The Compound and Friends - Worst Quarter in 4 Years, Oil vs Stocks, Win Rates From Buying Corrections, the Case for T and VZ

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Join ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Downtown Josh Brown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for another episode of What Are Your Thoughts and see what they have to say about: the worst quarter in four years, the opposite of private credit, win rates after corrections, mystery charts, and more! This episode is s sponsored by Public and Janus Henderson Investors. Find out more at https://public.com/WAYT Learn more at https://www.janushenderson.com/ Sign up for ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Compound Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and never miss out! Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-compound-media/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Public Disclosure: Paid endorsement. Brokerage services provided by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Investing involves risk. Not investment advice. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and investment values may rise or fall. See terms of match program at https://public.com/disclosures/matchprogram. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time. 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

All right. There you are. What's up? What's up, guys? Hey, gangsters. Well, I'm just looking at all the pounders that are here for the live. Michael, this is an exciting day. I'm so excited to talk markets today.

Me too. I see some Cliff Eastwood related commentary going on in the chat. Not sure what that's about. What related? What's going on in the chat? Like Clint Eastwood movies. Did he die? I don't know what's going on.

on. All right. Get off my lawn. Denver. Denver, Scribe says I feel superior to anyone who panic sold late last week. Should I be more stoic or no? No. Dude, talk your shit. Talk your shit. Good call. Should be proud of yourself. We don't like panic selling on this channel. We're not down with that at all. So, but by all means. At Career Whisper says can't wait for them to not get into politics. I don't. Is that sarcasm? You want us to do politics?

Are we CNN? You want Michael Battenick's politics? Are you interested in that? Maybe we'll start a new channel. Let's do local politics. We don't do that here. We do stocks and occasionally bonds. All right.

Everybody's here. If I didn't shout you out today, I do see you, and I appreciate you. We have a sponsor tonight. We have a lot to get to. So let's do this public. One of our favorite sponsors in the whole world today, the show is sponsored by public, which is the investing platform. For those who take it seriously, it's a place where you can build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks,

bonds, options, crypto, and now generated assets, which lets you take your ideas and turn them into an investable index using AI. That's right, Josh. It just starts with your prompt. You can literally, and I do mean literally, type to any prompt you want and put the machines to work. It greets thousands of stocks, builds a one-of-a-kind index just for you. You can back-tested against the S-P-500, and then in just a few clicks, boom, you can invest. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's.

Go to. So go to public.com slash W-A-Y-T and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. that's public.com slash W-A-Y-T, paid for by public investing, full disclosure in podcast description. All right, put me on screen. Did you see what public announced today? I thought it was pretty cool. And I think our, I think our audience probably want to know about this. They released agentic AI that allows you to write rules into your portfolio and just have the AI

execute while you're not even logged in or looking at it. And this was in the Wall Street Journal. John, on screen. So the Wall Street Journal wrote this up. And here, AI agents could be deployed to buy protective puts. Should oil spike hedging against potential stock losses and automatically sweep customers cash into higher yielding assets like bonds. You can also use the agents to add a 20% stop loss order on all your trades.

So we're like we're getting further and further into this moment where people have more of an ability to, I guess, automate the things that happen in their brokerage accounts. It's not just like we've had automated dividend and reinvestment for a million years. We've, you know, we've had certain things that are just like people expect. But now the tools are getting to the place where you can basically code your brokerage account. You could program it in advance for how you want. wanted to act. So I wanted to give public a shout out for that because I really feel like they're pushing the envelope. What do you think? Here's what I want. I want them to be able to read my blood pressure and buy stocks when I get nervous because sometimes it's hard to buy stocks when you get nervous.

Like an aura like you want like a collaboration with the aura ring. I want to write or your Apple watch. Yeah. So when your pulse quickens at like 10 a.m. because the market opens in a gap down. Yeah, you got to buy it. Just you want it to just. You want it to just circumvent. your feelings and emotions. I mean, I don't know. That's a Costanza method. Guys, I don't know where you, those of you who are trading your own money, I don't know where you trade.

But public.com slash w-A-Y-T is doing some cool stuff. So just putting that out there. Today's show is sponsored by Janice Henderson Investors, 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 jannishenderson.com. So here's the narrative of today. The market was going to bounce anyway because Friday was just a puk. and then Monday, there was a lot of dip buying happening out there. Not in every stock, but the software stocks as a group did go green, mildly green yesterday. Very green. Yeah, and I think this morning, the futures were higher. We were sort of going to drift higher.

Jensen Wong went on TV and had some really bullish stuff to say that, the Kappex cycle. And it just seemed like one of those days where we were going to get more. follow through than we got on uh from monday and then i'm on the halftime report and it's like 1248 and we're right in the middle of one of my solo segments and the judge interrupts me he's like listen hold on there's a headline from another news service i think it was probably Bloomberg right and it was something something something something the prime minister of iran is like willing to talk. And this is after, here, Iran's president, Peschkian, here's how political we're going to get. This is the furthest we're going to go. Says Iran is ready to end the war with the U.S.

but wants guarantees. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump tells AIDS he's willing to end the war without reopening Hormuz. So that combination, two different headlines, ended up producing a thousand point Dow Jones rally. You know how I feel about those points? It's a lot of Joneses. It's a lot of points and a lot of Joneses. Here, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump has told AIDS. He was willing to end military hostilities in the Middle East, even if the Strait of Hormuz remain largely shut.

The New York Post, Charlie Gasparino, later reported the president said he believes the Iran war will likely end soon with other nations taking the lead and reopening. So now the premise from the White House is like, if we we just stop bombing them and start pulling back, the straight will open because there's a lot of other countries that Iran actually does business with and the oil will flow, which will reduce prices. And we killed so many people anyway. It almost doesn't matter.

So that's like sort of, that's the vibes today. And the market liked it. And we said last week, this is pretty much what the market is waiting for. And you got it. What do you think? I think that what we have been talking about, I think we were right about this one. There was this, like, why won't the market just capitulate already? Why won't?

Why is it just such a slow bleed down 1% every day? We're in an almost 10% correction, not even a single down 2% day with all these headlights flying out there. Like, why aren't we just getting the, the whoosh? Why is the VIX not really spiking? And it's because the taco put was here. And it was the right. Today is the risk of, of, of, of. Getting out and a panic.

Right. Yeah. And nobody wants the answer for that. You think about how much money is managed by third parties on behalf of other people. Those are your clients. You want to call your clients and say you puked the lows. And then Trump throws in the towel on this whole thing. And it's like, what did we do?

We got out at the lows for no reason because you felt like it. It's like the worst feeling in the world, honestly. I know this is our jam. We're beating this dead horse here, but we and every other advisor tells our clients, like, listen, this is part of the deal. And every year, there's a 14% drawdown on average. That's a max entry year drawdown. And every time it happens, we act like it's the end. The bull market's over.

Their narrative starts to take hold. Last week, we started to hear the R word that there's a recession coming because the market was falling. And I think I rejected it. I hope I did. And who knows what tomorrow holds. But absent, I mean, I feel like the low's got to be in. God, God is a strong word. God is a strong word.

Twin, we did a show with James Labenthal not two weeks ago. And the title of the show was, are we in a bear market? Right. Like that's the extent to which we, that's what, I mean, we concluded no. And obviously so to Jim. But like, that's where we, that's where we got to. But wait, but. But and also 40% of the index wasn't in a bare market.

So. Yeah. I the oh it's a bare market if you're in home builders the conclude conclusion that I that I was operating on operating under is that this is a good clean washout that you love to see it's a hopefully told on let me finish what somebody's got got your attention to chat I want to see I want to see the I want to see the map the market map while you're talking all right so what's good so I'm kind of interested on what didn't bounce today so the credit card companies like visa. 90 basis points. That's kind of weak sauce. Don't really like that. Mastercard. And these stocks have gotten pummeled. So you have give back on the energy stocks. These have been the winners. Some give back on the staples didn't rally. You'd expect that. I know it's only one day. They were super strong yesterday, but Salesforce up 90 basis points today. Adobe 81. That's it. Service now is down into it up 70. 8. Not great. So no follow through with the software names.

But here's here's the bigger point. And we'll get to this in the show. You have, multiple compression across the board with earnings at all time highs. Yeah. And you had a lot of, a lot of CEOs come out reinforcing that they're not seeing a lot of demand destruction and assuming that this war is going to end, whether it was today or even if you said it's going to go on longer than we thought it ends in June or July. On the back half of this, oil retreating, interest rates coming down, inflation coming down. You don't, and I was saying this last week, the

Bulls will be back. And I don't know if that was today, but it's a good start. Well, I think, so I don't know if we get follow through tomorrow, but to your point, what today does is it reminds people, all right, like this is what the market does when for one second we forget about all our problems. Every time. It's a great, it's a great reminder. Give me the crude oil chart.

This is five days. the intraday move was smaller than I would have thought. So this is WTI. I think I would have thought we would see more of a falloff. You can see that knee jerk was like way lower. And then it sort of picked back up because the reality is what the guy from Iran said and who the fuck even knows if that's the guy that has the power to do anything? It's impossible to know.

but like there was literally nothing in his statement that was new it says he they're willing to talk if so long as certain conditions are met they said that last like they've always been saying that you know what those conditions are they want reparations for the shit we blew up they want like certain guarantees that we're not prepared to give them like it's it's really not news news news which is why I think the oil sell-off didn't really stick. And you saw it sort of rebound into the afternoon. Let me show you the S&P. This is five-day.

So, I mean, the gap, the gap held, and it was retested shortly after, and then it just went. And that's the nightmare scenario for the people that swung, quote-unquote, swung to cash. Well, also, yesterday was another reason for people to sell. You tried to open high on Monday. I don't know what it was up at the highs, but we gave it all back. I was like, all right, enough. I guess it's just not going to happen. But here's the thing.

Here's the other thing that really matters. Bloomberg had a chart of European natural gas prices and 40 to 50 percent of their homes are powered by natural gas or heated by natural gas. Yeah. That chart has gone vertical. We are an energy independent company. And thanks, God. Country. What did I say company? Country. Thank God we are because our natural gas prices have been basically unimpacted. There was a quick spike, came all the way back down. And so we're just not impacted by the price of crude oil and the price of natural gas internationally the way that the rest of the world is. Yeah, you're right. But let's like draw an important distinction. We are absolutely impacted by the price of oil, not because we don't.

have a lot of oil we do and in fact we can be a net exporter if we wanted to it's the price of gasoline that matters and we absolutely had a huge gasoline spike natural gas is different we are actually the saudi arabia of natural gas we have somewhere between a 100 and 200 year supply so much so that we're shipping it out as fast as we can from terminals they built in louisiana for people that um follow the stock lng that's shenie nc that's shenie energy. They spent 12 years financing these export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. And those terminals are active because the world needs natural gas. A lot of the supply comes from Qatar. That was temporarily impacted thanks to the straight of Hormuz. And you had a lot of assets get hit in the

Gulf region by $12,000 drones. It's actually one of the most interesting thing about this conflict. Let's say we have like a ceasefire or a truce. You know what American companies are going to do during that ceasefire? We're trying to build cheaper projectiles to knock out these drones. We're firing million dollar missiles at $12,000 drones. That's like financially, economically, that is problematic. And so there's a lot of interesting things happening with this particular of conflict, but in the, oh, give you the NASDAQ, guys. So this is, this is like another, another gap and the stock just kept going. And I think seeing the software rebound was really important psychologically for the rest of the market. It's not like it was just semis ripping.

Like, we had three, four, and five percent moves in some big software stocks. And I think, and communication stocks, the market needed to see that. When we had, when we had John Boyer on last week. It was Thursday. I said, why the hell is Facebook down 9%? Yeah. Like what? Outside of Liberation Day and earnings, this just doesn't happen. It just doesn't fall 9% in a day. And it was up, it was up 7% today. So the buyers are back. Give me the XLE. So here's the energy sector, immediate sell-off, huge profit-taking. I mean, these stocks are up 30, 40% on the year. But then you see, into the clothes, they bought them. It's down 1% today.

They bought them. Here's the semiconductors. Not as dramatic of a, the same, it looks the same shape of the bounce, but not as dramatic because these stocks were barely down. A few that were down, but, you know, in general, here's the, now here's the IGV. So I bought this on Friday at literally at the low, time stamped, right? I text, I, I slacked you. Could I have time that trade?

any better probably not right um well i'm going to the tape because i said to you 77 i think i'm the smartest man alive all right take it easy i mean it's it says pristine of a bottom call as you'll ever see in your your career okay i said i said on 223 all right i want to buy something josh you're good at this what balance is hardest on monday if there's a positive headlight on over the weekend what did i say here terrible call but but then seven minutes later after maybe i encouraged you to get in then you bought so you're welcome whatever still one money's still green all right so we're finishing we're finishing the quarter today is the point tomorrow's april first happy april fuls day it is the worst quarter for stocks in four years that that escalated quickly um is it is it is a is a

There's a Wall Street Journal article. Let's put this chart up real quick. This is just index performance year to date. Give you guys a little bit of context. We're looking at the percent decline on the Y axis for the Dow S&P NASDAQ. NASDAQ, the worst, down a little bit more than 10% going into today. That probably got somewhat better, but just directionally, it's been almost straight down since the first week of February. S&P probably negative 8% at its worst.

and Dow Jones a little bit better, negative 6% at its worst. And again, today we got a bounce. What's better than multiple compression on investor anxiety? That doesn't come to fruition. Because if you get the multiple compression, then you get the earnings falling, yeah, that's a deadly combo. We didn't get that. But, well, we'll say.

I mean, I hope not. But absent that, absent like the fundamentals changing, investors wanting to pay less for the same dollar of earnings as they're growing. I don't know, I like that nine times out of 10. What's this strategist chart? You want to pop this? So yeah, people are unexcited about the stock market. In fact, Todd shows that this is the weakest, uh, inflow for equity markets, equity

ETF specifically in nine months, nine months. Yeah. People are people have just. People have. it they've lost interest so and again they're they could change their mind very quickly and let's say if today was the day all right here's the journal u.s stocks set to deliver their worst quarter nearly four years um and the point that they're making is it wasn't that long ago that this was supposed to be an awesome year still could be we're only three months in um

here's the journal flashback to december economic growth was accelerating the federal reserve appeared poised to make further interest rate cuts and markets had moved past the uncertainty created by U.S. disputes with international trading partners. Together, the trends pointed to the potential for double-digit returns and investors came into 26 confident the rally was about to sweep up many of the stocks that set out the rise of big tech and AI. Quote, we had a perfect backdrop for a broadening. All the stars aligned. That's Michael Kemp. Cantuess from Piper Sandler. I like him.

Then this just put a huge pause in it. Okay, lesson number one, I don't care what the setup is. And this goes for a bullish setup, like what was just described, or a bearish setup. Something will always, almost always come along and interrupt it. Doesn't have to be a permanent interruption that changes the direction of the trend. but absolutely it's never going to be easy yeah there's a little jab well jab we did have a great setup think about it we had like financials rocking last year the health care stocks joined the party not just last year not just last year RSP the equal weight hit an all-time high in March in March

in March so all of this bad quarter stuff it happened in the last 30 days yeah and and so that's that's lesson number one um here hold on Quote, by some measures, stocks remain on solid footing. Analysts are projecting a sixth straight quarter of double-digit earnings growth for S&P 500 companies during the first three months of 2026, according to FACSET. These are the earnings we're about to get in about 10 days from now. Some investors are impressed. Stocks have inferred even worse this month, given the circumstances.

So this is lesson two. I don't care what you think the outlook is for earnings. I don't care what your bottoms up analysis tells you. I don't care if you sit on every conference call under the sun and do channel checks and whatever bullshit you do. You can't control the multiple that investors are willing to pay at any given moment. That's a moving target. There is absolutely no way to predict it. There's no way to know when it's going to expand.

There's no way to know what's going to fall. A lot of people think they have inside and for me. Oh, rates are coming down so multiple should expand. Oh, yeah. Has that been your experience this year? We've had a 19% multiple contraction this year. And the last moves from interest rates were lower. 25% on tech with double digit earnings growth.

Right. So that's lesson two. Let me read the rest of this. Quote, the recent volatility has mitted some winners. stocks in the S&P energy sector are up 39% this year on track to notch their best quarterly performance ever. Other asset heavy industries, they wanted to say hello, but they were afraid to,

such as materials also outperformed as investors scout for companies that would be tough for AI to disrupt. Why can't they just put my name? That's literally they're saying it without saying it. And many analysts are saying, to their original targets of modest stock market, so that's lesson three.

It's not like in a normal correction, every stock goes down. In 2008, every stock goes down. Most corrections are not 2008, which is, I know people think like, oh, correlations go to one. Yes, in a crash. In a crisis, yeah, right. In a crisis, that's right.

In a dip, in a correction, it's not true that you're going to get this washout where all stocks go to a correlation of one and everything is red every day. It really doesn't work that way. It's very rare. And in this particular moment, you absolutely did have safe havens in your equity portfolio, stocks that did not fall with the rest of the market. A lot of them are going to fall. Until the end. Dude, Walmart, very green, Costco, very green. Caterpillar and Deer, bright green.

The hardware, computer hardware, sand disk up 168%. Like a lot of things worked this quarter. Johnson and Johnson, I may not say nothing about energy, of course. Sorry, Jay Hampton says, Halo has been around forever. Jay, I will throw you out a window. It is absolutely not. I invented it on February 8th. All right.

What do we do? Oh, oh, oh, oh. So here's the Donald Trump truth social. All of those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hermuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran. I have a suggestion for you.

Wait, what? This is Trump. Number, this is prior to the rally. Number one, buy from the US, we have plenty. And number two, build up some delayed courage, go to the straight, and just take, Take it. You'll have to start.

I've been saying that. Yeah. You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The USA won't be there to help you anymore. Just like you weren't there for us. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil.

President DJT. I love this. Get your own oil. In other words, all right. You don't want to help. No problem. You're the ones that have the problem getting the oil, though. Not us.

I mean, it's factually true. It's a problem for the whole world to have gas prices at $4 rather than three. But the oil issue itself is really it's Japan's problem. It's Korea's problem. It's Europe's problem more so than it's ours. Now, we created this problem. But, I mean, it's factually the case. Get your own oil is not bad.

I don't hate it. Okay. The last couple of years, it's been all about the max. seven strip them out and the sEP has gone nowhere earnings have gone nowhere me that's not entirely true but you know i'm exaggerating uh and the versus the reverse happened in the first quarter so of the of the whatever of the how many points do we lose of the 500 something points uh that the sq 500 lost in the first quarter 75% of those points child on please john 75 75 of those percent of those points came from the max seven with microsoft and it's 34 percent decline leading

the charge. Wow. How about that? Look at this. Look at this. I never really seen a point attribution done this. His truck hit Matt, obviously. This is pretty impressive. So these are the stocks that gave you the that gave you most, not not all, but most of the gain over the last couple of years. And that's exactly where they took the market cap from when they wanted to sell. Is that the right way to interpret this? Mm-hmm. So the story is very easy. We all understand where the compression is coming from as these companies transition from asset light to asset heavy.

Ostensibly, there we go. I said it. Their cash flow is going to come down. Their margins are going to come down. And investors front run that to the tune of a 34% decline. And now Facebook's training at 16 times earnings. So. InVIDIA 15.

Invidia 15 on next year's number. you're going to grow earnings 74% this year, 30-something percent the following year. All right. So it's a good story, Josh. It's a sub-20 multiple. So I've got- What are we doing? I've got nine stocks for you that I'm going to spend a minute on each tops.

I want to ask you, are these stocks? I got one ETF, these fat pitches. And we could define the fat pitch as either, yes, this is the bottom. or maybe it's not the bottom, but just hold your nose and come back in three years. Sorry, to clarify, we're saying fat pitches. It's just a fat pitch. What? You thought I said something different?

It's a fat pitch. Right. So all of these stocks, all these stocks got whacked off to varying degrees. And now I'm asking you, Mr. Brown. Did the whack off of these stocks create a fat pitch? That's right. Okay. So we're going to start with IGV.

these names were in a 35% drawdown and credit to you for buying them on Friday. They are obviously at critical potential support. Fat pitch, bottom. Yes. Oh, so do these two things have to be the same? No, no, they don't. So we could say fat pitch, but possibly not the bottom because that's how I feel about these software stocks.

Yes, that's fair. That's fair. Okay. Some of these software stocks may. have bottomed unless we're going to have like a like a market wide crash then forget everything I'm talking about I'm talking about the group we understand they'll be winners and losers so in three years will this have appeared in hindsight to be a fat pitch yeah I think so even if it's not the ultimate low it's we are in fat pitch territory and I love all the little pitches that are in this

index like when I look at the individual names I look at the individual IGV holdings there's things in there like Palo Alto and CrowdStrike and Palantir's in there and of course Microsoft is in there there's just there there's all sorts of pitches in there so all right invidia was that was in a 15% drawdown and this says jc false breakdown false breakdown all over it yep who so who who is selling invidia invidia falls from 215 to 170 and then there are sellers in the high 160s? I think, I think this is that like a moron? This is all computers.

I think it's just like, oh, it's breaking a level, just, you know, dump it. So that's the, to me, that's the sexiest pitch. I think this is, this is obvious. If, if yesterday's lows don't hold, then the next 10% is lower. My average cost is too low for me to add to it. But this is exactly what I would be, I would be doing. If I ran a mutual fund, I wouldn't even care if I was a growth manager or a value manager. I'd be buying it either way.

All right. Sell it all to me. I want to read you a quote. This is from Delta Airlines CEO. Okay. This is a recent quote. Our consumer is really healthy. We live at the top end of the K that people talk about.

The premium end of the K. And that's where over 90% of our revenue is sourced from. That group of folks. want to travel. They're investing in themselves. They're investing in the experience economy. We've seen eight of the top 10 sales days in our history this quarter and five of those just within the past two weeks within just the last week of this past March, even with fuel prices, even with the war going on, our bookings are up 25% year over year. So I ask you, Josh, American Express, there is a high degree of overlap. The stock fell 25% I think on fears that there will be. What is this pricing?

in that there will be crazy i'll tell you what it's white collar displacement it's the a i fears okay it's just a trini stuff right okay okay okay is this a fat pitch down 25% based on nothing you know what i would i'm i'm i'm heavy long berkshire hathaway which has a huge american express position but i would buy the stock right now if not okay i absolutely would i think that's a fat pitch i think that there i think that you're going to look back and say that that would that felt 25% for no reason yeah you know how i'd phrase that phrase it if if you buy American Express how how how much is it down 20 it was down 25% on no news okay if you buy American Express down 25 and there's another 20 further from here back it up everything else got destroyed to yeah you

didn't look any dumber than somebody buying any other consumer discretionary name financial name you yeah all right I would buy it John I think it might be out of what's my next chart here this is Oracle okay no all right so that pitch it's definitely a pitch you ask I'm glad you asked it's it's a little pitch Oracle was down 58% technically I do love the setup the risk ward is so clean like your out is so freaking obvious but not a fat pitch but it's like a dirty little pitch because it every one of these bounces along the way looked so convincing in the moment but when We have somebody in the chat, hire human asked to find fat pitch, please.

So like when you're in the batters box in baseball, the fat pitch is like the strike thrown right down the middle that all you have to do is swing and the fat part of your bat is going to hit the ball. And you can almost close your eyes and hit it into the outfield or further. That's a fat pitch. So Oracle to me, even if you're not. the war ends tonight yeah and even if they deliver on earnings this quarter neither one of those things is going to erase the questions that have driven this stock into this very intense downtrend it may it may be bottoming now maybe forming a bottom it's not a fat pitch because it's hard for me to picture

a v it's hard for me to picture it getting back to those it never belonged at those highs is is part of the problem here. I love the, I love the stock setup, but the case that you just made is spot on. And they're obviously under pressure from Open AI's lack of ability to pay them $300 billion in the next five years or whatever they committed to. All right. What do we got next, John? Yeah, not all pitches are worth hitting.

All right. This is a little, this is not a stock we talk a ton about, but Paramount. It won the deal. Spying Warner Brothers. And quietly. The worst short. quietly the stock is down like quietly 55% i dare you to buy it i'm not buying it uh how much they're gonna have 120 billion dollars in debt lots of debt i would rather buy the debt than the

equity i don't know what the i have no idea what the coupon is i'm pretty sure they won't go bankrupt fill that chart one more time john this is this chart sub 10 bucks this is going to six dollars All right, I'll buy that sex. This is going to $6. Not for me. Next chart. All right.

Mike Ron. Oh, this is so. I missed the whole run. All right. Here we go. No, you didn't. No, you didn't. So they just reported a couple weeks ago.

The revenue was up 75% quarter over quarter and 196% year over year. Their DRAM, which is 79% of their total revenue, was up 207% year. over a year. And yet, so the stock hit an all-time high on March 18th and then it fell 30% and it put him a big fat hammer today. Fat pitcher now. I think for a trader, this absolutely qualifies for an investor. I'm not sure. I agree. I agree. The history with these stocks is that they always top concurrent with the top of the memory pricing cycle, not the demand cycle. Don't get me there's a difference the demanding the demand for the for memory chips versus the pricing of NAND or flash memory back in the day it's not it's not this so these

stocks historically price a top when pricing tops and then of course the demand stays strong and the analysts defended and it just becomes like a it's like a it's like Vietnam if you're an investor it's it's real tough to be in these things on the way down. So I could be wrong. Great, great company, great stock. Right, Biff Gribles is pointing something out important. It's so cyclical that by the time it's topping,

that's when it looks the cheapest. It's like four times earnings. And people that don't understand how cyclical this space is, they'll be like, oh, it's so cheap. Yeah, that's the point. That's what cyclicals trade. They're the most expensive at trough earnings. So they deceive you.

You think that they're, you think that the valuation is out of whack. No, what you're missing is that the, the earning cycle is gonna kick in. And then when they're trading it five times earnings, eight times earnings, you get deceived. Because you don't understand the earnings are about to evaporate. And that's why they're so cheap.

And these are, these are tough stocks because they're doing unbelievably well. I got two, maybe three more. I think the short term amount looks good. I totally agree with you. All right. What's next? Robin Hood, down 57.

57. A perfect storm, a perfect storm of crypto getting killed and of retail traders saying, fuck this. I don't want to do this anymore. It's not fun. Okay. I think this is going to be reminiscent of Facebook 2022. I think Vlad is going to have a year of efficiency moment.

I think they're not as focused as they need to be right now. They a year six months ago, this was like the hottest stock in the world. I think it was one of the best S&P 500 names of 2025. That's not long ago. And now it's all about venture and prediction markets. So they had like every asset class that they were levered to, every hot trade, they were like they were getting credit for. And a lot of that stuff is reversed. And people don't want private assets.

They don't want venture. I mean, they want SpaceX. but it's just not the same fever pitch. Nobody wants Bitcoin, nobody wants ETH, nobody wants stable coins, nobody wants to hear about tokenized stocks. It like the moment passed. And in the meanwhile, they're going into a lot of areas like RIA custody, that it's not clear that they'll ever make money there.

So I think at a certain point, he's going to have to face his shareholders and say, okay, here's the deal. We're going to get more focused. we're not going to go in 12 different directions at once we're going to double down on the things that are really profitable and the market will like it when he does it i don't know how much more pain has to happen in the share price before he has that realization last one black rock so black rock is getting hit stock was down 20 23 percent i believe and it got swept up in the private credit stuff

they do own hps which is a serious contender in the space but yet it's a that's not around the error it's about i don't know two percent of total assets it's a much bigger part of their earnings because these are these are higher fee products but black rock is black rock and this is a fat pitch it's not this is one of the obvious black rock one of the best companies in all of financial services one of the top corporations on the planet it's not clear to me though the investment case in the equity of black rock it's basically it trades based on the strength of the markets. We had a terrible quarter for stocks and bonds in Q1,

therefore the stock is down. If the stock and bond markets rally in Q2, yeah, you'll make money long BlackRock, but you'll also make money long the markets. I would bet you that Black Rock's earnings. Do you understand what I mean, though? I understand exactly what you mean.

It's a proxy for the market is what you're saying. I get it. And you're not wrong. Black Rock, I would bet, has out earned the index for, almost every year for the last 15 years. Because they take market share every year. It's an incredible, it's an incredible business.

I'm just not sure that could, because effectively what they sell is access to public and private markets and investment strategies that are directly, the AUM fees that they bill on all of their strategies are almost perfectly correlated with the rising and falling of those assets. So if you're already invested in stocks, and in bonds do you also need black rock well i don't know if you need anything it fell double what the market did more than double what the market did on fears that do not necessarily pertain to the core

part of the business okay so they it could absolutely be a fat pitch that i just feel like there are so many others that it's like not the one it's not the only fat pitch in the in the in the in the ether there's so and that that that concludes our our segment that was fun That was fun. Did you agree with most of my takes? I feel like we agreed on almost everything. I do. Okay.

Oh, this is good. Adam Parker basically stomped on all this poppy cock about. Oh, shit. I'm sorry. Can I just say one thing? I apologize. I forgot to lead the segment with this. And this is just this is important.

John, my bad. So I have two charts in here in topic two that are very important. Otherwise, we would skip over them. So Sherwood has a. chart that shows an unprecedented divergence between stock prices and earnings estimates. In other words, you've never had stocks fall this much while the forward EPS is this high. There was an extreme dislocation. And not only that, not only that, but earnings or provisions are going higher, higher.

They're being taken up. Now, this might be way wrong, but this is a positive backdrop given them the multiple compression that we just started. All right, back to you. Sorry about that. I think that's why you can't panic. Excel. Now, if earnings, if earnings revisions level off and start and even go in reverse, we'll have a different conversation. You and I would be the first people to talk about it.

Correct. You know, we're not here to, we're not here to cheerlead the market and defend every single thing that happens. We call balls and strikes. But like, if you think earnings are the most important thing when it comes to like future returns of stocks, and I think most rational people do, what do you want us to tell you that earnings are going to be negative because they're not, at least not based on the consensus? All right, Adam Parker basically was like,

why are you still talking about breadth and internals? I'm just going to quote him and then we're going to flash this table. He wrote this over the weekend. The S&P 500 price is down 6.96% year to date, the worst quarter of this holds since Q2, 2002. Only 18% of quarters

in the last 98 years of data we have analyzed have been worse. So that's something. And almost all of those instances were in deep recessions or crises. This year reflects a combination of near universal bullishness at the beginning of the year, resulting in high earnings expectations, a belief that AI productivity would create an incremental impact and an accommodative Fed. Geopolitical unrest has certainly caused a large unwinded, but under the surface, there have been enormous single stock moves and a skew that should have led to many long-only managers outperforming the index. While the index is down 7%, 57% of stocks have beaten the market so far this year, and 42% are

up in absolute terms. 108 stocks are up more than 10% this year. Give me the table. This is taking those numbers I just read and showing. you what that looks like in terms of the stocks that are doing better than the market or worse. Adam says we point this out because every time we do TV, I don't know why he refers to himself as we. Someone says that they think breadth is good for equity markets. Chart off. We have shown several times over the years in our research that common breadth

indicators do not have any predictive value for market level returns. And while that might sound like a good sound bite to those who don't know better, it's actually sort of particularly silly given how much the market was up in 2003 to 2025 with low breadth and it's down this year with good breadth. So this idea that we need to have a certain amount of stocks going up, We've just witnessed a three-year period where the reverse was true. Very, very bad bread for a bull market in 23 and 24 and 25. Most people would agree. And yet did way better than how we're doing now that we have all this broadening.

I think it's a really fair point. What do you think? I think, yes. Listen, if you are bullish in a bull market, you would ideally like to see more participation. But to your point in Adams, that is hardly. a prerequisite for the market going higher in the short term or long term. It works either way. It works either way. Right. So I think that where it's where I think it's particularly interesting is at turning points. So for example, if you see indexes making new lows,

but the number of stocks making new lows is not confirming the decline, like you're seeing that number of new lows dry up or not expand to what JC would say. I like that. Right. You would like, oh, okay, maybe it's okay. But absent that, absent extremes turning points, which are really hard to define anyway, I think people spend way too much time on this. I think he's right. Okay. Sam Row on earnings.

This is a fun one. He references this moment in 2011 where David Bianco, do you remember that name? I do. Yeah. I think he was at Merrill at the time. He was the only strategist who was raising his forecasts for earnings. for earnings and stocks, U.S. stocks, in 2011. So for people that weren't trading in 2011,

we were in the midst of what looked like another 2008. Less than three years later, it was double-dip recession, and in Europe they had an actual recession, and a stock price crash, a bond market crash, sovereign currency crash, and he was raising his expectations. and Bianco ended up being right by 2012. We were headed back toward the 07 highs.

And Sam brings this up because another strategist had the balls last week to raise his S&P 500 price target for this year. You're damn right I did. So, yeah, wasn't you. So I'll tell you the story via Sam. He said I was reminded of this episode, referring to the David Bianco thing, this week because Barclay's Vino-Krishna raised his year-end target for the S&P from 7650 to

27650 from 7,400. This despite the market pulling back amid heightened uncertainty and elevated energy prices stemming from the conflict in Iran. Quote, this is VNuk Krishna. Our baseline is that concerns over AI disruption, private credit, And geopolitics reflect real and material risks, but ones that will nonetheless fall short of derailing the current growth cycle at this point in time.

And the key to his call is earnings. He is looking for $321 a share up from where he started the year at $305. And Sam reminds us, if you only have one metric, it should be earnings. They're the most important long-term driver of stock prices. Here is why he's raising his, here's why Krishna is raising his number from 305 to 321 per share for the S&P. Big Tech beat and raise cycle.

Q425 earnings confirmed big tech and broader TMT continue to outperform an AI-related demand. Industrial production inflecting. Barkley sees industrials as a direct beneficiary of the cyclical backdrop and AI CAPEX. Stickier inflation equals higher nominal earnings per share. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Their economists are predicting higher core PCE, which actually increases the earnings expectation. Give me this table.

This is Krishna's bull case, base case, and bear case. His bear case is a 10% fall from here, 5,900 on the S&P, which would be an 18 and a half month. multiple on 11% year-over-year earnings growth. The bulk case is 25% higher than here, Michael. What do you think about that? I love it.

Is there anything else in here? It's all about tech earnings upside or not all about, but very much about. And then let's skip to, I don't know what chart this is, S&P 500 calendar year, 2026. I forget about that. County or go to go to match charts. So same thing. So this is this is at Exhibit A for Advice.com for advisors if you want to get this for you. This is the actual earnings trends. Okay. This is real reported numbers for both the large, the mid and the small cap indexes. And they're going up into the right and also look at the consensus.

expected earnings estimates for the next 12 months up big league and if you expect this to materialize I we don't trade the economy or the labor market trade stocks we trade stocks people so everybody is well aware of all the rest involved and the economy's not great we cover that last week but but that's not what we're trading we're trading businesses so they're going business and yeah um one more thing in this segment it's been a shit show for 6040 oh stop it well i mean it has no it has no no it literally has no give you that chart so this is the yield on the 10 year uh treasury and you can see they indicate the start of the war we were uh just below 4 percent now at 4 and a half percent and that happened fast

A traditional portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds has lost 6.3% since the fighting started in late February. At the same time, falling bond prices have driven up the yield. The borrowing costs. I'm just saying. 6%. Mortgage rates jumped to 6.38% last week. Not great. It's yet another bad quarter for stocks where bonds didn't help.

And we've been having a bunch of those in recent years in the last five years. It does seem like more recently you have this environment where higher interest rates spook stocks and that's not good for stocks and it's not good for bonds, obviously. And it's not good for the 6040 because it's great for private credit. All right. So here's the opposite of private credit. There is this phenomenon on Wall Street where, we are getting products where there is a mismatch of liquidity of what can be traded. So where I'm going with this is Matt Levine wrote about this. Fund rise has a venture fund.

Now this venture fund is I think four years old. So it was a legitimate private placement for investors to access privately traded companies. And then it came public. I guess this is a, this is a closed end fund. I don't know what this is. Is an ETF? I don't know. Either way.

It's, it's, it's a closed end fund and not all of the assets in it can trade. Okay. But the share price is going to, the share price is going to reflect either a premium or a discount to the assets that it holds. So it can't be an ETAF. The story is the float is low on, on this product because there is a lockup. So if you invest in the private placement, sort of like an IPO, you can't just dump it onto the open market.

So there's a lot more demand than there is supply. So Matt says, Fundrise innovation has about $679 million in assets of their management, and more than 10% of the fund is not locked up according to a spokesperson. That's it. Wow. Okay. So this is the opposite of the private credit problem. A lot of individual investors want exposure to SpaceX and enthrasex.

and Open AI and the other hot private companies in the fund. Those companies all have more or less visible stock prices, but normal individual investors can't buy those stocks. So you could do it through this thing. So this thing came public. Try on please. It ran up 450%. This is the dumbest thing.

It went from 100 to 600 basically in like five days. And then it crashed 80%. And this is not the first time this has happened. This happened with a fund X over X OVR. and there was another one with DX Y Z. What is that? DXY Z. DXY Z was another one.

So these are public proxies for private companies. And this is now the third time, it just doesn't go well. It's really just four or five stocks that people want access to. They want X, they want SpaceX because it's like SpaceX, Starlink, X, I, it's all in one thing. They want Anderol, they want Stripe, they want data bricks. Anthropic. Anthropic. There's like a small handful of private companies that should be public based on how big they are.

And some of them will come public later this year. And so these vehicles are accumulating shares in those companies from insiders who need to get liquid, mostly employees, right? So maybe some VC is selling. But for the most part, it's employees who are able to get liquidity for their shares. So anyway, the fund did well. Like if you invested in this fund when it was a private place, privately. Yeah. Why did it?

Do we know why they came public? Well, there had to be a reason. Democratization. I don't know. But I couldn't have done it for this. I don't know. Democracy. I don't know.

But anyway, just be careful out there. What is the lesson? Like, because you're saying like the liquidity mismatch. So this is the reverse of the. Yeah, this is the obvious. probably don't buy something that ran up five times in four days. I mean, for starters, probably not a great thing to do. Let's keep them moving.

Why do people need to own this SpaceX so badly that they'll do this to themselves? What do you, what do you think? It's like a status, like a status thing or I also do. I think there's a lot of just greater full stuff in here. It's like it was a good trade. Listen, if you bought it at 100, you got a 300, you tripled your money in two days. Was this like a meme stock on like on Reddit or Robin Hood? Like what people.

Well, anything that goes from 100 to 600 is going to become Mimi, of course, because think about how much attention that attracts. There's a SpaceX proxy in the publicly traded market right now. It's called Rocket Lab, RKLB. If you're so horny for SpaceX that you need to buy some contraption that owns a little bit of SpaceX stock, I'm not saying like run out and buy Rocket Labs. but it's the same story. And arguably, it's two companies competing for the same contracts. And it's its own publicly traded company. Have at it.

All right. Let's do this quickly. Win rates after corrections. This is from our friend, your boyfriend, but my friend, Ben Carlson, who reminds us that down months, while not pleasant, are completely normal. And, well, let's do this first. Give me the volatility in stocks chart. Ben goes back to 1928, so it's 100 years of data, give or take.

He shows we have had 56 times we've seen a 10% or worse drawdown. Now, obviously, a few of those get way worse, which you can see here. Only three of them have been 50% haircuts. There are people who spend every minute of every hour of every day of their life worried about that three out of 56. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, wait, can I just say one thing about that?

As, as ridiculous as it is to spend your entire life obsessing about the worst case scenario. Yeah. Those worst case scenarios do happen. And they do f*** shit up. Like those 50% not haircuts crashes, wipe out a generation of investors. They can. So even though I think it's overdone how much time and energy people spend, how much time and energy

people spend worrying about it. they're pretty devastating when they do happen if if yeah when you have leverage and you have every dollar you'll ever earn fully invested how many people does that really apply to right right i mean i was buying the aftermath of 2008 i had no choice i was like 30 like i don't so i don't even like you have to be 90 and worried about not being able to feed yourself until you're 95 because who else is that really applicable to let me get this straight every dollar you will ever earn is fully invested in stocks and you have leverage in that circumstance I give you permission to obsess over the next 2008 in any other circumstance I do not right okay let's just

say, all right, well, but I'm retired. I won't earn any more money. Yeah, fine. And the professionals, what? Then you know, I'm a hundred years from money in stocks. The professionals who their whole personality is wait till the next 2008, those people should be ashamed of themselves because they should know these, these probabilities. Yeah.

Those people should absolutely be ashamed of this. So, anyway, Ben says, since 1950, if you bought stocks every time the month ended down, 10% or worse, on average, you were up 14, 15%, 42% and, and, 72% in total, one, three, and five years later, respectively. And obviously, if you bought down 20% or worse, it's similar, even better. And then, of course, 30% or worse, it's similar, but better. These are averages. So Ben says, look at the win rates.

The guys, the diamonds across the top are the win rates. So forget about, for example, the three-year average buying. 10% a month that's down 10%. The three year average return is 42%. That sounds great. Focus on the fact that it works 93% of the time. Do you agree with that take? I do.

Listen, McMurtry McMertry posted about this on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. This system is rigged to go higher because everybody's entire life is counting on growth. Everybody wakes up for the most part and says, hey, I want to have

a better existence for myself and my family and I want to make more money and I want to do better. And guess what? That's the system that we live in. We made this system. It's great system. It's society. Yeah. Yeah. The system is rigged. Who is it rigged by? Oh, every investment bank, every asset manager, every law firm, every 401k plan, every employee working in a public company, every executive at a public company, every solo investor, every family office. Yes, to big fucking conspiracy and you're sitting in cash talking about 2008 you should have your fucking head examined shut up stop tweeting all right um let's do make the case i pitched this on

tv and then i got interrupted by trump um but go ahead jenny harrington today yeah i know today was today was a risk on day so these stocks didn't do much they were fine but these stocks are working all year and we never talk about this stuff AT&T and Verizon. If you're worried about the economy, these are the stocks that you're looking at. And there are plenty of reasons to be worried about the economy.

I think in today's day and age, people would be more likely to skip the bill for their car lease than they would to let their phone turn off. I think this might be literally the most defensive trade that there is, cell phone towers and the wireless carriers. Do you know what the story is here?

like AT&T doubled in the last year or in the last two years like there's got to be what happened I'd love I would love to tell you the story these two companies Verizon and AT&T five years ago the analysts who covered the space had a nickname for these companies do you know what it was I don't dumb and dumb and dumber um Verizon spent 10 billion dollars acquiring AOL I'm not joking and Yahoo and Yahoo. That was a good purchase. And neither of those worked, obvious to everyone at the time and now.

Blackstone owns Yahoo. AT&T was worse. They bought Time Warner for $85 billion. The way Warner Brothers came into existence was AT&T threw it up. AT&T leaned out the car window in the wake of 2021 and threw it. it up into the street and into the waiting arms of discovery, which is, you know, Malone stuff. And it was like a merger of discovery and the time Warner business and it became Warner Brothers. And they saddled it with $45 billion in debt as like a wedding gift.

And AT&T went like this. That's why the stock's doubled because they got this anvil off their back. Anyway, that was then. these companies have become leaner and meaner. They've been de-leveraging. They've been doing all sorts of restructuring, all sorts of financial transactions to get out from under all that debt and all that bullshit. And now in the age of AI, arguably, these are two of the most indispensable companies there are.

They've made huge bets and built out massive broadband networks. They're selling broadband. fist and they've got the wireless subscriber business um verizon actually put up a great quarter and uh shocked people with how low their churn was for their subs they they should be mentioned there was a knock down drag out fight between these two companies and team mobile team mobile got very aggressive very promotional on pricing and these three companies just went at it like three piranha in a goldfish bowl and that era seems to be coming to a close and rational pricing is recovering.

And so these stocks are both working. In my column for Best Stocks of the Market, Sean and I did all the levels, all the risk management. But I think these are, you know, I think these are stocks that people don't follow anymore. Verizon is one of the top 20 yields in the S&P 500. It's close to 6%. They're so boring.

But they're not as boring. Now they're broadband plays. And their wireless subscriber business is solid. And they got out of a lot of dumb businesses. And they're Halo. They're extraordinarily halo. I mean, it's undeniable. You can't do anything with AI or if you don't have Wi-Fi and broadband.

And like none of that stuff works. So I like these stocks. And I think in the case of AT&T, I think you have a, I think you have a breakout common. $30 a share to me looks like a very obvious. level of resistance and if it breaks, this thing could be 33, 34 in a second. And you're being paid a decent dividend while you wait for that to happen. Verizon raised this dividend 20 years in a row.

Remember being paid to wait. You don't hear that much anymore. You're being paid to wait, my friend. Anyway, I've made the case. Would you buy either of these? No, they look good. I just, I don't buy these stocks. All right, great.

Can I have that last five minutes of my life back? Listen, you can't buy every stock, can you, Josh? I might buy one of the I might fuck around and buy one of these. So I like I like the way that AT&T looks way better like way way way. It's going to go. I think it's going to go. And now they're in the right businesses. Now they bought Frontier.

They're focused on the businesses where they make a lot of money. And you know, they're out of the media game. And I think it's a different stock now. All right. I've got two quick mystery trucks and we'll get out of here. Chart one please. This is a longer term view of a it's a ratio. I did it.

So just based on this, Josh, do you think the primary trend of the primary down, it's still a downtrend? Okay. Still a downtrendering. Okay. Okay. Am I guessing at what it is? I've got one more for you. And zoom in.

This is the last year. So it looks, it looks better when you just show it to me the last year. Yeah. I don't trust it. Okay. So this is, man, how do we give this clue? This is like, we spoke about this earlier in the show. It's, it was all the discussion.

over the last three years about which is going to work better this group of stocks or that group of stocks in the last three years i mean the last 10 years we're going to have this conversation okay so it's united states versus uh you're on the right track but now ether you're in the right track sp versus yes uh rest of world i don't know what is it it's it's uh it's the equal weight versus the cap weight oh okay so i was wrong yeah but but so but so your instincts were that the cap weight i don't The cap weight still has to benefit of the doubt versus the equal. Dude, just buy Apple and Nvidia and shut up. Because I'm telling you, I'm telling you right now, if stock's going to work this year,

I mean, this is where you want to be. What are we doing here? We're going to look for the seventh best regional bank in the Russell 2000. And that's what we're going to get alpha from. We're on the verge of Apple's AI product. and Nvidia is 15 times forward earnings. What do we talk, right? What are we talking about broadening?

For what? Not rhetorical, I'm serious. It's just a mystery chart. Okay. Not a bad mystery chart. All right. Hey, guys. Tomorrow is Wednesday,

which means an all new edition of Animal Spirits, starring Michael and Ben. If you like this show and you've not checked out animal spirits, you're going to love it. It's way better than this, because I'm not on it. It's a little more sane,

but informationally, highly nutritious. We'll do Ask the Compound later that day. And then on Friday, we are back with an all-new compound and friends. Thank you guys so much for joining us for the live. We appreciate it. Go ahead, smash that like button. Hit subscribe. Go on the app that you're listening to this

and leave a review for the love of God. And we'll see you soon. Thanks, guys. Good night. Rittholds wealth management is a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Ritthelts wealth management and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Nothing on this podcast should be construed as and may not be used in connection with an offer

to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy or hold an interest in any security or investment product. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Ritald. holds wealth management unless a client service agreement is in place.