BUSINESS NEWS: Consumer Sentiment Tanking & It's Time for a Plan - Ecomm Coming for more Retail - Your Next Investment Opportunity

0:00Warning, the following ZipRecruiter radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F-words. When you're hiring, we at ZipRecruiter know you can feel frustrated, forlorn even, like your efforts are futile. And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. F***! Fortunately, ZipRecruiter figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. With ZipRecruiter, you can forget your frustrations. because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word.

0:36In fact, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic. So whether you need to hire four, 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash zip to try ZipRecruiter for free. Don't forget that's ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. Finally, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash zip. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks?

1:20Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. It's our weekly business news here on March 28th, 2025. Joined as always by Chris Hansen down in Miami. What's up, Chris? What's up, Brian? How are you, bro? I'm good. I'm good. Here in Greenville, South Carolina, our studio is here on the Swamp Rabbit Trail at Social House. Chris is down in Miami. We're always here to bring you the news. We take the BS out of the news, Chris. And, you know, we're going to be taking the BS today. You know, like if you listen to watch our show, you're not watching to get on YouTube. Go check that out.

1:58YouTube or Spotify. You can watch, see how pretty Chris is. You never know what he's going to be wearing. Always fashionable. I'm trying to keep up with them. But in all seriousness, you know, we lean certain directions. I think we try to keep out the politics and more of the policies of what we believe in. And I think when things are going good, we talk about how it's good. And I think when things are not feeling good, I think we've been talking about that. In today's episode, we're going to dive deep into some studies and surveys that go on. Some are yearly, some are quarterly, some are monthly, but it's really about consumer sentiment and about how people feel.

2:36And, you know, I think the numbers probably won't surprise you. They didn't surprise Chris and I as we were looking at them. And we're going to dive deep into that because I think this administration has been guns a blazing in things that they're doing. And many of the policies, I think, we tend to agree with directionally. But at the same time, a word of caution has kind of been coming from us with things lately, how we've felt like, at least in our circles, things have felt. And the studies that have come out on the overall consumer sentiment, how people are feeling, what they're, you know, how for both currently and future thinking, because it's also built into that.

3:18Like, you know, what's your prognosis? Like, how do you feel about the future? And some of these numbers are staggering. And I think we're at a real pivotal point where the policymakers and the Central Reserve and a lot of people really need to take a look at this because people think with their head and they buy with their heart. And literally, people are not buying. You've got money staying on the shelf if there is some. You've got tightening of the wallet overall. You've got interest rates that have been stagnant and real estate market that's stagnant in a lot of markets. And I think we're coming to a head with where if we don't get ahead of getting consumers feeling positive about the changes, feeling positive about the economy, feeling positive about the potential of real estate opportunities, we're in for a tough road.

4:09And the sentiment of the country drives the economic behavior of the country. and we're going to dive deep into that today. But I think it's time that we really point out, hey, let's talk the good, the bad, and the other. We take the BS out of stuff. We're going to take it out today. And so we're going to dive deep into some of these stats. I think some might be surprising, some might not be, and talk about a few other business updates of the day here on the Business News of the Week. Chris, I know, I mean, let's just jump right into it, man. Let's get it. We've been kind of talking about this.

4:42Like, I think more our own sentiment, right? The last few episodes, like, eh, like we need some good news. Feels a little gloomy, a little flat, a little stagnant. And one of these, which is a survey of consumers from the University of Michigan, the preliminary results for March, looking at the index of consumer sentiment, how do they feel about the country? and it slid another 11 points. We're at 57.9 is the consumer sentiment, which is hovering right around, you know, half feel good, half feel bad. And that's a 27 % negative change year over year. In March of 2024, we were at 79.4. All right.

5:36It's a big drop, dude. It's a massive drop. And you can feel it. Yeah. And, you know, take who was president out of it. It's just whoever's in charge needs to be paying attention. We can't just heads down a blazing, you know, getting all these policies, you know, all these campaign promises done without recognizing what is the sentiment of. And this is this is covering Republicans, Democrats, everyone else. Everyone's just kind of meh about the overall economy. A lot of money is staying put in the wallet, in the savings account, and it's a lot tighter for everyone else because inflation is still an issue.

6:22It's not good, man. No, I feel like we're in a heavy contraction. And when I look at the numbers, right, down 22 % from December 24, when I read that, I'm like, that feels right. Or it feels like it's higher than 22%. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if it was the Christmas spirit that people were living in fantasy land, even though I do know a lot of people remember saying this year felt weird at Christmas because even then things were still tight. But I had a conversation with a friend of mine last week, two different friends, actually one launching a company, one, her company that she was working with the shutting down and it's kind of just seems to be that's the rhythm right now is people are contracting even entrepreneurs i know are contracting right i know we've pulled in on some things we do it's like everyone's kind of huddling up a little bit and obviously i always say this i feel like the new administration like the coach has made the calls on the play but there's no action on the field jay yeah like or maybe there's some action on the field but there's no points on the board and i mean we all understand you can't turn a ship around overnight but i think the administration could do a better job and maybe some messaging and just informing people of what's going on right it's great we know these executive orders and whatnot but i mean i think back like put someone i think back at kaylee mckinney like doing daily updates you know and the when she was press secretary like bring back that you know yeah people uh just some more up-to-date stuff and i would say because there's so much information overload false information misleading information all the above like get out there and tell us what's going on, right?

8:16Because like you said, I got another buddy just got out of the mortgage business, right? Can't deal with the pressure. I got a family commission only can't do it. Switch your W2 job. So, and I don't necessarily want to see people doing that either, right? I want to see people trying to build themselves and work for themselves, but same with the job market. Another friend went to college with her. She told me last week, I ran into her trying to put in resumes. No one's calling, getting no callbacks, smart girl, well-educated. So it's, we're in an odd time. Yeah. I mean, I like data and facts and right.

8:56You know, so we've, we've been talking sentiment, talking things like perceptive. And then, you know, you look at this data and, you know, back to the white house, like, I think there's got to be some balance here. Like we can want to do the tariff war and it can have positive long-term effects, but it's got to be balanced out with the realities of today and the sentiment today, the inflation of today. And again, I'm not going to sit here as an economic specialist to tell you whether that long-term benefit outweighs the short-term pressure that we're feeling. I'm not I don't know. That's my pay grade.

9:38But what? Yeah. But I will say but I will say you can't ignore how the majority of America is feeling. It's just it's just reality. And this was the biggest thing. I mean, look at this. It's despite their greater confidence following the election, Republicans posted a sizable 10 percent decline in their expectations index in March. so this isn't partisan this is everybody yeah well especially when you know the market takes a hit right i think of the retirement generation i don't it doesn't matter what political class you are if the market goes down and you look at that retirement account is down you're not going to feel good right especially if you're on um you know what do they call it like set payments right you're on a yeah and a lot of money fixed income right market goes down then you look at the grocery store right and that's still hasn't really eased up much pressure as far as inflation goes there um i have an example but i can't remember it now it'll come back i'm gonna go through a couple of these other things while current economic conditions were little changed expectations for the future deteriorated across multiple facets of the economy, including personal finances, labor markets, inflation, business conditions, and stock markets.

11:02Many consumers cited the high level of uncertainty around policy and other economic factors. Frequent gyrations in economic policies make it very difficult for consumers to plan. There it is right there. You know, like that's it. That's kind of what you were saying. Fixed income. You got this stuff going on. You want to plan. You can't plan when you don't know what the impact of these things are going to do. So there needs to be more discussion about short term, long term. And hey, I mean, and this ain't cutting it. There'll be a little pain in the short term. Define what that means, please. what a short term yeah an example today i did see and i was digging right because we do this show i saw that india basically was kind of lighting up on the tariff war and they had said they would drop a lot of the the tax on imported american goods so it looks like positive news there right yeah but we haven't seen that on any headlines right no one's talking about that and that's where hey if you're the administration be shouting these wins from the rooftop because you know that everyone else is hating on you for the tariffs and now when you've got everyone in america right even like you said the republicans with their expectations it that should be a signal like all right guys we need to do a little pr right like you're a marketing guy we do marketing it's like do some damage control let's get this sentiment up let's let's make people feel good game.

12:40Yeah. Cause I'm looking for the silver lining. Like, you know, like I'm like going, okay, I agree with like fundamentally with the policy, but I need to see a little silver lining short-term, long-term plan because it could come off like this article, you know, the summary says is a little bit of gyrating. Like, it's kind of pew, pew, pew. But, you know, we're shooting bullets. And it's like, it's great. But it's kind of like fire aim ready. And I feel like we've just been getting the Trump-Elon show since the election, the inauguration, and the Doge stuff. And it's like, that's all great. And that is definitely part of, you know, balancing the budget is definitely an important part and cutting waste.

13:31but even when i go on twitter i'm like all i see is elon arguing with people about government policy and yeah there's no game plan yeah like or it's not clear right and even if it's just hey we're we're doing the tariff war and we're we're holding firm we're going to hold our hand i mean you need to bring jobs back to the u.s we need higher pagingly yeah we need all of that But what's the balance of the long term and the short term? And a little bit of pain is not a balancing plan. Sell me on why I should keep tolerating this pain, right? Convince me. Soften it. Yeah. Or get the damn inflation down and get, you know, the interest rates cut.

14:18Almost like in the election speeches, right? When you're campaigning, we're bringing jobs. Keep reiterating that. Where are the jobs going? Where are we doing mining? Where's the plans? I know personally that there's plans for these things. And I know guys working in those industries that tell me, yeah, red tape's being cut, projects are being opened. But I don't think the general population knows that. And I think whether that's the mainstream media, obviously hates this administration as part of the problem. But I think the administration can play some offense a little better on just communications 101.

14:53Yeah, exactly. And because I'm not sitting here telling you that I know that the enactment and the things that are happening are going to cause necessary short term pain. But what I am telling you is in my wheelhouse, which is marketing and back to the buy with their heart. If you want this economy to keep moving, you need this consumer to have an uplifted spirit and a belief in what is happening. And you got to get them to buy into that and understand what's happening in the short term to assist them in sustaining either through that short pain or to get them off. I think we got a lot of money that's kind of getting a little shrunk back up like, oh, I'm putting, you know, getting tight, all this buying gold.

15:53because, you know, even in my own mind, I didn't think my crypto would double in a month, but I sure as hell didn't think it'd be down 33 % in three months. I bet you didn't, Chris. Oh, no. I don't think anyone planned for anything that's going on, even in the stock market, guys, with NVIDIA, for example, you know, that big debacle. It's like... Because tell me what's good right now, Chris. Stock market's down. Crypto's down. playing cards apparently. Yeah. That's why we're talking trading cards. That's the only thing is up. I'm sitting here realizing today I've been in wrong investments the whole time, you know?

16:35Yeah. And I don't, and I'm not sitting here blaming the administration for all of that. It's, it's really regardless of the administration, but, but it is what it is. Whatever caused it, caused it maybe it was already built in these next six months were going to happen no matter who's in office or what's happening but the sentiment sucks right now and so this administration job is to make it not suck you have to give us a narrative you know give us the roadmap yeah right it's like a run if you're going to running it sucks a lot less when you know i got one mile left as opposed to, hey, Chris, just keep running.

17:19I'll let you know when we're done. Right? Yeah, because my concern is less as an entrepreneur. I'm going to figure mine out. I don't need the administration to figure it out for me. But here's the thing. Anything I sell is going to be bought by consumers or businesses that are impacted by this sentiment. So I need the sentiment to be higher, not because any administration or policy is in my personal way as an entrepreneur, but I just know things move. The money moves, the sales moves, everything moves better when this is when this is where it needs to be. And that's the point of this rant, if you call it, is somebody's got to take accountability responsibility for driving this up.

18:11Because it's a slippery damn slope. Let's just say that. With where things could go, because people start tightening up on everything and your interest rates don't go down. Just be careful in the short term while you play the long term. I mean, that morale up, you know? Yeah, exactly. We kind of like the old team. You know, you've got a team of players out on the court. I mean, if you can't make them believe, no matter how good, bad, or different it is, they're never going to play well. And we need to get some cheerleaders. And, you know, again, I like the theory of what I'm hearing Elon's doing.

19:04It sounds great. But I don't know that he's the cheerleader. he's the he's a pioneer and an innovator but i don't know if he's going to lead the rally of the of the the sentiment i think you're gonna have to have somebody else doing that and i think it's gonna have to be driven by okay the enactment of of certain things both telling the plan but we need those interest rates to go down yeah and if you still have inflation hovering they're not going to want to do that, but that loosens up money in the market. We talk about that a lot. And, you know, refis and sales and because that's the biggest transaction most people have.

19:52And so it's the moment in time when their most amount of money in one direction or the other in and out of hands. And the residual leftover of money made on a sale, refinance, is when you get that injected into the overall economy. And it feels stalled right now as much as anything. It's like, I don't personally feel like I see the doom and gloom. It's more of this really hard pause that's happening right now. It just feels like we're at a, like if you were walking, we're stuck in mud. And when you're stuck in mud, you take one step forward, you think you're out of the mud, you're kind of still in it.

20:43It's kind of like the crypto, you know, up 10 % one day, down 11 the next. It's like, all right, can we get unstuck here a little bit? Can we get a A little ride of good news. We'll see what happens.

21:03I'm going to jump ahead here. A couple of retail things I don't think are necessarily related to this economy. I think this is more trends overall, Chris. But Forever 21 and GameStop, both closing retail stores. Forever 21 expected to close all U.S. stores. that damn Sheen and Timu, the cheap e-com, came and got them. I do see Sheen everywhere. It's all over the place. The ads are everywhere, and it's so cheap. Yeah. I mean, I've never purchased from it, but I know it's very popular with the ladies. I've bought a couple things two years ago, maybe. And at the time, I thought it was pretty decent.

21:48I mean, it's like a$10 t-shirt or something. And it was like more of a fashionable type t-shirt. I was like, this is kind of cool. But I'm a double XL slim fit. So I'm a weird size fitting. And it did okay, not perfect. I had to buy from certain companies to get the fit I want. But I was impressed with the overall quality for like$10. It was better than I would have thought. So, I mean, it's hard. Like we joked about the mall is closing. It's like, but, you know, this generation, my kids still love to go to the mall, the mall rats. But the thing is, I don't know if anybody's buying at the mall anymore.

22:25You know, like when you and I went to the mall, maybe like 30, 20, me 30 years ago, you 20 years ago, like the parents were at least buying, you know, and the kids may have just been walking around being mall rats, but someone was buying because e-com wasn't what it is today. It's like, can the malls? can they survive i mean even now when i'm in the mall now i'm like can i find the same thing online for less money you know yeah well they become the window shopping for online buying right yeah a little bit especially if it's the same brand because if you go look at something you go like i don't know like an express or some store like that where maybe they don't have your size, but you can go look at the actual quality, like the exact item or something, then you buy it online.

23:17And I mean, Express is still getting the sale maybe, but that brick and mortar is not. So I don't, I don't think we've seen the end of this bloodbath of stores. I don't think all stores will go away. I just think you're going to see this centralization of, okay, Walmart, large super stores, which is the equivalent of, you know, gigantic Amazon store. But like, you know, discount stores like that, I can see doing well. Large stores where you can get lots of different things, convenience, still a factor. And, but then these kind of niche things, you can get it online and the tools for buying online have gotten so much easier and the shipping's gotten better.

24:05and really the overall expectation. People have just gotten used to what to expect buying online. And price-wise, you know? Like I know for these, T-Moon, Sheen, Shine, whatever you call it, it's definitely super cheap. So, and it's not even like nowadays, most people I don't even think are necessarily always buying because they're looking. There's just ads going constantly as well. Yeah. Here's what it said. Forever 21's brand name and international business will come under Authentic Brands Group. Our U.S. licensee's decision to restructure presents an opportunity to modernize the brand. Possible revival if a new U.S.

24:51operator takes over. We've lost over$400 million in the last three years, including$150 million in 2024 alone. Jumping ahead here. The GameStop closing a significant number of stores and will invest heavily in Bitcoin. It's an interesting headline for a company, right? It's like, well, how is one related to the other? Massive store closures. 1 ,000 stores shut down globally in the past year. 590 in the U.S. 320 in Europe. it's now at 3 ,200 stores, Chris, down from 6 ,000 a decade ago. So cut in half. Probably cut in half again. Yep. Says consumers moving to digital game purchases and streaming.

25:44Part of a broader retail decline with brands like Joanne, Forever 21, Kohl's, and Macy's also closing stores. GameStop to invest a portion of its cash reserves in Bitcoin. Probably a smart move. Yeah. The pivot to Bitcoin is really a defense against irrelevance. It says an odd thing is it's basically saying the strategy isn't retail, but to act as some kind of cryptocurrency investment vehicle. That's where they're smart because gaming is combining with blockchain and all that. So they might be extremely forward thinking with this and pivoting. It is interesting because then it becomes, if you're buying the GameStop stock, it's hard to say.

26:37Two words, GameStop stock. Why not just buy crypto then? Like, if the whole company, if they're putting reserves in, their value will be driven by whether Bitcoin grows. It's like, what are you buying into? They have such a cult following, you know. Yeah. From the Robin Hood debacle. It's kind of like a reseller of this. You know, you can buy direct. You buy it through GameStop who's investing. I guess you still have the side of the business that is retail. So I'm hoping that it pivots to something different. I guess as far as knowing that they won't go bankrupt would keep your interest in the stock, I guess.

27:25But at a certain point, you know, you can't spend half your money on Bitcoin. And then why not just buy Bitcoin versus buying GameStop? Yeah. However, if you were holding GameStop when this news came out, you could have made 16 % that day if you're a day trader. Which I think a lot of the GameStop guys really that follow that are like the swing traders. Oh, yeah. Because I mean, you had that whole, the stock jump on this thing. Yeah, there's a documentary on it. It's crazy. Talk about sentiment driving behavior. You know? Like, that's a whole case study in itself. Emotional. Emotional levers pulling it.

28:07Yeah, GameStop shares soared 16 % in pre-market trading. So, hey, close some stores and your stock goes up. I mean, I guess it's all about profitability. I get it. It's just, it's, do you get happy about the stock going up or you get sad about the stores closing? You can't fight. I'll answer my own question. You can't fight the reality of online and especially this, like digital games, like you can download them. Like you don't need the physical. Like I hate the, like I was the first guy to get rid of every CD and DVD I owned, you know, before there was Netflix. like it was like the moment that i could do digital like hard drive driven all my stuff i was there it's like get rid of this those racks you remember those racks the racks everybody had them in their house racks of cds racks of dvds it was almost like a i don't know a trophy of of all right look at all those dvds yeah man you got that whole collection all right yeah it's just one more thing you have to dust off or not dust off if you're a college kid like I was and oh look at all that CD collection man let me go through your collection think of how foreign things become like as technology changes it's like you know like oh let me see your CD collection go through it man the cranberries you know they got that one song that's a good one that lingers Dave Matthews.

29:46I had like 50 bootleg Dave Matthews CDs. Like every concert. Like I was like on, that's how I used the internet when it first started. It's just in college trading live Dave Matthews shows. I was a pioneer. Oh, I had tapes. Oh, I had a tape collection. Like a hundred tapes. According to the feds, you're a pirate. Oh yeah, I was pirating there. But Dave didn't care because he was smart. That's why he got so big. because they didn't police that. They let it happen naturally. The story there, that's an economic story right there. How to get big. Don't get in the way of spreading the news. Because we still went to all the concerts, bought the T-shirts, did all the stuff.

30:27They made all the money by not getting in the way of the spread of people getting to hear their music. Anyway, I digress. Oh, man, that brings back some memories, dude. oh the toy the work involved man with tapes and cds burning and failing oh god how bad was it when you'd be burning a cd and how many times would like it fail on the burn like the fact that the fact that there's a laser in your computer burning a cd i guess it's not my different than a hard drive now like saving shit but it's just the wild times man i've looked at analog digital man i'm on like all sides of it. Like this analog digital conversion.

31:09Crazy. And that's what really what we're talking about with the stores and retail and e-com and all that is this movement from physical to digital. But we do still have to wear the clothes, you know? So whether it's Sheen or it's done an order in e-commerce until we're living a, the day will come Chris, where it's just the digital clothes because you never leave your house except digitally. That's the shit that gets scary, right? Yeah, I don't want to live in that world. I don't either, but you could, can you not, there used to be a time where I couldn't see that coming. I could, I'm not saying that I'm going to embrace wanting to do that, but can't you see that?

31:52I can totally see that now. I mean, it's here to a degree with all the metaverse stuff. You have people that don't leave their house and they just live online gaming, you know? Yeah. and it will matter what your skin is and all that. I mean, my kids already care. You can, like, I will watch my kids playing Fortnite and they'll spend as much time playing the game as they do picking out their skin before they go and who they're going to be. Like, literally sitting there going through it, like toiling over it. I'm like, that really matters to them. That's how they show off. You know, me growing up, it was wearing Meyer Jordans like for the first time.

32:33And they care about that stuff, too, which, you know, it's more money. But it's that skin on Fortnite. Dressing up as, you know, Wimby or something like playing Fortnite is Wimby. Like or one of the NBA players or LeBron James or a banana character, a banana character, which my oldest son does, which kind of trolls everybody. He likes to just kind of do the stupidest shit. because he wants people to think that he thinks that that's cool when he doesn't. He's actually, it's reverse psychology. He wants to do the stupidest thing. He's smart. This is what you have to look forward to, Chris. You have kids, if you have kids.