Joey Loss 0:01
All right. Welcome back to another episode of Wealth Unplugged. Today is Friday, July 24th. It is 10:00 AM. My name is Joey Loss Loss.

Adam Van Wie 0:11
And I'm Adam Van Wie.

Joey Loss 0:13
And gosh, we, every time we close a show, we say, well, we know a bunch of stuff's going to happen between now and the next time we get together. And the 3 weeks that we just watched might be up there with the records. As I was pulling all the data together, I was like, I think I'm going to have to do a monologue to capture everything and just set the stage for what we can talk about. I mean, the bottom line is it's a mixed view looking forward, but I want to set the stage for all the talking points I think we'll get to. So to open it up, 2 weeks ago, oil was in the 70s and the market was arguing about whether AI CapEx from the hyperscalers was too big. This morning, Brent just printed $100 for the first time since May. The S&P had two sectors fall 5% in a single session yesterday, and bullish sentiment just had its worst week since the year 2021. Nothing about the underlying economy broke. Everything about the mood did.

Joey Loss 1:14
Before I move on from there, Adam, is that a fair vibe check?

Adam Van Wie 1:19
Yeah, pretty fair. I, I think, I think the, the, the real thing that's happening is we're flip-flopping between AI doom and gloom, AI euphoria, and the war in Iran and the repercussions of that. And it seems like on any given week or even day, the market is trading on one of those things, but you never know when you wake up what it's gonna be.

Joey Loss 1:45
That is very fair. Um, so this week it's a lot of, a lot of Iran. So what happened over the last few weeks? I'm going to run through the whole war, not every detail, but the war started February 28th, 2026. That puts us at day 147. A ceasefire held for some period through the spring. Um, mid-June was the MOU, the Memorandum of Understanding. Pakistan brokered this deal. Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. lifts its naval blockade. Both sides get 60 days of talks on the, on the two hard questions, which were control of Hormuz and the nuclear program. During that period of peace, oil fell to about $74.70 a barrel. It never really worked. Out of the 60-day windows, only 2 days of direct talks ever happened. July 8th, Trump declares that the MOU is basically over. Strikes resume 3 days later, and the naval blockade from the U.S. goes back up 4 days after that. Thursday night represents the 13th consecutive night of US strikes. Trump posted on, when asked about the ceasefire, a potential ceasefire, Trump says they need more of the same, and Iran is basically rejecting any US proposal. So, so it's not looking good on that front. And I think that's, I mean, the obvious reason why oil is now back up over $100 after it felt like even 3.5 weeks ago, like this thing was winding down. In fact, this week, How many times in this, this week in client meetings have you been like, well, when I wrote this, it was true to the bullet point.

Adam Van Wie 3:19
We've had about 8 meetings, so about 8 times.

Joey Loss 3:22
Yeah. The quarterly summary that Adam puts together for all the performance reports opens with, well, it looks like Iran is winding down, and immediately that he's having to cover that up every time.

Adam Van Wie 3:33
It was true when I wrote it, so I said it.

Joey Loss 3:35
It was true.

Joey Loss 3:38
And so what actually moved the oil prices was really what's going on in the Red Sea, not necessarily Hormuz itself. On July 20th, the Houthis declared a blockade of Saudi shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb, and Saudi loadings dropped 36%. Thursday, just yesterday, Houthis hit 2 Saudi tankers, which sent Brent up another 7% and saw us reaching the $100 print that I mentioned, which is the first triple-digit price since May. The US crude index, WTI, is settling around 91 or 92, and Hormuz traffic is effectively dead. Only 9 ships crossed on Tuesday. So that puts Brent up 40% month to date.

Joey Loss 4:24
And everybody's feeling it. I mean, the whole market is basically just focused on this. And so, Adam, I guess my question to you is this is, it feels like the 5th or 6th time, I don't know what it is, that this has happened where it goes down a little bit, people get optimistic, and then it blows up, prices go back up. Is this, I mean, each time this happens, are we, is it the, are the oil prices just getting stickier at higher points? Does it get harder and harder to get to where we were before the war?

Adam Van Wie 4:53
I don't believe so. Oil is a globally traded commodity. It is very reactive to spikes in demand, to low or high supply, and there isn't an effective way to manipulate that market. It's just too big and there's too many moving parts. I think that if oil is flowing and demand stays level, that prices will certainly go back to where they were. I, I just don't think that there is a mechanism to control the price of oil. It's just, it's on a scale that we can't even comprehend how much that commodity moves around the globe every day.

Joey Loss 5:39
Yeah. Yeah, that's a fair take. The one thing I look at, and it's hard to get any real data on this, is, you know, as reserves, theoretically, as reserve supplies for countries, including the United States, get smaller, you know, is the, does the lingering whiplash effect of people needing to restock those keep prices higher?

Adam Van Wie 6:03
I, well, that's just, that's just demand. So that is, I mean, that's all part of the equation. So that is a possibility. Ability, but I don't know why the US would need to do that. We are currently producing the most oil we ever have in history. And I don't know that we would be in that situation, but other countries certainly could be the ones that are dependent completely on foreign sources. Like South Korea comes to mind.

Joey Loss 6:30
Yeah. And then what about the impact of, you know, higher oil prices for longer? I think we've talked at points in meetings with clients about, What does that do to the rest of the economy? Anything made with plastics?

Adam Van Wie 6:43
Yeah, it's an absolute nightmare. Honestly, I, I, that's like my, my worst case scenario has the price of oil over $100 for the next year or more. I, I think we're seeing inflation. I think we're seeing potential Fed rate hikes. I think it's really bad for the, for the stock market, for the US economy. I, I just, I, it's a bad, bad deal if that's what happens. I put that on my, if I'm looking at a bell curve of likely outcomes, it's sort of on one of the wings. I don't think that's the most likely path forward, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility.

Joey Loss 7:22
What is the latest? You mentioned rate cuts. So what is the latest with the Fed's position on potentially raising rates?

Adam Van Wie 7:31
Well, I, it seems to me that there was a lot of interest in raising rates and the market was pricing this in. It wasn't the Fed specifically saying that, although they were pretty hawkish at the last meeting until we saw the CPI come out a couple of weeks ago and that showed a big, big drop in inflation as the price of oil was coming down and suddenly the markets were pricing in no rate hike at the next meeting. So I think bias is towards neutral right now, just because I'm, I know that Warsh did not get appointed to raise rates. That would be a major misstep in the eyes of the current administration, and he knows that. And so I think it's going to be a bias towards doing nothing at the next meeting. But this is a rapidly changing situation and I, I just, I can't make an accurate prediction because there's too much that could go on between now and then. And I also wanna say that I think a rate hike would be a major misstep. I don't think it would accomplish anything. The, if the price of oil goes up and you raise rates to essentially curb inflation, the price of oil is still high. That inflation is still coming regardless. I, I just don't see how that would help the situation at all. And in fact, I think it would hurt it.

Joey Loss 8:57
Yeah, I agree in this moment that that would be bad. It would just slow other things down. You're increasing the incentive for people to sit on their cash. It's going to slow down the economy. You make it more expensive for companies to borrow and hire or try things out.

Adam Van Wie 9:13
Potentially cause layoffs. I just don't, I think you make the situation worse rather than better.

Joey Loss 9:18
Right. And to your point, like it's very obvious what's driving oil. It goes down. It's 100% correlation between what's going on in one place at any given time.

Adam Van Wie 9:29
So absolutely. I mean, there, there's no doubt in our minds where this is coming from and it is not a global boom in demand. It is, it is clearly a supply issue. Yeah.

Joey Loss 9:41
Right. And the Fed thing I think is made more interesting by the fact that Kevin Warsh is, you know, historically pretty hawkish on inflation, which means he wouldn't be afraid to raise rates if he felt that it was merited. I think he's, Based on what he said, I agree that it seems like he's not going to, and I think he's smart and understands sort of the mandate and the situation that it's not worth trying to shake something you probably can't shake right now. But with that said, if other factors, you know, if the prices of everything else started to rise and there became what felt like some sort of demand-driven inflation, then he might cool things based on historical behaviors.

Adam Van Wie 10:24
Absolutely. I think he will. I think he's there to do the right thing. I I just don't think a rate hike is the right thing at this moment, and I think he would see that, hopefully.

Joey Loss 10:34
Yeah.

Joey Loss 10:37
All right, moving on. So bullish sentiment, Bespoke just put something out about how this is a pretty drastic change. So bullish sentiment fell from 44.9% to 29.6% in a single week, 15.3% one-week drop. That's the biggest weekly decline since September of 2021. Which was not a great moment if you think about what happened 6 months later and beyond. 2022 sucked. It's the year that nobody talks about, but that was not a fun year. And it's the 2nd percentile of all weekly moves since 1987, which is almost 40 years ago.

Adam Van Wie 11:18
Yeah, I get it. People are scared. It's a fast-changing situation that we as normal Americans have no control over and We're seeing it at the pump and we're seeing it a little bit in other places too. And it just doesn't feel good. And I, I get it. Now, when the market, when retail investors historically have gotten, gotten bearish, a lot of times it's a good thing for the market. So I, I, that, that stat doesn't scare me, but I do understand why it's happening. It, it is a, it is a it is a big deal. It, it, we really need to get this Iran situation fixed. Um, but I, I don't know how that's going to happen because there doesn't seem to be a lot of logical responses going on by Iran right now. I, I don't even know how they're fighting us because we seem to have destroyed every part of their military and defense forces, but they still are coming up with ways to, uh, to attack either us or Either through proxies or, or, or going after civilian ships. It's, it's just, they just won't go away. And I don't know how the situation gets resolved. Yeah.

Joey Loss 11:49
Yeah.

Joey Loss 12:39
I think the challenge of modern warfare is drones are this great equalizer at this point. You know, you can have, they've got a little bit of them everywhere and that's creating a huge problem because with a $20,000 drone, they can take out a million dollar ship or, you know, a multimillion-dollar interceptor, whatever. Huge problem.

Adam Van Wie 12:59
It is.

Joey Loss 13:01
And so this sentiment change in bullishness has ended a record 44 consecutive weeks with bulls ranking between 30% and 50%, which I just thought was interesting. That was 1.5 times the previous record, which was 30 weeks in 1995 to 1998. So quite a quite a long time since the last time anything like that happened.

Adam Van Wie 13:24
Yeah, it's been a remarkable run that we've had, and that, that kind of shows how good it's been.

Joey Loss 13:31
Also interesting in that report was that there's never, there, there hasn't been a bullish rating above 60% since 2010.

Adam Van Wie 13:41
Wow. That's crazy. We've been through some really good times. I don't understand how that's possible.

Joey Loss 13:48
Yeah, I don't understand how from 2000 to 2000, or maybe like 2002, let's say to 2010, like how was there ever above 60%?

Adam Van Wie 13:56
I don't know. That's, I don't know. That's, that's, that one surprises me.

Joey Loss 14:01
2009 and 2010 were good years, but I would think just the recent pain of 2008, 2007, like people wouldn't be over it yet.

Adam Van Wie 14:09
Yeah, definitely. The, the memory of those losses sticks with you for quite a while.

Joey Loss 14:13
Yeah, people still talk about it in meetings.

Joey Loss 14:17
All right, so

Joey Loss 14:19
is that, you know, what do you, what do we think of the, I mean, I guess we commented on that. The fact that the sentiment's changing is really a contrarian indicator that it might be a buying opportunity. You never know, but the data suggests that it would be basically whatever everybody says they feel is usually the opposite of what's true.

Adam Van Wie 14:39
Yeah, that is true. I was talking to a customer about SpaceX the other day, and SpaceX has not been doing well recently. And he was saying, well, all these insiders get to sell on August 4th, so we should obviously wait till after. And I'm like, well, it seems obvious, but the market never does what you expect it to do. And so I wouldn't guarantee that it's gonna fall dramatically on August 4th. We don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know what's gonna happen. It seems like it should, but I wouldn't be surprised if it went the other way.

Joey Loss 15:14
Well, the market can always price it in right now.

Adam Van Wie 15:17
Yeah. Pre, preload. They, that happens all the time. The market's forward-looking, we usually say by about 6 months. And, and that's, it seems pretty accurate.

Joey Loss 15:24
Yeah.

Joey Loss 15:28
Yeah. If it's 6 months, then you're talking about multiple releases already priced in because it's not, I think it's just 7% or so of the, non-floating shares that are coming out on August 4th. And then, you know, there's several other dates already mapped out into the future. It'll be like 7% or so each time. Many of those fall within a 6-month window. So that, that could be why the price went from $135 pre-IPO to $150 as it opened up over $200 and now down to $125 or wherever it is.

Adam Van Wie 15:57
Somewhere around there. Uh, yeah. Been everywhere. No, I, I wouldn't be surprised if it was pricing all of that in. It, it should be. I would— it's public information. It's well known. Yeah, so I, that wouldn't surprise me at all.

Joey Loss 16:10
Also, if there was a prediction market that said like, what will the bounce be the moment

Joey Loss 16:18
that stock hits $100? I bet there's so many people that are gonna have limit orders set for like $100. Like the second it hits $100, it would be like just $2 billion of like people buying SpaceX.

Adam Van Wie 16:31
It could happen. I don't know. I can see it.

Joey Loss 16:35
All right, so looking at like dialing into yesterday and going into today, I want to talk about like what went down and what drove it, because we've got a lot of reports that have come out, some big ones this week. So what went up? The Russell 2000 went up 1.29%. Healthcare up 1.7%. Industrials up two-thirds of a percent. The rare part is since 1990, there've only been 75 instances of two or more sectors dropping —5% in one day, which is what happened yesterday. Those two sectors were consumer discretionary, which concerns me a little bit, and communication services, which they do so well so often that 5% doesn't freak me out that much.

Adam Van Wie 17:21
Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know that it means anything.

Joey Loss 17:27
Consumer discretionary.

Adam Van Wie 17:29
So what that says to me is that people were sort of making the assumption that if the price of oil goes up and we lose a lot of discretionary income, then that sector will be hurt because we'll be spending it on things that we can't, that aren't coming from your extra cash and you're spending it on your staples. And so I think that's a, a bit of an overreaction to the news, but I don't know. That's a TBD item. But it does seem like a kind of a drastic reaction to— there really wasn't any new, that new news yesterday outside of the Houthis, I guess, was the biggest headline. But this, those, those, that's been an issue.

Adam Van Wie 18:24
Going back years and years. This is not, this is not a new thing. It's just the timing coinciding with Iran. I think that really got people on edge and that feels like a, it feels like an overreaction to me. I agree.

Joey Loss 18:38
Well, that's why I like, again, the ending thought in this whole episode is just going to be mixed data because if I scroll down here ahead to something else that I looked at, the Capital One put out their report. And here's what they had to say. Payment rates meaningfully above pre-pandemic across every segment. Crazy. Recent card vintages outperforming 2022 to 2023. Fairbank said, we don't see this K-shaped economy that a lot of people talk about. And end quote. That was it. That's all he had to say.

Adam Van Wie 19:10
That's a great quote.

Joey Loss 19:11
Which is exactly to your point, like doesn't agree with discretionary spending taking a 5% haircut in a day.

Adam Van Wie 19:20
Yeah, I don't see it either. I just don't. It just doesn't add up with every other data point that we've seen recently. I think we need to talk a little bit about an issue that you brought up on our radio show this past weekend, and that is one of my favorite new words, the vibe session. And if you don't know what that is, it's when people feel like you're in a recession, but then they go and act like we're not in a recession. And I feel like that's really happening right now.

Joey Loss 19:52
Yeah. And the databases for that was that retail spending last quarter, I think it was last quarter 'cause we were looking at quarterly data last week, was up 2.4%, which is a lot for a quarter. And that's, I mean, that's about as pure discretionary spending as it gets, retail. And so, For that to be up, but then everybody responding to the University of Michigan sentiment story, uh, survey saying the overwhelming majority of people say it feels like crap and that we're in a recession and the economy sucks. It's like, okay, well which one's true? Like the way that you're behaving with your dollars or, or what? And I think what we landed on was that it was a quote I wish I'd said on the radio 'cause it would've been really cool. I think I only thought of it during a meeting this week instead. Somebody said, uh, a depression is when you're out of a job, a recession is when your neighbor's out of a job. And then we said in a vibe session is when your neighbor's neighbor that doesn't exist is out of a job.

Adam Van Wie 20:52
Yeah. He's telling you a story about some guy that he read about in the news that's out of a job. Yeah. It just, that's really, I mean, to me, that kind of hits the nail on the head because there, there just are not signs here that we are in a recession, that there is no— that the job loss is that everybody's talking about really isn't happening according to the numbers. We don't have unemployment claims spiking. We don't have— the unemployment rate is still lower than the historical average. It just— I just don't see how everyone's saying recession, recession, recession. And if you look at the inflation numbers, yeah, the government number was around 4%. It pulled back substantially last month. But if you look at Truflation, which is another, I think, very good source of data, we're running around like a little over 2%, which is historically very, very low. So I, and I just from an anecdotal standpoint, I don't see prices skyrocketing right now. I maybe that's, me, but I'm, I'm just not seeing it. Yes, they're way elevated from where they were 5 years ago, but that's already happened. It's not happening today.

Joey Loss 20:59
Yeah.

Adam Van Wie 22:15
Yeah.

Joey Loss 22:18
Yeah. I'm, I don't have anything to add to that. That, that's just the way it feels.

Adam Van Wie 22:22
Yeah. I, and maybe we're way off and living in a bubble, but I, I don't think so. I think that there's just a lot of negative sentiment right now and, and it does That Michigan survey, it really falls along party lines. It is very politicized

Adam Van Wie 22:41
right now. When Democrats are polled, they are much more likely to say that the economy is very, very bad or bad than Republicans are. And it has a lot to do with Republicans being in all three branches of power right now. And so the, the, it's a very clear distinction between the two political parties. And so that is, that is driving a lot of the sentiment numbers right now.

Joey Loss 23:11
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if the mid, the midterms result in like heavy flipping of the House and Senate, you know, 6 or 12 months later. What is the Michigan survey saying if those policies start to show up?

Adam Van Wie 23:23
Yeah, it'd be an, it'd be a very interesting data point to track. I wonder if it would improve that, that would be, that would be even clearer data clearer picture of what was happening.

Joey Loss 23:37
So anyway, the takeaway that we want for you guys there is tell your friends that we're in a vibe session, but everything's cool.

Adam Van Wie 23:43
Yeah, it's fine.

Joey Loss 23:46
Go out and spend your money. Capital One says it's fine. Spend away.

Adam Van Wie 23:50
They don't have any incentive to tell you that, do they? It's fine. Exactly. You can, you can skip a month even and we'll collect that interest. No big deal.

Joey Loss 23:53
Heck, pay it off next month.

Joey Loss 24:01
So in my notes here, cherry-picking

Joey Loss 24:06
performance quarterly, like numbers to look at,

Joey Loss 24:12
Google had a 7.5% decline on a beating of everything, which is interesting. They beat expectations, they beat earnings and all this. Revenue was up 24% year over year. Cloud's up 82%. That's absurd. Crazy backlog, $514 billion. Margin still healthy at 35.6%, but they raised their 2026 CapEx expectations to $195 to $205 billion from $180 to $190, and they expect another big step up going into 2027.

Adam Van Wie 24:49
Why is this bad news? Why?

Joey Loss 24:52
It's just, dude, the whiplash of like Risk on, risk off is crazy. It is. You, you opened this whole conversation segment with like, one week it's this, one week it's that, and it's absolutely what it is. Like one week someone's gonna read, oh my gosh, they're gonna spend another $15 billion on infrastructure. Let's go all in, you know, risk on. And then the next week, are you, what are they crazy?

Adam Van Wie 25:16
Don't they have, you know, exactly. Well, let's, let's break it down. Let's break down what that means exactly. Well, why is Google spending all this money? It's a lot of money. Well, first of all, Can we agree that there are very smart people who work at Google and they have a track record of great success? I don't think anyone would argue with those points. So Google, when they make all this money, they make a lot of money. They have a choice of what to do with that money. They can, they can, they can increase sales of their existing product lines or try to at least by advertising, or maybe they can find new avenues, new clients, new customers to sell to with their existing products. Or they can invest in other great ideas that they have, new business lines to get into. That is what requires a bunch of capital. And so they're not gonna make that investment unless they run the numbers and say that the ROI is higher than increasing their existing lines of business. Because why would you spend all that money to make all these huge investments and take all that risk unless you were projecting that you could make more money on on those dollars that you spent than the money you're currently making. It, it wouldn't make any sense because you could also buy your own shares back and increase your stock price. There, there's so many things you could do with that cash, but this is what they've determined is their best possible use of that cash. So that should be a really good sign for the economy. The fact that they're willing to take that huge gamble and put all this, spend all this money You should be looking at that and saying, man, they're, they're, they're really seeing opportunity here. Now I understand that there is risk to that, and that is the, the negative, the con of, or the, the reasons to sell Google, I guess, on a great earnings report. But they have this incredible track record and they're, they're not wrong very often, and they're not the only ones doing it. So, I think it's a, I think it's a pretty positive sign for the economy that all these companies are willing to make these gambles. And it's, it's not like money is, is free right now. Money is, is moderately expensive to borrow right now. It's not the 2% interest rates of, of, you know, 10, 5 years ago that you're borrowing money at. Like depending on your creditworthiness, you're paying upwards of 5% for this money. So you have to make that decision. Is this worth it? Yeah.

Joey Loss 27:57
Yeah, I totally agree. The, uh, it's also worth noting, like, there's risk if they don't do it because they have this incredible history of revenues and profits from search, but search is changing. And I can remember, like, what was it, a year and a half ago? May— it might even be a year ago. I can't remember timelines at this point. There's so much going on all the time, but people are like, Google's dead. It's done. They were out of the race. It's ChatGPT. Anthropic was like a baby, but still in the game somehow. And you know, just a year later, these three titans are like absolutely the top. And pick a month, like one of the models is better than the others. And, uh, you know, it's taken hundreds of billions of dollars to make that the case for any of them. But I think Google sees some of this spending as insurance.

Adam Van Wie 28:47
I, I, and I suppose that's another bear case for it. That they're being forced to do this so they don't fall behind and they're, they don't have a choice whether or not to spend this money for the fear that they would become irrelevant. So that, that would be a bear case. And, and I can, I can, I can definitely see where, where that one would, where it would affect trading.

Joey Loss 29:10
Yeah.

Joey Loss 29:12
But, but that segues well into, I think this last bit here. Which is just about infrastructure.

Joey Loss 29:23
AI as a whole has done well. It's up 20— the overall AI basket, if we were to throw everything in one, is up about 29% year to date, which is better than the NASDAQ, better than the S&P. Actually might be better than emerging markets too, which is otherwise the leader. But it's down 7.6% month to date. But there's two very different stories playing out in that basket. So one of 'em we just talked about, which is AI infrastructure, and this is where all the money that Google and these places are spending to build things out, that's up 65% year to date. On the other side, uh, you have AI implementation, which is down 15.7%

Adam Van Wie 29:56
That's incredible.

Joey Loss 30:05
year to date. And so examples of this, the differences, AI infrastructure, the winner, NVIDIA, Broadcom, Micron, TSMC, Arista, VeriFone, and Equinix. On the other side, you have implementation. This is the one that's down year to date. That's Google, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Palantir, basically Mag 7 and friends.

Adam Van Wie 30:30
This isn't unprecedented. I, I think that something very similar has played out many times when a new technology is is released. The problem is, well, it's not a problem, but the situation is that the people with guaranteed revenue are the people making the hardware to make the technology run. They're already profitable, wildly profitable in some cases like NVIDIA. But the people on the cutting edge of the technology who are taking it out to the public or the business-to-business, they are still experimenting and they're, you mentioned earlier, it depends on what week the, the, the newest release of a model is and who has the best model. And so they're fighting tooth and nail to keep market share and price it right and, and keep their captive clients from skipping, from switching over to the other guy. So they're in a much more competitive environment and they're all forced to buy Nvidia chips. And so the only one with protected revenue and profit right now are the ones building the infrastructure. So to me, that kind of makes sense.

Joey Loss 31:49
Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, in a way it's these hyperscalers are the ones that are taking just absolute mega risk despite their size. The scale of the risk that they're taking is still relatively huge by spending all this money. And it'll be some time before they see see the fruits of this. Whereas the other guys that you mentioned, Nvidia, Broadcom, those guys are getting paid today.

Adam Van Wie 32:13
They are. I, that may not be the case forever because at some point this race will, well, another race will come up and maybe it doesn't involve Nvidia chips. Who knows? I can't predict that kind of thing in the future. But what I can say is that these things never last forever. So there is, there, time will tell. But this scenario doesn't surprise me too much because it is much more competitive. No one can get enough chips right now. So Nvidia, they're good. They're going to sell out whatever they produce. But

Adam Van Wie 32:51
we've had it play out in our office just this week. We're looking at different AI-type software packages and we're finding that some are very expensive and very niche and some are very broad and much less expensive but can't everything that we want them to do. And finding the right fit for us has been quite difficult. You've been heading that up. So, so I think, I think we're, we're part of the problem for those, for those providers.

Joey Loss 33:20
Yeah. Yeah. We're obviously not looking to donate anything we don't have to. And so, you know, I could tell there's a ton of building that they do on their side. And a lot of it for us is it comes down to like governance, like can they play by the compliance rules that we need to play by with the SEC and Some of that is, I mean, that's more important than capabilities. If something's super capable but can't do that, then it's a no-go.

Adam Van Wie 33:42
Yeah, we can't use it if it, if it isn't compliant, there is no way we're gonna touch it.

Joey Loss 33:48
Yeah. So, so I feel like we've covered the kitchen sink today. Like what, what, how do we close this?

Adam Van Wie 33:56
Help me out. Yeah. And I don't know that we've given any, uh, real guidance here either because everything is TBD.

Joey Loss 34:04
Um, I think I forgot this was a podcast halfway through. I'm just talking to you.

Adam Van Wie 34:11
The whole situation in Iran, I guess you can sum up by saying the sooner it's over, the better, because the longer this goes on, the worse off it's going to be for our economy and the global economy really, because oil affects everything. And at home, the AI race, I think we're going to see this like risk-on, risk-off behavior for quite some time. I just don't see it going away. I think we made a pretty, pretty clear case why Google spending money was good, and then also in the same breath made a pretty decent case as to why it could be bad. So I, I think that's what you're seeing playing out in real time in the market these days. Overall, a company that has 35% margins and is growing like they're growing looks like a strong buy to me. But I, I don't pick stocks, and I, that's certainly not a recommendation that you should do that. I you look at their, how healthy the businesses in that sector are at the current moment, and it does look pretty attractive.

Joey Loss 35:15
Yeah, I agree. And at the end of the day, it's like, where's the wind going? And do I believe in what's happening? And generally I do. I mean, I can see in my own life, productivity is way higher thanks to some of these tools that are coming out. The things that I can do that would've required multiple professionals or expensive tools. You know, I can do them well enough on my own and build my own systems. Now that's a, it's a totally different ballgame. And you just extrapolate that, you see small companies doing it. I think that's a big part of why small caps are having a great time is suddenly they have all of this extra capability that they didn't have before. And the people creating it are the large caps who are probably gonna be the last to get paid for it., I think that payday will come. And so I, I don't want to pick the winners either. Even looking at semiconductors quarter to quarter, the winners change. You know, Nvidia was the story for a long time, and more recently it's been TSMC, right? Yeah. And I, I just like what the whole thing's doing. I want to own the whole thing. I don't want to own one winner and for one quarter and see it flat while everybody else is winning a different quarter. Exactly.

Adam Van Wie 36:26
You, you, the, if you get caught too caught up in Nvidia, you, you you missed out on a really great quarter in the semiconductor market. The fund that we use was up over 70% in the quarter, and it was not Nvidia driving that at all.

Joey Loss 36:41
Yeah, it was an absurd quarter for that.

Joey Loss 36:45
All right, well, I think we can pin it there. And as I always say, in 2 weeks, I'm certain we'll have plenty to talk about. So Adam, thanks for your time and for chiming in.

Adam Van Wie 36:56
Thanks. I can't wait to see what happens in 2 weeks. Yeah. All right. Take care. Bye.