Markets have continued to push toward all-time highs, but beneath the surface, the story is not as straightforward.
On the other hand, consumer sentiment tells a completely different story.
Recent sentiment readings suggest Americans feel worse about the economy than they did during COVID and even the financial crisis. That gap between how people feel and what the data shows raises an important question. What are markets missing?
One of the key themes discussed is the divergence between perception and reality.
Consumers continue to spend, which typically signals confidence. Yet sentiment surveys suggest a much more negative outlook. This contradiction creates uncertainty for investors trying to interpret where markets may go next.
At the same time, market leadership appears to be shifting. After a long period dominated by large growth stocks, there are signs that small caps, mid caps, and international markets are beginning to participate more meaningfully.
The big question is whether this is the start of a lasting rotation or simply a short-term move.
The conversation also touches on several other factors influencing today’s environment:
Each of these themes plays a role in shaping both investor sentiment and market direction.
Periods like this can feel confusing. Markets are strong, but the underlying signals are mixed. That does not necessarily mean something is wrong, but it does mean investors should stay focused on the bigger picture.
Understanding both the data and the sentiment behind it can help provide clarity when headlines feel contradictory.
If you want to hear the full discussion and how these themes may impact your investment strategy, listen to the full episode below.
Hey, welcome back, everybody to another episode of the market enthusiast. I’m Noah Brooks. And obviously, this is Chris needs.
Noah Brooks (00:24)
Hello. Hello. We come back to you on. What is it today, Chris? It’s April 22nd. It’s Earth Day. Okay. Right. You’re a big Earth Day guy, right? Sure. Saving the world. What are you doing to celebrate?
Going to saw a t ball practice tonight. That’s it. Yep. Well, I think the whole purpose of saving the world with the Tesla. Yeah, I think the whole purpose of Earth Day is to, you know, mobilize the community for a better Earth. Right. And so you’re outside, you’re in the grass, you’re playing t ball. I think that’s probably satisfactory. Yeah, laying the grass. You can give yourself a checkmark. Yeah, right. Absolutely. What are you doing? I’m drinking out of a
plastic cup and in a negative point. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think I’m to do anything. I might. I did mow the lawn yesterday. I don’t know if that counts. Probably not. Probably not. ⁓ one of the things that earth day, ⁓ this year, I think it’s entitled the, ⁓ every year they, they change it, but this year is our power, our planet and, ⁓ emphasizes the transition to renewables. And you’re obviously driving an electric car these days.
There was some recently big news. feel like I, I, a few podcasts ago, I just said this, that one of these Chinese companies came out with a battery that charged in like 15 minutes and it got a thousand kilometers. And for the uninitiated, that’s, know, 600 and some odd miles, right? Six point six point ⁓ four miles this week. They came out the same company, C a T L cattle, which is one of the big competitors.
of BYD in China and they said their new version of their I think lithium phosphate battery will charge from 10 % to 98 % in less than seven minutes and it will give your typical car 1500 kilometers. That’s 932 miles for us normal folk. So 930 miles.
on a seven minute charge. Earth Day, Earth Day, right? The only problem is, is not an American company. It’s Chinese company and they have they have all the good stuff over there. They have no regulations on their mining either. No, no, no. They just dig, dig, baby, dig. Right. So, OK, we will come back to that, but we need we need some. ⁓
rare earth minerals of our own here in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I’m getting a little bit of laryngitis. So you have to, you have to bear with me on it. I hope it’s not contagious. Better not be. All right. So like I said, we’re here on the 22nd of the month, uh, S and P up a little bit more than 4 % mid caps up 10 % as we stand here today. Small caps, big winner. And on the size, um, uh, style and size up about 12 and a half percent.
Really jumped after touching that 200 day moving average. They sort of maintained it unlike the S &P 500. Yeah, they really jumped off it nicely. New all time highs right for the Russell 2000 not necessary S &P 600 but for the Russell 2000 developed international got walloped after we started bombing Iran and they closed the straight. They did not bounce back as much. There’s still up more than domestic large gaps up about 6.4%.
But the real winner this year is emerging markets. Yeah, they have recovered a little bit. I saw what were they up eight and a half this month or so after being much higher significantly in January, February, over 15. Yeah. And they did get hit in March as well, but they bounced back. They have been the under performer with the exception of the last seven months or so, man, the last seven years, they have really just
you know, they have been a drag on portfolios, especially as the Russell 2000 or small caps really largely have been over time. We’re finally getting that rotation as we’ve been talking about. The question really just becomes is was this just a short term woof where everybody you know, goes, okay, we got to get out of the mag seven, we got to move out of large growth, back to diversification. And then, you know, in a few weeks, we’re just going to go right back to where we were.
I like that to me is is the overall arching question because we’ll start back in October, November. So I think this I think this qualifies as staying power now. Don’t you? Six months. I mean, I go on calendar years. OK, right. You know, you’re a long term guy. Well, no. I mean, you think about it when you when you sit down and you go, well, what did S &P do last year? You do a full calendar year right now. We have some definite outperformance from international and small caps and mid caps.
Let’s see how you know when we get to January 2027. Let’s see what 2026 looks like. I think and then we’ll be able to say I would speculate pure speculation that they will probably continue a little bit of that out performance. ⁓ Growth making a comeback versus value as well. They obviously growth was getting beaten prehandedly by value, but this April bounce is sort of brought back into the fold. Yeah.
value outperforming growth by about seven and a half percent. It was about 11 and a half percent, you know, two weeks or so ago. But yeah, I mean, the market is responding. And it is really tough for the the for the day traders out there, which we are not. ⁓ It is got to be mind boggling to know what’s going to happen next. Unless you just do the opposite of what everybody thinks. Yeah, go opposite the headlines, right?
Yeah, I mean, we got down to our cheapest March 30 on the S &P 500 on the forwarderings, we got down to 19.3 after everyone talking about being in the bubble and everything like that. Hey, that tough March brought us back into reasonable valuation in our quarterly commentary, we told the advisors, you know, we’re back to a level we can, you know, apply money at and not feel bad about it not feel like we’re somewhere in a high valuation environment. And
know, this April bump brought us back up to I think we’re somewhere around 21. So we have come back significantly. But earnings keep getting revised upwards. And yeah, things are looking okay. What did you say the full year S &P earnings were? Forward year, one full year from right now up to 336. Yeah, and it’s been getting revised upwards keeps moving, moving week after week, it seems like that doesn’t seem like a bad economy to me. But obviously, the stock market and the economy are two different
things. And you kind of see that in some of the consumer sentiment numbers that come out, right? Yeah, I mean, we were looking at that a little bit earlier today, and we’ve ticked up off the bottoms, but we’re lower than the COVID lows. We’re lower than possible. We’re lower than the GFC, the great financial crisis, you know, really strange. We’re lower than any part of the dot com busts. You know, it’s wild. I don’t know if Americans are spoiled with how good we have it. But ⁓
consumer sentiment says everybody’s miserable right now and that things are awful and obviously they keep spending. Yeah. Well, the consumer retail sales came out yesterday and they beat expectations. Headline number was I think 0.7 and then the 1.7 versus 1.6 core was 67. Yeah, month over month. The control group was 0.67 versus point to
core was actually 1.9 versus 1.4. Those were good numbers that I don’t think we’re really expecting with consumer sentiment so bad you wouldn’t expect that. And the control group that goes that we mentioned there up point six m versus point two, that goes into the PC is a little bit of a read through we don’t get PC until way later in the month. But it seems the consumer is spending, but they think the rest of the economy is
core, right? That’s what that sentiment read would lead me to believe. And it’s kind of like, um, you know, if you ask a thousand people, if, they’re a good driver or not, everybody’s going to say, well, yeah, I’m a good driver. And then you ask, what do you think about other people? And they say, well, everybody else thinks. And I think that’s the, I think that’s the trend. What we’re seeing here is new. know, you, think to yourself, okay, well I’m in a good way, but other people must be really in a bad way.
And I mean, that that seems to be what the what the sentiment numbers are saying. Sometimes you would expect claims to pop up. We’ve talked about that over, you know, each month when they come out or each week with claims, you know, initial claims right back where they should be. I mean, they haven’t really budged initial claims at 207. Yeah. unemployment claim. Yeah, continue continuing claims at 1.818 million, I think, which is right around
expectation, you know, we’re not seeing any of these things spike that would really lead to a terrible consumer sentiment. But yeah, well, I negative nonetheless, I have said here, you know, the oil, the length and the level is probably going to be the determining factor over the next few months. If we can get through whatever is going to happen in Iran, open up the straight come through, you’re going to see some of the inflationary pressure because of the hydrocarbon
increase in price, if we can get through that in a you know, a month, two months, it comes back down. I think we’re going to be off to the races. And I mean, shoot, we are just a hair away from all time highs, just sitting here today. Yeah. And we’re still actively negotiating to open up the straight. is not by any standard opened up. And it’s really hard to figure out what’s going to happen. You and I were talking about it earlier in the week.
And to me, it seems like I mean, so there’s been some announcements. Lufthansa said they were going to reduce 20,000 flights, mostly intra Europe flights that were less profitable to to ⁓ save fuel. And one of the energy ministers in Great Britain came out and said that they were six weeks away, like had apparently six weeks worth of
jet fuel, jet a, ⁓ in reserved to me, those things will start to bubble up if, if the straight is not open. Yeah. It’s headlines like that. That I think are the reason why developed and mainly in Europe, centric ETFs are sort of lagging since this April bounce back. Everybody else is fully taking advantage of. Yeah. I, I mentioned, last time we were here, kind of the, end of the supply chain.
And in my mind, that’s, you know, Australia, New Zealand, right? They might literally run out of petrol or they might run out of jet fuel. And that’s not going to be good. What about China, though? How are they set up for fuel these days? They have they have a strategic reserve just like we do. But yeah, they’re relying on other countries to fill that. So Russia and Iran would probably be their two biggest sources. Sure.
They obviously aren’t getting that from one of them. So I would expect this is me game theory it out that they’re going to interject themselves in this straight of Hormuz situation, whether it is telling Iran just agree to whatever they say, and we’ll back you up later when you do what you need to do or something like that, just telling them to negotiate in bad faith and kowtow in the short term.
So they can get their oil, get the straight opened up, or maybe they militarily send a ship in there and say, Hey, what are you going to do if we escort one of our two million barrel tanker through? Yeah. To me, that seems like the beginning of a world war. Let’s call it skirmish. Two and a half, two and a half. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s world war three. ⁓ But if you think about other prior wars throughout history, I mean, they’ve been a ⁓ been about a lot of different things, but resources is really what most wars are.
fought over. And we’re in this weird situation where we have ⁓ plenty, I say plenty of oil, right? Since fracking came online in the early 2000s, it’s just expanded and expanded and expanded. We have plenty of oil for ourselves. It’s a world market. We know that ⁓ China and the rest of the world, ⁓ namely some of the Asian countries, you know, they’re really dependent on
the straight of hormones for their fuel at some point. You’ll get so they may say to Iran, listen, agree to whatever you want. But the people in Iran, they’re not too worried about China. Like China is going to be there in a year or in five years. They don’t have any oil. They’re more worried about sticking it to us. I think then kowtowing to China and saying, okay, we’ll get it out to you. And that to me is the problem that I think we were not.
prepared for is they’re just they have they have time. And they Yeah, they don’t care about the economic pain inflicted upon them. They’re willing to their their whole goal is just to survive the conflict. Right versus we’re like, well, economically, they’re getting crushed. Why aren’t they giving into us? And it’s, it’s not about that. It’s ideological to them. Yeah, it very much is. So ⁓ where does that put us in a month from now or two months from now? There’s so many different paths that this can take.
And I think the administration, our administration and this president certainly doesn’t want to see high oil prices and gas prices as we get to the election. I mean, we’re still a half a year away, like 208 days or something like that. But of all the people in the United States, I think he is one that is fearful that high oil prices will derail ⁓ the control that the Republicans have in the House and Senate.
I would expect these. There are more missiles to be fired in this, the whole escalate to deescalate thing. I don’t think these talks immediately in Islamabad right now are going to work. Whether they happen or not, I still don’t know. don’t have JD over there. Did he? Did he fly over? No, he was late to leave and I don’t know. He was in the US this morning if I’m not mistaken. It’s tough to say, but I would bet again that it’s not the last missile fired right now.
I think this ceasefire will fall apart at least for a short amount of time until they get back to the table. the oil traders got it right in the beginning. They got it right on the decline. Now they’re going to be long again, and they’re going to get it right when it goes back up. And there’s a lot of mysterious the traders are probably loving the ball. my goodness. They’re loving the headlines. Yeah, the option premiums go crazy. They’re having steak this week for sure. Or maybe not having steak depending how whipsawed they got.
Yeah, yeah, I guess I guess it could be. ⁓ So we have a bunch of other stuff to go into. You mentioned steak. I just figured I would throw this out. You know, I was I was in Las Vegas last week for a few nights going to the sphere, right? Everybody out there probably has heard me talk about fish. It’s one of my one of my favorites.
Our Iowa guys said that all that was being played this fear was backstreet boys and something else. So I thought you were lying to me. And you’re actually actually I am not a backstreet boys guy. I remember them back in the day. Sure you’re not. It’s not something that I would ⁓ I was good. Is JT Justin Timberlake? Is he a backstreet boy guy? And sink. he’s an in sync guy. Okay, I would go see Justin Timberlake. I think he’s past his prime. Is he still doing stuff? I mean,
He was the hot ticket for so long. Yeah. Yeah. No, if he comes to this sphere, I’m going, okay. ⁓ so we’re out there and yeah, there’s just restaurant or after restaurant after restaurant. And what I kind of noticed in good restaurants, right? I mean, you know, you eat your heart out there. What I seem to notice is that we had more of these small plate type of setups than on the menu. Then there were like the large plates. And I start thinking, you see these
Articles about the would go be ⁓ appetizers and would go be menus. And so we go out there and instead of getting, you know, this would the old 96 or write the giant, the giant steak. I’m just trying and I am not for the record. I’m I’m not taking a shot. I probably I probably should, but I’m not on the shot. But like the idea of just eating a bunch of little things.
like tasteful things, right? Not just broccoli or something, but like a lot of, ⁓ a lot of really, ⁓ different things. It grows on me and the, and just getting those little apps instead of one giant meal, I think is so much more fun. I don’t know where that came from, but you mentioned like, so I thought that was good. The other thing that’s going on is, ⁓ the sphere seems to be the new spot, right? The Eagles are there. Metallica is there. ⁓ kiss.
the old rock band from the 70s and 80s. They they were offered to go there and apparently they didn’t want to do that. They wanted to compete with the sphere ⁓ for that immersion art, if you will. And to me, the sphere is this combination of music. Right. So you’re going to see whichever band you want to see. And then this immersive art where it’s it’s over you and you’re in it. And I would definitely say it’s probably the the closest you can get.
to doing some type of psychedelic drug without doing a psychedelic drug. You sent a really two really cool videos one. Now we’re talking fish here. So I don’t know how we get fish was it was like almost like an EDM light show going off. And then the next one you say it was like a giant landscape and there’s like two giant birds that look like they’re like sitting on your shoulders. I’m like, what is going on at this concert? It is a good it is a good place to go for people out there if you can do it. Check it out. I think so we’ve been out there number of times.
We’ve never been on the floor. I think that’s too close to the to the screen. The 300 levels where it’s at, you see the band, but you really are immersed in in everything. It’s like full 180 around you. Yeah. Yeah. 300 level everybody. 300 level where it’s at or upper 200, baby. Yeah. Yeah. So, OK. Moving moving on. Speaking of sort of art experiences and really cool technology.
We got some Apple news that was really big. Yeah, Tim Cook is going to set down was it September 1 from his CEO role. He’s gonna stay on his chairman. Yeah. But yeah, it’s been a crazy tenure. John Ternes, who’s their VP of hardware engineering, who’s been with the company for 25 years, he’s going to take over. But yeah, Tim Cook oversaw one of the most profitable runs for shareholders, especially that I think can come to mind for a CEO tenure.
I mean, the stock went up 1900 % while he was there. Came out with the Apple watch. I think the all but the first iPad, the iPhone four and up. Didn’t get the Apple car though, did we? We didn’t get that. No, no Apple car, no Apple television. There’s, there is an Apple software television, but no Apple television in the hardware. And tennis is
He is a hardware guy, but I think he’s going to be tasked now. So it seems to me that Apple is behind on artificial intelligence, right? So they have their what’s their AI platform that they built into the last OS? The old crappy one, Siri one. No, because Siri is the worst. Yeah, I hear that. I’m not. I thought they just sort of took the stance of we’re just going to make all these AI platforms pay us 20, 30 percent or whatever the fee is on the platform.
Apple pay. He also did Apple pay, which is sneaky, important, sort of change the ecosystem. I think it was Apple intelligence, right? Was there a first attempt at AI on the phones? And I don’t want say it was a flop, but I don’t know that it went anywhere. Apple has not been even though there’s ⁓ this the Apple Store and music and all that. Apple is not necessarily a software company.
Yeah, it’s more a hardware company. Some of the things that you mentioned, and if you think back about breakthroughs like the original Macintosh, right? Or those updated ones in the early 2000s that were just one single unit and they were green in different colors and all that. Back in my elementary school, I remember when we got those. is that what it was? Right. But then I mean, they were the first ⁓ iPod. It was the first that actually looked with a screen that was ⁓ an MP3 player.
And then the iPad. Right. And then the iPhone and then the watch. The AirPods, AirPods. That was 2016, if I remember correctly. And obviously the iPhone, right? And so what they’ve been doing is I would say that they’ve kind of been iterating on these things and making them better. Right. So the watch, there’s an five, I think. And
17 on the phone and all that stuff, but I don’t know that they’ve had any groundbreaking technology on the hardware side for a while. Yeah. And I don’t think that was the personality they needed or wanted when they hired Tim Cook. He was never the creator. He was, think the supply chain, almost like an elder statesman negotiator, politician almost kind of to deal with all different countries. But yeah, he kind of did change the supply chain from all China to there. think
25 % of iPhones are now made in India, which is kind of important. You if we go to a hot war with China in the next five years or 10 years, they would be, they’d be in trouble, right? But it was really amazing that the shareholder wealthy created because they actually purchased, I’ve seen ranges of 35 to 40 % of all outstanding shares while during his tenure. And, but what you’re talking about not
having anything really innovative the last few years rather than they’re just doing what they did and doing it right and efficiently. They’ve spent three points. ⁓ I have a number here. have a number here. 3.6 times as much on share buybacks over 700 billion. Three six 3.6 times more than on R &D during his tenure. That’s why there’s nothing that’s
shareholders are happy but it’s like what we got going forward dude where’s my car yeah yeah absolutely I want the apple
⁓ But turn us you know, he’s going to be tasked with coming up with hardware that’s native AI. I think that’s the next generation. I don’t know what it’s going to be. I doubt that it’s going to be a car or something like that. But right now they’re trying to put AI on top of a hardware as opposed to hardware being native with AI built in and and he might be the right guy to do it. ⁓ He was around in the Steve Jobs ⁓ era.
And he lists to Apple, he lists Cook as his mentor. Right. So I mean, he knows the situation. He’s been there 25 years. He probably has some shares of Apple, don’t you think? Yeah, definitely. He’s well, he’s been there 25 years. I’m sure he’s got a nice little accumulation. Do we know how old he is? I didn’t I didn’t actually look. I don’t know. I he’s probably at least 50. Right? Yeah, I think he was the first the youngest VP.
they ever hired, which I assume that excludes the founders going back to the 80s. But I’ve heard he has a significantly different personality or management style decision style than Tim Cook had Tim Cook would be you give you come you bring him two or three ideas, sort of options to pitch against each other. And he would ask you five more questions back to get you thinking about it. And apparently, that’s not how turn this is he’s like, you give him three options. He’s like, like a
That’s it. that’s sort of how he makes it. like, like a the best. Let’s prioritize assets to that and we’ll put B on the second tier. We’ll keep it going, but we’ll work on that. But that means he trusts his people that are bringing the ideas to him, which is obviously important, right? There’s no question about it. Well, it’ll be interesting. ⁓ Not, you know, stock price, obviously it’s one of the largest companies out there. It’s almost $4 trillion.
probably the second largest company as we’re standing here today. It’ll be interesting to see what they’re able to come up with. And I don’t think they’re going to have anything brand new, you know, out of the box and like next month, but over the next year or two years, three years to see ⁓ what native AI hardware that they have and they are able to bring to market as opposed to just kind of making the existing stuff a little bit better iterating on it. That’ll be interesting. ⁓ So one of the largest companies in the world, right, which is Apple,
But the largest Treasury Department is about to get a new head. Yes. Right. Yep. Let’s let’s talk about Mr. Warsh for a minute. Yeah, he’s having his Senate hearings today or in committee meetings. ⁓ Yeah, he’s getting questioned up and down about everything, including his ⁓ assets, which are significant. But he’s not he’s not like really wealthy, is he?
not compared to his wife anyway. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He’s apparently has about 100 million of assets. I 200 million. well, you know, depending on the market and those funds, he’s apparently in some Stanley Druckenmiller funds, who obviously is one of the best investors of all time. I heard the juggernaut fund. I didn’t hear that before. But apparently, it’s an offshoot of one of their other funds. Okay. You know, I had fund. But yeah, 100 million up to 200 million.
he’s still a pauper compared to his wife. So he’s married to Jane Lauder, ⁓ heiress to the Estee Lauder fortune who’s worth I’ve seen like up to 2.5 billion, you know, depending on where the markets at on a given day. They have a prenup. I would bet they do since he can only claim 100 to 200 million. Yeah, I probably. Yeah, yeah, he was looking pretty tan in those San confirmation. He’s living a good life. Now he’s coming back to serve the public.
maybe now maybe a little bit later if Tom Tillis lets him get out committee obviously Tom Tillis is holding everything I won’t say hostage but he is he basically wants Jay Powell to get not get off scot-free that would insinuate he’s doing something wrong but there’s this DOJ ⁓ inquiry into the spending at the Federal Reserve building and the overrun on costs and he wants that to get cleared up and to go away before he’ll vote to advance worse
through committee, which once he gets through committee, he’s probably going to get voted in because of the current majority in the Senate. Yeah. For Republicans. Yeah. Well, ⁓ the current, ⁓ the current term, right is up. I think it’s, is it May 25th for J-PAL? It’s in May. Definitely. So we’re kind of, we’re coming kind of hard and fast up to a deadline. ⁓ but Tillis does seem to be a thorn in the side of the administration on this and
I don’t have any inside information, but it doesn’t seem like the head of the Federal Reserve is going to be in trouble for doing anything in regards to building. I don’t think he had any hand in on the plans. I don’t think he has a little slush fund. He’s passing off in that two, three billion or whatever it’s costing, which is it is still insane that it costs that much for a building, but obviously it has to have the best of everything secrecy can have. ⁓
It might as well be just as secure as the Pentagon because that’s how much, you know, wealth is affected by the federal reserve. Absolutely. Yeah. No, no question about it. Well, it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out both from a political standpoint. And then I think the obvious thing is right. So the administration is looking for lower interest rates and the natural assumption is that whoever the administration picks is already have this path to lower rates. Do you, do you think that that’s
the case? No, of course, he’s saying he hasn’t promised the president anything. And he’s, you know, he’ll look at as an independent person as the Fed needs to be. But yeah, it’s a committee, can’t push and guarantee votes any certain way, he can kind of control the discord a little bit. ⁓ The conversation, I mean, and sort of direct things that way. But yeah, you can’t force someone to vote a certain way. So we’ll see how it goes. Well, but you
At the same time, I think he was asked yesterday on some of the stuff that I saw was like, did you promise the president that you were lower rates? And he said emphatically, no, I didn’t promise. Well, OK, so he didn’t say I promised to lower rates. But come on. Yeah, right. I still gave him a little wink. Yeah. Wink, wink, nod, nod. I mean, the funny thing is, is he was generally a hawk and.
not recent history, but going back to the great financial crisis, you he’s saying that the low interest rates are going to cause a bubble and cause inflation. We didn’t really get the inflation, but we got maybe a bubble. You know, over all the years where we saw the run up afterwards. But yeah, there was a long period there where we wanted inflation almost we were sort of stuck with too low growth too low. Yeah. And but now he flipped and now he’s for lower rates.
He seems pretty bullish on the productivity gain from AI. That’s his sort of reasoning that we’re going to have de de deflation down the road because of that boost in technology. Well, I think there’s something we said for that. And, know, we talk on on this show pretty frequently about what’s going to happen at jobs as productivity continues to climb. And, you know, now you’re having this situation where I think it’s it’s artificial intelligence and specifically
these agents, not just the large language models where you go in and you ask Anthropic or Claude or, or chat GPT, you know, you just ask them something, but more you assign them tasks, right? As a, as an artificial intelligence agent and whether that’s programming, whether that’s, you know, every morning for a review of earnings that have come out in the last 24 hours, ⁓ people are people that are using it are going to get more productive.
The question is, are they going to be productive enough that the larger companies don’t hire? And I that’s, that’s yet to be seen. Um, some of our big pushes here at good life is the front office of the future where we’re trying to find out what things we can automate in terms of tasks between programs, between systems, which I know with our experience, we have tons of things that every time we make a change to our allocations, we have to update.
four or five, six different programs, which is unfortunate, but it’s part of the job what we have to do. But if we are able to automate that task and we have a bot talking between the programs and updating it seamlessly, probably that two weeks of work every quarter of updating stuff sort of disappears and we can get back to due diligence and things like that. Think about how much more productive and how beneficial that would be to our not only happiness and lives, but to the products we offer.
Yeah, and I think that is just a microcosm of what’s going on across the board that we’re kind of looking at what different productivity boosts we’re going to see from tasks being offloaded. Yeah, AI take me away. Yeah, right. As the old Calgon take me away. I remember that. So lots of other stuff going on this week, but I want to bring up there has been a number of scientists out there.
that have seemingly gone missing over the last few years. And a bunch of them that have seemingly gone missing over the last five or six months, if I’m not mistaken, there’s 11 of these guys and gals and they are all have a relationship with the department of energy and whether that’s a NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory or Los Alamos, which we know crazy stuff goes on there, but they’ve all disappeared and it’s gotten to the point where
the press has asked the president and president has said on television, yes, we’re looking into it. national security threat, yeah, knowledge that this is happening. So what do we what do we think is happening? I think I think people either were divulging information to bad parties or said no to divulging information to bad actors. what bad actors do you think they are?
they that have done this. International entities internationally does that certain countries does that mean China maybe they’re sick of their coal plants over there and they want some nuclear energy nuclear secrets you know want to find a way to get was it fusion we have fission they want fusion I don’t know cold fusion yeah maybe but it seems really strange and now it’s becoming a thing and if you look at the clusters some of them are very clustered in the specific area just seemed
What you said you’re down always said there’s no such thing as coincidences, I think that’s sort of how I’m looking at this. It would be tough. mean, listen, there’s 340 million people here. You just have to have 11 that all have some relationship with the Department of Energy in Los Alamos. ⁓ And they they mysteriously disappear or under some strange circumstances or suspicious circumstances. They all disappear. Could it be a coincidence? Sure. I don’t know,
Seems a little conspiratorial. I think it I think something funny is going on. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully we get to the bottom of it. Well, I guess, you know, I said, what do you think? And you said it’s outside actors. I think it’s inside actors. I think the call is coming from inside the house. Yeah, that would be that would be my two cents. I think they know something. Maybe UFO related. ⁓ yeah. OK. Los Alamos, right?
fusion, vision, all that stuff. anti gravitational technology. It’s either that or they know who killed JFK and they were going to talk. How is it possible? We’re in 2026 and we don’t know who killed JFK. No, it is interesting. I think Trump did say something to yeah, that is pretty wild. ⁓ Trump did say something like he’s going to release the UFO files. Yeah, we’ve heard that probably three or four times. Same with the JFK files for that matter. But very interesting that
this whole national security thing and all that’s going on while he, I guess, feels like there’s pressure or suddenly feels the need to be transparent on that topic. Interesting timing. That’s a coincidence. Yeah, maybe it’s like in ⁓ it’s nevermind. I’m going to go back to old movies. It’s kind of silly, but you’re sick that I don’t know your references. I’m sorry. No, an independent Independence Day.
great. When when the president finds out that they actually have a UFO and he didn’t know about it. And the one guy says, well, you really didn’t think they’re spending $800 on a toilet paper or whatever he says. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Then we find out people are actually doing that, like booking like a toilet, a hammer for like 800 bucks in the 80s and early 90s. That came out that, you know, contractors were invoicing for, you know,
Like you said, five hundred dollars for a hammer when you get a hammer for eight dollars or fifteen dollars. Yeah, that was I think there was some Senate hearings about that back in the late 80s, early 90s. Yeah. Toilet seats. Yeah. But not like the gold toilet seats today. These are just regular toilets. They’re only gold plated. No, I do. I’ve never had a gold plated toilet seat. I’ve never sat on anything gold plated. Gold plated caviar once. That was kind of cool. Yeah. At the sushi place. Oh, geez. Yeah.
I do remember. Can you eat gold? guess? Yeah, it’s good for you. Really? puts hair in your chest, I guess. It’s like grounding yourself. Just put the metal right inside of you. I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that. So going back to more economic stuff. I said we got retail sales coming came out yesterday that were pretty good. There’s some existing home sales data in Texas.
that doesn’t seem so good. It’s the first year over year decline in all parts of Texas for a long, long time, really since the end of the global financial crisis. And, you I, you always questioned that’s the canary in the coal mine. Is it just because of overbuilding is because of overbuilding combined with maybe population growth slowing down, but the numbers, know, immigration slowing down or immigration slowing down, right?
You know, so the question becomes, is that the beginning of something, ⁓ you know, around here, houses are still moving as quick as possible and they’re, you know, continuing to go up. But Texas is a very, very large state in terms of number of houses sold every year, just like, ⁓ California and new houses in Texas. I think they lead the way in new homes for, ⁓ States. So, you know,
The idea of those prices going down, mean, for the consumer, for someone who’s looking for a house, they don’t have to worry about a 10 % increase year over year. But I question whether or not that slowdown is just the changing of a trend. Yeah. Yeah. You’re always looking for that. Well, pending home sales were actually pretty strong last week. 1.5 % versus 1.1. So at least that nationally is a decent time. mean, listen, we under built for a long, long time after the global financial crisis.
Not that 1.5 is a high number, but something. But we under we under built after the GFC and then we had COVID which pushed all of those sales forward, right? Instead of doing, you know, 800,000 a million, we had all of those sales over 2020 and 21 into 22. So it brought that stuff forward and now maybe we’re, not not doing as much as we normally would have in terms of home sales.
Obviously that increased the prices because there were so few on the market. And in addition to that, we’ve talked about this on here many, many times. Rates are significantly higher than they were in 2020 and 2021. Yeah, for sure. You know, the people that went out and got those 30 years at three and a quarter or 15 years at two eight, seven, five. mean, you’re not going to see that again anytime soon, even though maybe a wash.
And gets a little closer. Yeah, it gets a little closer. And yeah, I mean, we’re still well above six at the moment. It was under six for a little bit. And then with Iran situation, inflation expectations bumped up. So the yields moved up with them. Yeah. So I don’t know when we’re going to see under six on a 30. It’s not today, you know, nationally. ⁓ But I think that’s going to help. And like whether the Fed lowers or doesn’t lower, I think rates can come down naturally.
as opposed to them and right where they only control the overnight lending rate. They don’t really control the 10 year or the 30 year note. ⁓ but we just need some more supply to come out and we need rates to come down a little bit and you know, we’re going to keep moving. That’s, that’s, that’s where we are on, housing. ⁓ we talked a little bit about inflation. We obviously talked about Iran. ⁓ what’s, what’s next? What do we see in the middle East?
think we’re going to have more whiplash headlines. ⁓ Like I said, one or two bouts of violence and war, or kinetic actions, maybe kinetic actions, but I think the worst behind is behind us. And I think the, the market reaction, the market sensitivity to it, the worst of that is also behind us. So from allocating capital perspective, I’m not sleepless over it by any means. absolutely.
⁓ Well, as we as we wrap up here, as we’re at all time highs, obviously, as we wrap up here, I want to go back to Earth Day. And you know, you obviously are driving an EV. There’s been some reasonably good news in EV land. And maybe not the traditional electric vehicle as we see it. ⁓ But the extended range vehicle so I can remember in some of the hearings with ⁓ Ford and General Motors when they were
They were facing bailouts. And there was the whole question of whether the CEOs took the private jets, you know, on their bailout tour. Right. Most people they did. They did. Of course they did. Right. Yeah. They flew to Washington and they took the bank for my train train over there. ⁓ But so some of the newer technology. the reason I brought that up is because the the Chevy Bolt was supposed to be the game changer.
that made General Motors a completely different entity at the end of the global financial crisis. And it really, ⁓ it really didn’t. The question of the hybrid vehicle and the electric vehicle, we now have hybrids where there’s a gas engine and there’s electric in the wheels that are driving the car. And at some times it’s electric and sometimes it’s gas.
And that is going to be the past of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. The new hybrids that are coming out are the extended range hybrids, which means there’s going to be some type of generator in the vehicle. And instead of cycling through RPMs, like as you step on the gas and goes up and RPMs, the comes down as you slow down that extent range extending generator, it’s just going to operate.
at its optimum level, whatever RPMs that is 2500 RPMs, I don’t know if you ever use a portable generator, right? You know, it doesn’t go up and down. It just it’s one level. And that’s what it is. Now, it will go up if you plug stuff into a turn on. But when it’s when it’s running, it’s just it’s not moving up and down. So these extended range vehicles are going to be driven 100 % by the electric engines in the wheel hubs or wherever they put them. ⁓
And they’re not going to be driven at all by these generators. A generator is there to extend the range. So there is a whole bunch of these coming out. A lot of them are SUVs and heavy pickup trucks because the, you know, the, like the F one lightning didn’t do so well. They stopped production on that. I don’t know if there’s any more sitting at lots, but they’re not going to be making anymore. My father-in-law has one and he loves it. Does he? Yeah. How many miles do you think is a full charge? Gotcha.
don’t know. Okay, I think it’s probably 250. Yeah, it’s not great, right. So the new version, the extended range electric vehicle, you’re going to be talking six to 700 miles. So it’s a combination of a tank of gas and the battery that you that you’re charging up. So who’s coming out with it? Jeep, the Grand Wagoneer, the Ram 1500 pickup truck, the new F 150 lightning.
Nissan Rogue. Those are all in 2026 later this year, right? 2026 27 Nissan Rogue, the Santa Fe from Honda Genesis GV 70, the Scout, which I haven’t seen any yet. I think there’s still pre order. I see them and love them too. They look sharp, right? They’re coming there. The Scout Harvester is going to have that extended range. And then in 2028, Audi has a whole lineup, a number of SUVs. And then it seems like
all the manufacturers by 2029 are going to have these extended range, you know, EVs slash hybrids. It’s really a fundamental shift from, you know, sometimes the wheels are driven by the gas engine. Sometimes they’re driven by the electric. It’s all electric, kind of like a train, right? Diesel electric train, diesel electric submarine, right? Where they generate, it’s just generating, but it’s being propelled by the electric
electric motor. This seems to be that gap between fully electric and where we are today. Next step in the iteration. Yeah, absolutely. In the transition. But why can’t we have the you know, 1500 kilometer battery that charges up in 10 minutes? Because they’re in China. We don’t have that. One day someday.
One day. Yeah. All right. What else? We should steal their technology. Oh, you mean go there, buy one, bring it back. I think constructed. I think we know how to do it. I just don’t think we have the rare earth minerals to do it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. How’s that possible?
We have to go bribe some African nations for their minds just like they did. Absolutely. Yeah. I’m good with that. Nationalize it. Yeah. Have a couple countries take over. Are there any rare earth minerals in Venezuela?
I don’t know. We should find out. We should find out. Absolutely. All right. What do we have as we wrap up here? I think we hit on all the market stuff. I think about a month ago, I forgot to recap it, but I watched the Peaky Blinders movie and I was so disappointed. It was it was not what I was hoping for. Basketball playoffs. I’m pretty happy. Braves are in first place. I’m pretty happy. Bragging rights with all the family here in PA. Yeah, nice. Love and life. Nice. Nice. Nice.
All right, everybody. Well, listen, thank you so much for joining us for everybody. A good life. We really appreciate your time and we will see you next time on the market enthusiast. Thanks. Have a great one.
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Markets have continued to push toward all-time highs, but beneath the surface, the story is not as straightforward.
In the latest episode of The Market Enthusiast, Noah Brooks and Chris Needs explore a growing disconnect that is hard to ignore. On one hand, economic data continues to come in stronger than expected. Retail sales are holding up. Earnings estimates are being revised higher. Jobless claims remain stable.
On the other hand, consumer sentiment tells a completely different story.
Recent sentiment readings suggest Americans feel worse about the economy than they did during COVID and even the financial crisis. That gap between how people feel and what the data shows raises an important question. What are markets missing?
A Market That Does Not Fully Line Up
One of the key themes discussed is the divergence between perception and reality.
Consumers continue to spend, which typically signals confidence. Yet sentiment surveys suggest a much more negative outlook. This contradiction creates uncertainty for investors trying to interpret where markets may go next.
At the same time, market leadership appears to be shifting. After a long period dominated by large growth stocks, there are signs that small caps, mid caps, and international markets are beginning to participate more meaningfully.
The big question is whether this is the start of a lasting rotation or simply a short-term move.
What Else Is Driving Markets Right Now
The conversation also touches on several other factors influencing today’s environment:
Each of these themes plays a role in shaping both investor sentiment and market direction.
What It Means for Investors
Periods like this can feel confusing. Markets are strong, but the underlying signals are mixed. That does not necessarily mean something is wrong, but it does mean investors should stay focused on the bigger picture.
Understanding both the data and the sentiment behind it can help provide clarity when headlines feel contradictory.
If you want to hear the full discussion and how these themes may impact your investment strategy, listen to the full episode below.
Listen to the Full Episode
Full Episode Transcript
Hey, welcome back, everybody to another episode of the market enthusiast. I’m Noah Brooks. And obviously, this is Chris needs.
Noah Brooks (00:24)
Hello. Hello. We come back to you on. What is it today, Chris? It’s April 22nd. It’s Earth Day. Okay. Right. You’re a big Earth Day guy, right? Sure. Saving the world. What are you doing to celebrate?
Going to saw a t ball practice tonight. That’s it. Yep. Well, I think the whole purpose of saving the world with the Tesla. Yeah, I think the whole purpose of Earth Day is to, you know, mobilize the community for a better Earth. Right. And so you’re outside, you’re in the grass, you’re playing t ball. I think that’s probably satisfactory. Yeah, laying the grass. You can give yourself a checkmark. Yeah, right. Absolutely. What are you doing? I’m drinking out of a
plastic cup and in a negative point. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think I’m to do anything. I might. I did mow the lawn yesterday. I don’t know if that counts. Probably not. Probably not. ⁓ one of the things that earth day, ⁓ this year, I think it’s entitled the, ⁓ every year they, they change it, but this year is our power, our planet and, ⁓ emphasizes the transition to renewables. And you’re obviously driving an electric car these days.
There was some recently big news. feel like I, I, a few podcasts ago, I just said this, that one of these Chinese companies came out with a battery that charged in like 15 minutes and it got a thousand kilometers. And for the uninitiated, that’s, know, 600 and some odd miles, right? Six point six point ⁓ four miles this week. They came out the same company, C a T L cattle, which is one of the big competitors.
of BYD in China and they said their new version of their I think lithium phosphate battery will charge from 10 % to 98 % in less than seven minutes and it will give your typical car 1500 kilometers. That’s 932 miles for us normal folk. So 930 miles.
on a seven minute charge. Earth Day, Earth Day, right? The only problem is, is not an American company. It’s Chinese company and they have they have all the good stuff over there. They have no regulations on their mining either. No, no, no. They just dig, dig, baby, dig. Right. So, OK, we will come back to that, but we need we need some. ⁓
rare earth minerals of our own here in the United States. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I’m getting a little bit of laryngitis. So you have to, you have to bear with me on it. I hope it’s not contagious. Better not be. All right. So like I said, we’re here on the 22nd of the month, uh, S and P up a little bit more than 4 % mid caps up 10 % as we stand here today. Small caps, big winner. And on the size, um, uh, style and size up about 12 and a half percent.
Really jumped after touching that 200 day moving average. They sort of maintained it unlike the S &P 500. Yeah, they really jumped off it nicely. New all time highs right for the Russell 2000 not necessary S &P 600 but for the Russell 2000 developed international got walloped after we started bombing Iran and they closed the straight. They did not bounce back as much. There’s still up more than domestic large gaps up about 6.4%.
But the real winner this year is emerging markets. Yeah, they have recovered a little bit. I saw what were they up eight and a half this month or so after being much higher significantly in January, February, over 15. Yeah. And they did get hit in March as well, but they bounced back. They have been the under performer with the exception of the last seven months or so, man, the last seven years, they have really just
you know, they have been a drag on portfolios, especially as the Russell 2000 or small caps really largely have been over time. We’re finally getting that rotation as we’ve been talking about. The question really just becomes is was this just a short term woof where everybody you know, goes, okay, we got to get out of the mag seven, we got to move out of large growth, back to diversification. And then, you know, in a few weeks, we’re just going to go right back to where we were.
I like that to me is is the overall arching question because we’ll start back in October, November. So I think this I think this qualifies as staying power now. Don’t you? Six months. I mean, I go on calendar years. OK, right. You know, you’re a long term guy. Well, no. I mean, you think about it when you when you sit down and you go, well, what did S &P do last year? You do a full calendar year right now. We have some definite outperformance from international and small caps and mid caps.
Let’s see how you know when we get to January 2027. Let’s see what 2026 looks like. I think and then we’ll be able to say I would speculate pure speculation that they will probably continue a little bit of that out performance. ⁓ Growth making a comeback versus value as well. They obviously growth was getting beaten prehandedly by value, but this April bounce is sort of brought back into the fold. Yeah.
value outperforming growth by about seven and a half percent. It was about 11 and a half percent, you know, two weeks or so ago. But yeah, I mean, the market is responding. And it is really tough for the the for the day traders out there, which we are not. ⁓ It is got to be mind boggling to know what’s going to happen next. Unless you just do the opposite of what everybody thinks. Yeah, go opposite the headlines, right?
Yeah, I mean, we got down to our cheapest March 30 on the S &P 500 on the forwarderings, we got down to 19.3 after everyone talking about being in the bubble and everything like that. Hey, that tough March brought us back into reasonable valuation in our quarterly commentary, we told the advisors, you know, we’re back to a level we can, you know, apply money at and not feel bad about it not feel like we’re somewhere in a high valuation environment. And
know, this April bump brought us back up to I think we’re somewhere around 21. So we have come back significantly. But earnings keep getting revised upwards. And yeah, things are looking okay. What did you say the full year S &P earnings were? Forward year, one full year from right now up to 336. Yeah, and it’s been getting revised upwards keeps moving, moving week after week, it seems like that doesn’t seem like a bad economy to me. But obviously, the stock market and the economy are two different
things. And you kind of see that in some of the consumer sentiment numbers that come out, right? Yeah, I mean, we were looking at that a little bit earlier today, and we’ve ticked up off the bottoms, but we’re lower than the COVID lows. We’re lower than possible. We’re lower than the GFC, the great financial crisis, you know, really strange. We’re lower than any part of the dot com busts. You know, it’s wild. I don’t know if Americans are spoiled with how good we have it. But ⁓
consumer sentiment says everybody’s miserable right now and that things are awful and obviously they keep spending. Yeah. Well, the consumer retail sales came out yesterday and they beat expectations. Headline number was I think 0.7 and then the 1.7 versus 1.6 core was 67. Yeah, month over month. The control group was 0.67 versus point to
core was actually 1.9 versus 1.4. Those were good numbers that I don’t think we’re really expecting with consumer sentiment so bad you wouldn’t expect that. And the control group that goes that we mentioned there up point six m versus point two, that goes into the PC is a little bit of a read through we don’t get PC until way later in the month. But it seems the consumer is spending, but they think the rest of the economy is
core, right? That’s what that sentiment read would lead me to believe. And it’s kind of like, um, you know, if you ask a thousand people, if, they’re a good driver or not, everybody’s going to say, well, yeah, I’m a good driver. And then you ask, what do you think about other people? And they say, well, everybody else thinks. And I think that’s the, I think that’s the trend. What we’re seeing here is new. know, you, think to yourself, okay, well I’m in a good way, but other people must be really in a bad way.
And I mean, that that seems to be what the what the sentiment numbers are saying. Sometimes you would expect claims to pop up. We’ve talked about that over, you know, each month when they come out or each week with claims, you know, initial claims right back where they should be. I mean, they haven’t really budged initial claims at 207. Yeah. unemployment claim. Yeah, continue continuing claims at 1.818 million, I think, which is right around
expectation, you know, we’re not seeing any of these things spike that would really lead to a terrible consumer sentiment. But yeah, well, I negative nonetheless, I have said here, you know, the oil, the length and the level is probably going to be the determining factor over the next few months. If we can get through whatever is going to happen in Iran, open up the straight come through, you’re going to see some of the inflationary pressure because of the hydrocarbon
increase in price, if we can get through that in a you know, a month, two months, it comes back down. I think we’re going to be off to the races. And I mean, shoot, we are just a hair away from all time highs, just sitting here today. Yeah. And we’re still actively negotiating to open up the straight. is not by any standard opened up. And it’s really hard to figure out what’s going to happen. You and I were talking about it earlier in the week.
And to me, it seems like I mean, so there’s been some announcements. Lufthansa said they were going to reduce 20,000 flights, mostly intra Europe flights that were less profitable to to ⁓ save fuel. And one of the energy ministers in Great Britain came out and said that they were six weeks away, like had apparently six weeks worth of
jet fuel, jet a, ⁓ in reserved to me, those things will start to bubble up if, if the straight is not open. Yeah. It’s headlines like that. That I think are the reason why developed and mainly in Europe, centric ETFs are sort of lagging since this April bounce back. Everybody else is fully taking advantage of. Yeah. I, I mentioned, last time we were here, kind of the, end of the supply chain.
And in my mind, that’s, you know, Australia, New Zealand, right? They might literally run out of petrol or they might run out of jet fuel. And that’s not going to be good. What about China, though? How are they set up for fuel these days? They have they have a strategic reserve just like we do. But yeah, they’re relying on other countries to fill that. So Russia and Iran would probably be their two biggest sources. Sure.
They obviously aren’t getting that from one of them. So I would expect this is me game theory it out that they’re going to interject themselves in this straight of Hormuz situation, whether it is telling Iran just agree to whatever they say, and we’ll back you up later when you do what you need to do or something like that, just telling them to negotiate in bad faith and kowtow in the short term.
So they can get their oil, get the straight opened up, or maybe they militarily send a ship in there and say, Hey, what are you going to do if we escort one of our two million barrel tanker through? Yeah. To me, that seems like the beginning of a world war. Let’s call it skirmish. Two and a half, two and a half. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s world war three. ⁓ But if you think about other prior wars throughout history, I mean, they’ve been a ⁓ been about a lot of different things, but resources is really what most wars are.
fought over. And we’re in this weird situation where we have ⁓ plenty, I say plenty of oil, right? Since fracking came online in the early 2000s, it’s just expanded and expanded and expanded. We have plenty of oil for ourselves. It’s a world market. We know that ⁓ China and the rest of the world, ⁓ namely some of the Asian countries, you know, they’re really dependent on
the straight of hormones for their fuel at some point. You’ll get so they may say to Iran, listen, agree to whatever you want. But the people in Iran, they’re not too worried about China. Like China is going to be there in a year or in five years. They don’t have any oil. They’re more worried about sticking it to us. I think then kowtowing to China and saying, okay, we’ll get it out to you. And that to me is the problem that I think we were not.
prepared for is they’re just they have they have time. And they Yeah, they don’t care about the economic pain inflicted upon them. They’re willing to their their whole goal is just to survive the conflict. Right versus we’re like, well, economically, they’re getting crushed. Why aren’t they giving into us? And it’s, it’s not about that. It’s ideological to them. Yeah, it very much is. So ⁓ where does that put us in a month from now or two months from now? There’s so many different paths that this can take.
And I think the administration, our administration and this president certainly doesn’t want to see high oil prices and gas prices as we get to the election. I mean, we’re still a half a year away, like 208 days or something like that. But of all the people in the United States, I think he is one that is fearful that high oil prices will derail ⁓ the control that the Republicans have in the House and Senate.
I would expect these. There are more missiles to be fired in this, the whole escalate to deescalate thing. I don’t think these talks immediately in Islamabad right now are going to work. Whether they happen or not, I still don’t know. don’t have JD over there. Did he? Did he fly over? No, he was late to leave and I don’t know. He was in the US this morning if I’m not mistaken. It’s tough to say, but I would bet again that it’s not the last missile fired right now.
I think this ceasefire will fall apart at least for a short amount of time until they get back to the table. the oil traders got it right in the beginning. They got it right on the decline. Now they’re going to be long again, and they’re going to get it right when it goes back up. And there’s a lot of mysterious the traders are probably loving the ball. my goodness. They’re loving the headlines. Yeah, the option premiums go crazy. They’re having steak this week for sure. Or maybe not having steak depending how whipsawed they got.
Yeah, yeah, I guess I guess it could be. ⁓ So we have a bunch of other stuff to go into. You mentioned steak. I just figured I would throw this out. You know, I was I was in Las Vegas last week for a few nights going to the sphere, right? Everybody out there probably has heard me talk about fish. It’s one of my one of my favorites.
Our Iowa guys said that all that was being played this fear was backstreet boys and something else. So I thought you were lying to me. And you’re actually actually I am not a backstreet boys guy. I remember them back in the day. Sure you’re not. It’s not something that I would ⁓ I was good. Is JT Justin Timberlake? Is he a backstreet boy guy? And sink. he’s an in sync guy. Okay, I would go see Justin Timberlake. I think he’s past his prime. Is he still doing stuff? I mean,
He was the hot ticket for so long. Yeah. Yeah. No, if he comes to this sphere, I’m going, okay. ⁓ so we’re out there and yeah, there’s just restaurant or after restaurant after restaurant. And what I kind of noticed in good restaurants, right? I mean, you know, you eat your heart out there. What I seem to notice is that we had more of these small plate type of setups than on the menu. Then there were like the large plates. And I start thinking, you see these
Articles about the would go be ⁓ appetizers and would go be menus. And so we go out there and instead of getting, you know, this would the old 96 or write the giant, the giant steak. I’m just trying and I am not for the record. I’m I’m not taking a shot. I probably I probably should, but I’m not on the shot. But like the idea of just eating a bunch of little things.
like tasteful things, right? Not just broccoli or something, but like a lot of, ⁓ a lot of really, ⁓ different things. It grows on me and the, and just getting those little apps instead of one giant meal, I think is so much more fun. I don’t know where that came from, but you mentioned like, so I thought that was good. The other thing that’s going on is, ⁓ the sphere seems to be the new spot, right? The Eagles are there. Metallica is there. ⁓ kiss.
the old rock band from the 70s and 80s. They they were offered to go there and apparently they didn’t want to do that. They wanted to compete with the sphere ⁓ for that immersion art, if you will. And to me, the sphere is this combination of music. Right. So you’re going to see whichever band you want to see. And then this immersive art where it’s it’s over you and you’re in it. And I would definitely say it’s probably the the closest you can get.
to doing some type of psychedelic drug without doing a psychedelic drug. You sent a really two really cool videos one. Now we’re talking fish here. So I don’t know how we get fish was it was like almost like an EDM light show going off. And then the next one you say it was like a giant landscape and there’s like two giant birds that look like they’re like sitting on your shoulders. I’m like, what is going on at this concert? It is a good it is a good place to go for people out there if you can do it. Check it out. I think so we’ve been out there number of times.
We’ve never been on the floor. I think that’s too close to the to the screen. The 300 levels where it’s at, you see the band, but you really are immersed in in everything. It’s like full 180 around you. Yeah. Yeah. 300 level everybody. 300 level where it’s at or upper 200, baby. Yeah. Yeah. So, OK. Moving moving on. Speaking of sort of art experiences and really cool technology.
We got some Apple news that was really big. Yeah, Tim Cook is going to set down was it September 1 from his CEO role. He’s gonna stay on his chairman. Yeah. But yeah, it’s been a crazy tenure. John Ternes, who’s their VP of hardware engineering, who’s been with the company for 25 years, he’s going to take over. But yeah, Tim Cook oversaw one of the most profitable runs for shareholders, especially that I think can come to mind for a CEO tenure.
I mean, the stock went up 1900 % while he was there. Came out with the Apple watch. I think the all but the first iPad, the iPhone four and up. Didn’t get the Apple car though, did we? We didn’t get that. No, no Apple car, no Apple television. There’s, there is an Apple software television, but no Apple television in the hardware. And tennis is
He is a hardware guy, but I think he’s going to be tasked now. So it seems to me that Apple is behind on artificial intelligence, right? So they have their what’s their AI platform that they built into the last OS? The old crappy one, Siri one. No, because Siri is the worst. Yeah, I hear that. I’m not. I thought they just sort of took the stance of we’re just going to make all these AI platforms pay us 20, 30 percent or whatever the fee is on the platform.
Apple pay. He also did Apple pay, which is sneaky, important, sort of change the ecosystem. I think it was Apple intelligence, right? Was there a first attempt at AI on the phones? And I don’t want say it was a flop, but I don’t know that it went anywhere. Apple has not been even though there’s ⁓ this the Apple Store and music and all that. Apple is not necessarily a software company.
Yeah, it’s more a hardware company. Some of the things that you mentioned, and if you think back about breakthroughs like the original Macintosh, right? Or those updated ones in the early 2000s that were just one single unit and they were green in different colors and all that. Back in my elementary school, I remember when we got those. is that what it was? Right. But then I mean, they were the first ⁓ iPod. It was the first that actually looked with a screen that was ⁓ an MP3 player.
And then the iPad. Right. And then the iPhone and then the watch. The AirPods, AirPods. That was 2016, if I remember correctly. And obviously the iPhone, right? And so what they’ve been doing is I would say that they’ve kind of been iterating on these things and making them better. Right. So the watch, there’s an five, I think. And
17 on the phone and all that stuff, but I don’t know that they’ve had any groundbreaking technology on the hardware side for a while. Yeah. And I don’t think that was the personality they needed or wanted when they hired Tim Cook. He was never the creator. He was, think the supply chain, almost like an elder statesman negotiator, politician almost kind of to deal with all different countries. But yeah, he kind of did change the supply chain from all China to there. think
25 % of iPhones are now made in India, which is kind of important. You if we go to a hot war with China in the next five years or 10 years, they would be, they’d be in trouble, right? But it was really amazing that the shareholder wealthy created because they actually purchased, I’ve seen ranges of 35 to 40 % of all outstanding shares while during his tenure. And, but what you’re talking about not
having anything really innovative the last few years rather than they’re just doing what they did and doing it right and efficiently. They’ve spent three points. ⁓ I have a number here. have a number here. 3.6 times as much on share buybacks over 700 billion. Three six 3.6 times more than on R &D during his tenure. That’s why there’s nothing that’s
shareholders are happy but it’s like what we got going forward dude where’s my car yeah yeah absolutely I want the apple
⁓ But turn us you know, he’s going to be tasked with coming up with hardware that’s native AI. I think that’s the next generation. I don’t know what it’s going to be. I doubt that it’s going to be a car or something like that. But right now they’re trying to put AI on top of a hardware as opposed to hardware being native with AI built in and and he might be the right guy to do it. ⁓ He was around in the Steve Jobs ⁓ era.
And he lists to Apple, he lists Cook as his mentor. Right. So I mean, he knows the situation. He’s been there 25 years. He probably has some shares of Apple, don’t you think? Yeah, definitely. He’s well, he’s been there 25 years. I’m sure he’s got a nice little accumulation. Do we know how old he is? I didn’t I didn’t actually look. I don’t know. I he’s probably at least 50. Right? Yeah, I think he was the first the youngest VP.
they ever hired, which I assume that excludes the founders going back to the 80s. But I’ve heard he has a significantly different personality or management style decision style than Tim Cook had Tim Cook would be you give you come you bring him two or three ideas, sort of options to pitch against each other. And he would ask you five more questions back to get you thinking about it. And apparently, that’s not how turn this is he’s like, you give him three options. He’s like, like a
That’s it. that’s sort of how he makes it. like, like a the best. Let’s prioritize assets to that and we’ll put B on the second tier. We’ll keep it going, but we’ll work on that. But that means he trusts his people that are bringing the ideas to him, which is obviously important, right? There’s no question about it. Well, it’ll be interesting. ⁓ Not, you know, stock price, obviously it’s one of the largest companies out there. It’s almost $4 trillion.
probably the second largest company as we’re standing here today. It’ll be interesting to see what they’re able to come up with. And I don’t think they’re going to have anything brand new, you know, out of the box and like next month, but over the next year or two years, three years to see ⁓ what native AI hardware that they have and they are able to bring to market as opposed to just kind of making the existing stuff a little bit better iterating on it. That’ll be interesting. ⁓ So one of the largest companies in the world, right, which is Apple,
But the largest Treasury Department is about to get a new head. Yes. Right. Yep. Let’s let’s talk about Mr. Warsh for a minute. Yeah, he’s having his Senate hearings today or in committee meetings. ⁓ Yeah, he’s getting questioned up and down about everything, including his ⁓ assets, which are significant. But he’s not he’s not like really wealthy, is he?
not compared to his wife anyway. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He’s apparently has about 100 million of assets. I 200 million. well, you know, depending on the market and those funds, he’s apparently in some Stanley Druckenmiller funds, who obviously is one of the best investors of all time. I heard the juggernaut fund. I didn’t hear that before. But apparently, it’s an offshoot of one of their other funds. Okay. You know, I had fund. But yeah, 100 million up to 200 million.
he’s still a pauper compared to his wife. So he’s married to Jane Lauder, ⁓ heiress to the Estee Lauder fortune who’s worth I’ve seen like up to 2.5 billion, you know, depending on where the markets at on a given day. They have a prenup. I would bet they do since he can only claim 100 to 200 million. Yeah, I probably. Yeah, yeah, he was looking pretty tan in those San confirmation. He’s living a good life. Now he’s coming back to serve the public.
maybe now maybe a little bit later if Tom Tillis lets him get out committee obviously Tom Tillis is holding everything I won’t say hostage but he is he basically wants Jay Powell to get not get off scot-free that would insinuate he’s doing something wrong but there’s this DOJ ⁓ inquiry into the spending at the Federal Reserve building and the overrun on costs and he wants that to get cleared up and to go away before he’ll vote to advance worse
through committee, which once he gets through committee, he’s probably going to get voted in because of the current majority in the Senate. Yeah. For Republicans. Yeah. Well, ⁓ the current, ⁓ the current term, right is up. I think it’s, is it May 25th for J-PAL? It’s in May. Definitely. So we’re kind of, we’re coming kind of hard and fast up to a deadline. ⁓ but Tillis does seem to be a thorn in the side of the administration on this and
I don’t have any inside information, but it doesn’t seem like the head of the Federal Reserve is going to be in trouble for doing anything in regards to building. I don’t think he had any hand in on the plans. I don’t think he has a little slush fund. He’s passing off in that two, three billion or whatever it’s costing, which is it is still insane that it costs that much for a building, but obviously it has to have the best of everything secrecy can have. ⁓
It might as well be just as secure as the Pentagon because that’s how much, you know, wealth is affected by the federal reserve. Absolutely. Yeah. No, no question about it. Well, it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out both from a political standpoint. And then I think the obvious thing is right. So the administration is looking for lower interest rates and the natural assumption is that whoever the administration picks is already have this path to lower rates. Do you, do you think that that’s
the case? No, of course, he’s saying he hasn’t promised the president anything. And he’s, you know, he’ll look at as an independent person as the Fed needs to be. But yeah, it’s a committee, can’t push and guarantee votes any certain way, he can kind of control the discord a little bit. ⁓ The conversation, I mean, and sort of direct things that way. But yeah, you can’t force someone to vote a certain way. So we’ll see how it goes. Well, but you
At the same time, I think he was asked yesterday on some of the stuff that I saw was like, did you promise the president that you were lower rates? And he said emphatically, no, I didn’t promise. Well, OK, so he didn’t say I promised to lower rates. But come on. Yeah, right. I still gave him a little wink. Yeah. Wink, wink, nod, nod. I mean, the funny thing is, is he was generally a hawk and.
not recent history, but going back to the great financial crisis, you he’s saying that the low interest rates are going to cause a bubble and cause inflation. We didn’t really get the inflation, but we got maybe a bubble. You know, over all the years where we saw the run up afterwards. But yeah, there was a long period there where we wanted inflation almost we were sort of stuck with too low growth too low. Yeah. And but now he flipped and now he’s for lower rates.
He seems pretty bullish on the productivity gain from AI. That’s his sort of reasoning that we’re going to have de de deflation down the road because of that boost in technology. Well, I think there’s something we said for that. And, know, we talk on on this show pretty frequently about what’s going to happen at jobs as productivity continues to climb. And, you know, now you’re having this situation where I think it’s it’s artificial intelligence and specifically
these agents, not just the large language models where you go in and you ask Anthropic or Claude or, or chat GPT, you know, you just ask them something, but more you assign them tasks, right? As a, as an artificial intelligence agent and whether that’s programming, whether that’s, you know, every morning for a review of earnings that have come out in the last 24 hours, ⁓ people are people that are using it are going to get more productive.
The question is, are they going to be productive enough that the larger companies don’t hire? And I that’s, that’s yet to be seen. Um, some of our big pushes here at good life is the front office of the future where we’re trying to find out what things we can automate in terms of tasks between programs, between systems, which I know with our experience, we have tons of things that every time we make a change to our allocations, we have to update.
four or five, six different programs, which is unfortunate, but it’s part of the job what we have to do. But if we are able to automate that task and we have a bot talking between the programs and updating it seamlessly, probably that two weeks of work every quarter of updating stuff sort of disappears and we can get back to due diligence and things like that. Think about how much more productive and how beneficial that would be to our not only happiness and lives, but to the products we offer.
Yeah, and I think that is just a microcosm of what’s going on across the board that we’re kind of looking at what different productivity boosts we’re going to see from tasks being offloaded. Yeah, AI take me away. Yeah, right. As the old Calgon take me away. I remember that. So lots of other stuff going on this week, but I want to bring up there has been a number of scientists out there.
that have seemingly gone missing over the last few years. And a bunch of them that have seemingly gone missing over the last five or six months, if I’m not mistaken, there’s 11 of these guys and gals and they are all have a relationship with the department of energy and whether that’s a NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory or Los Alamos, which we know crazy stuff goes on there, but they’ve all disappeared and it’s gotten to the point where
the press has asked the president and president has said on television, yes, we’re looking into it. national security threat, yeah, knowledge that this is happening. So what do we what do we think is happening? I think I think people either were divulging information to bad parties or said no to divulging information to bad actors. what bad actors do you think they are?
they that have done this. International entities internationally does that certain countries does that mean China maybe they’re sick of their coal plants over there and they want some nuclear energy nuclear secrets you know want to find a way to get was it fusion we have fission they want fusion I don’t know cold fusion yeah maybe but it seems really strange and now it’s becoming a thing and if you look at the clusters some of them are very clustered in the specific area just seemed
What you said you’re down always said there’s no such thing as coincidences, I think that’s sort of how I’m looking at this. It would be tough. mean, listen, there’s 340 million people here. You just have to have 11 that all have some relationship with the Department of Energy in Los Alamos. ⁓ And they they mysteriously disappear or under some strange circumstances or suspicious circumstances. They all disappear. Could it be a coincidence? Sure. I don’t know,
Seems a little conspiratorial. I think it I think something funny is going on. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully we get to the bottom of it. Well, I guess, you know, I said, what do you think? And you said it’s outside actors. I think it’s inside actors. I think the call is coming from inside the house. Yeah, that would be that would be my two cents. I think they know something. Maybe UFO related. ⁓ yeah. OK. Los Alamos, right?
fusion, vision, all that stuff. anti gravitational technology. It’s either that or they know who killed JFK and they were going to talk. How is it possible? We’re in 2026 and we don’t know who killed JFK. No, it is interesting. I think Trump did say something to yeah, that is pretty wild. ⁓ Trump did say something like he’s going to release the UFO files. Yeah, we’ve heard that probably three or four times. Same with the JFK files for that matter. But very interesting that
this whole national security thing and all that’s going on while he, I guess, feels like there’s pressure or suddenly feels the need to be transparent on that topic. Interesting timing. That’s a coincidence. Yeah, maybe it’s like in ⁓ it’s nevermind. I’m going to go back to old movies. It’s kind of silly, but you’re sick that I don’t know your references. I’m sorry. No, an independent Independence Day.
great. When when the president finds out that they actually have a UFO and he didn’t know about it. And the one guy says, well, you really didn’t think they’re spending $800 on a toilet paper or whatever he says. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Then we find out people are actually doing that, like booking like a toilet, a hammer for like 800 bucks in the 80s and early 90s. That came out that, you know, contractors were invoicing for, you know,
Like you said, five hundred dollars for a hammer when you get a hammer for eight dollars or fifteen dollars. Yeah, that was I think there was some Senate hearings about that back in the late 80s, early 90s. Yeah. Toilet seats. Yeah. But not like the gold toilet seats today. These are just regular toilets. They’re only gold plated. No, I do. I’ve never had a gold plated toilet seat. I’ve never sat on anything gold plated. Gold plated caviar once. That was kind of cool. Yeah. At the sushi place. Oh, geez. Yeah.
I do remember. Can you eat gold? guess? Yeah, it’s good for you. Really? puts hair in your chest, I guess. It’s like grounding yourself. Just put the metal right inside of you. I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that. So going back to more economic stuff. I said we got retail sales coming came out yesterday that were pretty good. There’s some existing home sales data in Texas.
that doesn’t seem so good. It’s the first year over year decline in all parts of Texas for a long, long time, really since the end of the global financial crisis. And, you I, you always questioned that’s the canary in the coal mine. Is it just because of overbuilding is because of overbuilding combined with maybe population growth slowing down, but the numbers, know, immigration slowing down or immigration slowing down, right?
You know, so the question becomes, is that the beginning of something, ⁓ you know, around here, houses are still moving as quick as possible and they’re, you know, continuing to go up. But Texas is a very, very large state in terms of number of houses sold every year, just like, ⁓ California and new houses in Texas. I think they lead the way in new homes for, ⁓ States. So, you know,
The idea of those prices going down, mean, for the consumer, for someone who’s looking for a house, they don’t have to worry about a 10 % increase year over year. But I question whether or not that slowdown is just the changing of a trend. Yeah. Yeah. You’re always looking for that. Well, pending home sales were actually pretty strong last week. 1.5 % versus 1.1. So at least that nationally is a decent time. mean, listen, we under built for a long, long time after the global financial crisis.
Not that 1.5 is a high number, but something. But we under we under built after the GFC and then we had COVID which pushed all of those sales forward, right? Instead of doing, you know, 800,000 a million, we had all of those sales over 2020 and 21 into 22. So it brought that stuff forward and now maybe we’re, not not doing as much as we normally would have in terms of home sales.
Obviously that increased the prices because there were so few on the market. And in addition to that, we’ve talked about this on here many, many times. Rates are significantly higher than they were in 2020 and 2021. Yeah, for sure. You know, the people that went out and got those 30 years at three and a quarter or 15 years at two eight, seven, five. mean, you’re not going to see that again anytime soon, even though maybe a wash.
And gets a little closer. Yeah, it gets a little closer. And yeah, I mean, we’re still well above six at the moment. It was under six for a little bit. And then with Iran situation, inflation expectations bumped up. So the yields moved up with them. Yeah. So I don’t know when we’re going to see under six on a 30. It’s not today, you know, nationally. ⁓ But I think that’s going to help. And like whether the Fed lowers or doesn’t lower, I think rates can come down naturally.
as opposed to them and right where they only control the overnight lending rate. They don’t really control the 10 year or the 30 year note. ⁓ but we just need some more supply to come out and we need rates to come down a little bit and you know, we’re going to keep moving. That’s, that’s, that’s where we are on, housing. ⁓ we talked a little bit about inflation. We obviously talked about Iran. ⁓ what’s, what’s next? What do we see in the middle East?
think we’re going to have more whiplash headlines. ⁓ Like I said, one or two bouts of violence and war, or kinetic actions, maybe kinetic actions, but I think the worst behind is behind us. And I think the, the market reaction, the market sensitivity to it, the worst of that is also behind us. So from allocating capital perspective, I’m not sleepless over it by any means. absolutely.
⁓ Well, as we as we wrap up here, as we’re at all time highs, obviously, as we wrap up here, I want to go back to Earth Day. And you know, you obviously are driving an EV. There’s been some reasonably good news in EV land. And maybe not the traditional electric vehicle as we see it. ⁓ But the extended range vehicle so I can remember in some of the hearings with ⁓ Ford and General Motors when they were
They were facing bailouts. And there was the whole question of whether the CEOs took the private jets, you know, on their bailout tour. Right. Most people they did. They did. Of course they did. Right. Yeah. They flew to Washington and they took the bank for my train train over there. ⁓ But so some of the newer technology. the reason I brought that up is because the the Chevy Bolt was supposed to be the game changer.
that made General Motors a completely different entity at the end of the global financial crisis. And it really, ⁓ it really didn’t. The question of the hybrid vehicle and the electric vehicle, we now have hybrids where there’s a gas engine and there’s electric in the wheels that are driving the car. And at some times it’s electric and sometimes it’s gas.
And that is going to be the past of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. The new hybrids that are coming out are the extended range hybrids, which means there’s going to be some type of generator in the vehicle. And instead of cycling through RPMs, like as you step on the gas and goes up and RPMs, the comes down as you slow down that extent range extending generator, it’s just going to operate.
at its optimum level, whatever RPMs that is 2500 RPMs, I don’t know if you ever use a portable generator, right? You know, it doesn’t go up and down. It just it’s one level. And that’s what it is. Now, it will go up if you plug stuff into a turn on. But when it’s when it’s running, it’s just it’s not moving up and down. So these extended range vehicles are going to be driven 100 % by the electric engines in the wheel hubs or wherever they put them. ⁓
And they’re not going to be driven at all by these generators. A generator is there to extend the range. So there is a whole bunch of these coming out. A lot of them are SUVs and heavy pickup trucks because the, you know, the, like the F one lightning didn’t do so well. They stopped production on that. I don’t know if there’s any more sitting at lots, but they’re not going to be making anymore. My father-in-law has one and he loves it. Does he? Yeah. How many miles do you think is a full charge? Gotcha.
don’t know. Okay, I think it’s probably 250. Yeah, it’s not great, right. So the new version, the extended range electric vehicle, you’re going to be talking six to 700 miles. So it’s a combination of a tank of gas and the battery that you that you’re charging up. So who’s coming out with it? Jeep, the Grand Wagoneer, the Ram 1500 pickup truck, the new F 150 lightning.
Nissan Rogue. Those are all in 2026 later this year, right? 2026 27 Nissan Rogue, the Santa Fe from Honda Genesis GV 70, the Scout, which I haven’t seen any yet. I think there’s still pre order. I see them and love them too. They look sharp, right? They’re coming there. The Scout Harvester is going to have that extended range. And then in 2028, Audi has a whole lineup, a number of SUVs. And then it seems like
all the manufacturers by 2029 are going to have these extended range, you know, EVs slash hybrids. It’s really a fundamental shift from, you know, sometimes the wheels are driven by the gas engine. Sometimes they’re driven by the electric. It’s all electric, kind of like a train, right? Diesel electric train, diesel electric submarine, right? Where they generate, it’s just generating, but it’s being propelled by the electric
electric motor. This seems to be that gap between fully electric and where we are today. Next step in the iteration. Yeah, absolutely. In the transition. But why can’t we have the you know, 1500 kilometer battery that charges up in 10 minutes? Because they’re in China. We don’t have that. One day someday.
One day. Yeah. All right. What else? We should steal their technology. Oh, you mean go there, buy one, bring it back. I think constructed. I think we know how to do it. I just don’t think we have the rare earth minerals to do it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. How’s that possible?
We have to go bribe some African nations for their minds just like they did. Absolutely. Yeah. I’m good with that. Nationalize it. Yeah. Have a couple countries take over. Are there any rare earth minerals in Venezuela?
I don’t know. We should find out. We should find out. Absolutely. All right. What do we have as we wrap up here? I think we hit on all the market stuff. I think about a month ago, I forgot to recap it, but I watched the Peaky Blinders movie and I was so disappointed. It was it was not what I was hoping for. Basketball playoffs. I’m pretty happy. Braves are in first place. I’m pretty happy. Bragging rights with all the family here in PA. Yeah, nice. Love and life. Nice. Nice. Nice.
All right, everybody. Well, listen, thank you so much for joining us for everybody. A good life. We really appreciate your time and we will see you next time on the market enthusiast. Thanks. Have a great one.
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