Lets Talk PTSD

**Doug Pike** (0:01)
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote? Because you were the TV remote? Remember when music sounded like this?
Remember when social media was truly social?

**Doug Pike** (0:17)
Hey John, how's it going today?

**Doug Pike** (0:20)
Well, this show is all about you.
This is 50 Plus with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances, good health, and what to do for fun.
50 Plus, brought to you by the UT Health Houston Institute on Aging. Informed decisions for a healthier, happier life. And by New Promise Neuropathy. Lose the pain and numbness, get your life back. NewPromiseNeuropathy.com. And now, 50 Plus with Doug Pike.

**Doug Pike** (0:52)
All right, here we go. Thursday's edition of the program starts right now. Let me turn this headset up, man. It's just kind of wonky. I may have to go back.
I may have to go back to Five Below and invest in some new headphones. Yeah, these are only, I can only hear out of one ear.
Well, it may be the jack. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Welcome to Thursday, Carbon Copy of Wednesday. And in all likelihood, the coming Friday through Tuesday will not look much different. After which, we've got one of those pretty much irrelevant 20% chances of rain on Wednesday, highs in the mid-90s again, and lows around 80 degrees again. And if you can't tell, because you can't see me, I'm suffering through a morning with no air conditioning in the area where I sit when I'm not on the air.
I'm tempted. I would come in here into one of these studios. It's unused this time of day because they're climate controlled. We can adjust the thermostats in the studios because we on air people are real fancy. But over there in what they call the pit for some reason, I've never really understood that. There's no AC, which means that for me, it's just another day because it's just like Saturday and it's just like Sunday. When I'm in here doing my weekend outdoor shows over on Sports Talk 790, hey man, it's pretty stifling by Sunday. Saturday's not bad, which is kind of what it's like here. First day with no AC on when it's hot outside. But Sunday, it gets a little sporty sometimes.
And the salespeople over there aren't used to it. They're dropping like flies over there. Most of them have already gone home.
I get this two days without AC in summer, two days without heat in winter every single week. So it doesn't bother me that badly. And by the way, today might be a very good idea to run your sprinklers, because for those of you who haven't moved into high rises or senior communities where they're taking care of all your lawn stuff, no rain is gonna equal dry, crispy old semi-dead grass for a while if you don't give it a little drink every now and then.
Unless you're driving, by the way, raise your hand if you remember from childhood. I had a kind of flashback when I was writing up my notes this morning about this.
Try to remember from childhood, hot summer weekend, your dad calls you into the den, hey man, he's watching a baseball game, maybe Wild Kingdom or something like that. Who knows, after he finished mowing the lawn, and he tell you to go out and move the sprinkler. Have you ever had to move a sprinkler, Cal?
You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you? Well, back in the day, Cal, Cal's helping out again today, back in the day, we didn't have sprinkler systems. We had sprinklers that you put in different parts of the yard to water a little bit at a time, and it took hours to actually water your lawn correctly this time of year, because you had to put so much water on each little section. And depending on whether you had a lot of money or a little money, you had one of those sprinklers that made kind of a big fan of water going to the left, and then a fan going right. Or you might have a second sprinkler that just spun around in a circle and threw water all over whatever it was aimed at. Either way, it took a long time to get that done. And the best part of the whole thing was you ask if you could stay outside and play in it, and dad and mom would say, Yeah, sure, go ahead, because they wanted you out of the house anyway. And you and your siblings or maybe the neighbor kids, if they were out, you'd all run through the sprinkler a hundred times, and that cool water coming out of that hose and through the sprinkler was like, that was our outdoor air conditioning. A fantastic time that was, I guarantee you. I had so much fun doing all of that. That water coming through the hose, man, it helped you forget how hot it was. Good times, for real. Into the stock market we'll go, which has been quite the roller coaster ride already today. I haven't looked in about an hour, so if I'm off a little bit, I apologize. All four of the indicators I look at were green early, then the NASDAQ slipped again. Around 930, the Dow was up 679 points. That's a percentage point and a third. The Russell was also up more than a full point. The NASDAQ, by that time, had gotten down a half a point, and the S&P was up about a third of a point, which really means almost nothing to me. I have a man I trust to manage my little stack of money, and he does a good job with it. So I'm looking more out of curiosity than anything else. Gold picked up $32 an ounce and was at 40, 40, about that same time an hour and a half ago or so. And oil, actually, it kind of waffled early. It was going above and below the $70 mark a barrel and had climbed to $70.78 last time I looked. It had gotten as low as $69.80, $69.70, something like that. And I'm sure it'll come back down some more. That said, the price is still more than 30% off its mark from just a month ago. And so long as Iran will adhere to the terms of its agreement with the US.,