Program:  Cavuto Coast to Coast
Date:  4/21/2021
Station:  Fox Business News
Time:  12:00PM

NEIL CAVUTO: If you could stay there, my friend, I want to get your fine brain in the mix of this, we’ve got Courtney Dominguez here of Payne Capital, Senior Wealth Adviser, and Scott Martin Kingsview Asset Management CIO, Fox News Contributor. Courtney, what do you think of what Phil was nicely outlining here? It’s a move away from traditional gas powered vehicles that’s been pushed even by the automakers themselves, many of whom hope to have all electric line ups in the next few years. But it’s quite another issue for governors to sort of push the administration into mandating that. Where do you think this is going?

COURTNEY DOMINGUEZ: Yeah, I think you have mentioned this earlier, NeIl, which I do agree with, we’re going to have to see where the demand goes. And I do think especially for younger generations, really are pushing more toward clean energy sources. So I think long term, I don’t think that’s a trend that’s going to go away by any means. Short term, the infrastructure is just not there yet. We we really just don’t have the means to completely rely on clean energy. So when you’re looking at investments in markets, I don’t think you’re more traditional energy sources are going away here anytime soon. But long term down the line, I do think it’s a trend that we want to continue and maybe start to get a piece of. What’s kind of interesting, actually, is a lot of your biggest a lot of your biggest investors in some of those clean energy are your more traditional energy sources, because they do know that that’s the way the future. So it’s definitely something to be watching. But I agree it’s probably a longer term trend here.

CAVUTO: You know, without playing the politics, it’s so easy to dip into on this, Scott, I’m fair and balanced on energy. I’m all in on everything and wind, solar, you name it. If that is the future, don’t favor one over the other or isolate one. Just as we’ve gotten our energy independence. Now, there are a lot of other factors at play. I grant you, the appeal of electric is obviously there. Ifthe major auto companies are making this switch from Volvo to Ford, GM, Audi and Mercedes and on and on, and they’re improving their mileage dramatically, I believe a Mercedes offering now gets over five hundred miles on a single charge. So it’s changed the math and the dynamics. I get it, but I don’t get it at the expense of traditional energy in the time being. Let the markets decide that. That’s all I’m saying. What do you think?

SCOTT MARTIN: And. Well, Neil. And they are. And that’s why I don’t understand the government’s move to hasten this approach, to force everybody to do this. I mean, this just goes down many lines of the government taking away civil liberties and telling us what we can do and when and how. And as Phil said, and as Courtney said, the markets will take care of this and it already is, whether that’s a younger generation thing or not. And frankly, too, I mean, even to date, I mean, if you read back some of the old periodicals or some of the old scares that we had out there and say, the 80s and 90s, yes, I was actually alive then. And reading them, believe it or not, read at a young age, granted. But like we were supposed to run out of oil by now. We were going to run out of water. And technology has advanced and such in those areas where even the the dirty old, dirtier fossil fuel that is out there are better burned these days, better utilize these days because of technology, because the free market took care of that, not the government.

CAVUTO: Well said, but I’m a little older than you, maybe two or three years Scott, I can’t remember when we were transitioning from horses and I thought, no way that would that would go well and fool me twice. So Phil let me come back to you on where this goes. If if you’re Vladimir Putin and you’re the premier member of this OPEC plus club and you’re trying to push gas prices up, push oil prices up, and this has got to be a welcome development, right. Because it would potentially cut down the supply and drive up the demand. So how do you think he feels about all this?

PHIL FLYNN: Yeah, I think he’s secretly smiling, you know, because every time the government in the United States, you know, makes a move like this, it makes us more dependent on Russia, you know, and foreign oil. And if you look at, you know, what we have seen under the last couple of years since we’re rebounding back on the demand from the covid crisis, the thing that we’re finding is that we’re becoming more and more dependent on foreign oil. And listen, you know, I understand these aspirational goals that everybody drive an electric car, you know, but you have to take it to the next level of how that’s going to impact. You know, have any thought about what what impact the environment’s going to feel from building millions and millions and millions of these batteries. And we even thought about, you know, the strip mining it’s going to take have we thought about how we’re going to dispose of these things when they’re no good? You know, so, you know, the market is moving in the right direction, you know, by the government trying to, I think, grandstand. What’s happening is could actually do more damage than good. So Vladimir smiling today, you know, and the U.S. automakers are scratching their heads to, you know, we’re moving in this direction. You know, why make it more difficult to make this transition happen?

CAVUTO: All right, we’ll see the backdrop for all of this, guys, as you know, far better than I is the improving economy. Some, you know, stunning economic news, the latest of which is what certainly, you know, has been happening on the housing front. Weekly mortgage demand jumping more than eight percent, obviously respond to a slight dip in interest rates after a steady climb. I’m looking at all of that, Courteney, and saying that that’s the backdrop for, know, oil prices that have been today, notwithstanding, you know, moving up through this and a whole host of other developments on the commodity front that has the likes of Procter Gamble, Kimberly-Clark talking about raising everyday items by at least June and in the case of Procter and Gamble, by at least September. So that is the backdrop for a lot of this. What do you think?

DOMINGUEZ: Yeah, really, everything you’re mentioning is all things that are going to potentially be increasing with inflation, which I definitely think is a trend that we’re likely going to see continue through this year. And really, you’re seeing kind of two camps right now where there’s a lot of people who are under the assumption that inflation is kind of a temporary event. That’s going to happen just as the economy continues to reopen. But there is another camp, and I do think it’s….

CAVUTO: You’re not worried about a real type of 70s type experience that was way before you were born. And I was old back then. So you’re not you’re not looking for that. What are you looking for?

DOMINGUEZ: I do think it would be more of a short term. That being said, I don’t think either the camp thing is just temporary and inflation’s not kicking in. But you’re right. I mean, it’s been a very long time since inflation kicked in. I think a lot of people are becoming complacent there. So I don’t I’m not really expecting something that dramatic like we necessarily saw in the 70s. But you definitely want to make sure you have inflation hedges in there and you’re seeing that in things like mortgage rates are going up, even though rates have eventually ticked up there, still really low for historical standards. You’re seeing people taking advantage of that because people are kind of assuming if rates go up, we may as well take advantage of the mortgage rates that are there right now.

CAVUTO: Good point. You know, it cuts both ways as we slowly come out of this pandemic. Obviously, economic demands grow and economy – That’s great. I get that Scott, but for a company like Netflix, it could be problematic, right? I mean, the number of streamers they’re having, I mean, you know, it was considered weak or weaker than expected at four million in this quarter. New subscribers expected to go down to one million in the next quarter. Is this going to play out with a lot of classic pandemic plays?

MARTIN: Some places, you know, the Netflix one is frankly a head scratcher, Neal. In fact, full disclosure, we bought some this morning just because those numbers were absolutely terrible, frankly, and I mean, I don’t know where some of the subs win. I mean, I know a handful of people that added Netflix subscriptions ahead of that crackdown, by the way, that they’re doing, where the sharing of passwords is going on, by the way, which I don’t participate in or condone. However, I’ve heard people do that stuff. So anyway, the reality is they sandbagged the numbers. I mean, to talk about a million subs added in the upcoming quarter or two, like that’s just a really sandbag number and a reason to probably get into the stock here because that bad news is already in the market and reflected in today’s stock price fall.

CAVUTO: All right, guys, it is where we’ll follow it all very, very closely. I want to thank you. In the meantime…