedging and Trading Team, at Optimal Blue. And that, that will be, you know, the summit is going to substitute as our early year forum next year.

So if you're, if you have come to our forums in the past, or even if you haven't and you'd like to attend one the summit, we will have all the same similar sessions at the summit as we would have at a forum, plus obviously the networking events and just a ton more people than we typically have at a forum. So another great event to join here in February. And we have new podcasts of all the.

Jeff McCarty: 00:29:56

All those is education is important to us.

Sharing information, using all this expertise that we have that our clients have, and aggregating that so that it's easy to learn from each other, easier to become a little bit more educated on the market, how to use our systems, et cetera.

nk we did a good job of it in: 2024

Jim Glennon: 00:30:23

Yeah, well said.

All right, before we wrap this thing up, this is a retrospective on the year, so it would feel weird not to maybe talk about some top music and top movies of the year again.

It seems like these came out years ago, but this year we saw if you have kids or you just like, you know, Pixar style movies that we had Inside out two that came out this year. If you're into something a little more superheroish. Deadpool and Wolverine came out this year finally. And we also saw Dune 2. I think that might.

That probably tops the charts on almost any website right now. I've not seen either one.

Jeff McCarty: 00:30:55

Did you see Inside out too?

Jim Glennon: 00:30:57

I did, yes, in the theater. Matter of fact, which one was better.

Jeff McCarty: 00:31:01

The first or the second?

Jim Glennon: 00:31:02

Don't make me choose. I don't know.

Alex Hebner: 00:31:06

I watched Dune 2 on the airplane and I got to say I think I would have enjoyed it more in theaters. I think that the screen being this big took away a little bit from it. But still, I love the concept and the world that they've created there.

Jeff McCarty: 00:31:21

Yeah, that one was probably better. I saw it on my imax. That was probably a better viewing experience than on an airplane.

Alex Hebner: 00:31:28

Yeah, that. That and some Boeing 737 engines just off to my left side.

Jim Glennon: 00:31:31

Yeah. Yeah. A lot like Mad Max, too. That was another big one that came out this year. I know. The Mad Max franchise in general is one of Jeff's favorites.

Jeff McCarty: 00:31:40

Yeah, those are cool ones.

Jim Glennon: 00:31:43

Another one you need to see on a big screen rather than, you know, on your phone.

Jeff McCarty: 00:31:46

I saw that one on IMAX as well.

Alex Hebner: 00:31:47

Yeah.

Jim Glennon: 00:31:49

As far as music, the top Spotify artist of the year, you can probably all guess who that would be. That was Taylor Swift, if you hadn't guessed.

And then someone sent me a text the other day, and I don't know if this was real or not, but it made me chuckle a little bit. So I thought it was worth mentioning that Kirk Van Houten's Can I Borrow a feeling?

Hit 1 billion listens on Spotify, which I think is just a monumental achievement for Kirk and the Van Houten family.

Jeff McCarty: 00:32:19

I had to ask who this was. Yeah, you're going to have to explain this one.

Jim Glennon: 00:32:24

If you're not familiar, Kirk Van Houten is Milhouse Van Houten's father on the Simpsons. And look up his album on Spotify. When you get a chance, just give it a listen.

Jeff McCarty: 00:32:34

Apparently a lot of people have, but I'm not one of those.

Jim Glennon: 00:32:36

One billion can't be wrong.

Jeff McCarty: 00:32:38

Also of note, Beyonce came out with a new album. Don't forget about Beyonce. I know there's a.

And of course, the Taylor Swift and Beyonce tours that propped up our economy for the first half of the year.

Alex Hebner: 00:32:50

How much has the ERAS Tour created in world GDP at this point?

Jeff McCarty: 00:32:53

The ERAS Tour and Nvidia are propping up the entire world economy.

Jim Glennon: 00:32:58

talk about what we expect in: 2025

And obviously, after what we've seen this year, anything can happen. Hopefully, Nvidia will keep the world propped up, and Beyonce and Taylor Swift will do their part as well.

And we'll talk about what we expect for rates, the industry, and the economy.

Alex Hebner: 00:33:26

Yeah, I hope we can do our part too.

Jim Glennon: 00:33:28

right, great discussion about: 2024

update, but also a preview of: 2025

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