The Compound and Friends - The Case for a Year-End Melt-Up

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

On episode 218 of The Compound and Friends, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Downtown J...osh Brown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ are joined by Warren Pies to discuss: Nvidia earnings, how the market will end the year, solutions to America's housing affordability crisis, and much more! This episode is sponsored by Public and Vanguard. Fund your Public account in five minutes or less by visiting ⁠https://public.com/compound⁠ Learn more about Vanguard at: ⁠https://www.vanguard.com/audio 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 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/⁠⁠⁠ All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. Public Investing offers a High-Yield Cash Account where funds from this account are automatically deposited into partner banks where they earn interest and are eligible for FDIC insurance; Public Investing is not a bank. Cryptocurrency trading services are offered by Bakkt Crypto Solutions, LLC (NMLS ID 1890144), which is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the NYSDFS. Cryptocurrency is highly speculative, involves a high degree of risk, and has the potential for loss of the entire amount of an investment. Cryptocurrency holdings are not protected by the FDIC or SIPC. See terms and conditions of Public’s ACATS & IRA Match Program. Matched funds must remain in the account for at least 5 years to avoid an early removal fee. Match rate and other terms of the Match Program are subject to change at any time. Alpha is an experimental AI tool powered by GPT-4. Its output may be inaccurate and is not investment advice. Public makes no guarantees about its accuracy or reliability—verify independently before use. *Rate as of 9/26/25. APY is variable and subject to change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnik, and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Riddholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed, in this podcast. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the compound and friends. We have a returning champion, one of our favorite guests.
Starting point is 00:00:42 Michael and I are so excited to welcome Warren Pyes back to the show. For what we believe, maybe his fifth appearance, he is our Tom Hanks. We've got to come up with a robe or a jacket. Warren Pyes is the co-founder and chief strategist of 314 research. Prior to founding 314 research, Warren led Ned Davis research's energy and commodity strategy. Warren is a contributor to numerous media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and CNBC.
Starting point is 00:01:12 Warren, thank you so much for joining us for this special remote but all the way lit edition of TCAF. We love to see you. Thank you for having me. Number five, I think that, I don't know if that's setting a record, but it feels important. Feels good. It's a bubble in Warren Pyes.
Starting point is 00:01:28 and all we're doing is fueling it, which is... That's right, yeah, baby. The best kind of bubble. Good to have you. Michael, how'd you sleep last night? Not great. Yeah. Not great.
Starting point is 00:01:40 Well, so here's what I did. I had a mescal. I had a bourbon drink. You don't have to say all that you drank last night. I was there. I'm just saying a decanter of red wine because who doesn't do that? And then would have a beer and went to sleep?
Starting point is 00:01:55 It's not ideal. but we're going to power through. Okay, Envidio reported last night, one of the best earnings quarters I have ever seen any publicly traded company report. I think the setup was really interesting. The amount of doubt going into it, not doubt about NVIDIA,
Starting point is 00:02:13 but doubt about the theme and whether or not it's gone too far, had us in a situation where Nvidia went into the report into one of the biggest drawdowns that's ever been in, headed into an earnings report. and Jensen came out and did what he's been doing for, I don't know, the last 12-quarters straight,
Starting point is 00:02:32 surprising to the upside, raising guidance, calming nerves, and resetting the story, like the big picture. And so now we're talking agentic, we're talking robotics, and he's using the term revolution pretty confidently. And this morning, as we're recording, you got a pretty nice nine or two. 10 point bump for the stock. And it feels like the VIX is about to collapse again. What do you guys think? Yeah, I mean, I think you laid it out perfectly. This is, to me, there was all these structural concerns that were popping up, but there was really not a lot of there. And so, you know, this was a sentiment correction. We needed sentiment had gotten stretched over the summer. I mean, one of the things we pointed out to our clients was like, since the last jobs report,
Starting point is 00:03:22 which we just got the first jobs report since the government reopened this morning as well. Since the last jobs report released on September 5th, that was the August jobs report. We've seen our AI basket was up 20% over consumer cyclicals. So this had become an AI driven market. I mean, it has been, it is by definition, since we started this move in 2023. But I mean, it was just on steroids for the last couple months. sentiment got ahead of itself. And so people got nervous.
Starting point is 00:03:54 And whenever that happens, you get a wobble in the market. And, you know, but I think that's, this is like par for the course. Invidia reports, they calm nerves. You know, in the market, we've studied this since the 2023, really explosion of AI onto the scene. And it's not groundbreaking stuff. But the market takes its cues from Nvidia following the earnings report. And so, you know, we saw like a negative reaction back in February. And the market was kind of already in a downtrend, but Nvidia led the way there.
Starting point is 00:04:22 And that's the only other time. Most of these times you end up with Nvidia, calming nerves, rally, especially when you have a drawdown going into earnings like this. So I think it sets up for a nice move for the end of the year. Mike, what did you think? Yeah, I completely agree with Warren. Sentiment had gotten so stretched. The charts had gotten so stretched.
Starting point is 00:04:43 Oracle's 35% move off of the announcement, that huge gap, had to get filled as they do. But it was too far too fast. And I think that had NVIDIA been in a sideways range, which it did in the past, remember it had gone months sideways, if it was in that type of market environment and the doubt about the useful life of GPUs came up, whether it was six years or four years, that nobody would have given a shit. It would have just been like whatever.
Starting point is 00:05:10 I think the stocks would have sold off 2, 3%. But because they went up so much, it was, well, wait a minute. That on top of the Sam Altman interview, it was just, it was a very natural normal give and Jensen and the team reiterated crazy numbers. They're talking about $500 billion in revenue between fiscal 25 and 26 just in terms of Blackwell and Rubin. If that's on track, $500 billion in revenue, game on, blue skies ahead. It was an incredible quarter.
Starting point is 00:05:41 Yeah, I think like the calming nerves thing, it's not just Jensen coming on and talking about robots. The numbers themselves were a palliative in this case. So net income, $32 billion, that's a 21% sequential jump, sequential, like versus last quarter. So you say he said like, on Vida's $4 trillion, yeah, because look, like what, we have no, we have no parallel to this from history. No company has ever been able to do this. Those numbers were up 65% year over year. That's net income.
Starting point is 00:06:16 Data Center was up 66% year over year. And this is without China. There's like nothing going on in China. Yeah. Q4 Revenue Guidance was one of the most important metrics that everyone was hanging on. And he upticked it. $65 billion. That would be 14% sequential growth-ish. And this is a great quote.
Starting point is 00:06:37 This is Jensen Wang on the call. Blackwell sales are off the charts. Cloud GPUs are sold out. Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference, each growing exponentially. We've entered the virtualization. cycle of AI. And you're bearish? I mean, is, Warren, do you think the bearishness was about valuation or do you think
Starting point is 00:07:02 the bearishness was about execution? Like all this CAP-X, somebody's about to stumble and have to start restating earnings or going back on their account, the way they accounted for the CAP-X. Like, what do you think was the thing that people were most worried about? I think it's a little bit of both. I think valuations are always hanging out back there. It's a little bit of this law of large numbers and how far can you grow and how big of a portion of the market that NVIDIA is. And so there's just natural nervousness.
Starting point is 00:07:32 I do think there's execution risk too and concerns around that. I think you brought up the useful life argument's been getting a lot of play here for the last couple months. And it's like, where does all the spend lead to? Is it, you know, what's the ROI? I mean, there are still a lot of skeptics here. And so that's something that, you know, Fernando, who I work, with. You've had him on the show before. This is his space. So everything I talk about when it comes to AI, GPUs, and video, I'm just kind of recapitulating in a really kind of like a
Starting point is 00:08:00 redneck way. Fernando's research, you know, but I mean, he's dug into it. That was something we did for our clients. It's something we let him through the deep seek saga because of his, because of his expertise. And then we're leading him through this concern as well. We just don't see this, this useful life argument. And then I think Jensen alluded to some of his arguments like, hey, like the A100s are still out there. You know, we track on a daily basis availability or Fernando tracks availability of GPUs. And this is something like we have the largest tech funds in the world who they pay
Starting point is 00:08:34 just to get the series from us. And so we track this every day. And you can see that there's still a lot of demand for the older vintage chips even. And so this idea that they all burn out and are gone or that they don't have an economically useful life beyond two years, like we were able to dismiss that. pretty easily for our clients. So I think it's a I love seeing fears like that crop up because what that tells me is it's it's a sentiment. It's not fundamental. It's not something that's really concerning. I mean, if you're going to be, I think my concerns as a macro guy who's not
Starting point is 00:09:05 an AI tech specialist whenever I press Fernando is, you know, how can we track AI adoption in general as a theme? And then what's going to happen if these models take a leg up in efficiency and what does that mean for the hardware in particular? And do we just always go back to this Jevins paradox thing where you just have more and more spend even if the models get more efficient? And so we go through that a lot and trying to come up with ways to track it.
Starting point is 00:09:32 But those are bigger picture concerns and this useful life, accounting, execution stuff at this phase, the Sam Altman interview, you can just feel people who are kind of grasping at straws. You can feel the fear that, hey, market is so dependent on this theme and it is there is we're going to live or die by AI for the stock market so you know all the generalists it brings forward all those concerns and fears you know naturally um but yeah it was from what we saw out there they're really not even like you know the fact like fernando's
Starting point is 00:10:04 responding to jim chanos on x and telling them like weeks ago this useful life stuff is a is a dead end they addressed that on the call exactly yeah he did yes she said in the in the prepared marks as to say, like, don't ask me back, I'm going to tell you up front. The CFO said most accelerators without Cuda and NVIDIA's time tested and versatile architecture become obsolete within a few years as model technologies evolved. Now, here's the money shot. Thanks to Cuda, the A100 GPUs we shipped six years ago, are still running at full utilization today. Right. So Cuda is the software platform that is part of NVIDIA's offering, and it's what keeps these chips, like, productive and worthwhile long after they've shipped and been implemented.
Starting point is 00:10:56 And that's, I think they're drawing a distinction between our GPUs don't go out of style, other people's might. It's like it sounds like it's a little bit of a, Warren, how much of the pessimism in the last two weeks do you think it's just wishcasting? Like, a lot of people have been left behind. by the invidias and the AMDs and the broadcoms and the microns like they're i don't know there's probably 50 to 100 of these types of stocks that are not obscure but like large cap stocks i'm thinking of the lamb researches the amats uh there are so many of them that people just feel like
Starting point is 00:11:35 they miss that i miss that i miss that but josh it's also it's been so long like people felt like they missed the fang trade in 2018 like it's It felt unfair back then. And then fast forward, it's like, wait, seven years later, there's like a new thing that we miss. Like, it feels fucked up. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:52 Like, how much do you think the pessimism is coming from that, that idea? Like, people subconsciously just, they wanted to blow up because they're sick of answering for not having participated in it. That's a huge, huge part of it, I think. It's a big part of it. Like, here's massive. Like, just to put a few stats on that. So if we go back on a trailing three-year basis, we're.
Starting point is 00:12:14 We're at the point right now. We have the fewest stocks beating the index over a trailing three-year basis ever. We surpass the height of the tech bubble. It's like it's very painful. There's only 20, I think it's 23 or 4 percent of S&P 500 stocks are beating the index on a trailing three-year basis. That's wild. If you look at it from just this year, we're third or fourth, depending on the day
Starting point is 00:12:38 that you track it. Here it is the third. The third narrowest year, year to. date. And so you can see the worst was actually 2023 when AI kind of came into the public's consciousness. And I remember 2023. I remember speaking to some advisor clients. And at the end of that year, some of them were almost in tears, to be honest. Like, it was a really hard year, despite the fact that the market was up 20%. Wait, in tiers. Why? Because they owned so many stocks that were lagging the index itself, that they looked like they weren't even in the asset class. In 23,
Starting point is 00:13:14 was especially hard because everybody was looking for a recession that year. And then big tech and tech in general had underperformed so badly in 2022. And I remember even in late 2022 pitching to one of the bigger pod shops out there, one of the pods that is a client, was a client at the time. I thought that big tech made sense, even given the concerns around the macro. And he was like, you're going to recommend big tech in the face of a recession. You know, like he was, he was livid. And this was before the AI thing really popped off. So, yeah, it was a rough year. 23 was the worst on record from that.
Starting point is 00:13:47 And then if you go back this year, just to kind of round it all off, we have more stocks trailing the index by 20% than that are beating the index by any amount. And so it's crazy. Today's show is sponsored by Public. Public is the investing platform for those who take it seriously. You can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and more. You can also access industry-related yields like the 3.8%
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Starting point is 00:15:07 These folks live and breathe fixed income. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com slash audio. That's vanguard.com slash audio, all investing is subject to risk, Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. Do you guys have a view on sort of like a kernel of an idea that I've had recently, and I'm sure other people have more eloquently described this situation,
Starting point is 00:15:35 But for a really long time, our largest technology companies looked miraculous because they were asset light, like for the most part, asset light. They always had data centers. They always had actual assets. But like gross margins in the 30s, 40s, 70s, companies like defied comparison to prior errors of large cap stocks. I don't really think that's the case anymore. Number one, they are taking on a lot of debt.
Starting point is 00:16:04 comfortably. They have strong balance sheets. They have, like, they have the cash flows. It's not, it's not a dangerous amount of debt, but they're heavily indebted. Like, let's not say that they're not. The dollar amounts are huge. And then they're not asset light anymore either. Like these companies, the capex spending de facto makes them some of the most asset heavy corporations we've ever seen. Now, they're not building copper smelting facilities. And, you know, right? They're not digging for iron ore. or anything like that, but like, they're not, it's not the same narrative now, like, oh, their asset light, it's all IP, it's software margins, it's, it's just, it's different.
Starting point is 00:16:46 I'm not saying it's worse, but like, do you guys hear that argument from people that basically these are technology companies that have turned themselves into heavy industrials? Yeah, I mean, I think we hear those arguments. That's part of it. And we're in a risky spot here. The real story is, is AI going to deliver, you know, is it going to deliver? What does it look like? What does the future look like?
Starting point is 00:17:08 There's so much. There's nervousness from every angle. There's macro nervousness, but there's nervousness like, hey, if this doesn't work out, these things are, this is going to be a really rough forward period of returns for not just these big tech companies, but for the market in general because they are the market at this point. So yeah, there's a lot of that. Go ahead, Mike.
Starting point is 00:17:27 I think that's a great point. Like people could look to the valuation and say, where's the bubble? So, for example, if their earnings increase 15% a quarter for the next four quarters. Now, they've done, they did 20 this quarter. So it's something outlandish. But if they do 15% for the next four quarters, then based on where the, based on where the stock closed yesterday. I'm sorry, at the top of $5 trillion. This is invidia?
Starting point is 00:17:50 In video. So at a $5 trillion market cap, it's 27 times earnings, okay? So you could say, that's not a bubble. How is that? It's a market multiple plus. Like, how is that a bubble? but to your point, the unknown, it might be an earnings bubble if they can't continue this and AI can't deliver and these numbers that are so gigantic.
Starting point is 00:18:12 If those go down, it's like, hey, dumbass, it was actually training at 150 times 2027 earnings. It looked cheap, but it wasn't. Well, when people say if this doesn't work out, what that means in reality is if all of this spend doesn't have an ROI attached to it. Not right away, but at some point down the road. And then you will absolutely see things like order cancellations, et cetera. But none of that is happening. Yeah. So, Warren, what do you think about the fact that this might be trading cheap on 26 numbers, but super expensive on 28, 2930, something like that? You mean Nvidia in particular? In this case, right? Yeah. Well, I think that's, that's concerning a little
Starting point is 00:18:56 bit. I mean, like, that's part of like why when with the deep seek thing was, and this is something that Fernando and I, I think this is, so there, like I said, there are two concerns with this AI thing. When I look at it as a macro person, AI adoption, we kind of dismiss that concern. Like, we are adopting it in our business and we can talk about that. Like, I've seen it firsthand. So I know this is going to be a big deal. And I know it's going to be adopted in mass. And so I don't think that existential risk is going to come to pass. But I see more like what if the models, what if we do get a step higher in efficiency that decreases the spend within video where this is like, and that would probably play out as more of like an earnings
Starting point is 00:19:38 bubble like you said, Mike. So we've talked a little bit about that. Like what does that look like? What would the handoff look like? In some ways, if that, if these hyperscalers are spending less within video, then they would be doing better. So within the market, could you have that handoff where you have like hardware semis invidia which is 17 to 20% of the market can they can those stocks come down while like the the the capex spenders have their margins increase and have their you know have in that i don't think is really possible yeah i don't think that's really that's not really feasible and so i am i do worry about it but at the same time like all you can do is track the data listen to the earnings calls like we track the data daily and and and right now i don't
Starting point is 00:20:23 don't see, I just, you can't project that, you know, it's the tech guys, the tech guys tell you impossible because there's no such thing as too much compute. And if there, if, if you all of a sudden free up all of this compute because the next gen models and then the gen after that are more efficient and it's less tokens and it's less and it's less compute. We just use that compute somewhere else and we invent even more unbelievable things that no one could have pictured. That's the Jevin's paradox idea. You make this stuff cheaper and other people come along and do even bigger things with it. And that actually has been the history in the internet, but there have been air pockets along the way. So that's the thing
Starting point is 00:21:12 that people worry about. That's exactly what we said. Like, hey, we had that earlier this year and we kind of looked through all that. In the Jevin's paradox, yes, that all makes sense. And like, you're just going to spend, just going to spend, have more compute. And just the spending stays continues on its 45 degree angle up or whatever. But like, maybe one day that's not the case. And that's the, so that's the concern. But it's not something that animates us at this moment. I want to put a pin in this, but I want to ask you guys, do you think we're done with the
Starting point is 00:21:41 KAPX debate between now and the end of the year? Do you think that that calms down and the market kind of focuses elsewhere? or you think, like, people are like, oh, great, Nvidia beat again. I don't care. It's still a bubble. What do you guys think is going to happen? It depends on what happens to the price.
Starting point is 00:21:58 If the prices continue to go up, the stocks, nobody's going to talk about it. If the price struggles, like let's say Nvidia gives up all the gains today and closest red, then boom, the focus is going to be right back on that. So I think it's, I think it's stock market dependent. Warren, what do you think? I totally, totally agree. I mean, we invent the narrative to follow the price, ultimately.
Starting point is 00:22:15 Nothing's going to change fundamentally between now and end of the year. but like I think the important thing because like I was on CNBC this like I guess it was last week late last week they asked me the same thing like what do you think about the market near term I said I think the sentiments worked off I want to see not what in Vindia says I want to see how the market treats in video I knew in video was we we tracked this stuff daily we track the the pricing and availability stuff daily we knew they were going to blow the quarter away it was just more about how's the market react I still want to see that looks like we're going to be fine, but I want to see how we close this week off in particular, how we print on Friday
Starting point is 00:22:53 at close. And, you know, that's going to dictate the narrative going to the end of the year. I expect it to be good and I expected to be bullish, though. So let's talk about the rest of the market, because Warren, you're right. It has been the leadership has narrowed, just continues to. Like a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about the rubber band between equal weight divided by cap weight was already stretched and then it just snapped and like crashed low. as a local top, but it's just, it just continues to happen. So you mentioned this earlier in the show, John, throw these charts on.
Starting point is 00:23:25 So half of the index, half of the constituents in the S&P 500, chart 3, trail the index by 10% or more, which is not quite off the charts, but we're getting there. And then you also mention that more S&P constituents trail the index by 20% than are beating it. What do you take away from this? I think it's, this is the, the, this is what we're talking about. Like if you, if you look at the equal weight, another sharp, we don't have in this, but you look at the equal weight to start of all these bull markets. So like, it leads usually.
Starting point is 00:24:00 Equal weight is off the bottom. We set a bottom equal weight leads. Small caps lead. Low quality, high beta leads. This has been a straight grind lower in the equal weight. It's been a straight grind lower in small caps relative to the S&P 500. I mean, this is a brutal, this is a brutal market because in order. to beat the market, you can be at your benchmark, but in order to beat the market, you have to
Starting point is 00:24:23 allocate an overweight to these tech positions that you already feel overweight. Like, it's 50% of the market at this point in time. So yeah, that's what I take away from all that. You know why nobody wants to do that? Number one, they don't actually think it'll work. They think, my luck, I'm going to get overweight Nvidia and Apple and Microsoft right at the top. and then it's you can't answer for it like in other words if you if you build a diversified uh diversified if you build a portfolio with like 60 positions right um which is pretty diversified for like a long only especially for a hedge fund like you're not going to live or die based on any of them you're definitely not going to beat the market um but you'll you won't have to apologize
Starting point is 00:25:11 If you come into Jan 26 and you're three, 400 basis points ahead of the index on some of the largest stocks in the country, and those stocks have a, you know, start the year off badly, then you're apologizing. Like, you're an index weight on index fund on steroids. That's what I'm paying you two and 20 for. So, like, there's two reasons nobody wants to do it. And the first is they don't pick it to work. And that second reason is even worse. It's like, I can't even explain this if it goes wrong. There's a lot.
Starting point is 00:25:45 You could explain a 60 position portfolio that trails the benchmark because, of course, it does, right? You can't explain being overweight the top five market caps. Like, what were you thinking? Don't you think that's what's sort of prolonging this warrant? Like, there is, it's hard to say that there's so much underinvestment of these names because Nvidia's a $5 trillion market cap. But Josh's point is so important for market psychology. Yeah. I mean, well, we have looked at this. So the pattern of this bull market, you hear this, it's just repeat. I don't know if I put a chart in there. And I think I did actually. It's chart. If you skip all the way just out of just to give you something to reference if you're watching. If you skip, well, I guess I didn't put it in. Sorry. Anyways, but there's been a consistent pattern where the mega cap leads, the rest of the market falls apart and you get a wobble in the market, just like we had we recently. You get a wobble in the market. And then everyone comes on TV.
Starting point is 00:26:40 everyone expects, but hey, we're going to get a broadening. We're going to get this broadening. Equal weight's going to take the baton. The cap way is going to give up. But we get a, yes, we do get a bit of a broadening because the bull market continues, but it's never a leadership shift. The leadership has maintained each one of those little cycles. It maintains in these large caps. It maintains in the tech sectors, like comm services tech, Amazon, those stocks. That's the pattern is you get a little bit of a broadening, but never the baton. actually being taken by the other, the other 400. Well, they're not big enough. Well, they're really not big enough. Like, there are health care companies that are $300 and $400 billion. There's a couple of energy stocks that are a few hundred billion dollars. But, like, they're just not, last week we had this amazing rotation into energy and health care. And a lot of people played it.
Starting point is 00:27:33 A lot of people made money because some of these stocks went up huge, like the Amgen's, the Abbe's, saw some nice moves in the refinery stocks, but they're just not big enough to become the new leaders. And they definitely are not going to be telling stories about 20% year-over-year revenue growth as far as the eye can see. They just can't do it. There is a physical constraint
Starting point is 00:27:58 to how much those companies can grow. And those were just, I think those are the new era defensive because utilities are now part of the, they've gotten sucked into this AI trade. So it's not a defensive anymore. So you have health care and you have energy. We've been making the case for a long time.
Starting point is 00:28:13 Energy is your best diversifier in the market. Not that you want to be overweight or bearish on oil, been bearish on oil all year. But it's doing things that nothing else is doing. So I think that rotation, healthcare had been so beaten up until that move. And you can just see this coordinated, like, shift and flows over to health care, over to energy. And it's kind of this where we're at with like the pods and everything. Yeah, they're just not $2 trillion companies. Like, Eli Lilly is gigantic by health care standards, not by stock market standards.
Starting point is 00:28:45 Warren, I want to ask you about one of the reasons why you're one of my favorite thinkers, writers, is you take a broad, you're able to zoom out and then zoom in. So you do the market, you do the labor market, you do construction, like you really, you do fed stuff, you take a really holistic view. Josh and I were talking about this yesterday. So one of your recent reports on the K-shaped economy and the K-shaped market. it's really confusing because there's no doubt that the bottom 10, 20 percent are still under pressure, as they always are, but especially now with inflation, the cumulative toll of inflation, there's no give back, prices don't go lower, everything's expensive, it takes a toll, of course it does. But also, I think what's confusing is you hear from so many different companies
Starting point is 00:29:31 that are taking cover, in my estimation, that are taking cover under this narrative, and using this as an excuse to say why it's not that we're not executing it's our consumers are under pressure so you hear this from kava and all of the bowl companies and chipotle um and you hear this from like target and companies like this but then you look at walmart who serves a similar clientele and then you look at sophy who also serves a young demographic goods and so there's companies that are executing really well despite the pressures and despite the headwinds and they're companies that are just not executing and are using this as blame. And I think fueling the flames.
Starting point is 00:30:10 And it's not to say that it's not a story, but it's really, what is the story? So sometimes you have a narrative. It's not like, I think that's what you're asking is basically, is this narrative real? Or is this just like BS that the companies are using to excuse away their problems? And I think it is real. You know, I think that what we went through after the pandemic has really impacted. When I went back and listened to myself on the podcast like a year ago, I used the word bifurcated economy probably like a dozen times. It's like, you know, the K-shaped sounds a little better, but the bifurcated economy is a real thing.
Starting point is 00:30:46 And the pandemic just really set fire to that, to that division between the haves and the have-nots, the asset owners and those who don't own assets. And so to me, when I look at it, I think the lower part of the K is best represented. And it's not everything, but by the housing market and housing affordability. You know, this is, if you gave me one chart to kind of set the table and explain the dynamic, like market at all time high, housing at all time high, gold at all time high, Bitcoin at all time high, all these things are doing well. Yields pretty have been okay, you know, bond's been good this year. But what's the one thing, one chart that could explain this, this lower K, it's this housing chart that I have. It's page or chart number 14. we're showing the amount of the percentile of household income needed to buy the median home
Starting point is 00:31:34 in the United States. And so the bottom line is before the pandemic, it was the 40th percentile was the average household income needed to buy, or the household income needed to buy a median home in the United States. You can just see it just leveled up post-pandemic, interest rates, housing costs going up, everything. It's now 60th percentile. So the bottom line on this is that middle class,
Starting point is 00:31:58 middle of the economy, the 40th to 60th percentile of income, has been priced out of the housing market. And I think that, yes, there are many other things going on. I know groceries. I know insurance. I know cars. And there's a lot of things going on. Yeah, medical mean, my medical costs, my medical insurance cost went from my family of five, went up to $66,000 a year this year. So I know there's more things going on than this. But yes, this is the one chart in my mind that explains why there's so much consternation in that bottom K and why the Fed is ultimately going to have to address it because you're starting to see political pressures rise up. I mean, this is where you get the election of Mamdami and the other lady in Seattle.
Starting point is 00:32:44 You see so much anger out there and it will manifest as political pressure. You see it from the Trump administration. I mean, Trump is putting political pressure on the Fed. he's going to stack the Fed with his own kind of yes men. And so to me, these are the manifestations of what is a real phenomenon. So, yes, some companies use it as an excuse, but I think it's real. I think the K-shape is real, and we should pay attention. So you said in a K-shaped economy, policymakers will cater to the lower K.
Starting point is 00:33:15 So that's that bottom, let's say, bottom 20 or 30 percent of the wealth distribution that are really struggling the most. and vocally so. And you said that that translates to an easing bias, at least if policymakers are listening to that segment. Obviously, housing is the thing that's making people scream. It's unbelievable to not be able to afford to live in the country. If you have a job, your spouse has a job.
Starting point is 00:33:42 There are families where both spouses have multiple jobs. And it's just like the thing that makes people say, I am going to vote for the most extreme candidate at this point because they're the only people that are listening to what I'm saying. But then you're saying, because I want to translate this into a market outlook, then you're saying despite that easing bias, like ordinarily you would go to small caps and you would say, okay, if the Fed's going to have this easing bias, small caps should do well. And actually, there are lots of charts floating around showing that small caps next year
Starting point is 00:34:16 are expected to have higher earnings growth than large caps for the first time in a long time. But you don't seem to believe in that. You think it's a bad bet. So why won't the small caps work given the outsized earnings growth expectations and the easing bias Fed? Well, number one, I don't know that the Fed's easing bias and cutting rates is going to cure the problem that we have. Just because we have a problem and there's political pressure and the Fed's going to has a hammer every problem. looks like a nail, so they're going to use that hammer. And the hammer is interest rate cuts. I don't think that, number one, when it comes to small caps and earnings, we had the same chart last
Starting point is 00:34:55 year at this time. It's funny. We printed it last year. They were expected to grow earnings by 30% this year, and they ended up having flat earnings. So, you know, the estimates on small caps is is sketchy to say the least. But, yeah, I don't think that the key on small caps is you need to buy them at the right part of the cycle, early cycle. You get a wash out. You have a recession or something. The Fed comes in and eases a lot, not in just drips and drabs of cuts through the year like they're doing right now. They need to have like a washout where rates go down. And then you, they in those stocks get hit too in that process. And then you buy them early cycle. So this is not that moment. We're not in that moment. No. And I think that this will
Starting point is 00:35:36 be a broadening in my view. But the broadening, you want to buy like we just talking about the AI trade to validate it and ratify all the cap X. You need to start seeing company. utilize AI. So you bring up like Walmart and things like that. Like that next sliver of companies still big cap high quality companies. They're most likely to first adopt AI and show benefits of AI, talk about all these headcount steady and things like that. It's going to be a while before that filters into the small cap universe in my opinion. Where it shows up in the form of increased earnings, like making these companies more profitable. I don't know that the Fed only has a hammer and everything looks like a nail right at this moment because Besson seems really
Starting point is 00:36:19 creative. He's a treasury. But I'm sure there are conversations like, why is the housing market making people so angry? What's the solution? And so now you're hearing them float ideas like a 50-year mortgage, which just sounds like being a lifelong renter, but fine. It's an idea. I don't think it's a good one. But the next thing you heard was Trump wants to explore portable mortgages. So this would be the thing that would answer the problem of people holding onto their houses too long. There's not enough liquidity in the housing market because nobody wants to sell a house with a 3% mortgage, buy a new house with a 6% mortgage. Do you view any of this as being constructive or these things are not going to be a big deal? Maybe they'll help a little
Starting point is 00:37:04 at the margin or maybe they won't do anything at all. I actually think that the 50-year mortgage, if you gave me the option, I might take the 50-year mortgage. You can always prepay, you know, and then turn your, you can basically, if you get your, as your life circumstances change, you can prepay your, your principal and actually reduce the term of the mortgage that way on your own, on your own terms. But it's not going to change this, you know, ultimately that's at the edges, like you said. The portable mortgage is the same thing. It will help at the edges, but the problem is there's a medicine that, in my opinion,
Starting point is 00:37:40 it needs to be taken, which is we need to have modestly contract the deficit. We've been running a wartime recessionary deficits during this expansion. It does, it is real money being put into the economy and printed every year, 7 to 8% of the GDP. You know, the tariffs, I don't think you can criticize a lot about the tariffs, but they were bringing in revenue, and they were set to contract the deficit down to about 6%. Now we're talking about, and the economy is slowing a bit because of that. That's a contraction. Like, that will be medicine that you have to take. If you take the deficit down from seven to six or five and a half percent, the economy will slow. It will feel like a slight contraction because that fiscal impulse is coming down.
Starting point is 00:38:25 But you have to do that in order to lower these interest rates on a more structural level to give the bond market confidence to let the rates come down and allow borrowing costs to be more normal. But now you're seeing, like just this week, Josh Hawley, and Trump saying, no, we're going to take that tariff money and spend it out as a $2,000, you know, check to working class households. It's like we can't take the medicine as a, as a, the government and policymakers in the political cycle won't allow us to take the medicine. That's, you know, that would just make things worse. And so that's where I. They want to send checks out, put them in an envelope with Donald Trump's face on it.
Starting point is 00:39:05 And the problem is you might as well just deposit that right at Robin Hood. just just let people know all right your stimulus is ready it's in your brokerage account yeah so the depth it goes to 8% the deficit goes to 8% of GDP and we go through another one of these things where you get a sugar rush in the economy how did that feel coming off COVID did that solve all the problems you know no I don't I don't made most it right it it was needed at the time and like most things it went too far and it went on for too long and we know what And I'm not a deficit, like, anti-de, I don't think you need to close the deficit to zero. I'm not sitting here saying that the deficits are inherently bad.
Starting point is 00:39:46 It's a policy choice. A deficit is a policy choice. When you run a big deficit, it's a policy choice. There are trade-offs, you know. And I think at this point, the trade-offs have swung in the direction of we should be addressing it somewhat. We should be trying to have some, a little bit, a little bit of austerity. I'm not saying go crazy, a little bit of austerity. Yeah, that's not politically palatable for this administration or really any.
Starting point is 00:40:08 Like, who's going to want to do that? But let's just say that that would happen, that we were to take our medicine and the deficit would shrink, the economy would contract a little bit, interest rates would come down naturally, that still doesn't fix the one of the big problems of how do you come up with the down payment, unless you're also suggesting that in that scenario, housing prices would come down meaningfully as well. Yeah, no, you need a supply side solution as well. Like, there needs to be a, there needs to be a realization that we have.
Starting point is 00:40:38 haven't built enough housing. We need to, we need to get at the local level. I don't know how you from the federal, some of the things the federal government can do and some they can't do, but there needs to be a realization. Like there's too much nimbism. There needs to be more yambism when it comes to housing. Like, yes, there's fiscal and there's macro and those conditions need to be adjusted, like I said. But when it comes to housing, like before I was in this business, I was a, I was a land use attorney. So I was doing approvals for real estate developers, for phosphate miners, things like that, and it's like the process has really gotten difficult to approve housing in this country. And I think there are too many people trying to get their pound
Starting point is 00:41:14 to flesh out of it. And so we need something that opens up supply. I mean, that's not, it's, it's above my pay. Well, there's a lot more. There's a lot of other, there are a lot of other societal things like people don't necessarily want to move to where the housing is. Because now you have cities with apartment gluts. Like, we're, Michael and I are in Austin right now. I most real estate people would say, okay, we might have went overboard with, but the jobs in Austin aren't necessarily the jobs that the people who are struggling to get housing can even get. So it doesn't matter if there's an apartment glut here or in Nashville or in Charlotte. So that's one of the issues and that's a forever issue. I wanted to pivot to this. It's November
Starting point is 00:41:56 20th. So of course, this morning we got September jobs numbers. I don't know if anyone still cares at this number. But I wanted to get your take on it. The U.S. added 119,000 jobs in September, which was a stronger than expected number, although digging in, the gains were concentrated in healthcare, food and drinking establishments.
Starting point is 00:42:20 That checks with my experience recently, what I've seen, and social assistance. Manufacturing sector somehow shed 6,000 jobs. 6,000 jobs is not that important one way or the other, but just notable, we think we're in this capex boom, and it's not necessarily translating into the areas of the labor market that you would have thought.
Starting point is 00:42:43 Transportation and warehousing saw 25,000 job losses. So that's the September number. Are we, like, moving past where this stuff even really matters that much? I think in the very near term, we are. It's getting stale, but it's confirming, like, some of the alt data that we saw during the government shutdown. So, you know, the alt data is saying the labor market is, is weakening. You know, I think that's, and that goes back to the whole, there has been some contraction brought on by the tariffs. You know, tariffs are a tax. That's how,
Starting point is 00:43:17 that's what they are. It's ultimately a tax and those revenues are coming in. So we increase taxes via tariffs, and you're seeing that contraction, and it's playing out in the labor market. If we were to stay on this course, if the Supreme Court doesn't overrule the tariffs, We don't send out these rebate checks. I think we're on this glide path to hire unemployment. The unemployment rate did tick up this morning to 4.4%. That's what you would expect. We look at things like when we haven't had this data, we look at challenger net hiring.
Starting point is 00:43:44 So this is announced intentions to, and you can see this on chart 11. You see announced intentions to hire versus announced intentions for layoffs. We're at in 2025 this year, we're negative. We're deeply negative. What is this? what is this red line that that were that doesn't look like a good line yeah that's 20 that's this year year to date through october and it's taking the uh it's netting out the difference between a challenger private sector announcements for hires or or not just private sector its entire
Starting point is 00:44:16 economy hires and layoffs and so yes but announcements or actual intentions they're doing intentions they measure intentions in the survey and so this is the most negative we've been since 2009. This doesn't include 2009, but in recent years, definitely the weakest, but since 2009, we haven't been this negative. We've only been negative 2011, 2009, every other year's positive. You have more hiring
Starting point is 00:44:39 than layoffs. That's what, that's the story. Then you have, if you go to the next chart, conference board, which is just it's a consumer survey and they ask, you know, our job's more plentiful or more hard to get. And we're comparing this to the unemployment rate because it's one of those things where, hey, we didn't have the data,
Starting point is 00:44:55 what can we see, the track where this data's heading, the blue line is the unemployment rate, the purple line. You can't really tell so well from this chart, but it's shifted forward because we had more data here is the difference between people saying jobs are plentiful and jobs are hard to get and we invert that. So when it's going up, it's basically to track the unemployment rate, it's basically saying jobs are harder to find versus plentiful. And that's been increasing. So we're seeing these things, what I would call alt data, confirm the weakening in the labor market. So this goes back. like when you say, how are you going to take this K-shaped framing and turn it into some kind of
Starting point is 00:45:32 market thoughts? I think that the Fed is going to have to address the labor market. That's a part of the lower K. They're going to try to address the housing market. That's the best representation of the lower K. So what that means, though, is that all these other things that happened. So there's a group out there that wants the Fed to get really tight and induce a recession to crash the stock market, bring down the upper K. There's like a, you know, just this desire to bring down the upper K. That's unrealistic. That's not going to happen because if they do that,
Starting point is 00:46:02 they sacrifice everyone in the lower K who's already in pain. What they're going to do is respond to the lower K and allow that upper K to continue to rise. And so in our world, how do you translate our world? You translate that to the bull market continues. The Fed is supporting it. The Fed has our back. And so to me, that's where you take this kind of big picture frame
Starting point is 00:46:23 and bring it into the market. the Fed is not going to try to teach the upper K a lesson here. There is no real, like they can't stop the AI train. They can't stop what's coming. It's coming. The dies cast. They can only kind of add a little bit of an accelerant on it with rate cuts, which is what they're going to do because they have to address what's happening in the lower K.
Starting point is 00:46:43 Let's do the sentiment correcting, but you're still expecting a year-end rally. So this is what we've been waiting for. Like we said, we came through the summer. Everyone has said, hey, seasonally, you expect a sell-off here at some point in the summer. And we didn't get it. Sentiment was sky high. This goes back to that whole AI, the first AI discussion is like, what was going on? Was there anything real fundamental happening that was causing this recent AI pain?
Starting point is 00:47:11 I'd say, no, you just get too many people on one side of the boat. And you need to correct that sentiment. That's the process of bull markets. So our model, this is just basically, you know, we take things like positioning. We take leveraged ETFs. We take the polls that everyone looks at. And we spit out what's our sentiment reading. We've been above 70, which is extremely optimistic sentiment for, you know, a pretty long time you can see.
Starting point is 00:47:35 And we've finally started to break down. And this morning we're down to 44.8. 40 is like excessive pessimism. You would love to see that as a setup. You can see the trading stats on the bottom part here. But the bottom line is this is a, we're getting this right. at the time when seasonals converge to the most positive part of the year. The other chart that we have in here that we can look at is buybacks seasonally come back
Starting point is 00:48:00 in December. That's been, yeah, here we go. So this is the seasonal pattern of buybacks. Oh, wow. Look at that. And it's been a huge factor this year. Like you can see back in May when we had April, May, when we had the initial liberation day sell off, corporates were up to as much as 8% of daily trading volume, which is
Starting point is 00:48:19 insane. So they were in there with retail setting the bottom. That's been a huge fact. You can see the purple line. That's this year. The blue line, that's the average going back to 2014, 2014 and 2024. You can see we've surpassed it. So corporates have been a big part of this market and a flow.
Starting point is 00:48:35 So the bottom line is we have sentiment that was excessively optimistic, has now gotten close to pessimism. And seasonally, we know the calendar is favorable, but the flows are favorable because corporations are coming back and start doing their buying. So positive. So they had they had to go through earnings. So during earnings, they're not engaging in buyback activity. And then now that they're in the clear, we've gotten all the earnings.
Starting point is 00:49:01 These companies have buyback authorizations. And if they're, you just mentioned how many stocks in the S&P are in 20% drawdowns, let's go. Like, have at it. This is your, this is your opportunity. So I like that set of going into your end also. I think, I think it's a good place to bit. The one thing I would say is we've studied these periods where you have this very narrow market going into this part of the year. And like you said, people want to buy the laggards, but usually the leaders.
Starting point is 00:49:33 It's the leaders that end up getting the flows coming into the year end because people want a window dress and they want to buy, they want to own the stuff that's been working. And they sell for tax loss and things like that. They're selling out of the laggards. So when you study it historically, more than likely, as much as it, It's unsatisfying for the average market participant. We think that the leadership will stay where it's been comming. So, Warren, that's a really good point about taking advantage of taxes harvesting, which wealthy people are increasingly doing.
Starting point is 00:50:04 There's one notable group of lagrids in the market, which is the software names, particularly the mega caps. I'm talking about Salesforce and Adobe and a little bit lower down the market cap spectrum at Lajian. These particular stocks are like on life support. They are right at multi-year support, like on death's door. Do you think that there is a catch-up trade in that group to year end? Or are these names really truly effed? You know, because I don't have any, like, domain-specific knowledge, I would go by my framework,
Starting point is 00:50:37 which is that if, you know, my default hypothesis is that the laggars, the deep laggards like that are going to get sold here at the year, end of the year. And especially with the setup where you had this nice little pullback in names like in video and some of the other hyperscalers who were still positive year to date and some of the hardware names that were positive year to date but just had a nice bulldeck I wouldn't bet on software catching up I would bet on this divergence growing all right so this Josh J.C would love this like these things are going to get crushed into year end have a false breakdown and you buy the snot out of them in January like what the 20 the bottom quintile
Starting point is 00:51:12 like CRM Adobe team like those names that are sitting on false breakdown watch like they Mike have a breakdown into year end as people say I'm get rid of that like just take losses and then have just some sort of uh rubber band on the other side of the year I don't know so I don't know if this is always true and I just don't realize it but this year it feels like the laggards that list um it's just littered with like really big name big brand companies and it's Right, but it's like, it's like Nike and Chipotle, Starbucks, Salesforce, and Adobe, Starbucks, it's not, maybe it's on that list. It just, it feels like there are some large market cap. Target, there's so many.
Starting point is 00:51:59 Widely owned Target, great example. It's just, it's kind of weird to have like a regular bull market year, which we had with one pretty big correction. in the middle, right, in April. But it's like a standard bull market year for the S&P, but so many names are left out of it. Warren, we had a chart earlier from you talking about, like, there's more names that are down 20% than are beating the index or something like that.
Starting point is 00:52:29 We looked at this recently. I can't remember if we charted it or not, but the number of stocks that are down 30% with the S&P within 5% of an all-time high, it's very unusual. There's a lot of really funky things happening under the surface. That's what I'm noticing. As a setup, I love that.
Starting point is 00:52:45 I think there's opportunity, not for the first time, that's ridiculous, but there is substantial opportunity, I think, with a lot of these names that have just been completely discarded. It sounds like you don't agree, but that's right. Well, no, I mean, I'm talking very short term, tactical towards the end of the year. I mean, but I think that in order to get this at the eight, like I said, in order ratify the AI bull market at some point, you are going to need to have this, this broadening that's a more serious broadening than what we've seen through the last three years, let's call it,
Starting point is 00:53:15 you know, and that's going to be the AIs adopted and shows up in the results. And it only has to be a handful of these companies, because as soon as like a handful of the companies come out and say, we've adopted it, head counts done X, you know, or whatever it is, that there, however, that's going to express itself or margins have expanded by 25, 50 basis points because of this, you're going to get the market, there's going to be a massive search that takes place to find the next. And that's going to spread out underneath the next layer underneath the AI winners of the last three years. Yeah, I think you will get that.
Starting point is 00:53:50 So I agree with you. And I think it'll happen. Yeah, it's probably a story for next year, but not at the end of this year. Warren, you have a chart that shows the S&P 500 net profit margin with analysts' expectations. I'd be curious to know how right the analysts are. Like, if you look backwards, how much does this do actual deviate from expected? But to the actual point, if we see margin expansion in the 493, like, that is one of the biggest questions.
Starting point is 00:54:18 Do ultimately we see results from AI? And if we do, and margins go up, then the market is going higher, like, period. Exactly. So first question, do these analyst estimates come true? The bottom line answer to that is if you, because we've studied that, no recession, then they're very accurate. Recession, they're not so accurate. You know, they're not good at bottoms.
Starting point is 00:54:45 Recession. So that's why we do macro. If you're going to do macro, that's why you have to answer the question first. Is the Fed tightening? No. Is there going to be a recession? No. And everything else is kind of all clear from there.
Starting point is 00:54:56 So they are pretty accurate given the fact that we don't have a recession on our radar. So what we have baked in through 2027 is 250 basis points of margin expansion to an all-time high. And to me, and this is the goes back. one year ago, maybe more than one year ago, Fernando and I were with you guys in New York and we presented that research where we said, look, S&P 500 is going to go to 7,000 by some point in 2026 and still not be overvalued because of, and we went through this whole, the way the market has changed, the way the composition of the market has changed, and how that new
Starting point is 00:55:30 composition interacts with margins. So as margins expand with non-cyclical, less cyclical businesses like the mature tech stocks that are in there right now, multiples go up. And we did a whole bunch of work on that. And that's just a, that's a phenomenon you see consistently through markets. So that's what the chart you're referencing is that when you get margin expansion, it's very rare to see multiples contract in those calendar years. So I don't think if this number comes through, if we get 250 basis points of margin expansion, this valuation concern is a great concern to fade. That's not going to,
Starting point is 00:56:06 let's put that last chart up. So this is price to sales versus change in margin. And what you're showing is that, I'm sorry, the next one. Yeah. So what you're showing is like, if these companies can continue to grow margins,
Starting point is 00:56:23 then you're not going to have to worry about valuations like price, like price sales standing in as a proxy for margins contracting or expanding. it's very rare to have that margin growth and people say, I want to pay less for these stocks, not more. Correct. 2007, 2005 or two years where we saw that, that was a highly cyclical market composition.
Starting point is 00:56:45 That was energy. That was financials. It's a different interaction when those are your market. That's where your market mass is. Then you had 2000 and 2018. Those were fed tightening years. That's not happening either. So, like, those are the things you have to think about.
Starting point is 00:57:02 But the bottom line, and there's, we have a much more detailed studies than this, but it's a good perspective. The bottom line is, if margins do what the analysts think they're going to do, the market is not expensive. And they are, like, and they are. Like, Walmart, Walmart is up as we're recording 6% on the day. They beat earnings. They waste guidance. They raised on the earning side. They're doing things more profitably.
Starting point is 00:57:27 It's, you're going to tell me Walmart's not battling with tariff issues. They sell. everything under the sun to everyone, but they're finding ways to do it. And that's the thing that continues to serve as this like underlying trend of upside surprise. The best companies, the Walmarts, they just continue to battle and find margin. And investors continue to reward these stocks with higher multiples. It's not forever, but it's definitely right now. 100%. And they're holding headcount constant for five years for the next five years for the next years is what they're saying is what my understanding is so what else funny they said they want to be on
Starting point is 00:58:06 the nasdaq did you hear that i did hear that ny s e the nasdaq shift yes yes i don't know very interesting i don't think that's a cost saving measure because i from what i'm told it's about equal which exchange you're going to list on i don't think they compete on the cost of listing so i wonder if that's just like hey we're cool like we're we do technology too that's we do i robots are coming in Walmart. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. All right, dude, that's a great place to leave it. We love having you on, Warren. And I know our audience appreciates the 30,000 foot view and then translating that into a market posture. And I think you do it better than anyone we know. So thank you so much. What are you looking forward to? What's next for you?
Starting point is 00:58:52 Anything on the radar? Yeah, man, the thing I'm looking forward to is we just, we've had an internal AI agent that builds charts for you on the fly. It's been the thing that's leveled up bar efficiency. And we are, in 2026, we're going to start allowing some outsiders to have access. And so we put some demos out on social media. I'd say, check it out. We're very excited for that. I think it's going to be, it's, you'll just have to see the demos. I could go on and on, but watch demos. You'll be impressed. Are you telling Michael and I that 314 research has gone a gen dick? We've been a genpick. I mean, that's why we don't have. Our headcount has been constant, Josh. That's what I'm talking about, you know? This is why we're believers.
Starting point is 00:59:31 So Warren, helping to cause more of that K-shaped economy, and we appreciate it. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. I want to send you to Warren's site and make sure you check it out. What's the best, what's the URL for people to go to? They want to learn more about you and Fernando. The number three, that spell out 14 Research.com. And if you're interested, fill out the form and we'll get back to you. All right.
Starting point is 00:59:56 Check out Warren and Fernando's stuff. They're always great. Guys, thank you so much for watching. Thank you for listening. We appreciate you. We wish you a great weekend. And The Compound shall return. See you soon.

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