Prof G Markets - Don't Try to Beat This Market — Here's What to Do Instead

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Subscribe to the Prof G Markets Youtube Channel  Ed Elson and Josh Brown unpack how markets have responded to developments in Iran and explain why regular investors are in a better position to ride out the volatility than they think. They then explore Josh’s recent move into software stocks, highlighting opportunities in the sector. They also discuss why the Magnificent 7 is struggling while HALO stocks are gaining momentum right now, and take a look at the upcoming IPOs from SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter  Order "Notes on Being a Man," out now Note: We may earn revenue from some of the links we provide. Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Send us your questions or comments by emailing [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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carefully consider the investment materials before investing, including objectives, risk, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the funds perspective at getvcx.com. This is a paid sponsorship. This episode is brought to you by Tell us online security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what?

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Welcome to Prof.G Markets. Hold on. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. This is our cold open. Welcome to Profi Markets. Scott is still out. He's on spring break, but we have a very special episode for you today. Today we are discussing the market's reaction to the 10-U.S ceasefire. And we are also looking at an

update on big tech and also the halo stocks with the man who actually invented the term Halo. This has been all the rage on Wall Street recently. It is the new investment trade, the new investment thesis in the world of AI. And the guy who created it is here. He's in the building, Josh Brown. Josh, thank you for joining us. I am not in the building. You're not in the building. I'm in the Hyatt Regency in Coral Gables. Coral Gables. That's fun. You're on spring break too. Sort of, but I like to work as much as possible when I'm on vacation. So this is, this is me vacationing on a podcast. Yeah. Is this really work for you? I mean, you love this, no? You love joining this podcast. I love you. I love you. That's the truth. I got to tell you, uh, I say no to, to,

I don't know, a hundred things a month. But anytime you guys need me, Scott, Prof G podcast, Ed, I'm just, I'm in. I love you guys. We always need you and we really appreciate it. And you and I had a lovely dinner the other week as well. Yeah. We had, what did we have? We had some ribeye.

I think we had the whole menu. We had the entire menu. Very on brand. It was a very good time. Well, we're very glad to have you on the show, Josh. and we want to get right into it because we know that you have some jet skis to attend to probably

maybe you're doing some... I have things to do people to say, so the jet skis can wait. Fair enough. All right, well, let's start with our first story here. Now has the time to fly. I hope you have plenty of the world at all. Last week's development in Iran

left investors trying to make sense of a rapidly shifting situation. First, President Trump threatened to wipe out the country. Then came news of a ceasefire, which was supposed to include reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The markets rallied in response, but within 24 hours, the strait was still jammed

and confusion emerged over the scope of the deal, specifically whether it applied to Lebanon, where Israel had continued to strike Hezbollah. By the following day, stocks were retreating, and oil was climbing again, so the details remain unclear, and the situation is still fluid, but one thing is clear.

Trump has escalated dramatically again, and then he has again stepped back from the brink. So all of this raises a key question for investors. How do you navigate an environment like this? Josh, stocks rose. People thought, okay, maybe the straits open now. Maybe we have a deal. Maybe we have a ceasefire.

Wasn't totally clear. What do you make of how the markets reacted? What do you make of the situation in Iran? what are we supposed to do about it as investors? So paradoxically, you think about a professional hedge fund manager, someone who, like, as a stated premise, tells their clients, I am going to specifically navigate all of these geopolitical macro issues I'm going to be on top of currency movements, commodity movements, oil price spikes, volatility spells and stocks. I'll be involved in the rates market.

I'm going to have a view on global GDPs by country, et cetera, et cetera. That person is collecting a fee of two and 20, and they are professing to have the ability to do this on a consistent basis. Putting aside the madness of how impossible that sounds, I suppose there are a handful of people who have demonstrated that they can make these calls repeatedly or not lose too much money when they make a call that goes wrong because they're not a hedge and it's uh it's it's it's their life's work it's a 24 hour seven day a week profession most of your audience ed are not sitting in that seat most of the people listening to us right now do not have that responsibility they haven't told a third party that they are managing money for and charging a lot of money for that uh for that privilege that they can do that so my answer to your question would be why try? So the paradox of the individual investor is that by not having that responsibility, they actually are in a pretty good position to ride this out

and not react to everything that happens because no one's watching. No one's paying attention. You have a brokerage account. Maybe you have a joint account with your husband or your wife, got an IRA. You've got your 401k. Maybe you have a portfews. somewhere where you're a little bit more active, that's fine. You're not being graded. You're not being judged. No one is expecting you to know the next move that Trump will make, the next 15 points up or down in WTI crude. It's not part of your purview. You don't have to do it. You obviously can't do it, but it's not the type of thing where you need to act like you have any sort of edge. And so I think this is the type of market where regular investors are in a

much easier position than the type of investor who is claiming I'm going to get this stuff right all the time. I'm going to be at the forefront of all these trends and changes and juxtapositions and I'm going to figure out the puzzle. Don't bother. So I know it sounds glib. So then like what do you actually do? I think there's a couple of things. The first is set the rules in advance. Now is not a good time. right in the in the heat of the moment that was maybe not the best time to decide like all of the things that you're going to do with your portfolio but when things are calm take that opportunity to say okay things are pretty good let's say January this year I understand that every year there's a 14% decline in the market on average there's some sort of a freak out last year it was

tariffs this year it's Iran next year it'll be an alien invasion how do the rules of my portfolio work. When do I rebalance? When do I get more aggressive? Hopefully it's into a sell-off, not into a rally. When do I make decisions about global allocation? Or do I not make those decisions? How do I want to tilt my portfolio? Which factors do I want more exposure to and which do I want less? Has anything in my life changed where I have to revisit my investment policy statement? Do I even have an investment policy statement or do I just wake up every day and think I'm supposed to try to make money. So when you do these things in advance and then you stick to them, you stick to these rules, you can get through a period of time like this where every day is as uncertain as the last.

So one day we're going to wipe out an ancient civilization and it will never come back again. and the next day, China steps in, urges Iran to agree to certain things so that the president has something he can tweet that represents a de-escalation. You get the biggest fallen crude in a really long time and an explosion to the upside in stocks. And then overnight, like minutes later, Iran is claiming that we're violating the ceasefire and here we go again. The whole cycle repeats. Why bother?

You have no edge. So I think that I have spent most of the last 15 years aggressively counseling people to not pretend that they're in the seat and that they have this responsibility of nailing the crisis, calling the top, calling the bottom. It's unnecessary. The returns of investment markets have been spectacular. None of this sort of tap dancing has been necessary. And it does seem especially ridiculous in this context where not even the people closest, to him can make any predictions or understand what's going on in his head. And this is something that I said last week, like, when it comes to what's happening in that guy's mind, and yes, he has a lot

of power, and it does matter. And if you did know what was going to happen, you'd probably make a lot of money. But no one knows more about what he's thinking than you do, because he's a complete bowling ball. Like, there's no way to actually really predict it. Perhaps unless you're in the room with him like 10 minutes before he makes the decision, in which case there might be a lot of people who are actually are making a lot of money on that, and we can get to that in a second, and we probably should, because there was some kind of sketchy trades that we saw during the week in the buildup to the ceasefire quote deal. But just to push back in your point a little bit, so I'm totally with you. Like, no one knows what's going to happen here, and the idea that you have an understanding of what's

really going on in the straight-in-form movies. You really know what Trump's going to do, and I'm going to trade on that. That seems a ridiculous premise. However, it is possible, and this is, I think, the thing to consider, or I guess this is the question, is it possible that the events this week have structurally changed something that may adjust your longer-term investment strategy going forward? Maybe it's that you now believe that we live in an extremely volatile world, that there are now threats of or implicit threats of nuclear warfare, and that wasn't really the case before. Or maybe you believe that we now do live in a world where oil prices are going to be extremely volatile, more so than we've seen in the past, or at least that maybe

the insurance premiums and the risk premiums to get oil into your nation, into your car, into the tank, that those are going to go up. And therefore, this is just where we're, paying a higher premium for energy in general. Do you believe that we are at this point that we must, that we must contend with the possibility that something has structurally changed here? Or are we living in more or less the same world as we were last week? These are all very real risks, but risk is the reason why you get paid. Right. If there's no risk in the markets, then the multiple on earnings would be 100 times earnings because, you know, why just pay 90 times earnings?

You could pay 100 times earnings. There's no risk. So the risk is the reason we get paid. And I would argue a couple of things. A lot of these risks are in the process of being baked into the cake and have been for quite a long time. It's not as though every stock is at an all-time high. A huge, when we think about the Russell 3,000. So this is the preponderance of all U.S. stocks, basically.

If you're not in the Russell 3,000, you basically don't exist. So that is the Russell 2000, which is small caps, and the Russell 1,000, which is large and, you know, mega, large and some mid. So this is the market. A huge portion of the Russell 3,000 is negative year on year. We have a gigantic percentage of stocks that are in 20% plus drawdowns or what you and I would refer to as a bare market. we've had multiple compression in the market this year. So most of the mega cap tech stocks peaked in November. The market overall didn't peak until January.

And since then, we have seen the forward earnings multiple fall from 23 to 19. So we were 23 times earnings, which is, you know, fairly rich. I wouldn't suggest 19 is cheap. But what I would suggest is a lot of risk is being baked in. How is it possible that the S&P 500 is only down slightly on the year, but the multiple to earnings has fallen almost 20%? Because earnings have been growing while stocks have been treading water or falling. And so arguably, it's less risky now than it was three months ago. I know that sounds insane, but we're selling at a lower multiple.

From an investment perspective, right. From an investment perspective, I would also point out, and this is really the key thing, earnings are growing and not just for the seven tech stocks that everyone talks about, earnings are growing in most sectors in the S&P 500. And really, like the war, whether it goes on for three months or three weeks or three days or three years, for that matter, the war is going to. to resolve itself. There's nothing as an investor that you can do to speed that process up. And there's no possible way that you can truly understand the depth of it, the extent of it,

the duration of it. If you have earnings growth, which is what we have, and you have interest rates that are not rising, you've got like supportive interest rates. Many people think that they're too high. Some people think they're just right because of the threat of inflation being passed through the prism of higher energy prices. But if you have an interest rate picture like the one we have and you have a earnings growth outlook like the one that we have, once this war does come to an end, stocks probably resume their upward trend.

That's been the history. So now you think about a global portfolio away from just the U.S. market. Year to date as of the close yesterday, emerging markets are up 5%. Develop markets X-U-S so the way to think about that is Europe and Japan up 2.4%.

Europe itself is flat. The S&P 500 is negative 3%. Now we look at things on a rolling one-year basis, which is more important. Year-to-date is arbitrary. On a rolling one-year basis, developed markets X-U.S. are up 48%.

Unbelievable. 48%. merging markets were up 55, the U.S. is only up 34. So investors with global portfolios looking back at their rolling one-year return, it probably like what crisis? Like what is everyone carrying on about? I'm making tons of money still. Feel pretty good.

I think the U.S. underperformance is the externality of what you're talking about, the political instability, the uncertainty about Trump's next move, et cetera. I think that's already being reflected in the fact that international stocks are now outperforming U.S. stocks on a one-year basis. I know it sounds crazy, but it's been a really long time since we've been able to say that. We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend. And please follow us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from Delete Me.

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visit getvcx.com for more info. That's getvcx.com. Carefully consider the investment material for investing, including objectives, discharges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at getvcx.com. This is a paid sponsorship. We're back with Profi markets. This does put Europe in a more vulnerable position than the U.S., but it is interesting to your point. Like the way that multiples have expanded in a other markets compared to the U.S. would kind of say a different story. Everyone's saying, oh, the U.S. is insulated from this. But actually, if you look at the one year, what we've seen in terms of multiple contraction the U.S. versus multiple expansion in other markets, it might say

a different story. To just put a button on that, it's systematic. So, of course, there are risks to Europe, there are risk to the United States. Some of those are risks in common. Some of those are idios and quadratic to the particular region. But I want people to understand. this because I know the average person, like they'll look at the Niki, they'll look at maybe the Futsi, like they'll look at like a European index, Japanese index, but they won't really understand the extent to which this is happening. When you look at international stocks versus U.S., every version of international stocks are beating U.S. stocks. This is year-to-date, okay? Low volatility international, up eight and a half percent.

versus 3.7% in the U.S. International growth up 5.5. That's versus negative 2% in the U.S. Momentum, international, 9.2% year-to-date versus 1.3% U.S. Quality, so the best companies, internationals plus 7.1% U.S. plus 1.8. Shareholder yield.

This is a factor where we take dividend plus buyback. 6.6% international versus 3.3% U.S. That's a double. Value, international value stocks plus 6.4, U.S. plus 4.5. It almost doesn't matter what stocks you buy, what style, what strategy. If you are in any way at least equally weighted globally relative to the benchmark to U.S., your portfolio looks amazing right now. And it is that global rotation that we were talking about, year. Everyone was saying it was to sell America trade, which wasn't quite right, because the SB

could need to rise, but it was really like more of a hold America trade and then add some, add some internationals into your portfolio. J.P. Morgan has emerging market earnings per share growth for this calendar year at 40, 40. And then you say, why are emerging markets outperforming or why are multiples expanding in emerging countries. Isn't the world the risky play? Yeah, everyone understands those risks and these stocks were too cheap anyway. Right. And so you get the double benefit of earnings growth plus multiple expansion. I'm telling you if EM can grow earnings 40% this year, we're going to be doing shows at the end of this year. People saying, oh, why don't I own more emerging markets? We're not there yet because the things I'm pointing out to you, nobody knows this stuff,

except for pros? Except for us. Your audience is going to look at their portfolio and say, what the hell did I miss? Why aren't I in Brazil? Well, to be fair, we have been making that claim for about a year now. Good. And people said that we were US Duma's and that we had TDS, et cetera,

and we tried to push back on that as much as we can. But, I mean, it has been an incredible trade. And it does make you consider the question, like, how would the U.S. stock market be performing right now if we didn't have tariffs and if we didn't have a war with Iran emerging, you'd have to think that the stock market would be absolutely ripping because of that incredible earnings growth, which we will get to in a moment in our second story. I just want to, as we wrap this up, get your reactions to another development in this insider trading saga that we continue to see here. $950 million worth of oil futures were sold just a couple of hours before Trump announced that ceasefire with Iran. I think that is probably less concerning because I think it's feasible that these traders were actually just thinking, like, he is going to Taco.

And I think that was maybe quite reasonable. In the context of the other scandals that we've seen, it does raise some cause for concern. But then in the prediction markets, three accounts made more than $600,000 betting. on the ceasefire. They had the same accounts that correctly bet on the date and the timing of the U.S. attacks on Iran. We don't know who those accounts are because it appears that our law enforcement just has no interest in investigating this. In fact, we saw that actually over at the SEC, there were attempts made to investigate this stuff, and then the woman who tried to make those attempts was ousted, dismissed from the position. We saw similar things happening over at the FTC,

but that's maybe a separate story. I just want to get you reactions to this insider trading issue because, I mean, as an investor, it seems as though there is a growing number of people who are close to the president, and we don't know who they are, and we can't definitively say that it is exactly happening as the way that we are claiming, but it seems that there's cheating. And I just wonder what you make of that and how it affects your faith in markets and this game of investing that we have dedicated our careers to. I read the same articles you do, so I don't have any insight into what happened, whether or not it happened in the first place. I think one of the reasons you like me, and I think one of the reasons I like you, we're a little bit of a yin and yang.

I think where you're very idealistic, I'm extraordinarily cynical. And I think, well, I'm just, this is like my 28th year on Wall Street. I just think this stuff goes on, whether we're aware of it or not, everywhere around the world all the time. Republicans, Democrats, old people, young people. It's human nature where people have an information advantage. They will seek to do something about it. And we have no idea. So it doesn't upset you.

Well, upset me to the point of like I can't carry on with my day. Not really. That's not what I'm saying. Does it upset you at all? I mean, I would prefer it if it didn't exist, but I think we have to acknowledge, unfortunately, this is this is the world we live in. And the problem is this instantly becomes politicized. So there will be people that look at this and say the MAGA world, they're tipping

each other off and they're trading on war developments. And maybe they'll even be congressional investigations. I have no idea. But the problem is the other side. will say, well, oh, you're talking about my team. What about your team? Why is Nancy Pelosi a better trader than Stanley Druckenmiller? 100%.

So you almost like, I don't want to see it's a waste of time even talking about it. I think the way I would phrase it is like, you're not going to, if you're on the red team, you're not going to convince the blue team that they've ever done anything wrong. And if you're on the blue team, you're not going to convince anyone on the red team. I'm on the green team. Why can't we just agree that both sides are doing? it and agree that it's bad and agree that... I will strongly agree that there are people who are willing to do whatever, you know,

whatever it takes to get rich on both sides. One side maybe pretends a little bit more that they don't, but I'm on the green team. I need to focus on my job, what I have to do, the people I'm responsible for. Fair enough. It would be great if we lived in a world where, like, nobody was trying to get away with things, but you know that's not this world, and I know that's not this world. And I think it could become a distraction if you let it make you feel that you can't win or the system is rigged or why even bother investing. It's all, you know, it's all fake. A lot of people, look, a lot of people

after the great financial crisis never came back to investing again because they saw a lot of the people who were responsible for the crisis, really not suffer any consequences, and in some cases, be issued bonuses the following year. And they just looked at that and they said, this whole thing is a joke. I'm out. I don't like that. That's, that's negative. I think that's negative for the U.S. investor's psyche. And so I'm not for it and I'm not dismissing it. And I'm not telling you, I don't care about it. I think what I, what I try to get across is like, okay, fine, that's a side show for most of us, we need to focus on ourselves. Yeah, fair enough.

I mean, I think the takeaway being just because there's cheating doesn't mean that you shouldn't play the game. You've got to play the game if you want to get rich and if you want to build economic security. But if the system is rigged in a big way, I mean, you want to fix that in some way. I mean, it's not a good thing that people woke up off of the financial crisis and they said, this is, this is, this is, this is rigged in a lot of ways, which was true. Right. And if that becomes a very widespread sentiment, you could knock out a whole generation

of investors who, who come to the conclusion that this whole thing is stacked against them. And I, I, I do think that that's, uh, a negative sentiment that we, we need law and order, we need securities regulation. We need cops. We need people who are keeping everyone honest. But, um, you're not going to get everyone. and not everything that looks like a scandal actually turns out to be one. Yes, yeah. I think one thing we can take away is this should not make you not want to invest anymore. If that's your takeaway, then you're getting into real trouble.

And expect more of it in the future. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fair enough. We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at profitymarkets.com. Support for the show comes from SOFA. Let's face it, student loans are slowing down your financial goals. it's time for a smarter strategy. That's where SOFI comes in.

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While all of the chaos with the war has been unfolding, it's been hard to focus on anything else, and the headlines are sometimes changing by the hour. But one trend has been consistent through this whole year so far. Tech stocks are getting hit hard. Microsoft has fallen more than 20% year to date. Oracle is off over 26%. Salesforce is down more than 30, As a whole, the IGV, which is the software index, is down more than 22% this year. Josh, this is really interesting for a lot of reasons. Mag 7's lost nearly $2 trillion, or actually, sorry, more than $2 trillion in market cap year-to-date. And you actually went in and you bought IGV.

You bought software stocks. I believe it was last week. So give us your views on what's happening in the, in the, in the, you actually. the tech sector right now, and why did you buy? Why are you bullish? I don't know that I'm insanely bullish on software. I just looked at a full-scale panic and just indiscriminate selling of these names for months. And at a certain point, I said this looks carried away, stepped in, but that's on a trading basis. And I'm up a little bit from there. But I just look at the top 20 holdings of the IGV. These are some of the best companies in the world, Salesforce, Microsoft, Pallenteer,

crowd strike, Palo Alto networks. And it's not that I don't think that these companies are at risk of AI-related disruption. Some of them are at more risk than others. But they're all going down. They're all down anywhere from 25 to 50%. It's not as though saying, oh, no, AI is going to eat their lunch. Like, that's not a unique point of view. That's the consensus.

So I just looked at it one day. and I just said, you know what, this probably bounces. I don't know that that bounce is sustainable or it turns into a new bowl market, but I do want to gently correct something that you said about tech stocks getting killed. It's actually not true. Software stocks are getting killed.

Tech stocks are doing great. I know that sounds, I know people like, wait, what? What's happening? Away from the hyperscalers that are currently pursuing the biggest KAPX spending cycle of all time. And away from software, SaaS enterprise software, tech stocks are doing great. And what the

tech stocks that are doing great have in common is, they're benefiting from this AI CAPX wave, and they are physical technology companies, Halo, if you will. They have heavy assets and low obsolescence risk. We give you some examples. Sienna is a company that makes networking equipment. switching, routers, Cisco, servers, racks, etc., Dell. These stocks are all at or near all-time record highs. Corning, vibroptic cables, also part of the data center, Cappex buildout. Then you look at some of the chip companies, Jable Circuit. They call it Jabil these days.

You look at Sandisk. You look at Micron. you look at Broadcom, Nvidia, these are all companies that are benefiting from that CAPX spending cycle that's been hurting

the MAG7 tech names. So one half of that equation are the spenders, the other half of the recipients. The recipients are going up, straight up. Some of these charts look like the Empire State Building.

So it is not true that tech is getting killed. It is true that Mega Cap Tech is not having a great year. But even within mega-cap tech, there's a pretty big separation between, for example, meta and Apple. Yeah. Apple is not having a great year, but Apple is more on the hardware side and significantly more Halo.

They will benefit from all of this AI CAP-X without having contributed to any of it. Their CAP-X is actually negative versus last year. meanwhile if you log into chat ch pt log into uh to claude apple's getting paid the apple tax 30% in the first year 15% thereafter of the revenue coming from the usage of these products in the ios environment so uh apple is halo it's physical it's the devices themselves phones AirPods, iPads, watches, MacBooks, etc. So it's tricky,

the technology market. It's tricky to say it's all doing this or it's all doing that. There's an extreme bifurcation. It's interesting because on the halo point, it does seem as though the momentum. So just so everyone knows, you create this term heavy asset, low obsolescence. It describes these more physical companies

that you're describing here. And it describes a wave that was emerging and developing over the past several months, and it has become a very, very popular and actually crowded trade, as you point out with those charts that look like the Empire State Building. Meanwhile, the software names, the application layers, have been getting absolutely battered, companies like Salesforce and ServiceNow and even some of the cybersecurity names, you mention crowd strike, those companies have been getting destroyed. And so I guess the question becomes like, at what point does either of those trades become

overplayed and when does it get old? And it does seem, my view, I mean, you bought IGV, you're saying it was more of a trade play than a real long-term investment. Maybe you can elaborate. Yeah, because you know why? Because these things in the short term get overdone. like the like thematic thematic trades that become popular and crowded

in the short term in the short term you're right like they get carried away and then there's a correction that's what appears to be happening in the software market yeah so so look let's talk about those software companies that I mentioned the sales forces the the uh the Microsoft's it's not like Anthropic is launching all these products and they're sitting at sales force eating crayons. Like they are very much aware. Exactly.

They are very much aware of how much time, energy, and money they need to put into their response to this. And what they have going for them is, and this is the truth is, they have not been disrupted yet. Most of these companies are reporting record earnings and revenue. And they have the cash flow. that will support very, very intense R&D and CAPX as they formulate their AI strategy. They also have the relationship with the customer. So it's, I don't think everyone can win, but it's never like that. There's always competition.

Some of these companies grew, the service nows, the workdays, the Adobe's. In the last 10, 15 years, some of these companies grew almost, without competition, investors in those stocks became complacent. Like, it's Adobe. What replaces Adobe? Nothing. What are you going to tell me about? Figma?

Give me a break. Right? So people sort of had that. And then a year or two ago, that stopped because we have this new class of technology player that is speed running through their innovation cycle, anthropic and perplexity and open AI. And they're raising a ton of money and they're making partnerships and they have huge resources and they've recruited an unbelievable amount of talent. And now it's game on.

And these software companies, they're not disappearing, but they're competing in a way that they haven't had to for a long time. So viewed through that prism, the multiple contraction makes sense. But it gets carried away. So I'll give you the day that I said, you know what, I'm stepping in this is bullshit. there was a story that Anthropic was about to disrupt all of cybersecurity. Like in other words, companies were going to say, oh, let's rip all this Palo Alto stuff out of our network and we'll just vibe code something with Claude and we'll give me a fucking break. There's no board of directors at any public company anywhere in the world that would sign off

on that kind of cybersecurity plan if the CTO came and presented. It'll never happen. And so that was the day where I'm like, you know what, this whole thing is nonsense. I run a business. I'm a Salesforce customer.

I would love for there to be an AI-driven solution where I could take that six-figure expenditure out of my, you know, off of my line items. I'd love to pull it out. The reality is it's a system of record for my business. it's enabling secure sharing of data,

transmission of information. It's the operating system of the firm. If something comes along that's AI driven, we're going to look at it. We're going to look at it. It's not going to be free. Oh, it's free because it's AI. What are people talking about?

Literally, what are people? So I just, I said, you know what? This has gone too far. Even Jensen Wang has made multiple appearances, including on his own earnings call. describing the extent to which this is stupid. So I'm willing to believe Jensen over the hedge fund analyst who's five years out of school, who's a disruption hippie and thinks all these companies are going to zero.

I'm willing to trust Jensen. Again, it's difficult. It's not, if we think the publicly traded software companies are under pressure, think about the private equity-backed software companies that everyone's worried about, a private credit. Yeah, a $50 million. SaaS software company that sells to auto dealerships

might have to face down an anthropic built product that comes in at a much lower price point and can do much more. Guess what? That's capitalism. You can't like it on the way up and not on the way down. There's competition. Like grow up. And here's what the market has done. The internal logic of the market this year, I identified this on February 9th in my article

that I wrote. Everything that's happened since then has bolstered what I was trying to say, which is that the market's going to figure out we have been underpaying for companies with heavy assets and overpaying for companies that are capital light or asset light is how they called it. So we've been overpaying for these asset light SaaS software companies for 10 years. We've been underpaying for things that really fucking matter. like companies that own power plants and pipelines, way underpaying. Here's what that adjustment looks like. I'm giving you year-to-date sector performance.

Energy up 36%. You think we're going to need energy? Okay. Materials up 10%. Utilities up 9. Staple 7. Industrial 6. Real estate plus 5%.

You want to guess what every one of those sectors has in common? Halo, halo, halo, halo. These are all companies with heavy, heavy, assets on their balance sheets, unreplaceable by a chatbot. These are not companies that sell data. These are not companies that are operating a layer on top of a cloud provider.

These are companies that have metal, steel, and timber, and bricks. And that adjustment is what we're seeing. Here's the other half in the market. Communications negative 4%. Tech negative seven, financials negative eight, consumer disgrace negative 10.

Those are not Halo for the most part, you know, with some nuance, which we talked about. Healthcare is interesting, not acting well this year, but biotech is doing great. I actually think the world of proteins and molecules is extremely halo. I don't know how AI does anything other than help these companies speed up clinical trials, discover new compounds,

enable all sorts of testing that normally would have taken lots of human subjects and years. I actually think AI is a massive tailwind for a lot of areas within health care, robotics for hospitals that are understaffed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I think health care is halo, but not acting well this year. Maybe that's an opportunity. But I think the market has now organized itself in a very different way than what we're accustomed to in the post-financial crisis period. But there is also another distinction that should be made here, which I'm finding very interesting. Just so you know, I also went in and

bought some of these names, but I did it in Sasspocalypse 1. I went for Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe, and also Microsoft, and I think that the Microsoft self has been stunning. By the way, I'm not up on those trades. I was at one point in time, and then we had another Saspocalypse. You never buy, you never buy Sasspacalypsepocalypse one. I don't know. I'm still actually quite optimistic because to your point, I actually think a lot of these companies are very well positioned for this AI revolution. And you think about what's happening. I mean, you made the point with Salesforce. I love what you say. They're not eating crayons. They're actually figuring out how to integrate AI into their systems. All day. This is all they talk about. It's all they do. They're actively growing those AI revenues. Service Now is reporting. incredibly great earnings. They are also growing their AI revenues, but people say, no, it's all going to be a problem because the new companies like Anthropic and like OpenAI, they're going to ruin the whole game. They're going to ruin the party. And they're even going to ruin the party

for a company like Microsoft. Why? Because, yes, Microsoft makes a lot of money from Microsoft office and that suite of products. But also, Microsoft is way overspending. They're investing all of this capex, they're plowing all this money, same with meta, same with Amazon, etc. The thing that just doesn't make any sense to me, that's exactly what Open AI and Anthropica are doing. I mean, those companies are wasting, not necessarily wasting, we don't know yet, but they are spending so much money right now. The unit economics don't make any sense. What would happen if they were publicly traded? Would they get destroyed by their own products? Really good point. Open AI is a valuation of $852 billion as of the last round of funding.

Wraising money from Microsoft, NVIDIA, like the, the savviest investors on the planet are investing into Open AI. Probably comes public. If not late this year, early next year, probably worth at least a trillion dollars. They are committed to $600 billion in spending on compute that we know of, like as of today. That's one. They said one and a half trillion out loud at one point. Yes. Yes. Now, they are also actively telling anyone who will listen that they expect to spend

the rest of this decade burning, burning tens of billions of dollars peaking at $85 billion in the year 2028. So two years from now, they're guiding to a burn of $85 billion. Okay. they are talking about profitability in 2030. Okay, maybe. The point is they're number three. Exactly. Anthropic is two.

Gemini is one or vice versa, depending on if we're talking about enterprise, but that's the number three player in AI right now, and it's mostly consumer AI for chat CBT. The number three player is going to burn $85 billion two years from now. This is the guide. So that's one, two, anecdotally, you probably have loads of friends who have sent you a text or an email or a DM.

Yo, check this thing out. I just built in Claude. It's so sick. Like the stupid website. It sucks more than an art project you made in fourth grade. And you have to, oh, so cool, man. That is 100% true. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, check this out.

check this out. I put all my playlist. Search it out. All my Spotify playlist are available on this website and you could search it by artists but I don't want to and it looks like garbage. Yeah, but I made it. What are you my son? I don't give a shit. You made it? Terrible.

So let's So all I'm saying, I'm not saying go buy every software stock. I'm just saying like the narrative gets I invented this Halo shit, but it gets carried away at times. And I think we've, we've been through a few of these. And it gets very, very confused, especially when you have this new paradigm where the biggest players in this market aren't publicly

traded. So we don't really know what's happening. We don't really know what the valuation of Open AI really is if it weren't being propped up by its vendors, the people from which it buys stuff from IE, Nvidia, etc. We will buy compute from you and chips, and in turn you will buy our stock. Exactly. So we don't really know what the actual market is. cap of these companies really are. We don't know if, I mean, these companies are projected, and this is the incredible stat that we got from Paul Kodroski, who we had on the program last week. Anthropic, Open AI, SpaceX, if they go public at what people expect, it's going to be $3.75 trillion in market cap. That is more than all of the inflation adjusted, that is more valuable than all of the dot-com

IPO put together. So it's an incredible valuation here that we're about to see. But again, if we saw the financials of these companies, if we really understood, if everyone really had a clear vision in their heads of this is how much open eye is spending. This is what the unit economics look like. This is how much money they are losing every time you put a little stupid prompt in on your computer. What would the stock market actually look like? What would happen to that stock price and how would people adjust their expectations of, say, Microsoft, which is down 20% year today. But we don't have that information. So I think the narratives are getting very confused. Yeah, what they need to do is continue to add users and show revenue growth.

And so Open AI is now introduced advertising. They want to get heavier into code. They want to be much more endemic to enterprise. They want to get chat GPT and other open AI products into Fortune 500 companies, government use. You saw Anthropic had a, had a dust up with the Pentagon and Sam Altman swooped right in. We have no, don't worry,

we have no privacy. Do whatever you want without, come on in. So they, because they all have to show this kind of like breakneck growth. And if they do, everybody can rationalize the losses, the spending, because they understand that it won't be unprofitable forever.

Someday will catch up. But they can't do it with Microsoft. They can't do it with the big tech names. I mean, it seems that we have different expectations, different standards here, depending on who you are. We're down with the incredible spending over on the private side, but in the public markets, ooh, we're going to get very nervous about that. So Microsoft's unpopularity as a stock coincided with a lot of questions about whether or not

co-pilot, which is their overlay on top of OpenAI for employees, for technical employees. A lot of questions about whether or not there was an ROI. People even were, you know, like the product, you know, if it's sticky enough, even though it's Microsoft. And I think you saw that adjustment in Microsoft's multiple. Importantly, their numbers are still lights out. We look at a 36% decline in Microsoft, and they have not missed earnings. They have not guided down.

They have not disappointed anyone in any way. It's all perception. And show on top, they own a third of Open AI, too. So that's also your risk protection. That's a good place to leave this. You know, as a non-public company, Open AI has the benefit of only reporting the things that are superlatives and make it look great. Like they don't they don't owe the same level of transparency as a public company does for obvious reasons. And I think that's why we saw that

story this week where Sarah Fryer is not as confident as Sam Altman is about the timeline of a go public in Q4. You know, these are people these there are people in Sam's ear that he's listening to that he's not listening to, but some of those people are saying Yo, once this thing is trading, you actually have to tell us everything. You have to tell the world everything. And they won't all be ready to do that. 100%. Okay.

Josh Brown, let's take a look at the week ahead. We will see the producer price index for March. We'll see earning season kicking off with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Johnson Johnson, ASML, TSM, Pepsi, Netflix. Josh, we really appreciate this. Any closing thoughts, any closing remarks, anything you've got your eye on before we end here? No. Josh Brown is the co-founder and CEO of Ritt Holtz, a New York City-based investment advisory firm managing $6.5 billion dollars in assets.

It's like seven and a half billion. Come on. Managing $7.5 billion in assets for individuals, corporate retirement plans and foundations. You can also check out his podcast, The Compound and Friends for more. Josh, we always love having you. Thank you so much and enjoy Coral Gables. I hope you have a good time. Cheers.

This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Jorge Carty. Our research team is Dan Chalin, Isabella Kinsel, Chris Nodonhue, and Mia Silverio. Jake McPherson is our social producer. Drew Burroughs is our technical director, and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to ProfG Markets from Profg Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow, and tune in tomorrow. for a fresh take on the markets.