Welcome back to numbers scream. I'm Tom Mills with the BISD doc and we have got the oil impact on the economy. You asked for it, you put comments about it. We're diving into it. Exactly some of the stats you wanted. Up on top, inflation has popped up to 3.3%. Remember the Fed saying, "I got to get it to 2%." Yep, that's it. Gas prices jumped 21.2% in a month. There's some of the largest jumps of gas on record. Then the small business index, it's down 28%. That's the confidence index in the American economy. And then consumer sentiment. See that 47.6? We're going to show you that number in historical reference. And it's the lowest it's ever been. And then home buyers. There's only 1.4 1.36

million to be exact home buyers, which is also near an all-time low. We have all of that. the oil economy this week. Before we jump into the numbers, I'm Tom Ell with the BISDOC offering you an opportunity so we can jump in to your numbers. At the link down below, you can contact BetDavid Consulting. We work with businesses just like yours to help you grow IBIDA structure, put a better team in place, optimize your sales, many things. And we have conferences and one-on-one consulting and mastermind consultings to provide you information. Do exactly that. Go to the link below, Bet David Consulting, and see how we can help you. First up, inflation 3.3%. I call it inflation. It's the consumer

price index because that's the change in what we're buying. So I call it inflations. Other people say, "No, the official inflation measures should be this or that." Bologn, I look at this. So, this is coming to us from CNBC from the Urus Bureau of Labor Statistics cobbling all of that together trying to provide a faithful honest stat. I didn't know you could say faithful honest stat and also mention the government at the same time. Nonetheless, I just did. So, year-over-year and let's go back to 21. Remember the height of COVID, the recovery from COVID, and then the bounce out where the economy really did well.

Whenever I say COVID bounce out, I'm talking about 2023 and then 24, 25, 26 as we are here. Take a look at this. The blue, the solid blue is all items. That has jumped up to 3.3%. See the jump there now? Then, but what does the oil have to do with it? Is oil impacting is it not? Well, there also is an index they do less food and energy. It's only 2.6%. So, if you want to sit home and don't use any energy and don't eat any food and just waste away, you can happily say that it's 2.6%. But for the rest of us that eat food and use energy, it's 3.3. Nonetheless, those are a reference. And what the reference point allows you to see is the true impact of oil. We hope that this spike comes right

back down because $ five dollar diesel is going to make apples very expensive because those trucks are carrying them from farm to market and they're delivering everything from Amazon to you on Amazon Prime because until Tesla sells electric trucks everywhere or Amazon builds its own fleet of electric trucks, they're using gas to drop things off on your porch. So there it is. It's up and it's real. Now the rest here, 2.6% 6%. We can't look at that and say that was inconsequential. Remember that you would hear the Fed say, and you heard me talk about it, I want to see inflation at 2%, then I'll change interest rates. Well, that's down here. And all of last year, it hovered around

three, getting under three. So, it's been in a better place, but it hasn't been down to like two or sub two. Why is that important? Americans are hurting. You are hurting. People I know are hurting. People that are watching that may be doing very well. You also know people are hurting. You know what's interesting? You have two choices. You can take a look at these numbers and just surf through it or you can sit there and try to help people that are around you. Then there are people that they only have one choice. Somehow get through it. And those are the people with credit card balances with BNPL balances by now poor later where late

payment charges are highest as they've ever been. Gee, I wonder why that is. 1.3 trillion in credit card debt and buy now pay later bonuses high as they've ever been. Delinquencies on buy now pay later as high as they ever been. So late charges are up. Wow. No, no, don't worry about it. Let's just get through the war. The middle class is doing fine. No, they're not. We need this to recover and the middle class needs help and they need it now. Second up, gasoline. Gas prices up 21% in one month. Nothing to see here in this chart. Yeah, you feel it. I feel it. I know you feel it, too. This is what's happened to gasoline. Now, Bisc, why does that only say $34? Because this is the neutral, kind of the

wholesale price. Then it comes to the pump and there's profit at the pump, taxes, and everything. And this is how this gets up to 650 for 89 gasoline. Regular 89, you know, in the middle. 87 89 91 I think it goes. So 89 in the middle. This is like 650 in California. Look at a map of the Midwest. The gas prices have been like 380 to four ducks, but still that's higher than they've ever seen. So this is the impact on the war. Right when it starts, gas goes up because the wholesale price of oil goes up. So even though we pump a lot of our own oil in the United States, supply a lot of our own gasoline, when the

commodity price is up, everybody suffers together. And we've been all celebrating this last week because just today oil got back down to $92 after being at 110 over the weekend. It's a pingpong ball bouncing around like you know who with you know who and a you know where. So this is what we look at and we track coming from federal statistics that track it faithfully for you and me. We need this wholesale price to be back down here at sub two. Sounds like I'm talking about the Fed and inflation, but we need it to be sub two. So, by the time it gets to our tanks at the pump, at Shell, Chevron, Exxon, what have you, it's right around 3:25 where the fund started.

Next up, statistics from the Small Business Index. Small businesses are surveyed on a monthly basis to see how they feel. This is the percent of them that perception of the economy is positive. a strong positive perception of the economy. 100% is way up here through the roof and you haven't been there in a while. And look, there's 50%, 40%, 30%. Take a look. If you average these together, the perception of the economy as being good and healthy for good US economic health is 28%. Now, manufacturing thinks things are better than services do. Retail thinks it's pretty good. professional services are down. So the doctor that goes to the store and then gets a manicure and then buys a tractor that gets produced at

John Deere, everybody's in agreement that the economy is under 40 and the average is 28. Now then you ask those people that's the US economy. What about your local economy? How are things going there? Well, everything is a little bit better. It's about 32% on a local basis. 33% but still these are historic lows. This is bad. This means that the attitude and the mood of people that are trying to run businesses to support mom and dad and a few jobs and things that are there or a lot of jobs if you're fortunate enough to be running a bigger business and thank you for doing that. every entrepreneur that is employing a person that's keeping somebody employed that's trying to run

on a little less profit and keep those jobs there because those people are from your neighborhood, your church, your school, your soccer club, everything that goes with it. God bless you. And to all the people trying to make an impact on larger businesses that think it would be easier to lay off and you're like, just get through the storm. Let's try to keep these jobs. God bless you. What we see here is the mood of America is down by business leaders. Now, they're not panicking and jumping off the bridges, but this shows you what they feel is that there's not good economic conditions now, and they need help. They need interest rates to come down. It'll help their loans. Most of all, they need

oil to come down, calm down. So, everything from jet fuel to diesel fuel to other products that come out of a barrel of oil come back to a more reasonable place. Then let's get back to working on the tariffs and building jobs in America. Remember when we were actually trying to do that late last year? Not a lot of that going on right now. Work in the background construction jobs for data centers. Whoops. Unless the data centers have had pickers outside that don't want high electricity prices. And they told the data centers to go bugger off for a little while and come back when you make electricity cheaper at the same time you build the data center. Consumers are in favor of that. They're not in favor of a data

center that makes electricity go up. All of that. That's not a rant and I'm sorry to talk fast. I know some of you don't like it when I talk fast. That all feeds into the business index and how they feel about America. And if you're running a business, I'll say it one more time. God bless you and let's ride out the storm together. Fourth up, consumer sentiment is down. It has dropped. It's now a measurement of 47.6%. This comes from the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey. A widely trusted survey of people like you and me, and you may be included in the survey and not even know it because

you've answered questions for someone. Nonetheless, they faithfully canvas a group of consumers on a regular basis to get their sentiment about the economy. As you can see, last year, remember 2025, Trump comes into office, a bunch of things happen with the tariff. Remember, April was here, tariff, tariff, tariff, tariff. And people were feeling pretty good. Wait a minute. I thought with the tariff sentiment was going to go down. No. Remember the early tariffs that were not taxes? They were techniques that was being used by the president to get other people to cooperate. Guess what? The sentiment rose because there was some benefits happening. Tariffs on American products went down in some cases because

countries had tariffs on us for a long time had agreed to break the tariff and come down a little bit. Now, in other cases, things were getting out of hand. So not every tariff situation was a good one. But nonetheless, the mood of America, even after the stock market moved aggressively on April 1st, what was that? Liberation Day. Well, guess what? The sentiment went up. But then the consumer sentiment started sliding down. Interest rates went down, but also the number of affordable houses, the cumulative effect of inflation, all of that was going down. But then all of a sudden it was going up. Sediment was coming back up over 55. not near where it was because remember we were at 58

and 60 right here. Now we're down to 55 and then the war and take a look at what happened. I have to turn around this way to show it to you because this went down and at 47.6 it's a historic low. Consumer sentiment is matching what I showed you on the small business index business sentiment. Okay. Now let's go look at the percent change. When you look at the percent change, it's even more stark. We had a positive percent change when the tariffs actually resulted in some benefits for the economy, but then the percent change in sentiment went there, followed by a little bit of a rally around Christmas, happy new year, but

then bouch, you know, hey, I'm think we're going to attack Iran. We did attack around. And here we are, not even halfway through April. This is the percent change in the sentiment index. So, as you can see, the consumer sentiment is dropped except for a little holiday rally. And we need the price of oil to come down, which will bring gas down, which will, which will, which will, you know, the list and we need it, and we need it this summer. Lastly, home buyers are down to 1.4 million. Bisto, what do you mean by that? Well, let me explain. This red line is the number of home buyers that are in the market. people that are actively in the market looking for a home. You go back here to 2014. Here we

go. Here comes COVID. Nobody's buying a house with COVID. We weren't even allowed to go outside without a mask. And then things came up here and the prices went up as there were far more buyers than sellers because remember we weren't out of COVID. Then in the bounce out year of 23, remember 23 the bounce out year, guess what? It came back to normal. number of buyers and sellers leveling off in the market. This is where price increases leveled off. Prices jumped on homes and have only just now started coming down in key markets. There were markets like Austin that was overheated, but most of it stayed pretty stable at the higher rate until now. The number of sellers is now almost 2 million, 1.961.

The number of buyers 1.361. 600,000 difference between buyers and sellers. Buyers are able to get deals, but very few homes are transacting, which means realers, loan agents, escro agents, inspectors, all those people have tough time with their careers right now. We need this to level out, not just to celebrate that there's a few sellers in your market that managed to talk to the Joneses selling their house and got a better deal, but the Joneses are happy they were just able to sell the house. That's not a good market. We want a vibrant market where the prices are moderated and fair so people can find housing and that people that have to move for a job from here to here are able to sell their house and sell it

without discounting or financial stress because they're trying to live in two places at once because their job in Atlanta moved to Nashville and now they have to sell one house and buy another. Nobody wants that stress and that frustration. Nonetheless, the stress and the frustration is right there. Also, guess what? interest rates being up to 6.5% doesn't help the number of buyers in market. And without having a couple years to restore some savings and to get some of the credit card debt down, until all of that comes down, you're not going to see relief here where you have a market where people can find affordable housing on a favorable interest rate and

make a deal with someone that wants to sell their home at a fair price so they can go on to retire in Florida or to another job and you can start your life and buy a house. you know, a working market with moderated prices that is good for everybody. Oh, what an incredible dream I have. Well, that's what we need. And right now, we're far from it. Well, that's it this week. And I'm sorry it's mostly bad news. Sort of a waterfall of oil filled with bad news flowing down as it impacts the economy. But nonetheless, it's a reality for you and me. I hope it was helpful and we all could learn together, observe, and make decisions as we wait it out and pray that the war is over and the economy

recovers. If you've got ideas, please leave a comment down below. I'd love your ideas for things to cover. And while you're there, subscribe so you get notifications and know when this comes out. We love reading the comments, and we do read them all, the good, the bad, the ugly, the snarky. Leave a comment down below. Until next time, I'm Tom Ellis Doc, and I hope I left you better than I found you.