Hey, it’s Dan. Welcome back. This is I, Allegedly. I’ve got a good one for you today because we’re going to the Home Depot. Home Depot. Bellwether, the economy. Lots of cover today. Please don’t forget to hit the like button. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. Join our email list because one is going out in the next day and you don’t want to miss that. You use the link below or you can take a little picture here with your phone and you can sign it for the email list. But good old Home Depot. Home Depot is one of the bellwethers that tells us how good the economy is doing.

And the one thing about this right now is you can’t deny that sales are down, that you can’t deny that people are spending less. Now, I am in Huntington Beach, California, arguably one of the busiest Home Depots in their store chain. It’s just packed. The parking lot’s busy. People are buying stuff. They got all the grills out right now for summer. And man, oh man, this stuff is really cheap right now. I mean, these grills already built $249. But Home Depot just announced their numbers and they said that the average consumer is souring on the economy.

Now, here’s the thing. You can’t argue with numbers. And the advantage to most businesses is that there’s data that you can get on any business, big and small. And if you are in business, one thing that you can do is track everything. Track foot traffic, people walking in the door. You can track the number of transactions, the size of the transactions, what people are buying, how they’re paying for things, everything, everything can be tracked. Now, what a lot of business owners do, especially small business owners, is they don’t look at the trends of their own company to sit there and say, wow, we sell a lot to people that do this and you should be hammering that.

So with Home Depot, 2020 was one of their biggest years ever. They saw sales go up 20%. Why is that? Because we were all locked in our house, painting our houses and fixing the fence. And your wife told you, you better get that electrical done in the office. You know, you had to do all that stuff. So with that being done, we spent a fortune there. And sales were up a ton. Their profits were up a ton. Now, they had a $154 billion year. Sales were up 20%. Now, it’s steadily dropped down. Now, they’re at $157 billion, which is a lot of money.

But think about this. The number of transactions are down almost 2%. When you think of the millions of transactions that this place does, to go down 2%, that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of transactions that are not happening right now. Now, here’s the thing. When you think about this, same store sales, the number of people that come back here decline between 3% and 4%, which is huge. That is what killed Macy’s. That is what is killing JCPenney’s right now because people don’t go there and don’t go back. But the problem is people are not spending the money that they used to spend.

Now, one thing I don’t have is the total transaction amount. But, you know, sales for the second quarter, they thought that sales were going to fall 1.9%, which is a lot. I mean, it’s going to fall almost 2%. No, they fell 3.3% at Home Depot right now. So with that being said, you’ve got sales off 3.3%. You know, the balance sheet’s off. You know, here’s the thing that’s crazy. When you think of the number of transactions, down, you know, almost 2%, it’s been down for 13 straight months. 13 straight months. Home Depot, Home Depot’s marketing company, interviewed 2,000 customers and families and said, how do you feel about the economy? Oh, it’s horrible.

We are in a recession right now. Inflation is killing me. The lies that, hey, inflation is, it’s subsiding. The fact that I raised the price to you to, you know, something that was $80 is now $140. And then it dropped 3%. Oh, great. You know, no, I’m paying $135 for this. It’s outrageous. People are not, their wages are not keeping up with this, and they’re not making the money that they used to make. But this is one of the Home Depot’s guys that, like, they sell a ton of, like, moss and landscaping equipment. They’ve got a really big pro shop where they get a lot of people that come in.

And, you know, it’s just very, very, it’s a busy store. But this is not the norm, guys. It’s not the norm. When you have people that are out of, that are not spending money and you have of those 2,000 people, 3 out of 5 said we are currently in a recession. That is staggering right now because, you know, this current administration doesn’t want to have any fault and wants to tell you that you’re doing great. But wait, I can’t afford to go to McDonald’s right now. I can’t afford to eat anywhere. And I’m supposed to sit there and believe that things are hunky dory.

They’re not, guys. They’re just not. So when home improvement projects don’t get done, you have a toll on the economy. It is that simple. It is that simple. It’s just taking a huge toll. It’s hurting everybody. You know, I mean, this place is great. The gardening section is huge. This is a decent Home Depot because they have retired professionals that work here. You don’t get this everywhere, guys. The advantage to having, you know, the retired electrician, the plumber. Hey, I need this fitting. Oh, is it three eights? Is it a half inch? You know, they know everything.

And the same thing with the gardening is that I’ve gotten more advice from this Home Depot than I have from any other Home Depot lately because they just don’t do that anymore. But they have a really good staff. So with that being said, you know, this is it, guys. Now, you can sit there and you can say things are good. It’s good in my neighborhood. You know, I had I had a man write me and tell me that he has Canadian auto insurance. It only went up in like 15 years. It only went up $40. Do they have government auto insurance in Canada? Tell me more about that because I’m not familiar with that because I have not met anybody who has not been clobbered by their auto insurance lately.

And, you know, I have people that have told me horrible things that they do jobs like they’re a hairdresser. They drive to and from work. And hey, listen, we want to do a mileage test on how much miles you put in your car, why you’re putting way too many miles in your car. And then their rates go up 60 percent craziness right now. So, you know, let me know what you think about this. You know, are you concerned about this? Again, a bellwether of the economy. People think it’s souring. People think that there’s an issue with Home Depot.

And I do. I do. Just because you walk into one restaurant that’s packed. Hey, I went to Vegas and Vegas was packed. You know, I made a video that I lost my mind on that I shared on other platforms. I couldn’t share it here. And it was about Chicken Guy, Guy Fieri’s place. I talked about this. I think it was three weeks ago how the majority of those restaurants are closing right now because of poor sales and because of the licensing agreement. People not, you know, they’re just closing at an alarming pace. And I can send you that story, too.

But the point was, was that I got two chicken sandwiches, two waters, $70. $70. Now you can sit there and say, oh, you’re the stupid guy that paid for this. And I’ll leave the link below if you guys want to see the TikTok. But I lost my mind. And again, it was go get it. Go order it. Here’s my card. Let’s do it. It’s insane. OK, they charged a dollar, one dollar for every sauce you want. Oh, well, we want four of the sauces. We want to try to see which one we like the best. OK, there’s our dollar apiece.

OK, so it’s insane. Now, yes, it was at Caesar’s Palace and you can sit there and say, oh, it’s outrageous. OK, but the point is, is that nobody can afford that. Chicken Guy’s a joke. And the problem with it is that you’re going to see people rebel even more. They’re not going to shop at Home Depot. You have a very affluent neighborhood here. You have a lot of people shopping, spending money. But this is out of the norm. But I guarantee you, this store is off. It’s not it’s it’s not immune to this just because you have a better store and a better location.

It’s still selling less. So correct me if I’m wrong. Share your thoughts and all this stuff. And Home Depot got clobbered yesterday with their stock price for when they announced their earnings. But again, this is just what’s going on right now. Let me know what you think. Let’s go inside. Now, one thing that we’ve talked a lot about is the delinquencies of credit cards and the amount of credit that people are getting. Think about this. In the second quarter of twenty twenty four, you have credit card delinquencies at an all time high. Ten percent. Ten percent of the credit card debt right now they say is delinquent.

What does that mean? I mean, 30 days, 45 days. Read the story below. But, you know, in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, these credit card companies, these banks went out and they opened up credit to people more and more and more. Now, here is a sign of the times at Home Depot. Everything is under lock and key. Everything now. It’s just terrible. You know, I mean, you’ve got you’ve got blowers. You’ve got a weed whacker. That’s what you’re going to stick that in your pants and take it out. Come on, guys. This is just embarrassing.

It’s absolutely embarrassing. I told this story three Christmases ago. My daughter wanted the Dyson vacuum and I looked all over because I do one big gift for my kids. As long as they believe in Santa, then they get one big gift for Christmas. Well, her wish to Santa was to the Dyson vacuum cleaner. And I found it in Signal Hill. If you know where I’m at in Huntington Beach to Signal Hill, it’s a few cities away. I go there and they had eight of them. And I was so relieved. And I got there to the store.

All eight were stolen. Boxes were emptied and they stole eight Dyson vacuum cleaners. Isn’t that great? So, look at this. Weed Whacker. Under lock and key, guys. Under lock and key. This is insane. You wonder why there’s a problem. By the way, I’m in a great city. I’m in a city that they will prosecute you if you do theft. You got Todd Spitzer as the DA here. You’re going down for the count, baby. If you get arrested for a crime. But this is just a loony bill. Look at all that. It’s nuts. So with the bad credit, with the extending credit people, people just borrow more than they can.

Instead of somebody having the sense to go, you know what? Maybe I don’t need this. Maybe I don’t need to borrow that. Maybe I don’t need to go out to dinner. They just spend the money. And they do. That’s why the thing I got a kick out of this morning before I left the house. I started laughing. Listen to one of the financial programs. They go, you know, I think we can officially say that all the stimulus money has been spent. Like, what are you kidding? It was spent 15 minutes after people got that money. To act like people saved that and put it in their retirement accounts is funny.

People didn’t do that. So you’re seeing all this, all this delinquencies. And here’s another thing that’s funny. Think about this. One of the world’s largest gentleman’s clubs, I’m trying to be as politically correct as possible, is an abandoned Costco. It’s like 74,000 square feet. What do you do with large locations like that? Well, I like the lighting. That’s how bright it is. One thing that’s funny is a great article below about how, hey, when Macy’s going to go out of business, you’re going to see an amazing amount of apartments. Hockey rinks and Amazon warehouses will go in there.

Will they? Will they go in there? Because it all gets down to what people are spending money on. Not everybody’s, you know, let’s go play ice hockey. Come on. Okay. It gets ridiculous, guys. It really does. This is not right that I laughed at this. New York City, their pension fund. You’ve heard about CrowdStrike where they had that update and it went down for the count in CrowdStrike. Stock went down at time. Well, listen to this. The New York City pension fund put 75 million dollars into it just a few days before the meltdown. And so far they’ve lost almost 30 million dollars.

They want to know how they can get out of it. Wait a second. You bought a stock and it went down. And does that apply to us? Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. So anyways, you know, it gets, you know, that applies to you, but not to me. Remember that. So let me know what you think about all this stuff so far. And there’s a lot to to talk about, you know, Orange County, you know, we’re not immune to losing the money for the homeless. There is a 10 million dollar fund for the County of Orange, which is which is a lot of money and it’s designed to feed seniors.

And I see meals on wheels. I’ve seen all these different programs that help people that are less fortunate need a hot meal. That’s 10 million dollars missing. Just don’t know where it’s at. How does that happen? How do you let this happen to where there’s not accountability for this 10 million buckaroos, guys. This is what gets like old and like it’s to be a problem. You know, it’s really where the stuff that gets locked up and the smaller stuff that doesn’t like the light fixtures and stuff. I don’t know why I enjoy walking through this part of the store every time.

But you know what I mean? It’s it’s crazy. But again, this is not you don’t want to steal here. No way. No way. Huntington Beach police. Look at the 1986 riots and what they did with that or 2006 riots with the beach and what they did. They, you know, they took action and then said, hello, please. That was the politically correct way of putting that. OK, so anyway, you get the gist. OK, there’s a little bit more to cover in this video. I’m going to finish this video with these last few stories. First things first, you know, do you guys want to see more short videos? Do you want to see more long form videos, research? Would you like to see three videos in a day? Let me know in the comments or email me at hello at I allegedly dot com.

First things first, covid fraud. I’m telling you guys, we all know somebody who did something nefarious where they went out and took covid money and you’re like, wow, can you believe that guy lied and said they had 60 employees? Yeah. Well, they got four hundred and sixty four thousand dollars. No, guys, I’m telling you, you’re going to see at a record pace, a record pace that they’re starting to arrest these people. And I mean, people bought things they weren’t supposed to. And if you know you did this, I’m telling you, this channel was built four years ago on getting people covid money.

And and if you did anything nefarious, they’re going to catch you this time. They’re going to come after you and you’re going to see this in a big, big way. Catch up with everybody. So the people that think they got away with it or laugh and that are buying sports cars and boats and vacation homes and went on trips and bought jewelry and just did bad, bad things. They’re going to get caught in a bad, bad way. So there’s that. The next thing is New Zealand. Think about this. You know, New Zealand, the land of milk and honey.

I just made that up, by the way. I don’t know. New Zealand has always been like, oh, it’s so beautiful. It’s so fantastic. You got to go there. I know a woman that went in vacation there and just said it was amazing. If I could live there, I would. She told me there was an age restriction on people moving there. And I thought, wow, how insane is that? Well, listen to this at a record pace. People are leaving New Zealand for two reasons. Unemployment, huh? Where did I heard that before? OK, and an anemic economy where people can’t earn a living and businesses are closing.

I’m telling you guys this. This is a global problem. This is not a Wichita, Kansas problem, Idaho problem, you know, whatever. This is a problem for everywhere. And final, final story, which I absolutely love this. And, you know, I tell you guys to get the your VPN. You guys have to have this because every little bit that you can do to make it so someone’s not going to come after your your personal data and know what you’re doing. You got to protect yourself. 3 a.m. ransomware. That’s the name of the group. I mean, I love that these guys, they’re so bold and so brazen that the bad guys name their groups.

Now, hey, you know, you can’t say mafia, you can’t say organized crime, but you can say 3 a.m. ransomware, you know, attack. OK, so these three a.m. group stole four hundred and sixty four thousand personal patient information from Kootenai Health, which is the largest health provider in Idaho. Now, here’s what they got. They got all your personal data. They got surgical data. They got orthopedic data. They got your your health visits. They got it all. And the problem with this is that your personal that think about this got your social. You’ve got your phone number, your name.

You got all your health information, too. That data is worth a fortune. And they’re trying to, you know, extort these people for payments and things like that. Who knows if they’ll get it or not. But again, I’ll leave the link below. Use the get yourself a VPN today. But again, check your credit report on a regular basis. Set an alarm. You know, I always tell people change your, you know, the filters in your furnace. Check your passwords. Check your health, your credit report. Just do yourself a favor, guys. OK, again, don’t forget to sign up for the email list.

The link is below. If you want to email me, it’s hello. And I allegedly, if you send me anything, say, yeah, Dan, you can use my name and you can’t use my name, because if you don’t say anything, I don’t use your name. OK, I appreciate everything you guys sent me. I appreciate all the professionals. Thank you one and all for being here. And I will see you guys very soon. But remember, the home day bow is down. OK, not down for the count. Just sales are down, which is a big sign as far as where we’re going.

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