Cyber Fraud and Scams Investors Need to Watch Out For Ep#125

It’s Episode 125 and Apple now is at $3 trillion. As the stock market continues to heat up, economic data continues to come in better than expected. The Roaring Twenties, we’ve been talking about, they’re here. So we’re going to talk about the momentum the market has, what we see in the economy like we do every week, and some of the bigger signals that things are going to get even better than they are today.

On The Tipping Point, we’re going to talk about cyber fraud. We’ve got our friend Keith Tessler telling you how you protect yourself against one of the biggest issues in America today, money being stolen from your account. And we have our colleague Frankie Lagrotteria on the show.

Where’s the black swan event?

Week after week, strategists have been calling for a black swan event that’s going to bring the market down and cause a deep recession. But the white swans are everywhere:

• GDP was revised for the first quarter
• Earnings came in significantly better than expected in the first quarter
• The stock market’s doing way better than anybody anticipated in the first half

Every metric we’re looking at right now looks great

• We saw jobless claims come in relatively low
• The PCE inflation gauge came in lower than expected
• Earnings look like they’ll be even better going into next year

Waiting for Godot

We keep hearing about this recession but it never shows up. The market’s actually been in expansion, the economy is growing.

How do you have a recession when there’s a labor shortage?

We have 10 million job openings right now. Travel has been a nightmare with flight delays and overcrowding. There’s gigantic demand. The problem is they’re short-staffed. The economy could be even more robust if we were able to get these job openings filled.

Apple hit $3 trillion for the first time

It’s a big milestone but where’s the value? Buying Apple today is really not a great idea. It’s wonderful if you own it already as we do in our growth portfolio. But there are 10,000 publicly traded companies around the world and much better opportunities than buying something that’s an all-time record high.

The Tipping Point

Cyber Fraud & Scams Investors Need to Watch Out For

With our guest Keith Tessler

Payne Points

We’ve got a very special guest on our show today Keith Tessler, he’s the CEO of CMIT Solutions. Keith does the IT work here at Payne Capital Management. He works with a lot of entrepreneurial clients and small businesses like ours.

One of the bigger trends we’re seeing right now as wealth advisors is cyber fraud. In fact, the FBI reported something like 10.3 billion last year lost in cyber fraud.

Spam has gone from a nuisance to a real threat

• Be on the lookout for phishing emails where people send you an email that looks like it’s from Microsoft or PayPal – they use it to get your password and get into your email account.
• They’re using it to read all your emails, learn everything about you, and then use that information to institute real significant financial crimes. One of their favorites is to figure out who your financial advisor is.
• They understand your writing style because they read all your emails and then send your financial advisor an email saying something like “Please transfer $10,000” to some account they own

It’s not just email, they’re using texting and even phone calls

• They will say they’re from Comcast or Verizon in an attempt to extract information from you.
• Keith’s advice: Get a phone number, an ID, hang up and call a number you know is valid for that organization.

They tend to target older wealthier Americans

The older generations are more susceptible to fraud because they’re less tech-savvy and easier targets.

When you get a communication, there are a few key points that you should look for:

• One: Is it expected? If you get something out of the blue, that’s the first indication that something is questionable.
• Two: Watch out for urgency. Scammers tend to say, “Act now”, “Urgent action” and “Move right away.”
• Three: Does it look legitimate? Check the email address. Is it from the real company? Where do the links take you?

Gift Cards are another method they use

• Scammers like it because gift cards are basically an untraceable form of money.
• Often they will text and pretend to be someone in your company asking for you to buy gift cards for a client
• If you’re ever asked by text to buy gift cards urgently, even if it’s from someone you know, be wary

Hidden Facts of Finance

Toyota has developed a solid-state battery that allows electric vehicles to drive more than 900 miles on one charge. That’s much further than the 300 miles that many EVs on the road can do today.

Some 2.2 million people moved to the southeast in just over two years. That’s roughly the population of Houston. A flood of transplants help steer about 100 billion in new income to the southeast in 2020 and 2021 alone. While the Northeast bled out something like 60 billion. Based on an analysis recently published by the Internal Revenue Service.

In a new BBC Radio interview, Paul McCartney says he has employed artificial intelligence to lift John Lennon’s voice from an old demo tape. An achievement that was not possible using 1995 technology when the recording was first worked on.