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The myth behind daylight-savings time · The Financial Exchange Show

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  Speaker 2: Kicking off hour two. Here, we got an ugly day
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  Speaker 2: of developing on Wall Street, where the Dow is off
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  Speaker 2: three hundred and forty one points. That's actually less than
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  Speaker 2: one percent. Not much going on there. S Andp's down
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  Speaker 2: two percent, one hundred nineteen points in the NASDAK now
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  Speaker 2: down almost four percent, six hundred and seventy eight points
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  Speaker 2: out the window here as the NASDAK continues its struggles
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  Speaker 2: to start twenty twenty five. You take a look at
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  Speaker 2: where we sit right now, and this is not total return,
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  Speaker 2: so it's not factoring in dividends. But the Nasdaq now
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  Speaker 2: off nine percent on the year so far, the S
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  Speaker 2: and P off four, and the Dow down point four percent,
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  Speaker 2: so in what is again kind of a major reversal
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  Speaker 2: of what we've seen, you know, in recent history, the
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  Speaker 2: Nasdaq really leading the way down here to kick things
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  Speaker 2: off for twenty twenty thus far.
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  Speaker 3: In equity markets, money moving into bonds today, You've got
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  Speaker 3: the yield on the ten year Treasury down to four
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  Speaker 3: point two zero nine percent. That's a ten basis point
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  Speaker 3: move on the day, so certainly not an inflation trade.
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  Speaker 3: Right in previous types of cell offs. You sometimes see
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  Speaker 3: both equities and bond selling off. That's not what we're
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  Speaker 3: dealing with today. We are dealing with a recession and
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  Speaker 3: valuation concern. Trade seems to be the story of the day.
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  Speaker 2: We got oil off fifty six cents a barrel to
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  Speaker 2: sixty six forty seven tripa national average four gas prices
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  Speaker 2: is at three eight and nine tenths of ascent. Remember,
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  Speaker 2: as part of the tariff negotiations last week, the United
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  Speaker 2: States did exempt us MCA compliant goods from tariffs as
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  Speaker 2: they were implemented. Energy exports generally fall into that category,
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  Speaker 2: which is why in the Northeast you are not seeing
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  Speaker 2: any upward movement in gas prices simply because those are
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  Speaker 2: now exempted. Instead, you're actually seeing movement in the opposite direction,
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  Speaker 2: where Massachusetts now below three dollars a gallon. Who, by
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  Speaker 2: the way, for Massachusetts and New Hampshire actually both below
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  Speaker 2: three dollars a gallon according to data from TRIPLEA. So
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  Speaker 2: there's some good news on that front that has developed there.
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  Speaker 3: The average thirty year fixed rate mortgage going now for
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  Speaker 3: six point seven nine percent. I expect that to come
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  Speaker 3: down a little bit more with today's yield moves on
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  Speaker 3: the ten year as well.
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  Speaker 2: Did you say it was six point seventy nine correct?
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  Speaker 2: Oriage News Daily. Yeah, maybe you get somewhere in the
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  Speaker 2: sixty six range, six six and a half or something
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  Speaker 2: like that, and you got gold basically flat up seventy
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  Speaker 2: cents nounce to twenty nine fifteen.
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  Speaker 3: Makes for a very interesting entrance to the spring housing season,
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  Speaker 3: which is well underway across the nation. We're seeing that
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  Speaker 3: in certain markets where inventory is upticking. But yeah, definitely
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  Speaker 3: makes for an interesting one. If you start seeing those
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  Speaker 3: rates come down a bit, do you start to see
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  Speaker 3: more activity.
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  Speaker 2: We will see Michael's talk a little bit about daylight
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  Speaker 2: saving time just because it just happened. Gosh, it just happened,
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  Speaker 2: And yeah, daylight saving time, as opposed to what most
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  Speaker 2: people think the summer is actually when we go to
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  Speaker 2: daylight saving time, standard time is what we are on
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  Speaker 2: in the winter and fall. It's one of those things
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  Speaker 2: with clocks in time that everyone sends to get backwards,
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  Speaker 2: kind of like people are like, well, the days get
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  Speaker 2: shorter in the winter, and it's like, no, they actually
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  Speaker 2: get longer. They get shorter in the summer. In the fall,
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  Speaker 2: heading into winter but that's neither here nor there. In
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  Speaker 2: any case, there's this push that's out there to do
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  Speaker 2: away with the you know, spring forward fallback and just
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  Speaker 2: make one of them permanent. The one that most people
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  Speaker 2: talk about making permanent is daylight saving time. What are
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  Speaker 2: the pros and cons that are a discussed as it
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  Speaker 2: relates to this mic.
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  Speaker 3: Well, the founding reason for it was had to do
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  Speaker 3: with energy savings, and the idea here being that hey,
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  Speaker 3: if I am awake for more sunlight hours, I don't
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  Speaker 3: need to turn on the lights necessarily. I might not
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  Speaker 3: need to heat my home if I am staying in
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  Speaker 3: bed during mainly you know, nighttime hours and all sorts
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  Speaker 3: of energy cost savings that are still being debated to
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  Speaker 3: this point as to whether or not they're actually there's
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  Speaker 3: any there there, But that was part of the argument
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  Speaker 3: in the for camp. Some of the other stuff just
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  Speaker 3: seems to be frankly, it seems to be a lot
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  Speaker 3: of preference, but you know, arguments against say, kids getting
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  Speaker 3: on the bus when it's dark out, safety issues there,
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  Speaker 3: and things along those lines seem to be part of
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  Speaker 3: the argument for the permanent change in one direction or another.
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  Speaker 2: Ultimately, you look at all of this, and the one
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  Speaker 2: thing that you can't do is there's no way to
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  Speaker 2: legislate more daylight in it's caused by the Earth being round. Okay,
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  Speaker 2: and so unless you want to actually make the Earth flat,
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  Speaker 2: which has a whole bunch of logistical challenges. Not according
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  Speaker 2: to a whole bunch of people. Yes, if if listen,
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  Speaker 2: if you're on flat Earth Twitter, then fine. But to
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  Speaker 2: those of us that you know, believe the Earth is round, sorry,
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  Speaker 2: but it's this is kind of you know, a problem here.
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  Speaker 2: So you can't actually make more or less daylight, you
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  Speaker 2: just choose when it is.
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  Speaker 3: And so there are positives and negatives to both sides
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  Speaker 3: of this argument. I'm pretty sure permanent daylight saving time,
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  Speaker 3: but you know whatever.
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  Speaker 2: So some really interesting things about this actually. The first
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  Speaker 2: is do you know that we didn't even have time
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  Speaker 2: zones until about one hundred and fifty years ago.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: The reason why is that it took so long to
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  Speaker 2: travel any meaningful distance that everyone just kept local time
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  Speaker 2: based on where the sun was. Because you had no
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  Speaker 2: way of going even from Boston to New York in
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  Speaker 2: a day. There was no way to do it. Then
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  Speaker 2: a train came around until the advent of railroad and
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  Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, okay, you could start to
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  Speaker 2: do things like that, and then you know, you could
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  Speaker 2: start to say, okay, now even you know, in a day,
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  Speaker 2: I can go from New York to Chicago. And that
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  Speaker 2: is when time zones had to become standardized because it
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  Speaker 2: now became a problem that, oh, gee, the sun's in
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  Speaker 2: a different place in the sky when I get there
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  Speaker 2: relative to you know, when I left in terms of
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  Speaker 2: you know, how much of the day has elapsed. And
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  Speaker 2: so this is a relatively new thing that we're dealing with.
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  Speaker 2: Until the eighteen sixties, it was basically every town had
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  Speaker 2: its own time that it kept and that was just
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  Speaker 2: how they did it. Because you couldn't go very far.
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  Speaker 4: Didn't really matter.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, like even like you're traveling by horseback, it's like, okay,
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  Speaker 2: how far are you really gonna get in a day?
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  Speaker 2: The horse needs to rest. It can't just go forever,
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  Speaker 2: you know. So this is something where we don't have
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  Speaker 2: any perfect solution to any of this. And just as
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  Speaker 2: an example, if you went to you know, full daylight
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  Speaker 2: savings time, you end up with the cities and states
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  Speaker 2: in the far western part of the time zone that
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  Speaker 2: basically don't see sunlight until midway through the morning. If
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  Speaker 2: you're looking at like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which
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  Speaker 2: is still the the eastern half of the Upper Peninsula
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  Speaker 2: is still on the Eastern time zone, the sun wouldn't
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  Speaker 2: come up until like nine to fifteen in the winter. Again,
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  Speaker 2: I'm not like even beyond like, hey, kids getting ready
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  Speaker 2: for school. I don't want to be awake for three
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  Speaker 2: hours before Like in the obvious answers, we'll move away
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  Speaker 2: from the Upper Peninsula and it's like, well, what if
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  Speaker 2: that's someone's home, Like don't So there's no great answer
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  Speaker 2: on any of this other than here, here's where I
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  Speaker 2: think I've gotten to Mike. We need more time zones.
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  Speaker 4: Go the Indian road of fifteen minute time zones.
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  Speaker 2: Half hour, Like, we don't need that many. I don't
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  Speaker 2: need the United States to have like sixteen different time zones,
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  Speaker 2: but maybe eight instead of four, you know, like that
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  Speaker 2: gets you somewhere at least. I think I'd be.
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  Speaker 3: Really confused if I got to Indiana and suddenly it was,
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  Speaker 3: you know, ten forty five instead of eleven fifteen.
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  Speaker 2: Well that's just because you're not used to it. True,
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  Speaker 2: I get like you know, it's like ultimately, human beings
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  Speaker 2: can get used to a lot of things. But I'm
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  Speaker 2: also convinced the more that I've thought about this, which again,
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  Speaker 2: this is what convinced me, this is not an issue
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  Speaker 2: worth spending any time on. And unfortunately we've just devoted
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  Speaker 2: ten minutes of our show to it because, like again,
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  Speaker 2: the aggregate amount of daylight will not change. All we're
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  Speaker 2: doing is shuffling the deck chairs on the earth.
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  Speaker 3: What if we installed some mirrors, either mirrors or we
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  Speaker 3: need to make go to the Museum of Science, Mike, yes, big, No,
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  Speaker 3: the penny squisher.
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  Speaker 4: Uh, just flatten the earth.
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  Speaker 2: You got to make one of a big one of
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  Speaker 2: those for the Earth and just flatten the earth, and
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  Speaker 2: then we can have the right amount of sunlight according
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  Speaker 2: to like how much we'd want. But absent the giant
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  Speaker 2: penny squisher, I don't think it's gonna happen.
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  Speaker 3: All right, So we're good on daylight saving time talk
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  Speaker 3: until eight months from now.
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  Speaker 2: Correc Yep, we'll revisit in the fall.
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  Speaker 4: Great sounds good.
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• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Mike, we got a piece in the Journal of Wall Street.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Let's tell you what the dot com bust can tell
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: us about today's AI boom. What can it tell us, Mike?
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  Speaker 4: Maybe nothing.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: I think I would like to start off with and
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: offer the perspective that quite possibly it can tell us
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: very little. But we've not the first ones to bring
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: up some I don't know, corollaries or similarities seemingly between
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: stages of the dot com boom and what we've been
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: seeing in the.
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  Speaker 4: In the AI trade.
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  Speaker 3: I think a few lessons from the dot com boom
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  Speaker 3: that I think everyone can kind of take away and
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  Speaker 3: learn from is that, Yeah, sometimes valuations in bubbles do
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  Speaker 3: happen and people fundamentally start buying into things that they
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  Speaker 3: do not even begin to understand, as was the case
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: during the dot com bubble, when you had companies that
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: did not have any revenue skyrocketing and value because there
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: was a dot com next to their name, and you can,
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: I think all of us can see how some of
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  Speaker 3: that stuff still exists here in markets today, Right, Like,
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  Speaker 3: does the average person have a real sense for or
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  Speaker 3: how crypto might or might not be related to AI,
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: or how certain areas of AI are actually making money
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: or making advancements.
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: I think the answer is probably not.
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  Speaker 3: The other lessons that I would have would be these
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: two aren't one for one similar, right. I just mentioned
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: how in the dot com bubble you had companies that
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: we are making no money, had no revenues, that were
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: going through the roof. That's pretty fundamentally different from what
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: we are dealing with when it comes to the AI boom.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: In my view, you know, in video is one of
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: the most profitable and fastest growing companies in history.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: So to that and not to be actually no, to
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: be Debbie Downer, to be Debbie Downer. Yep, it wasn't
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  Speaker 2: just the unprofitable companies that went through the tech bubble.
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  Speaker 4: True.
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  Speaker 2: I'm looking right now at a chart of five major
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  Speaker 2: companies that I would imagine most Actually sorry, I've got
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  Speaker 2: six here, I think, but maybe only five of them
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  Speaker 2: were around Oh yeah, because I forget Okay, that one
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  Speaker 2: didn't really exist then. Okay, so i got five that were,
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  Speaker 2: you know, around in prevalent then they were all different stages.
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  Speaker 2: But I've got Microsoft, who was big enough to have
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  Speaker 2: already gone through an anti trust situation at that point.
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  Speaker 2: So there was a business there that was making money
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  Speaker 2: in monopolistic fashion. Amazon, who was not, you know, a
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  Speaker 2: startup at that point, but you know, four or five
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  Speaker 2: years into their business and still like trying to figure
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: out how to make money, but you know, not a
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  Speaker 2: brand new company with no revenue. Cisco Systems, who was
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: I believe, if I'm not mistake in the first trillion
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  Speaker 2: dollar company ever m hm, Intel Corporation, who was the
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  Speaker 2: eight trillion pound gorilla in the room when it came
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  Speaker 2: to semiconductors. And eBay another little scrappy, young startup. And
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  Speaker 2: here's what you found from these companies. Let's start first
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: with the scrappiest and the startupyist of the two or
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  Speaker 2: the five. Amazon from peak to trough. You look at
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  Speaker 2: like how bad things got for Amazon. Amazon at one
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  Speaker 2: point was ninety five percent off its tech bubble high
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  Speaker 2: in late two thousand and one. So again, like you
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  Speaker 2: would expect like that to a certain extent because valuations
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  Speaker 2: we're nuts in Amazon was not this big well established
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  Speaker 2: company totally get it right, like it's there's nothing there
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  Speaker 2: when you sit there like okay, like yeah, this is
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  Speaker 2: out of character. eBay was down seventy seven percent at
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  Speaker 2: one point off its tech bubble high. Again, scrap a
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  Speaker 2: young startup. Sure totally understand Cisco Systems stodgy boring old
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  Speaker 2: Cisco Systems today. Back then, remember, Cisco was still making
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: you know, billions of dollars in sales, and I don't
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: have the exact profit numbers, but they were making a
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: lot of money because they were really the only game
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: in town at scale that did that stuff. Cisco Systems
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  Speaker 2: by October of two thousand and two was eighty nine
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  Speaker 2: percent off its high. Intel, who was like the then
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  Speaker 2: equivalent of Nvidia in every respect, was down eighty percent
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  Speaker 2: off its high by October of two thousand and two.
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  Speaker 2: And Microsoft, who was big enough that they went through
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  Speaker 2: again an anti trust you know case and everything, by
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: December of two thousand was fifty one percent off its high.
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  Speaker 2: So even your big tech companies that were hugely profitable,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: might I add, you know, like you you take a
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: look at you know, these companies in their profit and
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: you know, I'll just look at like margins as an example.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Let's let's just do operating margins here. No, I'm not
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: looking at the right thing. I can't pull it up
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: in real time. But these were, you know, companies that
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: were bigly profitable, and they still felt a ton of
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: pain just because the valuations had gotten so nutty, and
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: in particular the valuations got and then the businesses slowed
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: down as the tech bubble burst.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's the lesson to me was that
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  Speaker 3: even good companies, as happens in every big market pullback,
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: but even big good companies that survived and became behemoths
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: later on Amazon got absolutely decimated during the dot com
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  Speaker 3: bubble and bust. And that's that's an important lesson I
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: think is you know, just because the company is profitable
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean that they can't get dragged into a messy
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: period of time.
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  Speaker 2: Mike, do you know which of those companies got back
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: to their dot com bubble high's fastest?
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  Speaker 4: Microsoft? No, eBay.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: eBay made new highs in by let's see what this is.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: But January of two thousand and four, eBay was making
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: new highs the next one. Do you think it's Microsoft,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: It's not. It was Amazon. Amazon was making new highs
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  Speaker 2: by November of two thousand and nine.
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  Speaker 3: I guess that's speed to two companies that truly grew
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  Speaker 3: out of the dot com bubble afterwards, right, Like I
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  Speaker 3: remember their prevalence back then. Yeah, Microsoft was just kind
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  Speaker 3: of doing more of the same. By then, those were
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  Speaker 3: two completely transformed companies.
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  Speaker 2: Microsoft did not get back to its dot com bubble
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  Speaker 2: highs until twenty sixteen because remember the Steve balmerera sucked
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: for Microsoft shareholders. I mean, my goodness, like just just horrible.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Intel and Cisco have never gotten back to those dot
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: com bubble highs. They are still the closest Intel has
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: gotten is basically, let's see, I need to pull this
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: up now just to see. I gotta get up to
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: current day just because I wasn't there. Intel is now
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: seventy three percent off its highs. It got as close
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: as within ten percent of them in twenty twenty, and
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: let's see, Cisco got to within about twenty percent, basically
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: where they are right now. Obviously there's dividends and things
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: like that that have been paid in the time, but
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: just from a peer price level kind of wild.
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  Speaker 1: news in New England and around the country. This is
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: How the AI talent race is reshaping the tech job
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: mark let's turn not related. They can be. You know,
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: it's don Wasn't a real person in AI is not
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: a real person either. You just got to stretch your
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: mind a little bit. Michael, Yeah, man, when we talk
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: about this, is this talking about like companies not hiring
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: as many people or is it more we're looking for
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: people with different skills listed in their resumes.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Different skills, and I'll be interested to see how they're
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: actually testing these skills, because it's pretty easy to say
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: that you're some sort of black belt in chat GPT
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: without anything backing it.
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: But I think.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Eventually, and I'm sure already, you start having college level
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: courses and credentials that are popping up there that you
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: can go and get and tech will certainly be the
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: very first part of the industry. But frankly, I think
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: almost every industry, whether there's a good reason for it
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: or not, are trying to make their business all about AI,
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: and so I think across the spectrum, I would I
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: would expect that any college graduate right now is being
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: told by counselors find a way to have AI somewhere
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: in your resume. And I don't care if you are
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: applying for a food services job or for a you know,
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: investment banking role or something in technology, you need to
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: have it there somewhere.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Interesting note on that, Mike, what would you say when
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: when you look at millennials in terms of their ability
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: to use technology? Remember, not every young person is a millennial.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: To everyone listening, Millennials are a specific cohort of people
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: that at this point in time are between like thirty
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: and forty five years old. The younger people now their
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: gen Z. But in terms of millennials who were coming
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: into the job market during the two thousands and early
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: twenty tens, what do you think is like the defining
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: tech skill that they have that separates them from previous generations. Hmmm,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: I'll give my answer.
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: While you think, I think it's just navigating the Internet like.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Search. It's search like being able to understand how a
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: keyword search works. Where my parents, as much as I
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: love them, the stuff that they put into Google, you're
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: not gonna get good results. Like it's just you know,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: you can't put into Google, you know, buying a car.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: If you want to buy a car, you have to
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: put in like you know, hey, car dealers with this
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: brand in New England or whatever, or you know, how
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: do I negotiate a new car lease? Like? And millennials
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: picked up on that because we grew up when search
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: engines grew up.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: So the other piece that I would say, I I
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: feel like that was the first generation to get hired
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: to do social media. So navigating that in the professional
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: in the professional space, whether it was LinkedIn or in
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: you know, Instagram, Facebook, all of those platforms, that was
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: they were the first boils down.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: My search because it's knowing how to get your stuff
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: to show up.
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: Basically, yeah, exactly.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Mike, would you ever in a million years have considered
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: putting Google as a relevant skill on your resume?
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: No?
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Fifteen years ago, No, I don't know.
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right there.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: There was no way to advertise that the most tech
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: forward thing I had on my resume at any point
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: was that I had a Microsoft Excel certification course on
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: my on my resume, right or or you know, like,
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: how many resumes do you see like proficient with Microsoft
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: work Excel and Power pretty much a standard? Yeah, but
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: do you ever see anyone like good at Google?
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: No?
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: No, So I think it's kind of interesting just how
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: this like from a societal standpoint, what it's okay to
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: put as a skill on a resume and what isn't
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Because arguably one of the biggest tech skills that millennials
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: brought to the table never showed up on a resume.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: But one of the biggest ones that I suspect gen
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Z will have is again, they're developing at the same
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: time that all of these AI programs are, and quite honestly,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: they're probably gonna around run circles around most millennials. Like
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: I am fully calling myself a soon to be tech illiterate.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I'm not proud of it, but like, this is where
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: I think we're going.
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: I don't know what that looks like.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: Proficient in Chat, GPT, and then several other like AI
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: based platforms, And I guess how it appears on a resume?
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: I think so, I think so yeah, And so I
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: think that this is just interesting, like what makes it
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: onto a resume and what doesn't because like it's really
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: the funny thing is the cut for me is like
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: anything that's native to the Internet, like Internet one point
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: oho or two point oh or whatever number it was
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: like during the twenty and twenty tens, you basically wouldn't
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: put on a resume because it's just like learning how
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: to find stuff. But anything that is housed somewhere else
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: we've said, yes, I'm good at Excel, or I'm good
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: at you know, Cobal or like okay, those are fine,
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: but good at Google, you would never put on there
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: GPT The interesting thing and all these you know platforms,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: they're all housed on the Internet, but we're treating them differently,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: which is.
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: Kind of interesting to me.
• 23:34
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• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Mike, you ever been to a restaurant?
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: No?
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: What's that? Sorry?
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Resume good at restaurant can be taken out in public.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: This piece of the New York Times, and it's talking about, Hey,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: despite you know, the weather being a mess in many
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: parts of the country, despite inflation concerns, this and that,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: restaurant sales have been a bright spot in the economic
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: data over the course of the winter. And the thing
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: that I find, like, I guess most wild about this is,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: you know, we spent a lot of twenty twenty two
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: and twenty twenty three reading the pieces you know, inflation's
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: making restaurants like unmanageable, like this, and that we we
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: spend a lot of time, you know, talking about how
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: hard it is for restaurants to get help, which is
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: still a major problem. By the way, talk to any
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: restaurant owner and they will tell you that still is
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: one of the biggest issues they have. But despite all
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: of this, and this is according to data from the
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: National Restaurant Association, January, sales at eating and drinking places
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: was up about two percentage points in real terms after
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: adjusting for inflation.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: Jack, I'm filing this in my folder of other stories
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: related to that wealth effect sure growing upper class. This
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: is not a story about McDonald's and Chipotle. No, this
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: is a story about luxury restaurants who are able to
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: charge a high menu price and speaks to the massive
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: increase in spending on luxury experiences that we've.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: Seen over the last year or so.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: And I'm filing it right away with that because you
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: go take a look at McDonald's arnings, for example, Sure
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: like they were fine, but they were not exactly expecting
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: a blockbuster first quarter. In fact, they expect the first
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: quarter of the year to be a low point for
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: same store sales according to the CFO, And so this
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: falls into that same category, which is why I'll also
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: be really interested to see what we have to say
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: about March restaurant sales or April restaurant sales. Assuming this
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: type of market downturn sticks with us. And you know,
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: on the surface, somebody with five million dollars in their
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: four oh one k sees a giant drop in the value.
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: Of their assets.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: Do you start to see maybe that five million dollar
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: person isn't the best proxy, but a million dollars in
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: that four oh one k, which is a large portion
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: of Americans as we know, did they start to see
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: that type of pullback away from the big you know,
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: experience spending that has been driving a lot of this
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: economy forward over the last several months.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: You know what the comp is on this, in my opinion,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: what's that. It's what we're seeing with the airlines where
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: your Delta's, your United to your Americans, the ones that
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: offer the high end premium seats, they've been just find
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: the last couple of years, your jet blues in Southwest
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: and your frontiers and spirits have been getting absolutely just
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: like crushed.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: It's it's it's the same type of thing, and it
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: really speaks to that high end spender being the driving
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: force behind a lot of spending growth, and the vast
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: majority of people really struggling to the point where they
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: can't they can't find ways to make these discretionary purchases.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Which again gets back to how difficult these things are
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: to predict. Let's just talk about for thirty seconds that
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: airline piece. If you had told me in twenty twenty
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: that airlines were preparing for a world in which the
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: business traveler is doing a lot less travel because of
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: the advent of Zoom and all of this stuff, and
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: so first class cabins were going to shrink. They wanted
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: to make more urce class. Might they have a whole
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: class call it's called business class. All those things were
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: going to permanently shrink, and they needed to make more
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: room for this cost contrasus cost conscious vacation traveler. I
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: would have totally bought that premise. Instead, the exact opposite
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: has happened. Business travelers have returned in force, and the
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: vacation traveler has been willing to pay up for luxury.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: It's been the exact opposite of I think what I
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: probably would have personally anticipated in the early days of COVID. Granted,
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: I did not anticipate quite as much stimulus and market
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: run away as we have seen over the last few years.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: But that's where this stuff becomes so difficult to tell
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: where human behavior will go next.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break here. When we return, it's
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: time for stack root left.
• 29:03
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• 29:07
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• 29:11
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• 29:32
  Speaker 2: All right, Mike, what do you got for me? For
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: stack Rouletts.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: We have got CVS finally pivoting their business model a
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: little bit, perhaps too little, too late, after Walgreen's getting
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: taken private last week, but both pharmacies struggling a lot
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: over the course of the last twenty years. Really as
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: a massive portion of their business the front of store
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: sales of grocery items, cleaning items, all sorts of convenience
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: store items that you would typically go to I have
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: just disappeared to the likes of Amazon primarily. But CVS
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: now testing out twelve new stores that are going to
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: focus on full service pharmacies, limited retail offerings. Average size
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: less than five thousand square feet, which I don't know
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: the average size of an existing CVS, but that's substantially
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: smaller than your typical CVS store, And we'll see how
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: it goes. I can't imagine this is going to be
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: able to completely save and revolutionize their business.
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: But I don't know about you, Chuck.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: I don't know the last time I have gone into
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: a CVS specifically for anything other than medicine type services, right,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: like the.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: Only time I ever enter one?
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: I yeah, no, even then, Like you know, I might
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: be traveling and need toothpaste, but I think that they
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: would still carry that type of thing. What they're talking
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: about getting rid of is the you know, aisles upon
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: aisles of greeting cards and everything else. And that's just
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: I think, not how a lot of people shop these days.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does actually raise an interesting question just on
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: the greeting cards, like if they stop stalking those, Like
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: where what happens to Hallmark? Uh? Where do those cards go?
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess grocery stores like Target, Walmart's still.
• 31:15
  Speaker 6: The paper store. You guys know the paper store.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: I know the paper store. Yeah, it's nice.
• 31:22
  Speaker 6: They got plenty of cards, gifts, all that crap.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: You know, I should go there more often. It's fine,
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: sounds nice.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, But you know, their overall push from CVS over
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: the last few years has been more focused on healthcare. Right,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: they stopped selling cigarettes. Uh, they still sell alcohol, but
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: you know, they dropped a bunch of stuff. They tried
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: to expand their primary care and while I have personally
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: found that stuff very convenient, clearly the adoption has not
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: been there. And also they've had some trouble with you know,
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: the assumed reimbursements they would be getting from drugs and
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: from primary care compared to what they're actually receiving. But
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: continuing this push, it seems like away from retail and
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: towards medicine, which to me is the only direction you
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: can go if you are one of these pharmacy companies.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Now, Mike, I'm gonna talk a little bit about the
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: great avocado, and I didn't realize that the avocados prevalence
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: in American culture is a pretty new thing. The average
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: American today eats about nine pounds of avocados a year. Okay,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: so figure three quarters of a pound a month, which
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: is what do you think that is, Mike? Maybe two
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: avocados a month, Sure, that's the average obviously, I know,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: like a week, Tucker, I'm like three or four, you know.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Like again, I'm a heavy guaker these days. And it's uh,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: it's it's wild. It's great. But in the nineteen seventies,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: the average American ate less than one pound of avocados
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: a year. So avocado consumption is up like nine percent
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: in the last fifty years, even since two thousand, it's quadrupled.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: And the big thing is that most of them now
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: are not grown in the US, which is no surprise,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: but seventy nine point seven percent of avocados are now
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: grown that are consumed in the US are now grown
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: in Mexico. This according to data from the HAAS Avocado Board. Which,
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: how do I get on that?
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: Not doing this?
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: What do you mean not doing this?
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: You're gonna have to.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Really go for a career change if you're gonna get
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: on the board. I think, doesn't my consumption like do anything?
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: I don't think such chuck, you don't. I mean it's no,
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: I don't think so.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: I figured it was like the heaviest eaters like end
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: up on itors. At at the very.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: Least a career in agriculture might be a prerequisite. But
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: what do you say, ten pounds a year is the
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: average nine nine? Because the average American also consumes sixty
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: pounds of beef, So on the beef, but that's kind
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: of shrinking. And I'm sure chickens got to be like
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: one hundred pounds per person on average.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: So yeah.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: But the wild thing is that avocados until the late nineties,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: that the big thing that spurred this is foreign avocados
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: like Big US avocado prevented the imports of avocados for
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: the longest time. It was only ninety seven that Mexican
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: avocados were allowed into the United States and basically weren't
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: accessible in the US until around ten years later. And
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: now can seventy nine point seven percent of avocado's consumed
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: in the US are grown in Mexico, about eleven point
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: eight percent is in California, and then you got Peru
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: and Colombia at five and two point six percent respectively,
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: and that's pretty much everything. So it's kind of wild
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: just how this is, you know, all all developed here,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: But there really is an inflection point when Mexican avocados
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: became available in the US, just because that drove the
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: cost down significantly, because otherwise, if you want to produce
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: like enough avocados to get our current level of consumption,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: the price would be just significantly higher.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: It's amazing what low prize in good marketing can do.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: And just delicious avocado. Yeah, there's there's no better marketing
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: for avocado than eating an avocado.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: So there's that. Taking a look at markets, they still
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: remain very not good. At the moment that was off
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: four hundred and seventy one points, the SMP's down one
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: to seventeen, and the Nasdaq down five ninety seven. We're
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: gonna take a break for the rest of the day.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Tomorrow back at it. Remember, we do have the Jolts
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: report coming out tomorrow at ten am. We'll be discussing
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: that and a whole lot more on the Financial Exchange.