2026 09 24 FInancial Issues

0:00This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East. This is with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture East. This is Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, okay, hold on. I got a new favorite food. That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try Cupid Mayon. Yeah, it's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it at the grocery store. And this mayo is different. Mm-hmm. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cupid only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers, chefs use it, restaurants use it, people who really care about flavor use it, put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a big mac, McNuggets are sausage egg and cheese, McGrittle's, make it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite, too. Extra value meals are back.

1:02Get a big something extra. With a big mac or 10-piece McNuggets, fries and a medium coke, all for just $9. Limited time only, promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. Welcome to Financial Issues, where we help you steward faithfully by honoring God with your investments. Now listen in as we give you the practical tools and advice you need to become a Biblically responsible investor. This is Financial Issues, where we help you defund darkness and fund the light by investing with Biblical integrity folks. Day four of Mark in studio. It's amazing. It's fun, brother. You know what? It's a blast. And here's what's really cool. The other night or other day I spoke about different types of people and how they embrace Christianity. And some people think, you know, like I went to one church and I had this little paragraph about how to approach going to church there.

2:03And it was like, be somber, be quiet, come in, reflect on Christ. All good stuff, but at the same time, nowhere was the joy of the Lord in there. It was like, we all got to walk around like a funeral or something. And I think to myself, I just want to jump up and down to celebrate Christ some days and to be so happy about it. And that's why I like financial issues a lot. What does Jesus say? He says, I tell you these things so that your joy may be complete. There you go. He really talks about that. Yeah, we should see smiles on the face. I want somebody to come up and say, Mark, what is it you God that causes you to smile? You know, oh, let me introduce you to someone. This is Jesus. He loves you so much. We get to be joyful about it. And I think that's what sets financial issues apart. We talk about some very hard issues and we get the grand. Yeah, amazing. Yeah, absolutely. When you focus on one of your hopes in Christ, there's joy there. And it doesn't mean that you downplay the hard things in life.

3:06But all it means is that listen, you've got that joy of the Lord in you that nothing can take away. Right? It's a wonderful, wonderful joy. When we have all of God's promises, we have his power. We have we have his salvation. We have the faith he gives us. We have the good works. He's allows us to walk. I mean, there's so much to be joyful about. And then we get to finance. No, that's right. That's right. Boy, you don't market it. Well, that's just to, you know, give us a slap of real. Yeah, absolutely. But before we get to the financial stuff, guys, you know, by the way, our phone lines are open. No, we open for the hour, six, ten, three, six, three, eleven, ten call in. We love to hear from you. We need to announce some winners. The winners of the line. The winners. The winners. The winners. The winners. The winners. The winners. The winners. The winners. The winners. The winners. The winners. The winners of the highest single donation yesterday is John Jennings. Yeah. From the state of Mississippi. John Jennings. The one San Francisco. Congratulations to you, brother John. You're so thankful for your generous donation. That's good. Calm down. It's okay, guys.

4:06That's right. That's right. You're happy, people. So John, you have won a lifetime partnership at Financial Issues. You should never have to pay another cent. The V-Planer. This is the very first lifetime partnership ever. Absolutely. You have it. You should get a plaque on your wall. All about it. So cool. We might need to give a plaque to the second one because it's really a tie because they both come in the same day. But the highest monthly donor yesterday, guys, again, drumroll please if you could all bang your drums for me. Darryl from Texas. Dr. Darryl. You have a monthly donor. Yesterday pledged a one-it-all monthly gift. So cool. So congratulations to you, brother. You never have to pay another cent for your partnership. Pretty tired of life. It's amazing. And it's just the idea of this. I mean, we have two permanent partners now joining us daily to help spread the good news of God and stewardship. How cool is that? Pretty awesome. So congratulations, you guys. John and Darryl, you've done well. We're so thankful to be able to give you that gift. And thank you for the gift that you gave us yesterday.

5:08Just amazing. All right, guys, let's move now to a question that like a lot of our partners have been getting in already. Yeah, you know what's jump right into it, Mark. So there has been a some action going on with one of our FIs and holdings actually. It's RGR. That's the ticker symbol. Stern, Ruger and company. Many partners, Mark, have been asking about this. Among them, I'll just name a couple, Gail Dave Valerie, Stanley, John. I'm sure several others have this. More than I thought. They're wondering what to do. We've been getting a lot of questions about this. Well, they sent out a lot of. Yeah, yeah. So basically here, here it is, Mark. So they've been alerted by this tender offer by Beretta Holdings, which is privately owned to purchase RGR. Mark, what are our options and your recommendations on selling or holding RGR until it settles with Beretta? What do you think? So many jokes in there. But we're going to get serious here for us again to holding RGR. Yeah. Okay. So let's get to the roots of this. Let's get the root of this first. It's not a full buyout.

6:09RGR is still going to remain after they buy into it. Actually, they're just taking a bigger hold into it. That's all they're doing. They want to own as much as 25%. That's all they're doing. Now maybe this is the beginning of a multi-year process where they want to own the whole thing. But right now, they just want to own 25% of RGR. So in doing this, what they did is they took a stock that was marginal right now with us and they caused it to rise drastically. So effectively, anybody who wants to go ahead and take this offer, which is still, I believe even today, a couple of bucks higher than what the market price of RGR is, could do that. And then they could come back 30, 60, 90 days later after this is all done and RGR drops possibly because it's not being ran up by this buyout or this purchase offer and it drops back down and rebuy it at a better price.

7:11Now we don't talk a lot about strategies like this often, but when somebody offers you a premium for a stock and you have the opportunity and a high probability of being able to rebuy it again later at where we would consider it a more reasonable price, why not? Yeah, Mark, the only question I would have with that is that because the company is being bought out by a privately owned company, is that still an option that they can rebuy it? They're not being bought out. They're just, no, it's no different than an investment crew coming in and buying 25% of a company. It's still going to be on the market. It's still going to be on the stock market. RGR is still going to trade. That's why I'm saying, remember, what was it like 37 dollar, I'm rounding to the nearest dollar or a close dollar, it was like $37 and they're offering 42, 44 or something like that, I forget what it was. 41, 94, no, it's risen to 41, 94. Yeah, I think they were offering like 44 and change or something like that. Yeah, so the stock ran up immediately to get close to that in case this does go through.

8:16Now, here's the other thing, not everybody who accepts the offer will, they may not buy everybody who accepts the offer. They have the right to pick and choose how many that they really will buy out and maybe when they get to the 25% ownership that they want, they stop and you may or may not get this money. If they don't accept the offer, you may be on that roller coaster ride again to where it re-normalizes back down to where the market price was before or where everybody believes it should be at this time. So I can't predict the future, you know that, I say that over and over. But if something's at 37 and it goes to 44 because somebody makes an offer and that's the only reason and that offer ends and the payout and the buy is gone, there's no reason for it to stay up there. There's no fundamentals, there's no new vehicles, new products, new guns, new handguns

9:21or whatever. There's no new markets, there's no new orders. If there's nothing there to keep it up there, then it's going to come back down. So why not take advantage of it and just lock in a bonus effectively and then go back into it in 30 or 60 days if you really believe that stock is worth holding. That's great. This is really important for our listeners too because I know a lot of people are going to mark, this seems like short-term trade. That was exactly what I was going to say is so many people think, oh that isn't that just short-term, but I see that much more as necessary pruning when the time calls for you to prune or to add to tend to your portfolio as if it's a garden. You wouldn't just say, I'm going to let my garden grow and not touch it for 20 years because I'm long-term. No, you have to tend it, right? Exactly. You have to tend to the garden. The stewardship is a long-term gardening leads to weeds if that's the whole thing. Right. And let's you do what needs to be done. If you have a harvest that comes in early, you don't wait, wait, I'm not supposed to

10:23get to this until October 15th. That's what my Almanac says and it looks good now though, we should harvest. You don't sit there and let it rot in the field. You take advantage of it. Sometimes these things are handed to you on a platter. Good stewardship, prudent stewardship says, hey, I'll take that extra money. And 30 days later, you can jump back in again, 60 days after you get past the SEC regulations so that you don't carry over the cost basis from your original purchase six years ago. Yeah, absolutely. It's well done. Folks, if you were one of those people who had that question or asked it, I hope that that made sense. It made a lot of sense to me, Mark, so thank you so much for that. Well, good. I hope I didn't convolut. I think sometimes, you know, when somebody wants to give you something and it's all fair and it's honest and it's good, it doesn't defile God in any way. It doesn't defile who you are. You just take it and you say, thank you, Lord.

11:25I appreciate that. That's great. That's great. Yeah. And those are the kind of things we want to talk about. There's exceptions almost to every rule in the market, including long-term investing. Remember, long-term investing doesn't mean buy it, put it in a box, sit on the box, and forget about it for 10 years. What it means is you plant something, you tend to the ground, you plant it and you grow with it and you weed it and you harvest it over and over again and you trim it and prune it and plant more. That's what it's all about. That's what stewardship's about. Six 10, 363, 1110, 610, 363, 1110. Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. I'm so thankful. I just want to say thank you very much to you and your team there who are wonderful. Welcome to Financial Issues, everyone.

12:28We're back and we're having a great time here. We just talked about taking advantage of gifts when they're given to you. It's okay to do that. It's okay to accept those gifts. We accepted the gift of salvation. We accept the gift of stewardship and in that stewardship, when something causes an issue where you can make a profit, a good profit and it doesn't seem like you're going to be able to take advantage of that again, you ought to take it. That's what we were talking about this morning. But we are willing to talk about just about anything financially from a biblical perspective, from a real world point of view. That's what we do here. Remember, why is this serpent gentleness adduv, right? Why is this serpent means the wisdom of the world, how the markets work, how to invest, what does it mean, what are the different products, all those kinds of things. Gentleness adduv means how we apply it in a way that honors God. We do both here and we'd love you to join a 610, 363, 1110. We love you.

13:29We love you questions. Why don't we go to those phones right now and talk to our friend Nelson, who's called for the Santa. Nelson is with us. Nelson, welcome to the show. Glad you're with us this morning. What's on your mind today? Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire. Try them all only at McDonald's. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire. Try them all only at McDonald's. With the Ameth's Gold Card, you can earn four times points at US Supermarkets because the best nights in start with the grocery run that makes it happen. Apply for the Gold Card at AmericanExpress.com slash Explore-Gold terms and points cap apply. Good morning, guys. I'm going to go back to Monday. I don't know if y'all can remember that far back.

14:30We talked about refineries. Oh, now I remember. I wanted to call in Monday, but didn't happen. So anyway, I don't know if you'll realize this, but California forced two refineries to close in the last two years. I think we should get a thing to the White House saying create a national security issue. What a great idea. Open those refineries and get California tell them to stuff their idiotic, communist, philosophy. Because you know what they're doing? They're showing refined products in from Asia. Yeah. I also think I have another idea. I've been saying this. I'm in Louisiana. We have all kinds of refineries, chemical plants. They actually call our area the cancer alley, whether that's true or not. I'll let other people decide that. I think we ought to put a blockade of water, electricity, natural gas, and oil at the

15:35border of California and put a tax on them. Because all they do is take everyone's else's resources. I don't know if they're going to get off my rant, let you guys do some good stuff. Yeah, Nelson, good rant. Back the other day, and you didn't even bring it up, I said there's only one refinery. One major refinery. That was only half my sentence. Sometimes when you're on the air here and talking, there's comments going on and stuff. The whole thing, there's only been one major refinery built in the last ten years. We have over 130 refineries in the US. Most of them are smaller. They do like 40,000 barrels, where a major one would be processing something like 500,000 barrels. We haven't had any, there's a new one going down in Texas that would do just that. The refineries at Nelson is talking about out in California. They were diesel. They were a main supplier of diesel. You wonder why diesel is so expensive?

16:37Because I don't know. There's these people out there who hate America, who want to see prices raise, so they can say affordability, affordability, affordability. So yeah, Nelson, I agree with you. I don't think charging additional taxes on water and fuel and all that going into California and making any difference because they're so taxed now, they wouldn't even feel it. Half of their money goes to California taxes. You look at the gas, gas in California is usually a couple of bucks higher than the Midwest and it's all taxes. So I don't know if they see that. Governor Newsom was complaining about gas prices the other day trying to blame it on Trump. I wanted to scream. I couldn't believe it. Really? Sam scream, that would be interesting. He's such a common gentleman, you know. Internal. Nelson, I think you nailed it though. We just need to really be aware of what we have. And yeah, we need a couple of major refineries going in. Like I said, we need strategic refineries, North, South, East, West.

17:38We need that to be there and one in the Midwest. You know, that would be great. And that could happen over the next five years because we have the resources and we would never be dependent on the world pricing anymore. We could have the pricing from being here, no transportation needed. You know, get the pipelines in, do all the great stuff. Nelson, you're correct as usual. Is he still? Well, thank you guys. Yeah. I need to give you guys kudos for all the work I've been doing on the website and the portfolio tracker. And I missed the thing about the community chat. I'll have to check that out. We're all, all us chatters will be excited about that. That's good. Yeah, we'll be exciting. That's coming soon. Nelson, that's awesome. Yeah, for anyone who's wondering what Nelson's talking about, you know, we have a special feature that's coming soon to our listeners kind of a community chat type thing. So be on the lookout for that. Nelson, glad you're liking it, brother. Some of those beta versions. You know, there's, there's these things called bugs. Oh, no, communist. No, bugs.

18:38That's what it is. That get into programs as you're writing them. And we have to test them all first so that we make sure they work. And it's in the testing phase is what I understand. I think that's what Elijah told us. So almost out. So exciting. Very exciting launch. Thanks for giving us a call. Nelson, great to hear from you. Dr. Powell. All right. Yeah. Good start. Mark, let's, uh, why don't we jump over to Dan. Dan's calling from the state of Iowa. Dan, welcome to financial issues from the state of Iowa. I love that. I don't know if we've had an Iowa call this week. Thank you for calling. What's on your mind? Aloha. Aloha. That was, that was, you guys talking Iowa now. Good to hear from you, Dan. That good smell. That's cook food. You know what that is? What is it? That's the electrical energy folks away. Oh, you lose some of the energy. That means what's left turns at acidic.

19:38Your body rejects acidic foods. He's started us. Oh, that is wild stuff, Dan. And you have a comment about what we were talking about on the show. I think Dan might be doing something else actually right there. You know, sometimes Mark, we get callers who they call into the show and then they have to end up doing something else. They have. But we're glad you're listening, Dan. Thank you. Maybe we can try to get back to you. If you got a comment about the show, we appreciate it. Mark, why don't we turn for just a moment here and take a look at the markets here. As I'm seeing, everything unfortunately is in the red, which I don't like to see that at all. I think that's, that's, you know, rather sad. That is what it is. Oil is still down way from where it was, but it is up a little bit from yesterday also. The market's got absolutely bludgeoned yesterday, which was interesting, Mark, because didn't you say the day before we were in like, what was it called? The eye of a storm? I wonder who called that. Oh, you did.

20:38No, that wasn't me. That was, that was the Lord, actually, you know. I had a 50-50 chance that the market's going up or down, but the Lord put it on my heart. And that's the kind of thing that I've seen before where I've seen the markets calm like that. That's one of two things that caused me to think that way. If the markets are real choppy, you know, we got the NASDAQ going up, we got the dial coming down, we got the S&P not knowing which way to go. Which way to go? Yeah. You know, that kind of thing. Well, that, that choppy, that tells me that there's a transition going on. Same thing with calm. So if the calm comes after a little bit of a storm, it usually makes me weary and worried about that it might be heading in a rough direction. If the, if the choppiness comes after a downturn or a little storm, then it tells me that maybe we're headed for better markets. I don't know how long this will go on, but it looks like, it looks like it is AI and technology that took the biggest hits yesterday. Yeah.

21:39Which we thought, thought it would be. Things are transitioning. We're locking in as much as they can. And, but the good news is, even though there's some money going into safe money, it doesn't seem to be, a lot of it doesn't seem to be leaving the markets, but pouring into it. We've seen more going into energy recent the yesterday, which was really interesting. And we still have financials that are taking all the energy surpassed financials yesterday. So we're seeing a turn is what's happening here. We've seen a little, little storm turning it all around and people are getting ready. I think again, ready for the elections. The news coming out is so crazy and biased. I don't know if I've ever seen it like this before the news on what's going to happen in the election. There's, there's polls on this channel that says that Republicans not only are going to lose, but they're going to be ran out of the United States by torches and pitchforks. And then over here, there's, there's polls showing that it's just going to be a sweep

22:42on the Republican side. So there's no way to tell what's is true because now that they've learned well how to manipulate polls, how to ask the questions the way to get the answer you want, the polls are useless, I guess they always have been. So everybody's sitting here going, what is happening? Well, I'll tell you what's happening. Our God is on the throne. And He wants us to make the right decisions. He's given us stewardship, stewardship encompasses our whole life. It's how we utilize His resources for His purposes, His glory. One of those resources He's given us is citizenship. We have citizenship in one great country, the one that I believe He laid His hand on and that was founded on biblical principles. And we can honor Him by going to the polls and voting in those people who do not hate God, who do not hate freedom, who do not hate you and me and the family, but love them, who embrace voting those people in, who embrace sexual morality, who embrace the fundamentals

23:49of being a man like responsibility and getting up and going to work, who embrace the concept of freedom, the ability for you and me and everybody in this country to be the best they can be and realize the most that the Lord has from them and not be held down or oppressed by those who just want to take everything we have in a process and use this as their slave so they can state the elite. We have a responsibility to our citizenship, stewardship. That's what's going on. We don't have, you know, we don't have long wait, what, 40 days maybe, before that comes through. So I think the markets are saying we have no clue. And because of that, we're going to, we're going to move, move to safer diversification. What a concept. You know, I think there's a television radio show that talks about that a lot, don't you say? Yeah, maybe they're listening folks, maybe they're listening. I don't know. But they're starting to do the things that we would have been talking about for a long

24:49time. So if you're in a place where you have some overvalued stocks that are overwading your portfolio, that's now is a good time to do the pruning, lock some things that you don't have to deploy that cash right away. You can if you want to. If you can find a good stock at a good value and rebuild your asset allocation to be more, I don't know, diverse, that would be good. And if not, you can start in a safe money position, a money market or maybe a mutual or ETF like the Timothy Plan fixed income, which is just for a while because you can trade that when you're ready to buy into something. So the number here, 610, 363, 1110, give us a call. And if you have to leave us, we're sorry to see you go, but you can see the whole show. You can join us for the whole hour here today by going out to financialissues.org. And we'd love you to come out and get in the chat, talk with Nelson and the others there and join us in this fun.

25:56I can't find any place else that is actually doing bibles in responsible vests investing that's providing all the services that financial issues is. Thank you for everything you do. Great to be here with you today folks. Number 610, 363, 1110, give us a call. Why don't you? And while you're at it, you can always check out one of our great sponsors like Samaritan Ministries, just doing great work in the healthcare space. Health sharing really is what they are. And we're at www.SmartMinisteries.org. You can check out all the resources they offer, including redeem health share. Great thing to check out there. Smart administeries. Absolutely. Yeah, it's good. All right guys, so it looks like the private investment into space movement is growing larger and larger and larger. As we see the final frontier, at least looking to be conquered, right Sam? There we go. We have to do this right now. Wait for it. Wait for it. It's the final frontier of so many things, including investments as British investment

27:07firm, Sarah Femme. So you know this is going to be good. The guy in a jealous name. They say private space investment has more than double to $23 billion in the year through June. While realm insurance says investors are putting more and more money into companies, they have already shown they can operate. So this is more than just your space X's and whatnot. This is things that have real things you can count on, things like earth observation in orbit manufacturing and satellite supply chains. They say that the space industry is now moving from hype to commercial reality. With the Amat's gold card, you can earn four times points at US supermarkets because the best nights in start with the grocery run that makes it happen. Apply for the gold card at AmericanExpress.com slash Explore-Gold Terms and Points cap apply. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire.

28:09Try them all only at McDonald's. Now Mark, I understand that this industry is still very speculative, I should say. So what would make a solid space stock in this current environment? Just like any other stock, Sam, a solid space stock would be one that has a revenues and actually has profits. They actually are able to show that there is stockholder profits that they are beyond speculation. Remember, getting into space, getting into space is very speculative right now. You read in that report was it's starting to become commercial. Well starting means we're on the very edge of them starting to see the revenues bring in profits. Well, there's not very many true space stocks. If we're looking at rocket stocks that are profitable, SpaceX isn't profitable.

29:10None of the major ones are profitable at this point. Does that mean they won't be in the future? No, does it mean they will be? No, that's the thing. We have to be very, very careful. Remember, there's a lot of money pouring into these stocks and they are speculative and they are saying that's the future of everything just like they said a lot of other things were that didn't happen. There's also a lot of smaller stocks that are into the space race as well that are receiving a lot of government money, a lot of grants, a lot of businessmen coming together and saying, hey, I'm willing to speculate in this billions and pawn billions upon billions are going into it. Yet nobody's making any money yet. Besides the down line, this is what's really interesting. There are some companies that are launching satellites. That's a good thing and they're actually making a little money. There are some companies that are building satellites or the parts for rockets. There are some companies that supply the materials, the wiring, all sorts of things like that

30:16for those manufacturers of the rockets. Those companies have been around. They were profitable before the rocket surge, before the blast off of the rockets. They have been around quite a while. That's where I would be looking and that's actually in the theme that I'm looking at. That is the down line of the rocket companies. Who supply Elon Musk? Yeah, right. Who supply Elon Musk with the switches, with the chips, with the wiring, and all that is special stuff. You can't send a regular chip that was in a Nintendo or in a regular computer in the space because of how cold it is and because of the extreme temperatures it goes through, they fail very quickly so you need specialty stuff, things that were made for military strength situations. A lot of the companies that are doing the space that are being profitable actually are military base. They were making stuff for the missiles, for the interceptors, for our defenses.

31:22They were already there to begin with and now they have brought in themselves. The reason we haven't jumped in so big into this, I know I'm taking a little bit on this set but I hope you don't mind. March is the year show. When the space race, when the IPO came out for SpaceX, everything went through the ceiling. The valuation went through. We look at the stocks and the space race the same as we look at them in the utilities. Well, a little bit different because of the way we evaluate it. But the idea is we look at stocks across the board with the same financial issues still. We want to see strong balance sheets. We want to see strong income statements. We want to see the projections for the future. Not just projections are people hoping that Elon really is going to launch a thousand rockets next year, but that they actually have orders in place for those and down payments on those so those kind of contracts can't be broken and cause a total default. So we're looking at all that and then obviously we look at the valuation.

32:25Now we saw valuations take off like a rocket and we're not going to chase valuations. They pulled back a lot. So coming soon, if things don't get out of hand, there may be some really good buys coming up in the space industry or the down line of that space industry. So I love the anticipation just like the theme we came out with before the crash of the symbol, but good short waits for the right time and the right price and the right products to hit before we jump in head and foot. Now there are some young people that might be 20, 25 years old. And I believe in this without a doubt, I'm just jumping in head first and you know what, go ahead. You're going to there's going to be losers and there's going to be winners. Remember, everybody's vying for this money now. The government's money, not just the US, but Britain's Europe's. Everybody's racing. We see China. We see India. We see all sorts of people. Everybody wants to be in space and everybody wants a thousand satellites out there so they

33:28can watch here in my house and see what we're doing for dinner. Yeah, that kind of stuff. I think they're looking for more important stuff. But yeah, so be patient. And if you find something you really like and you got a question about it, bring the name to us. We'll do a full financial issue, still valuation on it. And remember, the very first thing we look at, what is it, Seth? When we ever look at a stock. If it's Biblically responsible or not. Biblically responsible. This whole desk could be piled up with stocks or typically it's, we take each one and say, this company is not Biblically responsible. You know what we do with it? Paper shredder. Paper shredder, right off the bat. We don't have to think past that. God made it really easy for us. You know, walk in his ways and trust in him and he just blesses us. Sometimes it's financially. Sometimes it's just with the joy of the Lord and the peace we get when the markets get crazy like they are a little bit, you know. Yeah. But we've had water stains, but we could still hold our peace and our joy and realize this

34:31too will pass because we have an awesome God. Yeah. Absolutely. Mark, a question for you with the space industry. For some of our new listeners, I think we did talk about this initially after the SpaceX IPO. What is the proper sector to categorize space stocks in? I feel like there's some tech, there's some industrials, there's some other stuff. How would you categorize? Well, you know, an industry has really arrived when it's its own industry. Yeah. It is. It is. It is. Space is its own industry. Some people put it under tech. Some people put it under industrials. Yeah. Because what are they doing? Well, they're sending satellites off. They're creating the infrastructure for other businesses and that's industrials. Do that. I think when you've really arrived, you become your own sector. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire.

35:32Try them all only at McDonald's. Yeah. Big enough and things take off. And we could see that in the future. Space could dominate just like AI did, just like in another technology could, but or another sector did it could become so big of a part of our economy sending things in the space, building, building resorts on the moon because everybody wants to get a moon tan and, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. So it could happen in our lifetime. I don't know if it will. I don't even know if this will get past the next few years when we start having satellites colliding with each other because there's so many or the sun can't get through. Right. Right. We'll see. Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. It is good stuff. And it's a great question because there's a lot of opportunity coming and I believe there's some opportunity there now. Like I said, in the suppliers to the people who are making the components and the components suppliers that are selling them to the rocket companies and, you know, like Elon Musk,

36:37he likes to make everything. He's even making his own chips and stuff. But other rocket companies aren't. There's even fuel suppliers. We have to be looking at that. The liquid supplies and the solid fuels for rockets. They're not, they have to be properly formulated. So it's a big deal. Those companies that put those together, if they are not overvalued or if they're being ran well, they wouldn't be a bad thing to be looking at either because what I've seen going into the future stuff is that, and everybody is that the number of rockets that are going to be launched next year compared to what we've done in the past is just multiples higher. So somebody's got to be supplying all these things and those people have been around already and they have other forms of income. And so it makes them a good company or it could be a good company as long as they haven't borrowed their way to staying in business. So yeah, 610, 363, 1110.

37:38We're going to get to our phones when we come back from the short break. So let's load up those phone cues and get ready for it. Also your questions are incredible. This question about space by so many people they've been coming is excellent. I think people are seeing the pool backs in set of the different space stocks and suppliers. So some opportunities are coming. The opinions and recommendations expressed on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of the station or any of the program sponsors. Additionally, all products or services offered by the program sponsors may not be known by the program. 610, 363, 1110. That's number to call in. Mark, why don't we try Dan again? He's calling back from Iowa. Dan, good morning. What's on your mind? Yes. Since everyone is eating cooked food and dying from starvation, I can be possibly judge

38:50anything. We are in heaven. You know, Dan, I'm not I'm not really sure what you're referring to. Yeah. Mark, do you have any other? Dan, let me ask you this. Are you concerned about our world because you believe that our one true God is not there for us? Are you concerned about the world because of the health issues that we're seeing that are being revealed now because that's really important to know. Are you a believer, Dan? What do they do about it? Putin. What can we do about Putin? Well, there's, you know, even though we do bring politics into our show, Dan, we're really about honoring God and all we do. And I'm not so sure that these questions are really in line with what we need to be talking about today with the stewardship concepts. But Dan, do you mind if I pray for you right now?

39:51Say it to the Lord. Oh, thank you. Dear Heavenly Father, we pray for Dan, Lord. We know that he has a lot on his heart and his mind and those concerns are for your children and your creation. And we ask you, Lord, to bless him, but still allow him to embrace the joy of the Lord and not have fear about what's going on in the future because he, because he has accepted, hopefully, has accepted Jesus Christ and his Lord and Savior and that he is walking in the ways of the Lord and walking in the good works. And he's just wanting to bring this to the forefront of everybody out there that we need to honor God in everything we do, what we eat, how we vote, how we live here in America, how we reinforce the Godly wisdom that you give all of us. And we want to thank you for gentlemen like Dan who really want to get the message out there in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today.

40:52God bless you, sir. Appreciate the call, Dan. 610, 363, 1110. Hey, Mark, here's an interesting question. Valerie is 68 years old and she's asking, is caterpillar supporting the LGBTQ agenda in any way? It passes and that's C-A-T is the ticker symbol for caterpillar. Pass is the screens on evaluator, but in discussing it with my financial advisor, I was told that they still support the agenda in ways. I googled and these were the comments. Caterpillar generally maintains supportive internal policies and resource groups for LGBTQ plus employees, though it's scaled back some public diversity participation back in 2024. How would you respond to that Mark? Well, the first response here and you're not going to like this stuff. Sure. You're really not. Is you pronounce caterpillar as caterpillar instead of caterpillar? Is that enough? Is that enough? You pronounce caterpillar? E-R is A in caterpillar, okay? Fair enough. I stand corrected. For most of the United States, we call it caterpillar, don't we? Amen. Amen. Amen. But besides that, what we want to look at is that, yeah, there's a lot of companies that

41:59allow equal access to rooms or to organizations to form within the company. And really, what caterpillar did? Caterpillar, did you get that? Caterpillar has changed. As they stop participating in the Human Rights Campaign corporate equity index, that's a very positive thing. In September 2024, they introduced stricter guidelines for external sponsorships. So they're pulling back on the DEI, the ESG, the supporting all these kind of things. What they continue to do is allow resource groups within their company. They're being fair-minded in this in the sense that if you want a Bible study there, if you want to get a resource group that the Bible studies will allow that, and they're not going to be discriminated against them. Now they're not funding these from the best I know it. So they do operate a terrible matching program, although the public guidelines don't establish

43:02which specific organizations they'll match. So if any, and which ones are receiving the matching funds. So there might be some slippery slope there. I don't like the idea that if they are matching LBTQ plus or whatever you want to call the sexual and morality groups that are out there. If they are matching those and not matching the Bible studies or the Christian organizations, then we got a problem with that. Otherwise, they're blindly allowing money to go to these other things. I'd rather not match a Bible study and not match sinful organization. Anti-god, anti-family, communists, sexual and morality, or organizations, or Satan-ness organizations, and not let the money that the corporation is making go to anything good or bad, but go to the dividends for those who own the company, like the people who own caterpillar. They're taking your dividends and dispersing them without your permission.

44:04So I'd prefer that to be the way. And obviously, if this upsets you in any way, if the idea that they're even entertaining or allowing organizations like that on their campuses or allowing them to form under their banner, don't buy them, don't participate. I have high respect for you in not doing that. But with the criteria, we have set up, they're still passing the criteria on evaluator and our personal. Now if you have something that shows that they are corporately sponsoring LGBTQ activities like outside activities or outside, like pride parades or things like that, please send it into us and we'll do a deep dive on it. Appreciate anything you can do on that. You know, Mark, that's really good. Valerie, for your situation, it's important to remember two things. One, we don't hold the stocks that are on the buy list or the whole list tightly.

45:05We hold them with open hands understanding that they could go dirty at any moment. And then number two, I think Mark, one of the most important screens that we have to remind our listeners, perhaps the most important, maybe after the Biblical responsible screening is their own conscience. And your conscience is really, really important. Between you and the Lord. Exactly. And if you're uncomfortable with it, Valerie, by all means, don't hold it. So I think many people would be surprised on some of the stocks I will not hold. And for the reason, the last 35 years as I was managing money, I had so many arguments with in the Biblical responsible investing arena about holding Chinese stocks. And I said, I won't hold them. And why not? Would they force abortion on women? No, they don't. Yes, they do. Look into it. I won't hold them. Why? Because they have a board, they have a board member on every of every company they have. And that board member has more power than the president or CEO because he has a full backing of the Chinese government behind him. So I won't hold them because they are making tennis shoes for American companies in slave

46:06camps with weavers and others that they've arrested, Christians, and force them to do this work. I won't own them for these things. Well, it's just only in the last, what, five, ten years that the BRI community has embraced that. Those people who told me I was crazy and I'm missing out on great returns. Now I'm starting to embrace that. So you need to, you know, I use evaluator because they're the strictest and they're the strongest and they're database. They don't say, well, somebody said this or somebody said this and that and then there's no way to back it up. They use data. They go back. They look at it and they do as strong of evaluation. I think that is possible. Sometimes I go beyond that just because of my personal preference. So can you. I think it honors God. Not that we act out of fear, not that we act out of anything but loving our Lord and realizing, you know, let's just be beyond reproach on this.

47:07Let's move on. I don't care how much that company makes. God decides that. He'll take care of us when, and I believe the closer you can get to Christ, even through your investments, the better it is. It doesn't matter the materialism plus or the materialism minus on that. There's no better place than at the feet of our Savior. Absolutely. And Mark, you know, one of the beauties of the Christian walk and of being transformed by Christ is having a clean conscience. And I think for listeners, that's so important when you're talking about your investments, you got to be invested in such a way that your conscience is clean, you know. And hopefully for all of us as Christians, our conscience is guided by the Holy Spirit and then lined with the Scriptures. But ultimately, yeah, that, that, that conscience decision is so important. And it seems like Valerie's conscience has been pretty at least. So Valerie, praise the Lord, move it, move within what you believe God would have you to do, stand firm on that. And if you find anything that's rock solid and that you're concerned about, alert all

48:09of us. That's what this is about. You know, every day you have, you have 23 hours of being inundated with secularism and one hour of financial issues. That's not fair. So we need to get the news out as quickly as we can so we can uplift you to help you, not just you Valerie. I'm talking about everybody who listens, everybody cares, our partners to help us all to be the great stewards. So more and more people can see our light and realize, hey, I can get closer to Christ by just reading the word, listening to the financial issue, becoming the best steward that I can. And that's an incredible thing. That's what we're all about. We're all about to be closer to Christ. We can get you. Then we've done something good. If we touched one life today or yesterday or tomorrow with a message of the gospel, the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. And or if we touched one life with the good news of what it means to be a godly steward,

49:10we feel like that we've been blessed by God to be here and to be joined by you. So thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for loving the Lord. Thank you for the way you display it and how you invest with biblical integrity, how you spend, how you save, how you give. All these are part of stewardship, even how you earn. God bless you all and you know, you might want to start getting ready right now because tomorrow is focused Friday. Focus Friday. Focus Friday and overtime. Don't want to miss it. So we'll see you there. God bless everyone. See you in the morning. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergeizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire. Try them all only at McDonald's.