The Compound and Friends - Data Centers Are the New Fracking

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

On episode 231 of The Compound and Friends, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠���⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Downtown Josh Brown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ are joined by Daniel Clifton and Chris Verrone of Strategas Research to discuss:TOPICS and much more! This episode is sponsored by Grayscale and Janus Henderson Investors. Visit Grayscale.com/Compound to get started.  Learn more at https://www.janushenderson.com/ Sign up for The Compound Newsletter and never miss out: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecompoundnews.com/subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/company/the-compound-media/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Grayscale disclosure: Grayscale is the world’s largest crypto-focused asset manager based on AUM as of 12/31/2025. For other companies in this category, AUM is considered as of most recent public disclosure. AUM is subject to change. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal. For more information, visit grayscale.com Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Josh Brown are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So which cartel did you join? Gosh, what a nightmare. Are you in the good one? I'm in the good one. I'm back. Are you in a target cartel? When we crossed over to American airspace, I was like... Wait, so start from the beginning.

I need it. Give me the whole thing. So you're in the whole... So you're giving a speech somewhere. Giving a speech, trying to get home... So there's a lot of you there. There's people there for an event. There's a group there.

And then, I'm sorry, you saw the news on Sunday. There's a little action in southwest Mexico. But made it back after four, five days. Why was the event there? Was it something international? Yeah, it was just like an international group. And it was a good opportunity to speak at that event and didn't foresee that there might be some trouble. I love Mexico, by the way.

I was there. Might be my last time. I know. It might be my last time. I was at a place called the Maroma is like north of Cancun. You fly into Cancun and drive up the coast. So that's more like East Coast of Mexico. So I was in the Belmont, Maroma is, I think it's one of the best hotels I've ever

stayed in. There's 25 guests there that's or something, something tiny at any one time. And I'm so sad. I can't. Like, I would love to go back to Mexico. Maybe wait a little bit. No, I understand. Stay on the east side. So, all right. So, what happens? You have a flight and the hotel says nobody's leaving or you just know? Yeah, the hotel was really pretty insistent that everyone's stay and just waited out. So like the federalities, like the Mexican authorities. Hotel security was pretty insistent that people stay and just wait for things to cool down.

And fortunately they did. And then was able to get out yesterday, Wednesday. Did you have to smuggle anything? No, I got some tequila back over the border, though, which is good. Dude, we're happy to have you back. You almost destroyed the show this week. I know. I know.

I was worried. I mean, I was definitely worried about your life. But also, the show is, you know, it's a big deal. All right. So happy you're here, dude. All right. How are we looking, John? One minute.

Okay. All right, so guys, we do the headphones so you can hear... Yep. So you can hear everything. Yep. You can hear yourselves talk. That way, if you get a little bit further from the mic, your own ears will tell you. Oh, sit up.

Dan, how about the State of the Union address, am I right? Oh, man. Right? It was a full movie. Two hours. There was two hours. Two hours. Did you watch the whole thing?

Of course. I think it's the most entertaining thing there is. I think it's better than most regularly scheduled events. Dumb question. There's not commercials, right? No. No commercials, straight. And he could just keep going, right?

So, but very different. Like Bill Clinton used to just go policy, policy, policy. Trump just talks. He's got the whole show going on. He's bringing out the hockey team. He's bringing out the 200-year-old soldiers getting medals. Like, it's- I thought that was dope when the entire hockey team was like brought in. Yes.

And they got a standing ovation. I thought that was really cool. Pretty great. Everybody in the room stood up for them. Yes. The big take, two big takeaways from the thing seemed to be one, he basically was like, I'll do whatever I want with tariffs. I thought it would go the other way.

I thought he would like look directly at the Supreme Court justices and tell them off. You're fired. No, instead he's like, LOL, watch. So, all right, that was a big one. And then the other one, did he really? Everyone's like, oh, he trapped the Democrats. He knew they wouldn't stand up for protecting Americans being job number. one. Sure. I don't know. Does that like that big of a moment, as everyone was saying?

Yeah. Let me just take one step back. He needs the Supreme Court on three other decisions, like the Voting Rights Act and Lisa Cook. He's probably not going to get him on Lisa Cook. So there was no reason to go stick his finger in their eye because his point is like, I'm just going to do it another way. You're just saying I couldn't do it by Aipa. The second point is that he's trying to inject himself onto the ticket. Midterm elections are usually about a referendum on the president. He's not on the ballot. So he was like, okay, I'm going to make this about immigration. And he's like, I'm for American citizens. You're not. The question that you have to ask, though, does that help in the target districts like Short Hills, New Jersey and Orange

California? That immigration issue is less of an issue there. But you could see where he's going from today until the election. And that is that it's going to be the Democrats are going to have to run against him. And he's making it about immigration. Is that where he's the strongest for the independent voter? Yes, he's very strong. Like, if you look at the polling, if you look at the polling, His polling numbers are awful. Yeah. Okay. But what is 36%?

36%. Like that's 35 seats he's going to lose in the house. If you look at a relative comparison on immigration and other policies, he's actually even with the Democrats. He's slightly ahead on immigration. So they see that as some sort of opportunity. So then they're going to push on that. They're going to push on that this summer.

And they're going to push on it. I would say my takeaways from that state of union are actually a little bit different. He's got a real issue on data centers. So he was like, he was like, hey, I'm. I've come up with a way for Microsoft to pay for their own energy and start to ease voter concern on data centers. To me, that was a very important. It was like 45 minutes into the speech or something. And so it kind of got missed because there was a lot of other stuff.

That was very important. The second thing is- Let's put a pin on that one. What's the second thing? The second thing is on taxes, where he basically was trying to tell everybody, I get this massive fiscal stimulus coming in 2006. We passed a bill last year, and you got zero from that in 2025. It's coming in 2006.

And that's why he started out there in the beginning on that to try and say that while people were still warm and watching. So his support is narrowing unlike the stock market. Am I right? Nailed it. Well, I mean, I think what's remarkable here. What a segue. Stock market guy, go. The poll numbers are where they are.

And the market's basically, what, 2% off the highs? Yeah, Dow 50,000. I can't believe he's not 40% at least. Where are, what's the national average on guest prices right now, Dan? Probably $2.85, right? Yeah. $2.85? down from something like 350.

Right. So you have what are perceived tailwinds, maybe in an old view of the world, which are not manifesting in higher poll numbers. It's just... All right, Pancho Villa. Hold on. Let's get the show started. Don't do the content before the content. Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop the clock.

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where we believe working together is the way to work better. Like combining your portfolio plans. and our in-depth strategy, your valued assets and our valuable insights, your mission, and our vision. Always working in perfect harmony to find the right investment opportunities, Janice Henderson investors investing in a brighter future together. Visit janicehenderson.com. Welcome to The Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnick, and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Redholz wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon

for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Thank you, Ms. Nicole. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the best investing podcast in the world. My name is downtown Josh Brown. First time listeners, welcome. Last time listeners, sorry, I did my best. with me today, my co-host, Mr. Michael Badnick. Hello, hello. All right, the crowd is going wild. Thank you.

I love you. All right, and we have two very special guests making their inaugural appearances on the compound and friends. With us today, Daniel Clifton. Daniel is a partner, portfolio manager, and head of policy research at Stratigas Asset Management, where he leads the number one ranked Washington Policy Research Team on Wall Street per institutional.

investors, All-America Research Survey. Glad's on that. Thanks. Good. It's big. His work underpins, all right, it's enough. Chris Verone, Chris is a partner and head of technical and macro research at Stratigas, where he serves on the firm's asset allocation committee.

Chris is consistently ranked among Wall Street's top macro analysts by institutional investor. And all-star charts. And all-star charts. J-C. J-C is a big fan. Jay-C. is a huge fan of us. Actually, Jason loves here. This is the first time I think in the history of TCAF.

We've had three different people from the same company between you and you two and Todd. Amazing. Is that right? I think it's got to be. Oh, that's actually a pretty good point. That's an honor. Yeah. John, can I play a clip? What do we do it?

Can I do it? All right, wait, why am I? Oh, you're not from back. Oh, how do I, wait, make me connect? It's too late. Can you play a clip? Send it up. All right.

We'll do some, we'll do some, we'll do some, we'll do some, we'll do some, we'll do some, we'll do some, we're not playing the clip.

Guys, send it to Daniel. Uh, all right, let me send this. Daniel, can you pull it out of the dock? Do you have access to?

Yeah. All right. Pull that out. Let me know when you're ready to play it. Give me the, give me the eye, all right?

Why do you set it up, Josh? What are we, what are we about to say? I don't even know. I forgot already. Okay. Why do Americans

hate AI? Oh, boy, because the unemployment rate's going up. But it's not. I know. That's the irony, right? I mean, we're sitting here. You know, I wonder almost if it does, is that actually like the bullish outcome here? Because if you need something in a world where like nominal growth is pretty high to keep the Fed easy in 26 to 27, is it the unemployment rate going from three and a quarter,

sorry, from four and a quarter to five and a quarter? Is that kind of that structural shift in employment that gets the new Warsh Fed to? to cut 100 pips when everyone thinks they're only going to do 25 or 50. That, I think, is the big question. Is the asset bubble actually in front of us if we're cutting into what is otherwise a pretty sound economy here? Nope. It's been a while. I was in this trade.

And the higher timeframes were bullish. So I bought the dip. Just like you taught me, I just dip. And it kept dipping. What do you do, dad? When the dip keeps dipping, but you have. You have nothing left to buy. Here.

I mean, I blew the account, Dad. That's great. And I was one day away from payout. It's been a while. Is that fake? All right. No, that's actually a scene from Interstellar. I don't remember that part?

Where his daughter bought the dip and yeah, yeah. All right. So in other words, it's possible if we start seeing those unemployment, if we start seeing headline unemployment deterioration, it's possible that the market comes around to the idea that, wait, actually, maybe this isn't so terrible because now we don't have to talk about inflation anymore? Well, listen, I think the Fed's ability to figure out whether this is a structural shift in unemployment or a cyclical one is they're unlikely to be able to make that distinction. So if we're going to be cutting in an environment where nominal is probably six, six and a half anyway, that sounds like a relatively bullish outcome, not a bearish outcome. And, you know, what are you saying?

I mean, another day today, NASDAQ's down, what, percent and a half? Yeah. More advances than the Clonters? This is the fourth day this year in two months where you've had NASDAQ down at least a percent and more stocks up than down. Last year, in totality, all of 25, only three days. So far, four of those thus far in 26. I mean, this is the market of the many is the language.

This is those RSP days where it's RSP over SPY, and we're having a lot more of that. This has just begun. I think we love it, but it's hard to say. see this persisting where the market is within 2.5%, 3% of an all-time high, as we see further deterioration of the Mag 7. Invidia, which is down 6%, 5% we'll talk about. There's a limit to how much the mag 7 can weigh in the market with the equal weight still turning, I think. At some point, I think this will turn. Yeah, I don't disagree. And I think when you look at the only kind of real comparable period where breath got a lot better and the index came in, it's March of 2000 through March

of 2001. Now, ultimately at the end, everything fell. 2001 was not a good environment for the, quote, average stock or the active manager, everything went down. But for about a year there, it's the only period in history where breath gets better for 12 months and the index goes down 20. Two asterisks on that, though. Um, 9-11. Yeah, that's later. And Ron WorldCom. So that comes later, though. Okay. Find another a asterisk. Real recession. Okay, I mean, what was odd about the recession, though, was it was a very, very mild recession. Consumer spending went up.

yet the market went down 50%. Go back to like 1990, very deep recession, market only goes down 20%. So this idea that there's symmetry between the depth of an economic decline and what the market gives you, history would say is just not the case at all. When did earnings peak? In the dot-com. I'm going to guess they peaked probably second or third quarter of 2000, so after the market peaked. Because if you remember, the big tech names were still printing good numbers into like summer fall of 2000. You had that big reflex rally in the NASDAQ into October of 2000.

You almost made a new high. You may have made a fractional new high in the NASDAQ in like September, October of 2000. Because they are still printing the earnings from the prior years binge on computer equipment because people were trying to get ahead of Y2K. I mean, it sounds so stupid now, but we had like this one of the million capex cycle. People literally thought their computers would be useless. If you bottomed on good news and peaked on bad news, this business would be easy. But unfortunately, it's the other way around. All right, guys, so I want to show you a chart. I think this is the week that the full backlash against AI finally went mainstream. It has now become, I think, a huge popular issue, not a

financial issue, although we're turning against AI in the stock market, too, for different reasons. What I'm showing you here is unemployment rate for recent graduates, versus all workers. And this is get, I mean, it doesn't look like much at this distance, but this is becoming more acute. I think households are realizing that there's recently graduated sons and daughters can't get hired. And the only thing they can think of,

because these kids have gone to top universities, work their asses off, the only thing they can think of is this is because corporations are taking a wait and see approach. They want to see whether or not the AI can do what the typical entry level could. I mean, these are Excel monkeys, basically, not getting those entry level jobs.

So that's one. Sam Altman, every appearance he makes is worse than the one before. Terrible public speaker. The company, the best in the company could do is use him ceremonially, not as a thought leader on 90-minute podcasts. And now you have people using chat GPT every day,

using Claude, using Gemini, in some cases they don't even know they are. because it's just built into the products they use. They love using it, but here are some of the polling numbers around AI, and then I want you guys to react to this. 50% of Americans are now more concerned than excited about AI. Only 10% say they're more excited than concerned.

That's Pew. 57% of Americans say societal risks of AI are high. Only 25% say benefits are high. Also Pew. 5% say they trust AI, quote, a lot. 41% say distrust AI. The remainder say they're a little bit distrust. That's you gov.

35% of U.S. adults report using AI tools weekly. 30% have never used it at all. 62% say it'll increase worker productivity. 61% say it will eliminate more jobs than it creates over the next decade. Last two. 69% say the U.S. government is not doing enough to regulate it. 77% say Americans do not trust business or government to use AI responsibly citing privacy, bias, and accountability. Everybody hates this shit.

Here's the cover of Time magazine. Daniel, thank you. I don't know if this is like really a cross-section of America, but just like representative of what went on this week. I want to hear what you guys think. What's changed all of a sudden? why is this all of a sudden now becoming a top of mind issue? Well, first, let me say you started off by saying more and more people are using AI. So they're saying they use it and they don't like it.

I think there's a bit of a contradiction between the two of those. There are two major issues. The first one you highlight it was the unemployment rate. People are like, why would I like this if you're going to raise my electricity bill and I'm going to lose my job from that? And particularly where the data centers are being built, they're in more rural areas and there's a lot of skepticism around it. I got to tell you, this goes right into the heart of Trump's base.

Okay, I've seen, I've been in focus groups with Trump voters saying, I want nothing to do with this AI stuff. And he believes that AI is existential for the U.S. dominating the next generation. And if we don't do it, China's going to do it. Dan, it's part of his CAPEX boom, though. These numbers are the Trump economy. Absolutely. And the base doesn't like the output of that cap X. Absolutely.

And so he's got to figure out how to get around that. And that's why I think what happened at the State of Union this week was important. if you're seeing that the private sector companies are going to get better access to energy and pay for that energy, it allays some of the concern on the energy side and the electricity side. By the way, electricity prices are growing up. None of this is related to data centers. It's just higher cost in the system that are inflationary. And people are just connecting it to AI or they're connecting the unemployment that we just saw to AI itself.

This is Puck. This is Ivan Kreisberg. In the latest example of data semper nimbism, A proposed 27,000 square foot AI data center in New Brunswick, New Jersey will become a public park instead. Yeah. The city decided to block it. And they had a city council meeting. Protesters lined up.

They said, forget it. There have been 25 data center projects canceled in January alone. I don't even hear about any of these. That's hundreds of billions of dollars. Industry sources have described local resistance as one of the most significant challenges. the sector faces, yeah, you think? They don't like the sound. They don't like the idea of air pollution.

They don't like the water usage. They don't like the idea that it'll raise local electricity demand. Yeah, but better reels. Better reels is, you know, we have to weigh the good with the bad. But you have a really hot take here. Yeah. Data centers of the new fracking. That's exactly right.

All right. We went through this 15 years ago. We went through this 15 years ago with fracking. Fracking was the economic promise. By the way, we were coming out of the financial crisis. And so this was seen as a way to get more jobs, more investment, lower trade deficit door, better foreign policy. There were so many benefits to that.

And you're talking about contaminating water possibly or earthquakes. I mean, this is beyond just the economic issues of the local nibism. And there was a lot of resistance. At one point, we were having a debate on the House floor about banning fracking. I remember. Okay? And like the Exxon XTO merger clause that if we ban fracking, this deal is not going to happen. That's how real it was.

at one point. Okay. And it's interesting because Boone Pickens used to say, it's okay if New York bans fracking. We're not fracking here. We're not fracking in New York. He's like, we don't need that now. Eventually, they'll do something where they're going to need fracking at a later point, as long as we got it going on in the right places. Okay. And you have it going on in the right places right now, which is Virginia out through the Midwest. Okay. But when you have the governor of Virginia stand up, which is the heart of the data centers, because the CIA dinner centers are there. And she's like, I think we should slow this down. That's a real signal to the market. Or Ron DeSantis saying, hey, maybe we should take a closer look at some of these data centers.

Virginia is the biggest cluster there is. And that goes back to AOL being based there. And they just, they knew how to do this stuff there. Correct. Right. It's really, if you haven't taken a tour down there, it's really worth the tour. But then go in the diner right down the street from the Micron factory that this is all building around. It's a very MAGA, very, very Trump-oriented diner, you feel the local opposition. And so what I'm arguing is, what did the energy industry do to ultimately win on fracking? They got ahead of this. They were able to tout the benefits of it. They were able to bring out supporters of it. And what we're finding is that the energy industry was way ahead of the debate. They understood that there was risk. The tech industry is slow.

So you got all this regulation, the legislation popping up, and they're slow. They got to come in and say, hey, you know what, you don't like this? Here's the medical innovations that are going to happen from this. You're worried about your local electricity prices. Here's how much your local property taxes are going to go down because we're building this factory in here. There's a way to do this. The tech industry has just been slow to do it. With fracking, the answer is obvious. Two dollar natural gas does the correct. Correct. But it took a while to get there. But what's the obvious way for the tech people is just jobs? Like, look how many people were employing in these places that were erecting the data center? One of the problems is they don't create a lot of jobs. There's not a lot of construction

jobs, and there's definitely not jobs inside the data center itself. So you've got to make it about property taxes. If I'm in a town with a lot of kids and a data center comes in, that's more money for education than that town. You'd all be a good argument. Hey, it's this or a nuclear power plant. Yeah, right? Right. You pick. You pick. This is such a better way to do it, right? But I think that there's going to be, the great thing about federalism is that there's going to be states that are going to be able to get this thing done. And you don't need it all. Bernie Sanders and Vermont, they're going to ban data centers in the next couple weeks. We don't really need data centers.

The irony of the fracking revolution, just to extend the metaphor, is that probably last on the list of beneficiaries were the publicly traded stocks of the frackers themselves. Totally. I mean, think about the irony of this whole environment. The first chart you showed was the unemployment rate for new college graduates, right, which has exploded. Try to get a plumber to your house. Try to get electricity.

You can't. Right. So God bless the trades. It is a bull market in trades. You know, you show the Time Magazine cover from this week. The irony is, six weeks ago, who was the person of the year? All the AI Titans. Seven of them.

Right? Now, we talk about chat, GPT, and Sam Altman. Look at SoftBank. It kind of tells you all you need to know. What's the stock down? Maybe 45 or 50% from the highs. I mean, find me a financial crisis or a tech crisis where SoftBank doesn't have their fingertips on it. Right.

So you have that backdrop. Is that the poster child for the referendum on what we think Open AI is worth on a day-to-day basis, or is it Oracle, or is it both? Someone, I think a mutual friend of ours asked me a good question a few weeks ago. I said, Chris, if OpenAI was a publicly traded company, what would the chart look like? Yeah. Oracle. Oracle or SoftBank or Microsoft, right? I think the market's been pretty vocal in what that chart would look like.

You know, then you fast forward here a little bit. You talk about the lost decade for energy from, let's call it, 2008 through really 2020, 2021. Is the lost decade there ironically over, as perhaps some lost decade in some new group might be in here? I'm a big believer that the trends that are in place or the trends that are developing only get reinforced by what news follows. It's not news that sets the trend, right? The trend gets in place and then the narrative shows up in time. Oh, I think that's right. Right.

So it's price first. Of course. Then it's narrative. Because the market is smarter than the journalism. So, you know, it's not just six weeks or eight weeks of 2026. Go back to really September, October of 25 when this RSP over triple Q's theme started to develop. All the incremental news flow since then has been in this direction of this new developing trend of, we call it the market of the many, right? And, you know, in this populist world that we're living in, it's very much a populist market.

It is the market. of the many here. What's made new highs this year? Midcaps, equal weight, value line. Everything else. NYAC. Where's the cues? Right. Yeah. So let me ask you mentioned earlier, the market would be so much easier if it topped on bad news, bottom of a million good news. Daniel, chart 14. So this was the week that officially nobody wants software. No one. Like it's dead. AI has replaced it. It's over. And we're getting a pretty strong bounce today. So you have a chart showing that we've found a pretty good flush. What are we looking at? Yeah. So as, as, it's a good, you know, so as, as, we kind of saying the title, you know, in the zip code, in the ballpark, of where at a minimum

I would expect relief. I mean, is this a good chart? Absolutely no. Is the trend down, of course. But when you get these periods of just indiscriminate selling, shoot first, ask questions later, I think as shorts you probably have to cover or maybe said another way, start thinking about, hey, what could actually go right from this condition? Go back a year ago. So it's January February of 2025. I thought Google was supposed to be the big loser in this, right? It turns out to be the big winner. My point is, in such a moment of technological advancement and uncertainty, you better keep a real open mind for how the playing field could evolve here. 70% of software stocks made three-month lows last week. I mean, that is a COVID-type level.

That's a liberation-A type level. I think at a minimum, it's a siren call to cover your short-season. The trend is broken, obviously. It's going to take time for these names to heal. It's every rally should probably be sold into at least a little bit. I think that's fair. Guilty until proven innocent. Yesterday, yesterday, so workday reported a not-so-good quarter. Guidance came down. The stock was down 9% pre-market, I think.

It ended up closing up 3% yesterday. Follow through today. Follow through today. There was an article yesterday from the journal, The New Hot Trade Shorting AI Companies. Yeah, I mean, listen. Nobody's selling anymore. I think you've gotten to the point of complete indiscriminate weakness

where you have to think about what could change. You know, let's think about, this a different way. Let's think about it on the numerator of the semiverse software pair, right? Because a lot of attention to spend on how bad software is. When you look at the semis, I mean, you've had silver-like parabolic moves in some of these names. Should Micron be bought here at 150% above a 200 moving average? I won't do that, but I also didn't buy it 150% ago. Should Pinex be bought here? Should Samsung be bought here? I'm just saying, I think if we've learned anything in the first eight weeks of 2026, be very, very careful with the

parabolic looking charge. It was silver in late January, early February. We saw how that goes. Quantum computing stocks. Memory today. Right. And, and, you know, the process of which this is all played out over the last few years is fascinating to me because it's so different than 99. I mean, 24 was all hyperscalers, right? Just got to own the hyperscalers. Life is easy. 25 was all about memory, right? It was Samsung, Hynix, Micron, right? What looks best in semi-world today is probably equipment. I mean, that's the one place where you haven't seen the blow off, You haven't seen the parabolic news. Land Research, KLA.

And I say it's different than 99 because there was no rotations in tech in 99. They all worked until they did. They all went up every day. They all went to. It wasn't like, oh, today we're going to buy the semi-shaws. And next week it's going to be the software. So I actually, I would say that there is a trade that looks like that right now. And it's led by Corning, which is the hottest stock of the year.

And there's a lot of small caps in this trade. People don't even know these names. names like EOSE. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And these are companies in the Russell 2000 that supply electricity generating equipment to the utilities and or data centers, things like industrial-sized surge protection. Sure. It's a company called Enersis that makes electric batteries. EnRS, know it well.

So there's a whole host of these stocks where the charts, they look like cryptos in 2021. Yeah. That's the rotation. and people are discovering, oh, this company is electrical. I don't care what it does. They're going to beat earnings, and it works. I mean, just go to Big Cap World for a minute. You see the same thing with the strength out of the industrials.

I mean, for all this talk about a market that's got defensive this year with Staples and some health care, I mean, anything in the kind of derivative of AI world in the industrial sector. Quantist services. Look at carrier, the reversal after a pretty good bear market or train or PWR or Parker Hanifin. I mean, these are certainly still very much. very much in gear. I'm a little bit more skeptical, Josh, of like, okay, this rotational mood that the market has is just about owning small over large, because if you look at Russell 2, it's just not a good index. I mean, the top of Russell 2, I would hardly say is like some real old economy,

non-spec—I mean, it's a very speculative index. I think this is more about equal weight over, say, queues than it is about small over large. I spread a conspiracy theory today on TV. Yeah. I said that I think earlier this week or over the weekend a memo went around, not like somebody printed it, but like maybe like a game of telephone. And there are a bunch of phone calls behind the scenes. And what I think happened is that the software moguls got to these AI guys and basically said, guys, shut the fuck up. Stop talking about job loss and replacing people.

Number one, it's not going to end up being true. We're not all getting disrupted. And number two, you're going to have some very unhappy customers for your stupid AI products and we're not going to buy them. And all of a sudden, Jensen Wong comes out and he wants to spend, I'm going to guess, 25% of his post-earnings remarks on the fact that SaaS is not only not going to be disrupted. It will be the tool that these agents are trained on to use. They're not going to invent their own software products. the AI agents coming out of the big AI shops will in fact become the most prominent users of SaaS products because that's what the humans they're interacting with use.

I thought it was a very nuanced and important point from Jensen. I also think it was deliberately told to him, you have to put a stop to this. We're not talking about stocks down 5%. We're talking about companies that have lost hundreds of billions in market cap collectively. And they are some of the biggest customers for anything AI. I'm pretty sure that that's the word that went around because all of a sudden you saw the disruption hippies disappear. Nobody was making appearances like that this week after last week.

And you have some of the biggest voices in AI now saying, no, no, no, no, we're not going to have job loss. So what do you think? Like, is something like that even possible? Yeah, absolutely. You think there could be a coordinated, like, Guys, you're going in the wrong direction with this. So let me also add on top of that, the private credit is very levered up to the software names as well.

They need that talk to stop, too. Right. So you got to pull it all together. And if you don't, then the industry is going to be much more regulated. Yeah. And they want to head that off. The oil industry itself has been trying to advise them that they're doing this wrong, saying, based on our experience. Because they want to provide the energy to the data centers.

So it is a concerted effort. And by the way, sometimes you've got to burn your hand on the stove. and then go, okay, we're handling this in the wrong approach. So some of that might be them just self-pleasing themselves in the software in the AI industry. Microsoft, though, they have a guy go out, you have a guy go out on TV, national television, and tell the anchor like half of all jobs aren't going to exist by 2030. Can't do it. Think about Microsoft's customers.

Be like, are you high? Yes. Why would you send this guy out to say things? Even if you think it's true, which, by the way, half of all jobs by 2030, this is what you think? All right, let's say you actually think that. Why are you saying it? Yep. Okay.

Yes. I think that's over now. Right. But you had to go through that process and get it out of way. I think there's something else going on here, and that is that the CAPEX is actually broadening out outside just the data centers. All right. It's just the AI. And look at what we did in one big beautiful bill.

We have 100% expensing of CAPX, a hundred percent expensing of research and development. Yeah. And 100% expensing of factory building. So if you're in the non-AI world, You're like, this is my shot to be able to get this factory out. Yeah, get after it. Right? And boom, they're all going in.

Pharma's going in, right? Like, you see all these other industries. And so there's a bit of a broadening out. And some of these small caps are going to be feeding into that. Then maybe it's not some of the AI. So I just think that we, like, if you look at the companies that are lobbying for those provisions, they're massively outperforming this year, like 15, 20 percent over the S&P 500. There's something happening here where you're going to start seeing more cap X.

And the industry itself, you have to have that AI data center, the other side doesn't work. Yeah. You need both of them for the economy to work this year. I think, you know, haven't you seen enough over the last year where you should be really, really skeptical of anyone who is just such with a forceful narrative here? I mean, you could have people that know exactly what's going to happen. I don't mind if you have a strong opinion based on price here. But if you have a strong opinion based on narrative in an environment where the narrative,

I think feels like it changes every six months in a very meaningful way, I think you ought to be really skeptical of that. And just think about these last couple weeks. It's like all of a sudden people found the connection between Ares, Blue Owl, KKR, Carlisle, and the software stocks. I mean, when did the private capital stocks start to weaken? They went negative in our work last April, right? Relative strength gives you clues about what's shifting. I think Microsoft went negative in our work maybe January, February of last year.

How about Adobe or Salesforce? I think the year prior, right? So the market can give you hints or clues of what you should be. thinking about. And then suddenly this week, everyone makes this connection that Blue Owl and Apollo are tied to software. Hey, did you know private equity has been buying software companies? Really? So, like, you know, you talk about local bottoms. If there's some tradable low here in software, again, I would say cover shorts in the private capital stock show. So I think one piece of evidence that this rotation can continue is what we're seeing with

Nvidia today. The stock has gone sideways forever. Daniel, chart 9, please. Beat and raised could not possibly be doing better. Like, literally, I mean, it's, it's hilarious. I think, I don't know if this is the biggest sequential increase since Q2 of 24 when it like doubled out of nowhere, but from 57 billion up to 68. And I think what we're learning is that you can't trade at a premium multiple when you're the biggest stock in the world. And even still, Daniel, chart 11, please, even after the sideways movement for the past year or so, it is still a trillion dollars bigger than Staples. And I don't know what could Invidia possibly say at this point,

the stock is down 6%. What could they possibly say for the stock to go higher? Well, let's make a couple points here. I'd say, number one, let's not forget Nvidia did have a 50% decline last year, right? I think it went from 160 to roughly 80 at the Liberation Day low. So you had one minute to buy that. that dip. Right. I mean, what do we learn about semis? As secular as you want to believe they are in this

cycle, they're always cyclical, right? In the end. You go semi by semi by semi, every three years, they all go down 50% all the time, right? So I'm not sure there's like big downside here in NVIDIA. You know, 170's kind of been to pivot on the stock for the better part of the last six months. Could I come up with the world where it's 140 to 150? Of course I could. But I think the bigger story, and you hinted at it, this isn't hitting the tape today. I mean, where more advances and decliners on a day V-NVIDIA down 6%. You have the software stocks rallying. That semi-software pair

was in like the 99th.99th percentile historically. So, you know, be on guard for these nasty mean reversions. And the only way I know how to prepare for them is to believe price, not narrative. Even the NASDA-E equal weight is down 20 biffs. That's it. That's it.

Revenue was up 90% year-over-year. Are you surprised the stock is... So I've noticed that the stock never goes up after they report earnings. It runs up in- Last quarter, too. It's the same. We were in Austin doing this.

It rallies, then reports. People think there's going to be this big climactic thing that happens, and it drops like 3%. It happens every quarter. Last quarter, it opened up 6% and closed down four, something like that. November 21st, right? So the stock opens up 6-7%. I'm in a meeting.

This is 9.30 in the morning. I'm in Baltimore. By the time the meeting's over, the stock's down, 5% or 6%. Are you in the meeting being all bullish about in video? And look, of course, that was it. It's gone sideways since. Right.

It's got sideways since. You know, I think what's so remarkable about this, like, don't even try to tell me for a second that people are positioned for this. Don't even try to tell me for a second. For what? For this revenge of the old economy or the average stuff. I mean, for 15 years, all you've had to do is own. Asset light. Right.

So, like, don't even pretend to tell me this is where the... the positioning is like I am so skeptical when I see the the Bank of America fund manager survey that says, you know, everyone's most overweight RSP and underweight cues. There's just no way, no way. I'll never forget. This is six, seven, eight years ago. We're doing our macro conference in New York. I'm doing a fireside chat with Byron Ween, late great Byron Ween, a mentor to Jason Treeter, to myself, to Dan.

And I asked Byron, I said, Byron, tell me what you remember about 1982, right? 82, as we know, kind of the top in rates, race have started to fall, equity started to turn up. And he laughed at me in front of 400 people. And he said, Chris, I didn't know it was 82 into 85. It's so easy. That's such a great important point. It's so easy in this business to look back with hindsight and say, oh, look at the regime shift. It was so obvious.

We're in a regime shift right now. I don't think people are positioned for it. Maybe in like the tactical sense, the tactical book has it on. Other than me, they aren't. I've been talking about this regime shift. being a new paradigm that has nothing to do with what we're all accustomed to. We live in this world where it's small versus large, value versus growth, tech versus non-tech, or defensive versus cyclical. And I think that this trumps all of those paradigms and it comes down to AI immunity versus not.

Well, no pun intended. No pun intended. If this trumps everything, Dan, isn't this the market that the Trump administration wants, right? They want this revenge of the old stocks. Well, it got the copper stock set record highs. So is that what they, was, was that the goal? No, you know, at the risk of giving a narrative here, I think we're shifting out of the post-Berlin Wall environment. Berlin Wall went down, the world globalized, inflation comes down, interest rates come down. That's why you want to own asset-like companies, high PEs, less geopolitical volatility. That's all reversing now. We're moving from a unipolar world to a multipolar world. And that means that there's going to be demand for resources. And that's why you want to be in this kind of second, I think in a long-term shift

of being in industrials and materials because you want to be able to have access to this in a scarce world. I think we're at the very early stages of this process happens. Is there a world in which we see industrials at the top of whatever this cycle is going to be? Let's say this continues for another two years. Is there a world in which industrials earn a multi-decade high multiple because of the scarcity of the facilities that they have onshore? because if so, then you got to look at companies like the LNG terminals. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And you got to look at companies that are manufacturing the things that we deem essential. And by the way, this includes some semi-companies now because they're building Apple chips in Phoenix. And so you could end up with a situation where we pay tech-like multiples for industrial stocks. No one's position for that right now. Look at this through the lens of two pictures. I don't know if you can bring them up. I say two charge. One was.

Yeah, we got it. one was discretionary versus energy. So long-term, sharp, maybe 20 years of discretionary relative to energy. Like a lot of people out there are still behaving and you're still talking about like this being the consumer decade or the continuation of the consumer decade. Consumer peaked relative to the S&P in like November of 2020. It's been five years since discretionary. Consumer discretionary. Last land.

I mean, ironically, went to the bottom late 2008, right? You have 12, 13 years of tremendous. outperformance from consumer. That's over. Look at discretionary versus industrials. This is not a consumer economy. This is a CAPEX economy. Look at consumer relative to energy. I mean, talk about another major shift. So, I mean, these are the big changes. And I know, Dan, you see it in your stuff, too, that I think we have to sit back and say, okay, if this is a new regime, number one, am I playing by the right rules, right? That is essential to our process. What is the rule set for the regime that we're in? And number two, am I positioned to-

Meaning like to how do we trade differently now versus how we used to trade? Absolutely. I mean, we talk about in video demo, five or six percent today. Look at the reversal up in Freeport today. Yeah. I mean, they hammered that thing at the open right back to the highs. Like, the market is telling us. You know what's cool about this?

Only people our generation and older even know what these stocks are, the old FCX. So I'm sure Todd is probably all over this. This is Vandex real assets, ETF, RAAX. They're a monster. As you guys know, there's no one better than Todd in the ETF landscape. We love Todd. He gives me all the data that we need. He was great in Pineapple Express, too.

Yeah, he was. Terrific. But so that's interesting to me. The Robin Hood crowd does not know the difference between Caterpillar and Deer or even more obscure examples. They don't know the HVAC stocks. They don't know. Not that I know them really well, but at least I remember a market where those were leadership stocks. I know the oil names.

But know what? They'll find them. Well, that's, so this is my point. So when you say, know the environment, know the, that's the really interesting thing, where all of a sudden there's a new shareholder base for stocks like this. I didn't send you this chart, but I'll pose a question. Maybe you guys can answer it. If you overlay Palantir and Robin Hood, why are they the same chart?

Literally tick for tick the exact. Because, I don't know, 10% of the revenue on Robin Hood comes from people trading Palantir options. Same shareholders. Same shareholders. I mean, we've been in this. world where, like, the speculative economy has flourished, basically since the Fed balance sheet started to go like that. Holy shit. That is pretty damn good. It's the same. It's tick for tick. And Robert is a crypto stock. Like, why would it trade like Palantir? Because that's the activity.

It's the same people. I know. I'm just saying it. They're all hood ornaments of the same thing, right? They're hood ornaments of this remarkable 15-year episode where the Fed balance sheet went from a couple hundred billion to, you know, multi-trillion. Right. That is. is over and the market's telling you that's over. Okay. So I, this makes me very excited because I always said I was bored. But at a certain point,

watching like year after year, it just be Nvidia Tesla like, you know, the same 10 gigantic stocks. This is so much better. I think this is more like the stock market that I grew up with. So I'm, I'm into it.

I want to ask how to, so how did the, uh, so I want, I want to ask, how did the fracking story, if the fracking story is the right parallel for how the AI trend continues, because they get themselves a political lifeline, I think it worked out well in the end. Absolutely.

Okay. Absolutely. Okay. So how does this work out well in the end and will it matter for shareholders of these companies? Well, one, I think it's going to work out, but I'm a little bit worried. In 2012, you had the stars line up. Obama was against fracking.

Yeah. And then he was running for reelection. And he started to realize, wow, I can win Pennsylvania and Ohio if I just let this happen because it's going to drive down the unemployment rate and I'm going to get lower gasoline prices, so to speak. And climate change was a hoax anyway, so why not? Yeah, well, you know, I still think he believed it, but he was like, I'll deal with that in my second term, right? And so I gave a speech to 65 oil and gas CEOs a week before the 2012 election. I put one chart up. It was just the unemployment rate of those two states.

I said, congratulations, you just elected Barack Obama to a second term. I can tell you nobody in that room wanted Obama to be a second term. He adopted it. Once he adopted it, it kind of cleared the political brush out. You don't have that same situation going on today, and you're going to need some event like that to fix this data center. That's why the industry needs to basically say, I'll put a tax on myself to pay the electricity. That's not an issue for bed in Louisiana.

Louisiana, they already have the business and consumers structured off each other. In the East Coast, where we're in the PGM interview. connected, that is all, it's all intermingled. And so that's why the tech companies have to say, we'll pay for this ourselves, build our own. Are the Democrats smart enough to look at how Bitcoin cost them in 2024 and not make that mistake again? Are they pro AI CAPEX Democrats? Do you think that there's a chance that this issue could be, and not just AI buildout, but just this whole CAPX on shoring story? Because I, if Trump loses, the midterms.

I don't know what that does to this whole Cappex trend that we're all extolling the virtues of, but are there Democrats who would like to see it continue? So I will tell you that the tech relative to the S&P 500, tech sector relative to the S&P 500, has been underperforming tick for tick

with the Democrats' odds of taking over Congress since the November election. So Democrats had a big night. The market's already thinking exactly what you started to ask. So some of this is just midterm stuff and it generally gets resolved. by the election itself. Wait, why is that?

Because all the tech titans went to the inauguration. Yeah. They made friends with Jared and junior. Yep. And now, so now they're seen as Republican proxy companies. Susan Rice the other day. Absolutely. Susan Rice is talking about like, you know, going after them because, you know,

when the Democrats win, if you kiss the ring of Trump. But it's more than that. It's that the Republicans have adopted the AI, just the same way they adopted the crypto. Right. And the market's saying there's going to be more regulation of AI if the Democrats win. Like we have a, I know you're not big into this, but we have a Harris basket and a Trump basket. We use it to see how the market's pricing in the election. Our Harris basket has been trouncing Trump by 25% since September.

What's in the Harris basket? It's all the basic renewable energy, Medicaid, health care, some tech stuff, all things that would do well. Because look, if the Democrats sweep, they're going to stop the OBB cuts from coming in on Medicaid and food stamps. Those stocks are going to rip if the market really. What are those stocks? Those are like Medicaid HMOs. like Centine and Molina, first solar, a lot of the wind in solar stocks. So the subsidies will stay.

Yep. The Medicare payments will, Medicaid will continue to be paid. Absolutely. Those are going to be the biggest winners. But now you're starting to see it in the tech industry. You might want to take Harris's name off that basket. I just haven't built the new baskets this cycle. So we're just using the old ones.

I think that might be a Federman or a Newsom or a Shapiro basket. It could be. We'll say. It could be. Okay. All right. So that's an interesting thing. So if tech is now going to go into this period, this pre-election period, and sort of trade as a proxy on the House and the Senate,

I don't know how many multiple points that's worth to these stocks, but that might not be pretty. It just feeds your rotation of equal weight over market weight and owning the other sectors itself. The best advice I ever got in this business is when a trend is in motion, all the news flow tends to break in the direction of the trend. Right. So what we're talking about is something that's all. already in motion. So use your time to imagine a world where all the news breaks in this direction to begin with. And I think that's what's happening. I think that that's what's happening politically. I think that's what's happening geopolitically. Everything's breaking in the direction of this equal weight

over rest of world. All right. So let's stay with that team. Daniel, chart 16, please. We've got a breadth dashboard that chart can mat made. And we've got every sector percent above various moving averages, making new highs, making new lows, RSIs, above 30 or below 30, above 70. And no stocks making new lows except for tech, 11% across the board from four week to 52 week. If you look at the percent above the moving day average, utilities, energy staples, it's real estate materials. There's so much green here. Chris, you shared a chart with us showing that we're at the 97th percentile of stocks making 52 week highs. Yeah, not that's not you, that's not, we're not on a bare market. It'd be a very odd bare market. Chart 15. Yeah. Let's put

this out because this is good. Go back to the other slide, just for one second. I just want, like, if there's one number on this page that stands out to me screaming, okay? We are, right, we just spent 40 minutes talking about AI, and there's 43% of tech above the 200-day moving average. Are you kidding me? Right, right? Like, if this was 99, and you ran a long short fund, and I went in there and pitched a tech short, you'd laugh me out of the room. Yeah.

This is so different. It was never rotational in 99. This is 43% about $200. And then look at energy, 95% above the 200 day. Chris, do you think that's because the market participants are more sophisticated and they don't just hear tech revolution, therefore, buy tech stocks? Or are we just as dumb, but we're being more discerning for some other reason? I think it's always the latter.

Okay. And you sit here and you say, okay, 95% of energy above the 200 day. That sounds so intimidating, oh, like it must correct. It's overbought. go back test that number, right? Where do your best energy returns come from over the next six and 12 months when you're that over bond? It's a bread thrust and energy, right?

So, yeah. So, again, you see these price signals now spend the time imagining. What could that be telling us? I think everyone gets this sequence of events wrong in this business. They start with like, what do I think? Let's find the price to justify it. No, no, no. What is price telling us?

Now let's spend some time imagining what that could mean. Let me write some science fiction, alternative science fiction. from we started earlier last week. Nobody is thinking about a world in which tech comes back in the second half of the year. Can you even imagine if these hyperscalers start to come back and we left? Obviously, Meta's had a 52-week high. Why do we think it was ever? And obviously, in Vidi's the leader in AI, why do we think it was going to fall?

That's plausible. Nobody's talking about it. Yeah, I don't disagree. I just wonder, like, does it come back as the dominant leader or does it come back with price up? I mean, we can have an environment that's, I think we're in a relatively broad tape where tech can be part of that. Is it the story? That's what I'm less convinced of. I think there's one chance of that, and it's Apple.

Apple could be a market leader again. I think it is the only one. It is now. It's the only one not tainted with these $600 billion cap-ex multi-year budgets. They sidestepped it. They said, we're just going to throw our Apple layer on top of what. whatever you guys build. And we're going to talk to 70% of the middle class consumers in the world.

And we'll be very happy owning the consumer AI opportunity that you guys facilitated with your stupid KAPX. Now, Josh, I own it. I don't own it because of that. I own it, period, also. But I actually think that there's a world where that's how we're telling the story at the end of the year. I own it because it's on the relative high list. And I just want to make that clear. You and I end up in the same place.

Right, right. Because we end up with the same conclusion, whether your story is right or wrong, I don't know, I don't care. It's a leader in a tricky tape. Isn't that sticking out? Why isn't that sticking out some more people? This is the way I want to ask the question. Why aren't more people talking about the fact that Apple is within a few good days of a record high with the other MAG 6 down anywhere from 5 to 30? I mean, look at the weekly chart, Apple.

It is good. I know. Well, agentic Siri is coming. I know that because they have three meetings this year. They have three of those events scheduled this year. At one of those will be, ladies and gentlemen, Siri is your agent. Every app in the app store has to cooperate with Apple. Otherwise, you might as well be out of business.

Yeah. Like, what if they are the consumer AI play? Amazon owns the enterprise with Anthropic. And then Sam Altman and whatever's going on there become features. Like, that is a thing that I don't think enough people are recognizing could happen. Or Sam Altman goes away. I don't know. Just right?

Don't be surprised with any outcome here. Let me ask you this. What do you do with a stat like this? So, sentiment trader shared this. Market breadth has narrowed significantly in three key cyclical areas, discretionary, financials, and technology. Fewer than 60% of stocks in these sectors are trading about their 50-day moving average, despite the S&P lingering near 52-week high.

historically this specific type of divergence has preceded weak and volatile medium-term returns for the broader market. So two to three months later, positive, only 30% of the time, and N equals, I don't know, almost 20. Sure. Like, it's happened, it's not N equals two. I think, you know, it's funny. There are two things always confused in this business. People confuse breath and momentum all the time. So we're talking about discretionary with, what, like 50% above the 50-day moving average.

That's a momentum reading. We're not in a particularly like robust momentum environment here. But I think discretionary, I was looking at it before I came here, has like 70% with their 50 above the 200. So you're still in these long-term uptrend. So like, let's distinguish between short-term momentum concerns and longer-term trends. And I think it's funny. Dan and I have this debate all the time kind of about where discretionary fits right here because the policy backdrop is as good as it gets. It's time for the stocks now to validate that.

But it does feel late cycle like this. When I say feel, I'm just saying the. types of stocks that are working and the types of stocks that aren't doesn't feel great. I'm not saying that it can't resolve and figure itself out and correct to the upside. It probably will. That's like, that's my base. But what do you guys think? So I have a little bit different view than Chris, but I see this every four years in the summertime before midterm election year.

Okay. Midterm election years just tend to be much more volatile than non-minterm election years. Why do you think that is? Well, we know why because presidents just run it hot into their midterm election year. What Trump is doing is not different than any other president. presidents usually get growth stronger at year two. So the equity market's pricing in this cyclical recovery. It usually happens in the fourth quarter and first quarter of this year.

And then as you move into the second quarter, markets price that. Now, think about where we're headed for April. Tax refunds are done. The Fed will no longer be expanding its balance sheet. New Fed chairman coming in. Trump G meeting, right? You got all this geopolitical stuff. You got to start pricing in.

What's divided government going to look like? It's just a lot for the market to digest. I mean, this is meaningful. Yes, it's extremely meaningful. It's hard to say this is a coincidence. You're getting more real GDP than you're getting in an S&P 500 return. Think about that. Three percent GDP and a 2% return on equities.

Okay? So that to me is at play here. You could see it in every single. Because there's too many tape bombs. Yeah. Potential for a tape bomb. Totally. Right?

Like I spoke at the National Association of Business Economists this week, right? So it's all like Fed speakers. It's all like economists at companies. And all they're worried about is this trade stuff that happened with the Supreme Court, right? By the other, these people don't like tariffs. And my point to them was very simple. We just lowered tariffs by $65 billion. Be happy.

Take the win, you know? And they couldn't do it. They were like uncertainty, uncertainty, uncertainty. No. Like, literally, we're moving to a 10% rate. So let me ask you this. So year one of a presidential cycle from 94 to today. Yep.

17%, year 3, 17%, year 4, 5%, year 2, less than 2%. Yep. Are there a few outliers that bring the average down, or is it consistently ugly? It's consistently ugly. Now, people will break it up. Is the Fed easing cycle? Is it a second term? They'll do all that.

Yeah, was the moon in the second house next to Jupiter? But I'm pretty simple here. In 2018, the year started, Trump had just had his tax cut. Everybody was wildly bullish. And then we're in the middle of a trade war by April. Okay? And Trump's tariffs are always going to be here. In 2022, we had a former Fed person in February say, we're going to have to raise five times.

And it was like wildly out of consensus that inflation was coming. And then it was like, we're going to have Biden's inflation. Something always happens in the midterm election year. Here's the most amazing news about it. You get a sell-off like it's a recession. And we've never had a recession in the third year of a presidency. It's all noise. Okay.

And so the punchline of all this is that the S&P 500 has not declined in the 12 months following a midterm election ever. Ever. Since 1938. Like, it's like ever, right? So the point being is that you just got to grind your teeth and be more tactical in the midterm election year. And that's what everything you're talking about doing is doing that. And the great news is it creates a huge opportunity to be there on the other side. My favorite example of the one you talked about is 18, right?

Because you also had new Fed share in 18, right? We had that nasty correction. I think it was maybe February of 18. You rallied to make new marginal highs in the summer. And then you have October through Christmas. I remember that. Brutal. What I'll never forget is Powell, I think it was the December meeting using the language,

we're nowhere near neutral. Ironically, he was right. They were nowhere near neutral. Yeah, they had to go down. On the other side. Totally. Totally. You had Powell hiking and the two-year yield falling out of bed.

That's a very, very powerful statement that something was off. So now think about it, right? Consumer staples are doing well, right? The defense stocks are doing well. These are all traditionally defensive areas that you're going into. The market senses that by mid-year, you're going to have some of this volatility coming into that. Any sense of fate staples right here?

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Well, they're all overbought technically, almost all. If you look at it relative, both equal weight and cap weight, it has not turned in a relative model yet. Healthcare has, energy certainly has. We turned up or down?

Turned up, right? So the relative, our longer. term relative model. Health care's positive, energy's positive materials. Stables have not turned even on this rally. I think you've still got to be a little skeptical. All right. How are you buying staples here at a higher forward PE than the Mag 7? This is a whole lot. By the way, this is a great chart. So right now, staples are 23.6 times earnings versus Mag 7. Forward. Like, come on. Pulling Tesla out, 23.5 times. So now you're buying Smucker. what's in this, Coke, Pepsi, Colgate.

It's peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter and jelly, higher multiple than Mac 7. Poilet paper. Ironically, right? I don't love staples here. I think the relatives still weak. Actually, this chart would make me want to buy it more than sell it. I don't want to own sectors with P.E.'s falling.

I want to own sectors with P.E. rising. I mean, valuation is a momentum indicator. They rising or have they risen? I mean, great point. I'm just saying that like, if. But forget about the light blue. If these weren't PE charts, if these were stock charts, and you said, are you buying the blue line or the light blue line? All right. You're right.

But think about it in terms of expectations. Get rid of the light blue line, the mag seven. Just look at the blue line, dark blue. Are you buying an all-time breakout in multiple for consumer staples? You're fading that all day. Well, you didn't want to buy the all-time lows in the PE in stable. So I'm just saying that, like, I think I come to my conclusion on let's fade staples here, not through this avenue. I'd also love to see what this chart looks like with Costco removed.

I think it might look different. I think Costco trades 60 times. Costco is a big one. Yeah. Everything okay? Yeah, good good. Oh, all right. Nice to see you.

Let's do this. I want to go to this Defense Department versus Anthropics story. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's very Trumpian. Like, it's not surprising at all. Yep. But it's sort of new because it's not even a public company. Yep.

First, why is Anthropic so important to the Department of Defense and the government? And second, are these headlines hyperbolic or is this really what's going on? Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday, let me tomorrow, to back down on AI safeguards. WSJ did another, did a store. Anthropic ads new board members at I's an IPO. They put this guy, Chris Liddell, on who was a Trump administration. Absolutely. Okay.

Do you know him? You know Chris? No. All right. So Anthropic basically now has to do whatever the Trump administration says. What do you think this is all about? And what do you think investors need to understand about this moment and time? Yeah.

So I think there's a larger thematic view that's reflective in this story. Before the Berlin Wall went down, there were 60 prime defense contractors. Six zero. Six zero. What do we have now? 10? Five. Five.

Okay. We forced them all to consolidate. We were cutting down the budget. Okay. Now the defense department can't move quickly. So they're going to these Silicon Valley tech companies and saying, we need you to define a solution. Like, we have a problem. We need your solution.

This is like the Anderals, the Palantiers. The Andrews is the best one, best example of them all. Right. And so I look at it. And I'm saying, not only is there a bid now for these defense, these defense tech companies, you're probably going to start seeing some of the larger companies start to split off their parts. You saw it with LHX. They basically divest it and then joined a partnership with the,

U.S. on what was the old Aerojet Rocket Dine company that they had bought. And so you're going to seem... It's L3 Harris merged with... With Harris. L3 merged with Harris. Yep. And then they bought Aerojet Rocket Dine. But that's important to the whole defense industry, that asset.

So the government now has 15% ownership. Use that as an example as you start to think about the Anthropic, right? And so my sense here is I think, you know, Lockheed Martin may break up this year. You know, that's like a like a tail event of something like that. because the parts of it are so much more valuable than it all together. Oh, they might do a spin after having done all these mergers. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. So this is what's going on in defense world right now. Okay. Anthropic comes in and they have the greatest product for what the defense department needs right now. It was used in the valence well and rate. There's only one place to go. Why is what is it doing for the Department of Defense?

What is anthropic doing? Like, not classified, but like generally speaking, what is the use case? Claude, right? They're using Claude, and it has the, basically the artificial intelligence that allows them to be able to do their missions and do it a lot safer. You know, I hear the Belgian government

is using Jean-Claude. Thank you. Awesome. So, but, but follow me for a minute, right? They're only going to have one customer, and the Department of Defense is only going to have one vendor. And they're going to come to some sort of solution because they're going to need each other.

And they both need each other. Anthropic lost a contract, like a Department of Defense. Yep. That's pretty catastrophic for their hopes of going public this year. Absolutely. Okay. So, all right, so they call the guy up and they say, we don't want any of this woke shit on the algorithm. We don't want Anthropic to be the version of Facebook that we hated during the 2016 election.

We don't want regular people utilizing Claude and getting answers back that are anti-American, anti-conservative policy. blah, blah, blah. That's part of it. But I also think it's privacy and how the U.S. government's going to use their product for surveillance. Oh, okay. Like it has a much larger implication on how the Defense Department can use their products.

So when you put that together, it created a lot of tension. And they will figure out a solution because they both need each other. Anthropic was pitching itself as like, we're the safe AI. Yep. We're the version that respects privacy and blah, blah, blah. But now it's like, well, can you really, maintain that posture if you want to, A, compete with Open AI who clearly doesn't give a shit. And B, if you want to maintain these government relationships that you're now going to need.

Yep. Okay. Yep. And so I, but again, I think it's so integral to the missions of the Department of War that they will figure out some sort of solution from it. You start off and you start off big and say, we're just not going to use you anymore if you don't make these changes. But eventually they'll come to a center ground. All right. Guys, I got to get to this.

Gold, Bitcoin, and the dollar. And I guess we could take them in order if you guys want. Just on gold, we know it's still being accumulated by central banks. There was a ton of retail interest in gold. I'm sure it's still there, but it seems to have cooled off. Gun to my head, it's in the penalty box. For the rest of the year? I think it's in the penalty box for like six months here.

You look at, it was like May of those six. You had a very similar, like, power block moving gold, decent correction. and it chopped for six months, I think that's more likely here. I think silver's done. I think silver is done. Okay. You look at this rally, you've had the silver.

People have been vaporized in that trade. You have this bounce. I mean, talk about tepid bounces. You haven't even retraced 50% of the decline. At least in gold, I think you recovered two-thirds of the decline here. Silver, I think's finished. Copper's making new highs. Freeport's making new high.

Very different animal. Markets telling you where to go, right? So for me, it's copper, gold in the middle. I could go either way. I think silver probably finished. Let's do Bitcoin. I thought this was the Bitcoin president. What happened?

Where did this story go off the rails? Went off the rails July 2025. Why? Stablecoin legislation passed. Okay. Stable coin legislation mitigates the need for regular Bitcoin. I said that. So you agree with that.

I think stable coin is a better version of what we thought Bitcoin would do. Stablecoin is going to lock in the reserve currency of the U.S. Right. It's creating U.S. dollars outside the United States and places you couldn't even get access. And it remains digital. So it scratches that itch of like anti-surveillance and anti-whatever. You know what should have been an obvious buy in hindsight circle? So they just reported monster earnings. Killed yesterday, right? Yeah. Everybody that got washed out in Bitcoin, they're still there. If they got scared, they're just transferring their money to stable coins. They're not leaving. They're not going to JP Morgan.

Listen, I think best case on Bitcoin here, I mean, if you look at every decline of significance, right? And there's been five or six of them over the last. 15 or so years, at a minimum, it took six to 12 months of repair time, just flushing everyone but it's always made a new high. Yeah, and I'll tell you what, it is like tech in that regard. You know, you go back to tech in the 80s and 90s. I mean, tech had multiple, multiple 50% drawdowns, many 80 and 90% drawdowns as well. Like, if you go down 90 and come back, you're typically your survivor, Bitcoin's done it four or five times here. So I still have to tip my hat to it in that regard, but I think there's- Is anyone calling you about it? It's in a 50-something percent drawdown from a high six months ago.

And I almost feel like no one wants to talk about it anymore. You know, it's funny. I think of Todd was sitting here. He would show you the chart of the outflows from the Ibit right now. So like you're in that liquidation phase, which is always interesting to us. I think it needs time to repair itself. Or is that a symptom? Oh, it's always a symptom of the emotional.

So withdrawals from Ibit is not causing the Bitcoin price to continue to make new loads. No, I think it's symptomatic, right? What's the undefeated rule of Wall Street? it flows that follow price, not the other way. If it was the other way around, we'd all be. So who is, somebody has to be selling besides the ETF then. Yeah. I think crypto Twitter is just blown up.

It's just, it's dead. Couldn't happen to a nice group of people. So like it's Bitcoin, it's Palantir, it's Robin Hood. It's all the same chart. So the equal weight of Q's one out of the day at the highs, up 16 basis points. I'm there where the net, when Nvidia fell, five and five in change. What was breath? So Nvidia fell at the lows.

I don't, I don't know. Invidia fell at the lows, down 5.5. and Equally Q is up to 16 bibs. Unbelievable. A lot of strength. Get used to it. A lot of strength. U.S. dollar.

The U.S. dollar bearers are out in full force. The dollar decline has been a huge tailwind for Japanese stocks, European stocks, maybe Chinese stocks. What are we thinking on the U.S.D? You guys have like a house view. So we think that this is mechanical, political, maybe a mixture. What's going on? Yeah. First, let me say that.

for like 10 years, the U.S. dollar crushed it. U.S. stocks crushed non-U.S. stocks. I wake up every day. Dollars falling out of bed. Nobody wants to own U.S. assets. It's all nonsense. What's happened is the U.S. dollar traded in a range between 2015 and 2019. COVID came.

The U.S. was the best place to be. We went up. We're just going back to that 2015-2019 level. Nothing more than that. Okay. For right now. Okay. That gets you a barons cover and an economist cover that the U.S.

is going to lose its reserve. In the last two weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if we bounce here. In fact. We had them both already? Both, yeah. Two weeks in a row. Two weeks ago.

So we got the Barons cover. Which one? Economist. Oh, it's a great cover. It's a snake. Is there a third? Is there a third? Is there a third?

I think those are the two. But we don't need USA today? Maybe we'll get it. Maybe we'll get it. But your bullish rates? Well, let me just say. The effective tariff rate has moved almost perfectly inversely with the U.S. dollar as well.

So the tariff rate went up, the dollar went down. tariff rate's going down now, right? The supply chains are already adjusting. Now you're going to have lower tariffs. So I wouldn't be surprised if you get a bounce. By the way, this gets you back to this. How does tech come back? You asked that question before? Because literally the Japanese yen trade is the NASDAQ relative to the S&P 500. If you get the dollar up and the yen down, NASDAQ is going to start outperforming again. So you just got to be, you got to be mindful of it. But I wouldn't, I would expect to bounce. The way we think about Trump, three, three part strategy. Tariffs were the first part. That's basically done. The second part.

UFC this summer. Yeah. That's true. What's the third part? The second part is getting the investment through all those cap X expenditures. That's what we're in right now. The third is to get the dollar down more in the range of where it was, 2004, 2004, 2005, 2006 for exports. That's the third, but we're not there yet.

That's like post midterm when you actually start to see that. So I wouldn't be surprised if we have another like lower on the dollar. But how's ultimate fighting exports? I think that. I think it's great. And as you've noted in year two of Trump 1.0, dollar rally pretty good. Yeah. In, I guess that would have an 18.

You guys have a chart. Daniel, chart 22, please. If this, you pose this question, if this was a stock, would you be long or short? And you're showing U.S. market cap as a percentage of global market cap. Oh, boy. And you are saying it peaked early last year, rally timidly in the second half of 25 and now weakening again. Could this roll hard and that international trade have another six months a year or two years to go? But, like, that's the thing.

Like, this, this didn't peak January 1st of this year. No. This peaked November of 24, I think. The hyperscalers stop going up, though, right? Like, basically? It's a lot more than that. I mean, look at the raging bull market you have in Japan. Look at the raging bull market you have in Latin America.

You know, the Japan thing is really funny to me, right? No one wanted to own Niki because they were all worried about JGB yields going up. Well, you know what's stopped happening? JGB yields have stopped going up. I mean, the 40-year-year-year-J-DGB yields down 70 basis points since the election, and everyone's still skeptical of owning Japan here. You went nowhere for 40 years in Niki, nowhere. The breakout was last September.

40-year breakout and your target's not a double, right? 90 to 100K Niki should be your target there. No one's there. So this could get, this could keep going. I think this is one of those. I don't think any investors are positioned. Nobody buys that chart. Nobody buys that chart.

This is one of those regime changed moments. Now, in the short term, is this very overdone? Do you get some bounce in tech and some, of course. But what's the longer term trend here? I mean, just to go back to where we were in 22, 23 is another, you know, 700 bips of market cap relative to most of the world. One thing I would be remiss, though, if I didn't remind people, there's an industry mixed story here. Totally. These markets are.

Say, Hela. Well, no, but like, Europe is not a tech market. Japan has tech, but also has big manufacturing, exporting banks. Like, the compositions are not equal. Let me just say the political news is different than the investment news. That's a wildly bullish chart. That's what Donald Trump wants. He wants Europe spending money on its own economy.

He wants Japan to get out of its 30-year decline. And they say, oh, this is a terrible thing for the U.S. And he's like, no, they're starting to pay their own way, that we don't have to carry that load globally. And we sell into those markets. Yes. Right. Absolutely. I agree.

You guys have some of the most. interesting thematic ETFs I have ever seen. Thank you. We're not here to promote ETFs. All standard disclaimers apply. Yep. Right? Okay.

Let's get that out of the way. Can you tell us a little bit about the ideas behind these and who's using them? Let's start with this one. Well, this one's a little bit more, well, easy to understand. Macro thematic opportunities ETF. This is Sam T. Yep. Is this the flagship ETF?

Absolutely. The flagship ETF. It has. When did it, when did you launch it? and tell us how people use it? I guess there's about three and a half years. January 22. So January 42, right before the bear market.

It was great. Always. Excellent. And that's run by our investment strategy team at Stratiga. So Jason Trener, Ryan Grabinski, and, you know, they're basically doing four different macro themes, and then they're rotating those themes. So right now, when you buy an ETF, you're buying a macro theme. You've got to know when to get in and when to get out.

You have professionals who now do that rotation. And it's constantly changing. And they've had two just incredible years over the last. I always tell you, you got to rotate your macro themes. Yeah. Wait, so what are the themes that are being rotated amongst? So right now their themes are consumer. Globalization.

Yeah, globalization. De globalization. De globalization. Consumer 2026, kind of the return of the consumer. Kind of a multi-polar world. And what's for? Helbi out of four. You got to ask them.

Yeah. Okay. All right. By the way, that sports theme isn't a bad theme. Not bad. Stratigas, global policy opportunities, ETF, SAGP. This one sounds like you're involved. That's the one I run.

Okay. So tell me about it. So in 2008, if you asked the S&P 500 companies, what's their greatest risk? 25% would say the government. That was health care and defense stocks, maybe utilities. By 2018, 10 years later, that number was over 52% saying the U.S. government was their top risk. 75% either first or second risk. Okay.

So this is why policy is important. And what we figured out is that lobbying is a factor that could actually influence returns. Companies go in and they lobby Washington with the idea that they're going to get some sort of return on their investment. Right. So we had a long history of doing this just on the large cap space, a very successful period where we were doing it. But we were doing it like private SMA. And investors were like, we need a more public access to it. So we basically built this.

a little different than our large cap. It has three buckets. It has large cap U.S. equities. It has small and mid-cap U.S. equities. By the way, you get a lobbying win at a small-cap level. It really moves the needle relative to a large cap. Those stocks could double. But we have 40% non-U.S. because there is a whole industry of non-U.S. companies that feel that they have to be at the table in Washington, or they'll get beat up on the national system. Can you quantify this? Or is this more like the things that you're hearing or the things that? Oh, no. It's all quant. So there's, there's, there's, very little subjective analysis that goes into this. So you're looking at the dollar amount level of spend.

Okay. So now if I do that, I have the Dow 30 and some tobacco companies. Okay. When we tested it didn't work. What we found was that you've got to capture the intensity, the lobbying relative to the size of the company. So we've long gone to a company called Vertex in there, Vertex Pharmaceuticals. They don't spend a lot of money on lobbying, maybe $400,000.

But they are making people's lives better. with cystic fibrosis every single day. And they're down in Washington telling that story and saying, okay, if you're going to do drug pricing, we don't want to get hit because our drug costs $250,000. Now you converse that with Gilead. Gilead cured hepatitis C and had no lobbying dollars at that point. They didn't tell anybody that they had this revolution that was going to save the government all this money.

And they got burned. They got hit because the managed care companies were like, we don't want to pay $80,000 for this drug. Interesting. Okay. So you're bullish when you see an increase in lobbying. We love it. We love it. And not just in a defensive mood, like, oh, I'm in trouble. Let me go spend lobbying dollars. You want to own the compounders, the companies that have built a presence in Washington that can withstand all of this noise and the constant changing of political parties.

So who are those? Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly, great. Meta is another good company on that. Lockheed Martin is another good company. You can go industry by industry. There's going to be leaders in the lobbying level. I'm just giving you the large cap side. I mean, but like, you know, Hyundai, you know, in South Korea, really, really prominent lobbyers in Washington, given the nature of their mix of what they're trying to do. Sounds like you have a lot of fun running that fund. It's amazing. And it's just very differentiated because it's, there's no real relation to any of the other types of funds. And it's a totally different style.

I've never seen anybody doing that. And it's done pretty well. So. So. So. And the last one, macro momentum ETF. Sam, this one sounds like you have something to do with it. I do.

This is the one, uh, I run. S-A-M-M-M-M-M-M-A-M-E-M-E. It's exactly what our process is, right? We're trying to identify through price where their narrative will be in six months or in 12 months. So our whole focus is relative momentum. What is on the relative high list every day? And how can we take positions that are kind of way outsized what, you know, relative to the sector? So I'll give you an example right now. We have a double-waiting in energy.

We have a double-wading in health care, right? That's where the relative momentum has been for the last handful of months. We have a very big waiting in industrials. This is all about price first narrative second. So it's, I think, a very good compliment to kind of our first product. How often will you make changes? I mean, we make changes. We're so cell disciplined.

So we make changes, you know, sometimes every day, sometimes every couple days. In terms of kind of managing, where is the relative strength? No, like a double energy. Like you won't be double energy one day and then the next day take over time. No, no. So like that, as an example, took, you know, four or five months to come to that position. cycle. Everything we do is incremental, right?

When you're a trend follower or chartist, everything is incremental. So we incrementally kind of get to these positions, which is, you know, big in health care right now, big in energy, a lot of cyclicals on the other side. But I think the great thing about this is because it's really based on a trend following system, we have the ability to go completely with cash, right? I think the true test of any fund manager is what are you doing in a bare market, right? So, you know, God willing, we don't have the bare market. But we can be 100% in cash.

We could be 100% in bonds, 100% in gold, wherever the market. is telling us we need to get to, we can get to in a very agile way before the narrative shows up. I am launching an ETF. I heard, congratulations. We can't talk about this. No, no, no, no. You don't even know what my product is. Okay.

I am taking your fund, the lobbying intensity, utilizing your macro overlay. And I'm basically going to take the best momentum politically, all right? I'm going to. Probably what we should do that. Have you guys ever looked into like when you're saying? stuff aligns with your stuff. That's got to be a very powerful concentration. I got to say, we talk about this all the time. There's a few times a year, I think, where, I mean, what Dan

sees in D.C., there's no one better. He sees it before. It's on the front page of the newspaper. When it's shown up in your work, and it's also shown up in my work. That's what I mean. And then it fits this kind of bigger, thematic idea that Jason may have. I mean, that's where the magic of our firm, I think, comes together. I mean, the fact we've all been together for 20 years. Yeah, 20 years. It's also remarkable. Oh, that's awesome. In that sense. That's awesome.

You guys have fun on the show today? Oh, we're always. Thanks for having us. Thank you. We're so happy to see you. I can't believe it took us this long to do this show, but we had the best time. We would love to have you guys back, and we want to let people know where they can get more of your thought leadership. Where can they follow you guys?

Where's your, you have like a social network of choice that you put info out on? Yeah, a few things. So our website, StrategistrP for Researchpartners.com. Awesome. Are 3 ETFs, S-A-G-P, S-A-M-M-N-T. Okay. Twitter, LinkedIn, or I guess not Twitter, right, X, X, LinkedIn, all the places we traffic. All right, what about you?

Anything special? Everything the same. All right. Awesome. Guys, thank you. Thanks, guys. We always end the show asking people to name one thing that they're looking forward to. Yeah.

And it could be anything. What are you looking forward to? I'll give you two. World Baseball Classic Championship in March. Okay. And the midterm election actually getting here. so that we can go back to normal and get rid of the Sliuces. That's your Super Bowl, right?

Yeah, sort of. Absolutely. All right, well, it'll come soon enough. What about you? Two things. I think the Masters is... You're just happy to be alive? I'm happy to be out of Mexico.

I think the Masters is six weeks away. I'm looking forward to the Masters, the best week of the year. And I guess what I'm looking for... Like, this is the most exciting macro environment I've ever seen. Like, God willing, it continues. This is fun. So, we're having fun.

All right. Well, it's great to hear. Dan Clifton, ladies and gentlemen, Chris Verone, Stratigis. RP.com. Guys, thank you so much for watching and listening this week. Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, no.

Oh, you shouldn't have. To you. Happy birthday, dear Josh. Thank you guys so much. Happy birthday to you. All right. Thank you. Are you one?

No, we're not going to go there. 49 for the listeners. I know. All right. I already go out. Good luck. Okay. I'm not going to share my wish.

I love. Cheers. All right. Thank you guys. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week.