Nvidia (NVDA) continues to dominate the tech sector as the company’s shares move past $1,100. The chip giant earned a boost from Elon Musk, who announced that xAI’s supercomputer will run on Nvidia technology. Meanwhile, Tesla (TSLA) shareholders are awaiting an important vote on June 13, which will dictate the fate of Musk’s proposed pay package of $56 billion. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will hold its annual meeting in Chicago this week, exploring the latest advancements in the cancer research sector. Tom Steyer, Galvanize Climate Solutions Co-Executive Chair, also joins the show to give insight into the state of climate change mitigation under a possible second Trump presidency.
I’m Julie High and that just in live from our New York City headquarters, we are giving you the ultimate investing playbook to help tune out the noise and make the right move for your money.
And here’s your headline blitz getting you up to speed one hour for the closing bell rings on Wall Street.
It’s not a surprise that the consumer is feeling well.
It’s actually been a little bit more of a surprise that the consumer had felt a bit challenged.
We have a historically low unemployment rate and the wealth effects of investing in the market continue to go up.
So it shouldn’t be a, a major surprise that consumers are feeling.
Well.
One thing to keep in mind is you don’t know if sell in May works until, until June, right?
We kind of know that but we don’t yet know if sell in May didn’t work.
We’re coming into this month, we’re ending this month, I should say on a very exuberant note, um stock, you know, basically, no matter how you measure it.
There’s, there’s very little fear and a lot of grief, one of the key elements of the buy out products that we offer is zero interest.
And so to some degree, we’re seeing, you know, a continuous acceleration of our growth and, and preference among us consumers due to the fact that actually from that stretch, a lot of that stretch comes from the higher interest rates on the credit cards and other lending products, right?
And actually to some degree biop becomes a more attractive offer, we’ve got one hour to go until the market closed.
So let’s take a look at the major averages while that exuberance over the longer term does remain intact that you heard Steve.
So talking about just there, we’ve got a little bit more of a mixed picture today and that’s because the big economic data of the week comes at the end of the week that is in the form of P CE which is the Feds preferred inflation indicator that said we did get a reading on consumer confidence today showed a rebound for the first time in four months that coming to us from the conference board that not really mitigating the declines we’re seeing at the moment with the dow down about 300 points of about three quarters of 1% the S and P down about a quarter percent.
The NASDAQ is the outlier here today to the upside.
It’s at the lows of the session but still up about a quarter percent.
And as we try and weigh all of this economic data, we see the 10 year note of the yield back above 4.5%.
We haven’t seen it at that level in quite some time.
A pretty big move upward today of about seven basis points.
So, um that may be causing a little bit concern.
We’re up about the same level that we were really coming into May.
So something to keep an eye on there.
Also watching what’s going on with the sectors today.
We’ve got health care, industrials, financials that are weak energy and tech are on the rise today.
And speaking of tech, when we talk about the NASDAQ being the outlier to the upside, we’re going to dig into it later.
But NVIDIA rising to another record today, Amazon and alphabet also on the rise.
But really uh that, that um strongest performer there would be NVIDIA among large cap tech, Josh.
All right, Julie stocks mixed as investors attention remains focused on the federal curve in their path to get inflation back to that 2% target for more on what’s ahead for the market.
Let’s welcome in Rob Hayworth us Bank, Wealth Management, Senior Investment strategist, Rob.
It is good to see you.
So you know, you heard Julie there stocks wavering today, Rob.
Do you wanna be putting more money to work at these levels?
Fed, uh measure of inflation, the fed’s preferred measure of inflation on Friday, but over the longer term, yeah, we think this is a growth oriented market where the economy is holding up fairly well and there’s room for earnings to continue to expand.
Uh We’ve seen analysts start to take up a full year, 2024 earnings expectations.
We’re, we’re estimating around $244 a share depending upon which service you look at.
Uh and that’s probably enough to keep this market in positive territory for the year.
Still lots of questions ahead but, but we’d be constructive over the long term, maybe a little cautious watching this week as the data unfolds.
Hey, Robert, it’s Julie here.
So what could be, you know, of all of those questions which is perhaps the most dangerous for the market, so to speak.
Wow.
Yeah, I, well, certainly we have the election coming up.
That’s probably uh a question but probably a couple of months down the road in the near term.
I think the question is what is the fed doing?
Uh And that’s some of what I think we’re seeing with the tape today is there’s a lot of questions from the market about FED speakers and how likely is the fed to start to cut rates?
We’re now seeing that maybe it’s not uh an event until November or December and maybe we get one this year instead of multiple.
Uh So I think that fed uh those, those fed speakers remain highly important and how the ad inflation data evolves is where the market is going to be really focused.
One issue, Rob, you know, I want to get your take on this because Ed Yardeni, the, the strategist and economist in his note to his clients this morning, Rob, he really zoned in on geopolitical conflict and, and what’s front and center there really.
And of course, you know, Russia, Ukraine, Rob and China Taiwan, Israel Hamas.
How do you think about that as a strategist in terms of just kind of economic and policy implications?
No, great great point.
It, it’s something where we really haven’t seen much of a market impact yet.
But we’re for our clients, we’re thinking about it as really being the epicenter in, in commodity markets, commodity markets in general are in shorter supply right now, whether we think about oil uh metals.
Uh we’re even seeing some, some supply disappointments when it comes to the US grain inventories.
Uh So we’ve actually thought that we want to own some inflation protection and portfolios against those geopolitical risks.
And we’re thinking about broadly diversified commodity exposure there.
And at the same time, it’s interesting because, you know, obviously those are also a risk, as you said to, to the um upside for inflation when you were talking about, um what’s gonna happen with the Federal Reserve this year at this point?
Does it matter to equity markets if there’s a cut or not?
So the agnostic part is probably the artificial intelligence and, and growth part of the market that we’re seeing just natural growth rates with or without the fed cutting rates.
Uh But we’ve seen smaller companies uh interest rate, sensitive companies thinking utilities and, and real estate have struggled with higher rates for longer.
Uh Is there some, some further pressure on those multiples as we look over the rest of the year and, and Rob just sticking with the, the fed, you know, Jay Powell’s favorite key inflation metric.
I mean, the surprises would be out of if we’re, if we’re, if we overshoot last month’s reading or undershoot last month’s reading right now.
I think consensus is about a 0.3% increase, about 2.8% year over year.
Uh, we, we don’t have anything to tell us to think differently than that, but we’d be worried if there was a, make an overshoot or undershoot.
Uh, and the mar that’s where the market would really start to react.
Um, are there any other places in the market that you think?
Um, it, it’s good to be right.
I mean, would you be in artificial intelligence, for example, as well as you mentioned some of those commodities?
But A I on the other hand, is that a good place to be?
Well, some of those names have been uh have certainly seen a surge in the last week in the last couple of days.
So it’s, it’s tough to buy at these levels.
But in the longer term, yes, we think that’s a place uh that investors need to have uh some money put, put invested just to be able to benefit from what looks to be longer term productivity growth.
But is right now, at least an epicenter epicenter of corporate investment.
How about fixed income investors, Rob?
Listen right now, if you’re looking for advice, what’s your guidance?
Yeah, we’re uh really interested in looking at credit both in the municipal space and in the corporate space.
We think there’s room to run here even though you’re seeing uh valuations are on the rich side.
That this solid economic growth scenario we have for the US economy is giving companies earnings room to run and earnings and some room to kind of continue to make those payments.
So we think there’s room for investors to kind of capture that extra yield, whether it’s high yield bonds, uh AAA collateralized loan obligations and in the municipal bond space, we’d look to the lower quality end of the in the market because uh because we think there’s high, it’s still kind of low distress there and, and room for people to capture those yields.
We’re just getting started here on market domination.
Coming up, shares of video are soaring to another all time high today.
On the back of an announcement from Elon Musk, we’ll check in on the latest trend tickers on the other side, plus a slew of retailers are set to report quarterly results this week, providing insight on consumer spending.
We’ll take a look at the sector in today’s investor playbook and at 430 Eastern time, it’s the latest edition of asking for a trend.
I’ve got you covered with the biggest market moving stories affecting your money.
Stay tuned, more market coverage after this.
Let’s check in on some of the top trending tickers from Yahoo finance.com, Invidia, top of the leaderboard today.
Yet again, those shares are trending higher following an announcement from Elon Musk that his A I start up Xa I is in the process of building a supercomputer to be powered by nvidia’s chip technology.
Really.
What we learned is how much he had raised in order to power that $6 billion valuing all of Xa I at about $18 billion and the sort of there have been, has been talk in the past that it was gonna, he was gonna use in video chips.
So this confirmation that he raised the money, it was like, ok, now he has the money to pay for all this chips.
Yeah, that’s right.
I mean, it’s interesting because what Elon Musk is kind of saying here is that when it comes to these LL MS, these large language models, I’m gonna be a player with Xa I and you kind of already know Julie who some of the core winners are gonna be there like, you know, open A I and Meta.
But he’s now saying, listen, Xa I is gonna be one.
I was impressed with some of the, the, the investors who piled in here.
I mean, these are marquee names and Isilon Valley that put money to work.
It’s Andre Horowitz, it’s Coya and when he raised $6 billion to your point, listen, you if you’re gonna be a player in LL MS, everybody knows you’re gonna need NVIDIA.
Yeah, I mean, and he has said in the past that he would need the, that 100,000 specialized semiconductors for this uh for Grok, which is Xais Chat bot.
And to Grok, something is like to implicitly understand something from your fellow human.
I was just gonna say, I mean, it’s interesting now because you do have the kind of different A I companies sort of clearly laid out and along with who’s backing them.
So you have Xa I, as you mentioned with Sequoia and Anderson, uh Horowitz uh Andries Hor, it’s behind it.
You have open A I that of course, has gotten $13 billion from Microsoft and you’ve got anthropic $4 billion from Amazon.
So you have kind of a choose your fighter kind of situation.
It’s also fun to think about, you know, Elon Musk has this empire and how kind of the pieces flow because you mentioned Gro as chatbot that requires a massive amount of data to train on.
And so it’s interesting like that’ll come from X but then I’ve seen these reports, they’re also already thinking, OK, how much data will flow from Tesla at some point too?
Right?
And you’ve got open A I which is forging different agreements with different news organizations and other sources to train its model.
So it’s very interesting and you know, I won, I don’t know if the quality of what they come out with, of the gen A I that they come out with is gonna depend on the, where they’re drawing the data from it.
It’s a great point because is the data that’s gonna train grok that fuel a lot of it’s gonna come from X?
I don’t know, ask some questions you ask, some people have been asking all of these questions like asking Gemini questions and stuff.
All right, we’ll stick with Elon Musk led companies, Tesla shares heading in the other direction today.
That’s proxy advisory firm, Glass Lewis has recommended that shareholders reject a proposal to reinstate co Elon Musk pay package and y’all will find this his very own pros submarine and joins the show.
Now he’s been tracking this story and has the latest pros.
So Tesla here wanting to sort of have their shareholders approve Musk’s 2018 pay package.
That was, that was sort of uh rejected by a Delaware Court.
Now, what’s happening now is Glass Lewis, the the advisory proxy advisory firm says, you know what don’t approve that pay package for Musk?
It’s just too excessive, right?
The amount of stock that people are that he is getting is excessively diluted to current shareholders more so than other pay packages that we’ve seen for the sort of mega cap tech companies, but also Fortune 500 sorry S and P 500 auto companies.
Well, you know what, I’m not actually getting a salary here.
Look at the, look at what the stock has done over the past five years.
So that’s sort of the kind of the crux of the debate here.
Glass is saying that it’s not good for shareholders.
Neither is the move from uh Delaware Incorporate Incorporation to Texas Incorporation doesn’t really make sense.
There’s too much uncertainties with Texas Business Law at this point.
So they’re saying stay in Delaware Musk, don’t get that pay package.
Uh and oh, by the way, he’s claimed that he wants at least 25% of, of, of the stockholding share and Tesla always gonna pull out A I and robotics and things like that.
And pros the meeting is what June 13th, correct.
So, we’ve heard from Glass Lewis who have we heard from?
And are there any big players that we’re sort of waiting to hear?
Which way they’re gonna go?
You know, we’ve had, we see some, a number of smaller shareholders, uh some small pension funds, some other types of funds that have said we’re not going to uh approve this uh pay package.
They put together a letter last week saying that I think this is a slow drumbeat here of those sort of concerns.
And of course, Glass Lew is a bigger player in the proxy advisor was saying that this is not a good pay package, you know, but we’re not surprised that glasses and probably iss will come out at some point and say the same thing.
But I think the big sort of concern is what is the fidelity of the world are gonna say Blackrocks?
Uh It’s gonna be up to the smaller shareholders, I guess.
Let’s say shareholders rejected that pay package.
What do you think Elon Musk was, would be I’m honestly not sure.
I don’t know if he would say, you know, what, who needs this?
I got Julie and I were just talking about Xa I or is it no?
Like he’s just, I mean, I can’t think of another company where the founder so embedded, I mean, Tesla is Musk.
Musk is Tesla.
What, how do you, what do you think his response might be?
You know, he hasn’t gotten paid, believe it or not in 2018, but his current holding of stock around 12 to 13% has seen his, seen that sort of his stake in the company, the, the value that go up tremendously.
Maybe he does fall through that threat in the Xa I and what you were talking about earlier and other of his companies get more of the attention from the A I and robotics point of view.
It’s hard to say what he might actually because he’s such a mercurial character that from one whim to the next, you don’t exactly know where he’s gonna go with that.
But from a Tesla point of view, I think he knows that it’s too valuable for him to, if he left his stockholding would, would the shares would go down, right.
So I think he, he knows he’s got to stay in their state, but maybe you’ll actually see a better, more balanced pay package from the board, which seems like right now it’s just rubber stamping a lot of what he wants.
That’s for the impression that a lot of people have.
So it’s hard to say, but you never know with Musk, you never, never know with that guy.
Thank you checking in on another trending ticker today in Smed.
This is not what we talk about frequently.
It’s a biotech company that announced positive results from a study of a drug to treat a, a rare lung condition that is called bronchi stasis.
Um and uh it affects, you know, not a huge amount of people, but enough that analysts are very, very positive after seeing the results of this study.
Yeah, I was just in terms of Thailand Julie company apparently plans to file for us market clearance in the final quarter of the year, then launch in mid 20 tw 25 filed by launches in Europe and Japan.
I, you know, analysts seemed very positive.
I saw JP Morgan analyst quote as saying the findings are a home run scenario, say they see the results as transforming the company and unlocking a tree, key driver of value and it sounds like investors were plenty excited too.
Yeah, I mean reading between the lines here, some of the other analysts, one it duo said that this should provide a huge sigh of relief for investors as we believe it helps to secure a more positive outlook on the company’s future.
So obviously, there was some concern over that the company has never turned a profit and it has been public for quite some time about 10 years.
The other possibility here as the company says in its statement is this maybe has the potential to address a range of neutrophil mediated diseases.
This is a certain type of inflammatory disorder.
So there could be potentially other applications.
I mean, that’s kind of the model with a wide range of drugs.
Now you you get it approved for one thing and then potentially it can be used for.
I saw another A I was also saying here, the company, you know, does have a fair amount of debt Julie.
So maybe I think their point was this rally we’re seeing here, gives them the chance to think creatively about some possible financing options too.
Makes sense.
Well, let’s stick with the health care uh sector, shall we?
Because thousands of oncology professionals from around the world are set together in Chicago for the Asco annual meeting, the American Clinical Oncologists.
There.
A grid of sessions will reveal research treatments and visionary insights on cancer treatment for what more on what this means for the biotech sector.
Let’s get to Jeffrey’s biotech analyst, Michael Michael.
It is always great to talk to you and I can think of no one better to talk to about this meeting.
A number of companies have already released abstracts in advance of the ASCO meeting as they tend to.
So tell us, do you have a top one that you’re gonna be watching as we get more information at the conference?
Uh obviously, uh the biggest uh cancer conference of the year uh in a week and a half will be there.
And it is true that much of the cat is out of the bag.
Um Maris in one of those big movers this week and all eyes are focused on some of the updated data at the presentation there.
And a couple of others were focused on like immuno T I MC R and Moderna MRN A uh with an update on their phase three cancer vaccine or phase two cancer vaccine data already in phase three with Merc.
So there are a couple of the ones happy to talk about others, but of course, a big cancer conference of the year and biotech is moving and shaking as it always is.
And Michael, quick question for, you know, earlier in the show, I was talking to Julie about um all things A I and of course, we talk a lot of the show about how, you know A I obviously early days Michael, but there is this real interest about how this technology could kind of upend and disrupt a lot of industries.
I have been reading some reports.
There’s already some talk about how, how A I could maybe reshape the field of oncology as well.
Well, look, um first of all, there’s only a couple of sort of pure play software platform A I related companies, uh Schrodinger ticker, Sdgr and uh Recursion rxrx which actually has a deal with NVIDIA.
Um uh So check that out.
Uh But a lot of the early investment have been going into a bunch of private companies.
As you can imagine, the drug discovery uh process can take 10 years.
And there is a wealth of discovery and work being done early on for new targets using A I and attempts at looking at large language models to discover new targets.
But those are pretty early.
Uh and uh certainly a risky, but most of them are private.
And before we dig into some of these names that you’re talking about, and um I’m interested in Marri, in particular, which you mentioned.
Um I, I guess for people who are not as steeped in this as you are Michael, um going into this meeting kind of, I know this is a big question.
Where are we in terms of cancer treatment and research?
Right?
Kind of where are we on the curve of being able to treat most types of cancers?
And uh is there anything sort of revelatory that you’re expecting?
Well, you know, you’re asking uh an important question and I think it depends on the time horizon of, you know, maybe 10 years ago, it was all about chemotherapy and maybe new antibodies uh from Genetech like Avastin over the next 5 to 7 years, we now have been on the immuno oncology, IO wave certainly with PD ones and new developments across PD one and other immuno oncology, drugs, which has been fantastic.
And now you’re on the brink of also new uh no modalities like car T uh and other attempts at cancer vaccines uh holistically like the moderna cancer vaccine and others.
And I think we’re still looking for the next generation.
I think the answer is that you’re not going to have a one product, one pill, cancer cure anytime soon.
But we are making great strides over years to make big steps in cancer.
And I think that when you uh perhaps has been spoiled and look at something just five or seven years ago when we did not PD one.
And now you look at the types of efficacy that PD one has brought for us.
I think we’d all be pleased.
Uh Sometimes, maybe our hurdles are just uh uh a little bit too high and we’re trying to find a cure but it takes time.
But we have been making great strides and that’s why Julie that people are all focused on the thousands of cancer drugs at the Asco conference and investing in biotech.
And why all these ipos are going out is because there are great promise of the next.
So let’s get to Maris then and this company specifically came out with the results of a study in head and neck cancer.
Mr Us is the ticker and that one for people who are not familiar with it.
Now, the stock surged, it has since come back down a little bit.
It hasn’t retraced all of it.
Like, how should people think about trading a stock like Marris around an event like this when it, you know, because it already came out with the abstract from its study?
Yeah.
Um, well, look, I think that, uh, in many respects, we try to think about buying stocks in advance of all of that.
And Jeffrey has been vated and been bullish on that going into it, the data played out in the abstract and then in the uh early presentation that they hosted this morning, uh with more data and the stock obviously has gone up over that time period.
And now we’re at a new step where uh obviously we’re going to start phase three.
I think most people would think about trading this as we have great data as they move forward into phase three, whether it’s a potential uh take out target or obviously one of the more promising drugs that had a cancer.
I don’t think we’d be trying to day trade that but rather say that this is a very promising cancer company going to phase three could be a take out target.
Hey, Michael, can I squeeze one last one in?
Because I’m curious to get your take on this besides A I Michael, I’m not sure there’s another trend we talk about more than G LP ones in your opinion, Michael.
Still a mega trend hot as ever.
And if so are there ways to play it besides Eli Lilly and NOVO nodes?
Sure great.
So we have said specifically that these types of waves come once in a decade or two.
Uh We believe that the G LP one wave is still relatively early in the multiyear cycle.
We believe obviously that uh Lillian Noble as you’ve talked about, specifically Lily uh is obviously attractive and they’ll be a major player.
We have said Amgen is one of the most important larger cap companies that we have been very bullish on.
And they too will go to phase three with a monthly G LP one.
And we think the data is gonna be great at the end of the year, there’s also smaller companies uh like Rock, uh Srrk or Cor that also have new modalities um that are interesting.
And so a lot of these smaller cap companies I think are promising because the upside potential for that data in $100 billion T A is great and the M and a potential for these is great and we still think we’re relatively early in the cycle.
There may be reason to be optimistic in the war against climate change.
We’re gonna tell you more on the other side when market domination returns.
Since last year, the average person has seen nearly a month’s worth of extra hotter than usual days.
And those additional abnormal days can be attributed to human clause caused climate change.
That’s according to a recent analysis from nonprofit Climate central but not all hope is lost at least.
According to my next guest, he says there is reason to be optimistic in the war against climate change.
Climate investor and activist to steer says there is to be optimistic in that war.
He outlines the state of play in a new book, cheaper, faster, better How We win the climate war?
And he’s joining me now in the studio.
Thanks so much for being here, Julie, thank you for having me.
Um I read that report today about those hotter days and it is just the latest in a long line of really depressing news.
And we, you know anecdotally, we see these reports in the news every day, right about uh weather events, et cetera.
The news from the natural world has been consistently not just bad but worse than expected.
And in fact, this is the hottest planet that human beings have ever walked right now.
Um But what people, so people don’t always know that but what they also don’t know which I know as a result of spending my time professionally investing in companies that are leading the counter revolution is that the technology is better than anybody knows.
That not only have solar and wind come down in cost and are, you know, really spreading quickly but that there are in the cliche in the climate world is we’re not looking for a silver bullet.
We’re looking for silver buckshot.
Lots of companies addressing lots of problems that can win in the marketplace on their own because they are, in fact, as my book says, cheaper, faster and better, let’s win in the marketplace.
We can do it and we need people to get together and make it happen.
Because one of the other things that you talk about is sort of getting society on the same page you talk about.
Um and you talked about in the Q and A accompanying the book as well about the effort around World War Two and Victory Gardens and this sort of sentiment of everybody being on the same team in the same pulling in the same direction doesn’t feel like that right now.
And it’s hard to get people to make daily changes.
They want everything to be perfect without having to do anything.
Well, let me say this, we’re not asking people to sacrifice economically.
As I said, if it’s not good enough to win in the marketplace, it’s not going to happen.
But let me give you an example of something where whatever the talk is, we can see what’s really happening.
That’s Texas.
If there’s a state where the elected officials have disliked.
The idea of renewable energy have disliked the idea of whatever ESG is it would be.
Texas.
Texas has tripled its amount of solar in the last three years and expected to go up another 35%.
This year.
Texas produces more wind energy than any other state by far.
And when we look around the world, what we’re seeing is these new technologies and it’s fo that this follows technological breakthroughs for the last 200 years.
They spend a lot of time reaching cost comparability and when they break through and are cheaper, faster and better, they go straight up.
It’s like an, it’s described as an S curve and then it flattens out.
That’s what we’re seeing in a lot of technologies, not just solar and wind, but evs and heat pumps and other things.
You know, as you talk, I have to ask you about nuclear because there’s been a recent and interest in sort of acceptability of nuclear.
Where are you on that technology and how, what role it needs to play in all of this?
Well, first of all, there are two different kinds of nuclear.
So let’s try and separate the two.
There’s the existing technology that’s been around which still has plants in the United States that’s fission technology.
People are trying to build smaller, safer fission reactors.
And we’ll see if in fact, they can be both safe and cheap.
I mean, the real problem with nuclear fission has been no one’s been able to build a plant in the United States for a reasonable price for a long time.
And so people think nuclear is somehow cheap, it’s very, very expensive.
Right now.
The other kind is nuclear fusion that is a new, very difficult to achieve uh engineering feat.
People have been saying are saying, and I’ve talked to, they are probably 12 big companies trying to solve this.
I’ve talked to the CEO S uh of two of them in the last couple of months and they say if everything goes great, we’ll be meaningful in the market in 2040.
But we need to focus on the next 10 years and really get things going.
So as far as I’m concerned, when we think about new electricity generation, that’s not the place I’m looking to solve the the shorter intermediate term problem.
Speaking of urgent, um this year is a presidential election.
You are a supporter of President Biden, you’ve held fundraisers for him.
Um What do you think conversely a Trump presidency would mean for climate change and climate change policy?
Well, I think one of the things that I’ve been trying to say is that clean energy is winning in the marketplace and it’s kind of you can say whatever you want as a politician.
But if something is cheaper and better people are going to buy it regardless of what you have to say, that’s going to go on in the United States.
I think, regardless, I think the big question for the United States is that under a Republican administration, we are not gonna do the kind of international leadership, international Cooper operation to build the kind of global institutions and measurement systems so that in fact, we can have a global response to what was once called global warming.
This is a problem that concerns everybody on the planet and we’re not gonna have the kind of cooper operation that’s necessary in co ordination without American leadership.
It’s not like we’re the only country, but we’re an indispensable country.
And if that, in fact, the Republican administration pulls back as it did under the previous administration.
And as they’re saying, they’re going to then the kind of leadership that we need and cooper with China and India and the rest of the world won’t happen.
And that means that there will be a delay in terms of building those international systems of cooper measurement and, and standards.
What about even domestic legislation?
I mean, president, former President Trump reportedly met with a bunch of oil executives said I’m gonna get rid of the IRA if you guys support me.
Now, I’ve spoken to some oil executives and they say they don’t like the inconsistency that we’ve seen in policy, right.
That everything flips every four years.
Do you think he’d even be able to get rid of the IRA if, if he indeed wins the election?
I think most of the IRA is stuff that has been uh deployed or where people have pushed to get things done so they can’t be reversed.
I think most of it is in red states and it’s created a lot of jobs.
So I believe in the UN in the United States we are rolling and yes, there will be different speeds and maybe some of the new technologies will be slowed down because they won’t get government support.
But by and large, the United States is heading on a glide path that has been laid out by the Biden administration.
And I think that we’re, it, it’ll be slower and faster, but we’re really gonna get there.
They think we’re an oil and gas country and we can never get off it.
And the second thing is people think we’re in a climate doom loop that basically we’re destroying the natural world and we can’t stop ourselves from doing it.
And that is false.
What I’m trying to say is this, yes, this is a crisis and it’s probably a bigger crisis than most people understand.
But it’s really a challenge for us and that’s how we should think about it.
This is something we will win, we will win it together inevitably, this is gonna happen.
The question is the sooner we pull together, the sooner we work together and the sooner we recognize that we’re really try all trying to make a better world for the future, a safer better world, the sooner we recognize that we all want that same thing and just decide how best to do it.
That’s when I think the United States is going to step up and do what we’ve traditionally done, which is solve the big problem, right?
I mean, it seems to me that’s the tricky part, right?
I mean, again, going back to the election, how many people, for example, are voting on this issue?
It doesn’t seem like, I mean, people are voting on inflation right now.
They’re not necessarily thinking about climate as their biggest issue.
I think that’s true.
And I think that one of the reasons I wrote this book was to say to people, this is something that really is important.
This is something that really affects you.
If you’re most Americans agree with me, as you said, I mean, most registered Republicans agree with me.
They just don’t prioritize it.
What I’m saying is this is not just something we have to do.
This is a great opportunity for America to do the kind of things that we have done in the past that we were really built as a country to do and that involves accepting each other, not villainizing each other, but really coming together and solving big problems.
That’s what we do best and that’s what we’re proudest of ourselves for Tom.
All right, let’s switch gears and back to our uh market business if you will and talk about some calls of the day here.
Uh We start with Dell Technologies which is getting a price target lift from loop capital, the firm citing legitimate gen A I progression.
And it’s interesting um the sort of evolution if you will or the migration and perception about Dell, which, you know, people think of as a PC company and a server company to some extent, Josh, but lately it’s had this gen A I buzzings, you know, it also had a conference recently, Jensen Wong of, of NVIDIA was there.
So it’s been an interesting shift.
Yeah, so they, they rate Della by, they raise their target to 185 and to your point Julie, they, they say, you know, their work continues to show legitimate gen A I progression in the last 90 days.
The PC refresh cycle valuation I mean, the stock has enjoyed a remarkable run.
It’s something more than 250% over the past 12 months, about 100 and 20% just this year.
And it’s interesting what, um, they comment on in this saying that it’s very well positioned for long term commercial it, budget wallet share.
I’ve seen a lot of talk about wallet share recently, these enterprise um software and hardware notes that you know, where is the money going to be flowing?
And we’ve talked about a lot of it’s gonna flow to gen A I to the infrastructure and I guess Dell is now part of that infrastructure.
And so that’s uh part of the thesis here.
By the way, it is Showtime Dell reporting its Q one earnings this week, May 30th.
All right, Morgan Stanley Muel sending a cautious tone on Celsius holdings, knowing sales growth for the energy drink maker appears to be slowing.
So you saw the stock and hit today on that.
Morgan Stanley is basically saying you’re looking at sales growth for the company slowed sequentially in the two week period ending May 18th looks like they’re citing kind of industry sales data here.
And I’ll say sales growth slowed to 39% year over year in the week ended May 18th and that’s down from 50% in the week end of May 4th, those shares have been as Josh Lipton would say a rocket ship this year.
Um They are up around 50% here as we have seen the popularity of these drinks really expand one of the other things and you know, take this with a grain of salt.
There is a little bit of sort of social media chatter because there are, there, there are sort of one off reports at times about the health issues of Celsius.
There was a recent report about a guy from Chattanooga who drank two a day and had liver damage that he said, he said his doctors attributed to the quantity of Celsius he was drinking.
I guess the thing says you max out a two a day.
Although I can’t imagine how I would feel a two C a day.
But, you know, so that stuff kind of percolates through as well and it does.
But to your point even, I mean, the stock got hit on this today.
But even so what?
Right, even with this, it’s still like 40% this year and most analysts still think you should buy it, not Morgan Stanley, but most are still saying this one’s a buy the levels, 15 buys on the stuff.
All right, coming up, we’ve got a slew of retailers set to report the quarterly results this week.
We’ll take a look at the best ways to invest in the sector with today’s playbook that much more when market domination returns all eyes on the consumer.
This week, a slew of retailers like Abercrombie and Fitch Costco cos they all set to report their quarterly results providing insight on customer spending.
This coming as consumer confidence saw a rise in May while recession concerns still linger according to the conference board.
And we’re looking at how to navigate the big picture with the Yahoo Finance playbook here to discuss Barclays consumer discretionary analyst, Adrian Y along with T DC and analyst, Jonah Kim.
Because we, it’s a confusing time when it comes to con consumer, right?
You got consumer confidence, they rebounding, but you have a lot of the retailers talking about a trade down effect, et cetera.
When we’re talking about the specialty retailers in particular, the likes of an American Eagle and Abercrombie, a gap, for example, Adrian, I’ll start with you kind of how are they sitting with the consumer?
What share of the consumer wallet are they getting these days?
I would say that this is a, an ebbing tide.
We are year to date in what I call a consumer malaise.
Clearly, you’re seeing a pullback.
The inflationary impact is now impacting not only the low end 50 K consumer, but it’s starting to have a creeper effect, right?
It’s coming up to the 75 K and even to the kind of the, the higher household incomes.
So what I would say is you have to have a trend or a brand that rises above this is the 8020 rule, 80% of stocks that are in kind of a subsector.
They trade along with kind of what I call the micro macro.
And you’ve got to find our job is to find the 20% that have some halo moment on them.
I’ve talked to you about the denim bottoms and the kind of fashion change that’s going to happen in the back to school time period.
I also think Gap is our other pick here.
We don’t cover Abercrombie, but they would fall into kind of the companies that have momentum.
Old Navy is the key at Gap brand.
They are the ones that are actually turning and they are taking share in that lower and household income in their segment.
And Jonah, I wanna bring you in here as well, maybe start that same high level.
Jonah just ho how does the consumer look to you, Jonah, how healthy, how resilient based on on your coverage universe.
The low end is definitely pressure, but we think the newness is resonating a lot with consumers at Bath and body, which is our topic.
They have a new Netflix partnership, they’re venturing into men’s and laundry.
So there is a lot of new categories there and we like the new balance that they’re having in store So any newness is, is resonating quite well.
And another differentiator is proprietary products and hymns is another concept that we really like.
And, and that proposition is in products that, that are affordable and differentiated from other platforms.
So those are the key to a strong consumer sentiment in our opinion.
And J I wanna pick up what you were talking about with the um price point, right?
That that value is also an important component of this.
And I, I wonder sort of how does value now compare to value last year or two years ago?
I mean, how, how much are consumers prioritizing that?
Yeah, I think we are seeing a lot more choice for consumers.
So they are prioritizing value while also being very selective in what they can spend.
So as I mentioned, having that unit and differentiating factor in addition to having strong value proposition, make strong sense for consumer at this stage.
Um that, yeah, that’s sort of how we are seeing uh a consumer today and Adrian and, and same to you because that, that is a theme we hear Adrian, you know, if you’re trying to pick on, on, on kind of trends, you hear it seemed to be this consumer who is generally more cautious, more prudent kind of focused, more Adrian on right now what they, what they need rather than what they want.
I would say that’s absolutely the case.
Let’s remember that, you know, compound inflation over the past five years is up, you know, close to 20% about 18% within kind of just apparel and accessories.
Once they went through the purging process on the inventory, the average unit retails, right, the out the door pricing inclusive of prices that they took up right during the 2021.
Um, time period are also up about 15 to 20%.
So people are paying significantly double digit more than they were in 2019.
And we’re starting to see the ceiling, you know, get hit on those price points.
We’re seeing a ton of promotions.
Memorial Day was about as emotional as we’ve seen it.
And I don’t think people made plan over this past weekend generally, you know, so we saw a lot of extensions and I think you’re just going to kind of fight through kind of the summer time period until we get to the back to school season and then we have reason and need to buy and reason I need to buy.
Where is the question?
So, so Jona, you talked about um that BBW I is your um preferred uh stock right now, but we’re also getting Gap and American Eagle this week.
So just quickly tell us what your, what your stance is on those two going into the numbers.
Yeah, on American Eagle and Gap, we are market perform.
We see strong momentum uh in both brands, obviously, Gap is, is having its moment with uh the fashion show and others.
So we are, we are seeing a lot of momentum there, but we are just a little bit more cautious on the execution and longevity of growth at both.
Uh Eagle and Gap especially Gap Athleta really needs to turn around in our opinion.
Navy is an important concept, but I I think there’s still a little bit more focus on gap brand at the moment.
So we are waiting to see more stability in in the financials.
Uh I think strong signs that air and offline in American Eagle.
Um And, and to our point, there is a little bit of uh cautious consumer dynamics playing here.
So we remain cautious, but our pick is Bath and body.
Uh we select the newness and, and we think promotions are well controlled.
Uh and they have 37 million loyalty members that they can continue to leverage.
So there are a lot of new exciting initiatives at Bath and body works in our opinion.
And Adrian, you gave us your thoughts on gap.
What about American Eagle as well stock that had a a nice move already Adrian.
So American Eagle, um we think that they are absolutely in the bull’s eye of this kind of silhouette shift with the, you know, 40% of their sales at American Eagle are actually in denim bottoms and they are kind of the lone team player from like 10 years ago when we had Abercrombie Eagle and Postal playing in the space, uh, our promos kind of throughout the quarter and sort of quarter to date they’ve held in there.
Right.
So we hate to see deeper promos and we see them hugging the promos that they did last year to us.
That kind of says that they’re on plan and they should be ok. No one’s going to blow away the quarter, right.
So the best you can hope for is a little bit of upside, probably driven by SGN A for the quarter.
A blessing of the Q two guidance, maybe a little pass through to the year and that’s all we need.
I think we’re having a little sound problem with Jonah.
Oh, no, I was just saying that, that, you know, a, a little bit of a beat, an in line guide and a pastor to the year.
Uh All right, thanks so much guys, Adrian Jonah, thank you both for joining us today.
We’ve got you covered with all the action following the closing bell, including earnings from KVO and at 430 Eastern time, it’s the late edition of asking for a trend that got you covered with the biggest market moving stories affecting your money.