Latest / The Financial Exchange Show / Inflation Surprise: Is the Fed’s Easing Path in Trouble?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: The Financial Exchange is produced by Money Matters Radio and
- 0:03Speaker 1: is hosted by employees of the Armstrong Advisory Group, a
- 0:05Speaker 1: registered investment advisor. All opinions expressed are solely those of
- 0:09Speaker 1: the hosts. Do not reflect the opinions of Armstrong Advisory
- 0:11Speaker 1: or anyone else. Investments can lose money. This program does
- 0:14Speaker 1: not offer any specific financial or investment advice. Please consult
- 0:17Speaker 1: your own financial, tax, and estate planning advisors before making
- 0:20Speaker 1: any investment decisions. Armstrong Advisory and the advertisers heard on
- 0:23Speaker 1: this program do not endorse each other or their services.
- 0:26Speaker 1: Armstrong and Money Matters Radio do not compensate each other
- 0:28Speaker 1: for referrals and are not affiliated. This is the Financial
- 0:34Speaker 1: Exchange with Mike Armstrong and Mark Vandetti. Your exclusive look
- 0:40Speaker 1: at business and financial news affecting your day, your city,
- 0:43Speaker 1: your world. Stay informed and up to date about economic
- 0:47Speaker 1: and market trends, plus breaking business news every day. The
- 0:51Speaker 1: Financial Exchange is a proud partner of the Disabled American
- 0:54Speaker 1: Veterans Department of Massachusetts. Help us support our great American
- 0:58Speaker 1: heroes by visiting dav five K DOC Boston and making
- 1:02Speaker 1: a donation Today. Face is the Financial Exchange with Mike
- 1:06Speaker 1: Armstrong and Mark Vandetdy.
- 1:12Speaker 2: Good morning, Happy Friday. Glad you made it this far
- 1:16Speaker 2: with all of your kids still at home and not
- 1:17Speaker 2: in school. Just talking to Ed Lambert this morning, and
- 1:20Speaker 2: many many schools still closed down on the Cape and
- 1:23Speaker 2: in southern Masters.
- 1:24Speaker 3: How about how about your town, Tucker.
- 1:26Speaker 4: You guys had two straight weeks of no school because
- 1:29Speaker 4: of vacation last week and this week with the storm.
- 1:31Speaker 2: As I said to Ed this morning, your kids are
- 1:33Speaker 2: going to have a very patriotic day of school on
- 1:36Speaker 2: July fourth, and I'm excited for them.
- 1:38Speaker 1: No, we're pulling them out.
- 1:40Speaker 4: We're not letting them stay in past this makeup.
- 1:43Speaker 3: Time's gonna start home schooling.
- 1:45Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's he's seven years old. Are you gonna leave
- 1:49Speaker 4: him in school for that long?
- 1:51Speaker 5: No? No, it's summer.
- 1:52Speaker 4: Come on, see you later, let's go.
- 1:54Speaker 2: I'm excited for these kids going into today. So markets
- 1:59Speaker 2: are off today, Mark yesterday, different reasons seemingly the cause
- 2:03Speaker 2: between them. But today we had a reading, a course,
- 2:07Speaker 2: an economic reading that frankly, you know, I didn't even
- 2:10Speaker 2: bring up as a major news event on the calendar
- 2:12Speaker 2: because I don't really think we pay a lot of
- 2:14Speaker 2: attention to the producer price Index. I don't know a
- 2:17Speaker 2: lot of analysts who do pay a ton of attention
- 2:19Speaker 2: to it. I don't think it's really predictive of consumer inflation,
- 2:24Speaker 2: and so most ignore it. But there's a few things
- 2:27Speaker 2: going into this year that I think most investors on
- 2:32Speaker 2: average anticipate. One of them is inflation continuing to come
- 2:36Speaker 2: down and interest rates continue to come down. I don't
- 2:39Speaker 2: think you believe that, but I think the average investor
- 2:42Speaker 2: has thought that that was the case. I think that
- 2:45Speaker 2: the average investor expects the AI boom to continue, both
- 2:49Speaker 2: in terms of spending as well as rollout of the technology.
- 2:54Speaker 2: I think, again, you know, to set the floor on
- 2:58Speaker 2: some status quos, I think generally speaking, the average investor
- 3:03Speaker 2: expected tariffs to remain in place but kind of be
- 3:08Speaker 2: background news. And today one of those items that I think, again,
- 3:13Speaker 2: there's a lot, not a lot of things that investors
- 3:15Speaker 2: agree on, but I think generally speaking, the average investor
- 3:17Speaker 2: was thinking that would be the status quot for twenty
- 3:19Speaker 2: twenty six, and this morning what the news was was
- 3:23Speaker 2: potentially breaking down one of those core expectations of inflation
- 3:27Speaker 2: coming down, there by interest rates coming down. I think
- 3:30Speaker 2: part of what markets are doing right now is reacting
- 3:32Speaker 2: to that potential contradiction.
- 3:36Speaker 5: I'd be a little surprised if inflation jumped. If what
- 3:39Speaker 5: we saw today in producer prices, which is you've already
- 3:41Speaker 5: pointed out, is not used by people that do that
- 3:47Speaker 5: do so called time series forecasting. I'll just use the
- 3:50Speaker 5: term people like me because it doesn't really help your models,
- 3:53Speaker 5: so I don't pay much attention to it. But when
- 3:55Speaker 5: it comes in really hot, that might contain useful information.
- 3:58Speaker 5: I don't want to dismiss it. And with respect to
- 4:00Speaker 5: the expectation that inflation would go down or go up
- 4:04Speaker 5: this year, I was originally in the should stay elevated
- 4:07Speaker 5: camp because growth appeared to be above potential. Then we
- 4:11Speaker 5: got that fourth quarter reading that set me a little
- 4:14Speaker 5: bit back on my heels. Overall growth in twenty twenty
- 4:16Speaker 5: five was far slower than twenty twenty four.
- 4:21Speaker 2: So let's start off before we get into what the
- 4:23Speaker 2: reading was. Can you just explain to listeners, like the
- 4:25Speaker 2: difference between what exactly producer price index is measuring compared
- 4:29Speaker 2: to the more used consumer price index that we do
- 4:33Speaker 2: spend a lot of time on this program going through
- 4:36Speaker 2: it is another measure of inflation. But it's not what
- 4:38Speaker 2: you and I are paying. It's a survey rather of businesses.
- 4:41Speaker 3: Correct.
- 4:41Speaker 5: Yeah, that was going to be more or less my
- 4:45Speaker 5: my explanation. Firms pay one set of prices, we pay
- 4:48Speaker 5: another set of prices. In theory, PPI should feed into CPI.
- 4:53Speaker 5: In practice it doesn't really help you predict it. Of course,
- 4:56Speaker 5: as you pointed out.
- 4:57Speaker 2: For the last few years, you have not seen producer
- 5:01Speaker 2: price index indices very elevated. But you've all heard us
- 5:05Speaker 2: talk about how during twenty twenty two, the consumer Price
- 5:09Speaker 2: Index hit a high of almost nine percent year over year.
- 5:13Speaker 2: This more volatile producer price Index hit a high of
- 5:19Speaker 2: twenty two percent year over year in June of twenty
- 5:23Speaker 2: twenty two. So it can be a bit more volatile
- 5:25Speaker 2: in terms of its swings.
- 5:27Speaker 5: More recently, it is more heavily weighted. I just looked
- 5:30Speaker 5: it up to confirm this. It's heavily weighted toward inputs
- 5:32Speaker 5: like commodities, right, which are weighted. Therefore, which are weighted
- 5:38Speaker 5: which are given a much more smaller weight. I guess
- 5:40Speaker 5: I should just say in CPI, the one we're all
- 5:42Speaker 5: used to measuring consumer prices by.
- 5:46Speaker 2: So the big news of this morning, core wholesale prices,
- 5:50Speaker 2: the producer Price Index when you strip out the food
- 5:52Speaker 2: and energy part of it, increased eight tenths of a
- 5:55Speaker 2: percent in January. The expectations were for a three tenths
- 5:59Speaker 2: of a percent increase. So again volatile reading, volatile measure anyway,
- 6:04Speaker 2: but kind of blue expectations out of the water. And
- 6:08Speaker 2: I don't have really a reading of how rare something
- 6:11Speaker 2: like that is. But to put it plainly, when you're
- 6:15Speaker 2: expecting three tens of percent increase, you don't really care
- 6:18Speaker 2: on this reading if it's four or five tenths of percent,
- 6:20Speaker 2: but you start to care when it comes in at
- 6:22Speaker 2: eight tenths of a percent, well well above any expectations.
- 6:27Speaker 5: Yeah, and that would be a surprise because again, think
- 6:31Speaker 5: about what's happening in the larger economy. We saw growth
- 6:33Speaker 5: slow a lot in the fourth quarter. Growth overall in
- 6:37Speaker 5: twenty twenty five was slow. I know I'm repeating myself,
- 6:39Speaker 5: but it's worth bearing this in mind. It was a
- 6:42Speaker 5: lot slower than in twenty twenty four. Two point two
- 6:44Speaker 5: versus what two point eight in twenty twenty four, I
- 6:46Speaker 5: think at two point nine and twenty twenty three, So
- 6:48Speaker 5: growth is slowed a lot, and that may have been
- 6:50Speaker 5: in the cards because growth was rapid coming out of COVID.
- 6:54Speaker 5: All the stimulus, monetary and fiscal. Slower growth, all else equal,
- 6:59Speaker 5: should mean lower inflation. I changed my tune a little
- 7:02Speaker 5: bit last week when I saw the GDP, the economic
- 7:04Speaker 5: growth number. We appear to be growing at about potential
- 7:08Speaker 5: or trend rate. That should again, all else will mean
- 7:11Speaker 5: less upward pressure on inflation. So I could see inflation
- 7:15Speaker 5: settling down in the I don't know, two and a
- 7:16Speaker 5: half percent if you want to measure it by PC,
- 7:20Speaker 5: the way the Fed does this year. The wrinkle there
- 7:22Speaker 5: is inflation expectations. They remain high. And I don't know
- 7:26Speaker 5: what this month's PPI reading is telling us. Is it
- 7:29Speaker 5: just a bunch of one offs that'll sort of even
- 7:33Speaker 5: out with a couple of more months worth of data,
- 7:35Speaker 5: or have we missed something? Of people who do the
- 7:38Speaker 5: type of analysis I do, for example, missed something. Is
- 7:41Speaker 5: it expectations pushing prices up? Was there some shock reflected
- 7:46Speaker 5: in core PPI something we didn't filter out. I don't know.
- 7:50Speaker 2: So in either case, I don't think this is a
- 7:52Speaker 2: reading of uh oh, run for the hills. We're heading
- 7:55Speaker 2: back to five percent inflation. I don't think anyone should
- 7:57Speaker 2: read it that way. Just because doucer prices surge in
- 8:01Speaker 2: one month does not mean that will lead to consumer prices.
- 8:04Speaker 2: We might not see any of this reflected in the
- 8:07Speaker 2: ultimate data. What it does do for me, though, is
- 8:10Speaker 2: raise some questions at the Federal Reserve in terms of
- 8:13Speaker 2: what path they continue to go down now in the
- 8:15Speaker 2: intermediate term. The answer was they aren't cutting rates anyway.
- 8:19Speaker 2: Jay Powell's got two more meetings to oversee. The next
- 8:21Speaker 2: one coming up is March eighteenth, so a little eighteen
- 8:26Speaker 2: twenty days away at this stage. There will be another
- 8:28Speaker 2: one in April twenty ninth. But the likelihood of a
- 8:32Speaker 2: rate cut at that March meeting, which a month ago
- 8:35Speaker 2: was sitting around sixteen percent chance of a rate cut
- 8:39Speaker 2: at that March meeting, is now down to almost nothing,
- 8:41Speaker 2: less than four percent probability of a rate cut, according
- 8:44Speaker 2: to Ciman.
- 8:44Speaker 5: I think this is one of those cases, and we
- 8:46Speaker 5: talk about this lot where you can't without a model
- 8:48Speaker 5: in mind, and most people don't have one because you
- 8:50Speaker 5: all do something else than economics and finance for a living.
- 8:53Speaker 5: But you've got to understand how PPI fits into your
- 8:55Speaker 5: bigger like worldview, and that'll prevent you from flying off
- 8:59Speaker 5: the handle every time time you get a data point
- 9:02Speaker 5: you need, you need like a construct or. A model
- 9:04Speaker 5: is a fancy word for that. And I we got
- 9:07Speaker 5: inflation already for January. It was. It suggests some if
- 9:12Speaker 5: you look at measures that trim extremes, it suggests annualized
- 9:16Speaker 5: inflation somewhere in the you know, I twoes, mid twoes,
- 9:19Speaker 5: I twos, maybe low threes. This this seems like a
- 9:22Speaker 5: little bit of an outlier given what we already know
- 9:24Speaker 5: about January.
- 9:25Speaker 3: It does.
- 9:25Speaker 2: I think the only thing I'm really comfortable saying about
- 9:28Speaker 2: this when it comes to the broader picture is a
- 9:31Speaker 2: reading like this makes it less likely.
- 9:34Speaker 3: For the FED to cut rates in the short.
- 9:35Speaker 5: Term, all else equal, If this has a place in
- 9:38Speaker 5: your mental model, it almost certainly.
- 9:43Speaker 1: Don't.
- 9:43Speaker 5: I don't know if it fits into I know this
- 9:45Speaker 5: sounds ridiculous because it seems like it. Why did they
- 9:48Speaker 5: measure it if the Fed doesn't. I don't know if
- 9:50Speaker 5: the latest variation on the big economy wide models that
- 9:54Speaker 5: they used to estimate how the changes they make will
- 9:57Speaker 5: affect important variables like GDP and unemployment. I don't know
- 10:00Speaker 5: how much of a role PPI plays, or how much
- 10:03Speaker 5: of a role one extreme observation will could play in
- 10:09Speaker 5: their forecasts of the variables that they pay close attention
- 10:12Speaker 5: to the things they're responsible for, consumer price inflation and unemployment.
- 10:16Speaker 2: In any case, this big reading this morning again the
- 10:19Speaker 2: Producer Price Index coming in with a month over month
- 10:21Speaker 2: core reading of eight tens percent. Bump here to say,
- 10:24Speaker 2: I'm not sure that you should make a lot of it,
- 10:26Speaker 2: but markets seem to be douz off now six hundred
- 10:29Speaker 2: and seventy points, SMP off forty six points in the
- 10:32Speaker 2: NASDAC off one hundred and eighty. We're going to take
- 10:34Speaker 2: a quick break because really the news that has continued
- 10:37Speaker 2: to dominate markets throughout this year, and really since October
- 10:40Speaker 2: November of last year, has been about tech. It's been
- 10:42Speaker 2: about tech, It's been about AI. Let's take a look
- 10:46Speaker 2: at the warning signs coming from the tech sector of
- 10:49Speaker 2: the market that's next year.
- 10:50Speaker 1: On The Financial Exchange, stay informed and prepared for market
- 10:54Speaker 1: changes and breaking business news. The Financial Exchange is live
- 10:57Speaker 1: every day on YouTube. Tune in, subscribe and keep up
- 11:01Speaker 1: to date on all of our show's content. On a
- 11:03Speaker 1: daily basis. This is the Financial Exchange Radio Network. Miss
- 11:08Speaker 1: any of the show. The Financial Exchange Show podcast is
- 11:11Speaker 1: available on Apple, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. Hit the subscribe button
- 11:16Speaker 1: and leave us a five star review. This is the
- 11:19Speaker 1: Financial Exchange Radio Network.
- 11:23Speaker 4: The Financial Exchange is a proud partner of the Disabled
- 11:26Speaker 4: American Veterans Department of Massachusetts. The DAV five K raise
- 11:31Speaker 4: over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars last year, but
- 11:34Speaker 4: we still need your help. You can support our great
- 11:36Speaker 4: American heroes by visiting DAV fivek dot Boston and making
- 11:40Speaker 4: a donation today. Your participation helped provide vital services like
- 11:45Speaker 4: free transportation to medical appointments and safe housing for single
- 11:50Speaker 4: veterans and their families. Donate today at DAV fivek dot Boston.
- 11:55Speaker 4: That's davfivek dot Boston.
- 11:57Speaker 2: By the way, I was so excited about the producer
- 12:00Speaker 2: price index, I didn't didn't give out that we're going
- 12:04Speaker 2: to be joined by a bunch of guests today. We've
- 12:05Speaker 2: got a busy show. Todd Lutsky's joining us during the
- 12:07Speaker 2: next segments. During the eleven o'clock hour, we're going to
- 12:09Speaker 2: be joined by Michael sand Totlly from CNBC excited about
- 12:13Speaker 2: that interview. We last spoke to him back in January,
- 12:16Speaker 2: prior to some of the shakeups in the SaaS area
- 12:18Speaker 2: and other areas of the AI trade. And then Paul
- 12:21Speaker 2: Lamonica from Baron's joining us today at eleven forty five.
- 12:24Speaker 2: So stay tuned. A lot more to come. But there's
- 12:26Speaker 2: a piece from the New York Times today that I think,
- 12:29Speaker 2: beyond anything else, has some neat little ways to graphically
- 12:33Speaker 2: display data, which is cool, but not why anybody reads
- 12:36Speaker 2: the article. The subject is the warning signs flashing from
- 12:41Speaker 2: the tech heavy bloat of the S and P five hundred,
- 12:44Speaker 2: and obviously with a title like that, I'm looking for, Okay,
- 12:47Speaker 2: well what are the warning signs? And I honestly I
- 12:49Speaker 2: don't think I came away with any, but they do
- 12:53Speaker 2: reiterate some of the points that we've been making over
- 12:56Speaker 2: and over on this program, which would be if you're
- 12:59Speaker 2: not all already aware, if you are going in and
- 13:03Speaker 2: buying an S and P five hundred index fund of
- 13:06Speaker 2: one sort or another, or you know, any other index
- 13:08Speaker 2: fund that generally replicates on a market capitalization weighted basis
- 13:14Speaker 2: the largest US companies, you're making a massive bet on
- 13:18Speaker 2: technology and thereby a massive bet on artificial intelligence. That
- 13:22Speaker 2: is the real bet that you are making right now,
- 13:26Speaker 2: because those companies that are involved in tech make up
- 13:30Speaker 2: a huge portion of the total index. And that's really
- 13:34Speaker 2: the main thing that I could take away from this.
- 13:36Speaker 2: And an outsized waiting compared to any other time in
- 13:38Speaker 2: history too.
- 13:39Speaker 5: Well, you're betting that investors on average are right to
- 13:42Speaker 5: value companies relative to one another the way that they
- 13:46Speaker 5: do right now, that nvidious prospects are x times greater
- 13:50Speaker 5: than a company with smaller market capitalization, and the smaller
- 13:54Speaker 5: weighting the index is mechanical, but it's also but it's
- 13:58Speaker 5: not mysterious. Assign those weights to it collectively.
- 14:02Speaker 2: So for example, here, just to give you some idea
- 14:05Speaker 2: of the scale, the president has made energy, low gas prices,
- 14:10Speaker 2: the actions in Venezuela a big part of his time
- 14:13Speaker 2: in office. The energy sector as a whole is represented
- 14:16Speaker 2: by twenty two companies that make up a combined two
- 14:18Speaker 2: point zero six trillion dollars. It's less than half of
- 14:21Speaker 2: Invidia's market capitalization.
- 14:24Speaker 3: That's every single publicly traded.
- 14:28Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some that are outside of there, but generally,
- 14:32Speaker 2: you know, some of the big giant energy companies. Add
- 14:35Speaker 2: them all together, they're less than half of in video stock.
- 14:39Speaker 2: There are other areas of the market that are similar.
- 14:42Speaker 2: There are thirty one companies that operate in real estate
- 14:44Speaker 2: that are publicly traded one point one eight trillion dollars
- 14:47Speaker 2: compared to in videos for I think it's now like
- 14:50Speaker 2: four five four seven when this was written utilities. That's
- 14:54Speaker 2: been a major benefit beneficiary of the AI trade. A
- 14:56Speaker 2: bunch of utilities being assumed that they are going to
- 14:59Speaker 2: have to build out this electricity grid. Who's going to
- 15:02Speaker 2: be able to construct nuclear power plants and small nuclear.
- 15:06Speaker 3: Reactors on a fast scale.
- 15:08Speaker 2: Those thirty one companies operating in the utility space have
- 15:11Speaker 2: a combined market capitalization of one point five trillion. So
- 15:15Speaker 2: when we talk about just the size and scale of this,
- 15:18Speaker 2: I do think Mark, you and I looked at this
- 15:20Speaker 2: and we said, okay, this is obvious.
- 15:22Speaker 5: This was an exercise in data visualization by data scientists
- 15:26Speaker 5: or analysts, which is a relatively new profession using This
- 15:30Speaker 5: is not Python or are I don't know what they used.
- 15:33Speaker 5: Maybe it's something proprietary, maybe it's Tableau, I don't know,
- 15:36Speaker 5: but people, you know, like me who work with data.
- 15:38Speaker 5: We like full You know you're the victim of my yes,
- 15:42Speaker 5: my daily assault of charts. Sometimes we make them just
- 15:46Speaker 5: to make sure we remember how to make them, to
- 15:49Speaker 5: be honest, sometimes it's because we think they look cool,
- 15:52Speaker 5: but there's very little analysis behind them.
- 15:55Speaker 3: Yeah, there isn't much in the way of analysis behind
- 15:57Speaker 3: any of this. I think so.
- 16:00Speaker 2: But what you may overlook, Mark, because your job isn't
- 16:02Speaker 2: to speak to the general public, is that people aren't
- 16:05Speaker 2: really aware.
- 16:05Speaker 3: On this radio video we're speaking of the general but
- 16:08Speaker 3: you don't.
- 16:08Speaker 2: You can't hear back from them. I guess every once
- 16:11Speaker 2: in a while we get to the text line six.
- 16:13Speaker 5: West, we most certainly do hear from them.
- 16:18Speaker 2: In any case, I do think this piece is overlooked.
- 16:21Speaker 2: I don't think people generally understand understand the scale of
- 16:24Speaker 2: the concentration that we are now talking about. The other
- 16:27Speaker 2: piece that again we've brought this up before. It's not
- 16:29Speaker 2: news if you listen to this program, but six firms,
- 16:35Speaker 2: the five biggest companies out there sorry that we are
- 16:38Speaker 2: talking about, being Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Vidia, and Alphabet
- 16:42Speaker 2: Those five combined companies, not all of whom are tech companies,
- 16:45Speaker 2: by the way. Alphabet is in the communications services sector
- 16:50Speaker 2: is that where we do, and Amazon is in the
- 16:52Speaker 2: consumer discretionary sector. But reality, I kind of think of
- 16:56Speaker 2: them as tech AI companies. Those five make up a
- 16:59Speaker 2: third of the S and P five hundred. People don't
- 17:03Speaker 2: quite understand that and understand, and I think it is
- 17:07Speaker 2: important to comprehend that that is a different kind of
- 17:11Speaker 2: risk than we have ever seen in the S and
- 17:12Speaker 2: P five hundred. Am I overstating that? I mean at
- 17:15Speaker 2: least in modern investing times.
- 17:17Speaker 5: Yeah, it's hard to get that data. You have to
- 17:19Speaker 5: go to an investment manager to get it. So I
- 17:21Speaker 5: would ask one of the firms we work with in
- 17:23Speaker 5: our day jobs to send me the data on sectors
- 17:26Speaker 5: as a percentage of the market year over year, and
- 17:28Speaker 5: if you charted that, you would see the tech sector
- 17:31Speaker 5: growing and everything else with the exception of a couple
- 17:34Speaker 5: that you mentioned shrinking. Should that be a concern? I
- 17:38Speaker 5: don't have the answer to that, obviously, Mike.
- 17:40Speaker 1: You'd be.
- 17:41Speaker 5: You should think very carefully before you bet against a
- 17:46Speaker 5: market cap weighted index. The S and P five hundred,
- 17:49Speaker 5: for example, which we're using, is our proxy for large
- 17:51Speaker 5: cap stocks, but there are others like the Russell one
- 17:53Speaker 5: thousand and others. It's very hard to beat if you're
- 17:57Speaker 5: an active manager. So you could say, no, no, I don't
- 17:59Speaker 5: want so much, I don't want this much tech. I
- 18:01Speaker 5: want to go equal weighted, or I want to go
- 18:02Speaker 5: with an active manager who evaluates stocks on a bottom
- 18:06Speaker 5: up basis and etc. That's risky. Not to say it
- 18:10Speaker 5: won't pan out, it's risky.
- 18:12Speaker 2: What I can say because they charted this to the
- 18:15Speaker 2: New York Times, they pulled the data from nineteen eighty
- 18:18Speaker 2: and beyond, and this doesn't tell me concentration of sectors,
- 18:21Speaker 2: but it does tell me the top ten companies in
- 18:23Speaker 2: terms of the concentration of the T SMP.
- 18:26Speaker 3: They make up thirty.
- 18:27Speaker 2: Nine percent of the S and P five hundred right now.
- 18:29Speaker 2: Those top ten, which include companies like Eli, Lilly, Berkshire,
- 18:32Speaker 2: Hathway in addition to the giant behemoth tech companies. There
- 18:36Speaker 2: was not a single instance prior to twenty twenty when
- 18:40Speaker 2: those top ten made up more than thirty percent. So again,
- 18:44Speaker 2: if you're looking for some understanding of this market right now,
- 18:48Speaker 2: I do think that this is an important understanding to have,
- 18:51Speaker 2: which is, we are more concentrated than anytime we've been
- 18:55Speaker 2: in forty five years. We are more reliant on those
- 18:59Speaker 2: giant companies continue to grow, to continue to lift that index, because, yeah,
- 19:04Speaker 2: when you talk about the energy sector, as exciting as
- 19:06Speaker 2: it might be to an individual investor, the entire cumulative
- 19:11Speaker 2: energy sector doesn't even.
- 19:12Speaker 5: Can we talk about how this might get resolved on
- 19:14Speaker 5: the other side.
- 19:15Speaker 2: We should, Let's say a quick break, We've got Wall
- 19:17Speaker 2: Street Watch coming up. We're also gonna be joined by
- 19:19Speaker 2: Todd Lutsky from the law firm of Cushing and Dole
- 19:22Speaker 2: and all that here next on the Financial Exchange.
- 19:40Speaker 1: Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at
- 19:43Speaker 1: TFE show. Breaking business news is always first right here
- 19:47Speaker 1: on the Financial Exchange Radio Network. Time now for Wall
- 19:52Speaker 1: Street Watch, a complete look at what's moving markets so
- 19:55Speaker 1: far today right here on the Financial Exchange Radio Network.
- 20:01Speaker 4: Selloffs continuing on Wall Street at lease in terms of
- 20:04Speaker 4: the tech sector as investors react to a hotter than
- 20:06Speaker 4: expected PPI Index, where producer prices climb two point nine
- 20:10Speaker 4: percent year over year, higher than estimates of two point
- 20:13Speaker 4: six percent. Right now, the Dow is down one point
- 20:16Speaker 4: to excuse me, one point three percent, or six hundred
- 20:20Speaker 4: and thirty two points lower SMB five hundred, down three
- 20:23Speaker 4: quarters of a percent, Nasdaq selling off about nine cents
- 20:26Speaker 4: one percent, Russell two thousand down nearly two percent, ten
- 20:30Speaker 4: Your Treasure reeled down four basis points at three point
- 20:33Speaker 4: nine seven five percent, and crude oil up nearly three
- 20:36Speaker 4: percent higher, trading right around sixty seven dollars a barrel
- 20:40Speaker 4: after shedding more than five percent yesterday despite its solid
- 20:44Speaker 4: fourth quarter results, and video shares are down over one
- 20:47Speaker 4: percent today, breaking a news from open Ai after the
- 20:51Speaker 4: chat gpt maker announced SAD is finalize a record breaking
- 20:54Speaker 4: one hundred and ten billion dollar funding round at a
- 20:57Speaker 4: seven hundred and thirty billion dollar valuation, Amazon investing fifty
- 21:01Speaker 4: billion dollars, while SoftBank and Nvidia are each investing thirty
- 21:05Speaker 4: billion dollars. Meanwhile, Block announced that it is laying off
- 21:08Speaker 4: more than forty percent of its workforce, or four thousand employees,
- 21:12Speaker 4: and I bet that AI tools can fill the gap.
- 21:15Speaker 4: Shares in the parent company, two square and cash app
- 21:18Speaker 4: are surging nearly eighteen percent. Elsewhere, Paramount was crowned winner
- 21:22Speaker 4: for Warner Brothers Movie and Television Studios and HBO Max
- 21:27Speaker 4: streaming service after Netflix pulled out of their initial deal.
- 21:31Speaker 4: Warnerstock is down two percent, while both Paramount and Netflix
- 21:34Speaker 4: shares jumping by eight percent and two It up by
- 21:37Speaker 4: three percent after the Turbo tax owners quarterly profit guidance
- 21:41Speaker 4: missed expectations, and Dell shares rallying eighteen percent after the
- 21:46Speaker 4: tech company posted a thirty nine percent leap in quarterly sales,
- 21:50Speaker 4: boosted by its AI server business. I'm Tucker Silva and
- 21:54Speaker 4: that is Wallstreet.
- 21:55Speaker 2: Watch and joining us now is Todd Lutsky from the
- 21:58Speaker 2: law firm of Krishiingan Doland. Welcome jet back, Thanks for
- 22:01Speaker 2: joining us.
- 22:02Speaker 6: Oh thanks, always a pleasure.
- 22:03Speaker 2: I want to talk about some of the basics here
- 22:05Speaker 2: in a state planning and maybe we can actually.
- 22:08Speaker 3: Start right there.
- 22:09Speaker 2: I mean, what are the quote more basic estate planning
- 22:13Speaker 2: documents and how might you know that they're not enough
- 22:16Speaker 2: for your family?
- 22:18Speaker 6: Yeah, great question, because so many people forget about them,
- 22:20Speaker 6: We don't talk about them as often. But think about
- 22:23Speaker 6: a will, think about a healthcare proxy for medical decision making,
- 22:28Speaker 6: think about a living will. I don't want to be
- 22:31Speaker 6: on a machine kind of document, and of course a
- 22:33Speaker 6: really powerful one. The power of attorney. So the power
- 22:37Speaker 6: of attorneys mainly just helping you appoint somebody else to
- 22:40Speaker 6: make financial decisions for you, whereas the healthcare is to
- 22:44Speaker 6: make medical decisions for you if you cannot all kinds,
- 22:47Speaker 6: and of course the will is mainly to basically direct
- 22:51Speaker 6: where you're askedts go if you haven't done anything else,
- 22:54Speaker 6: at least it'll direct where they go. And if you
- 22:56Speaker 6: have a trust in place, that'll pour it over into
- 22:58Speaker 6: a trust. So those are those are your basic documents.
- 23:02Speaker 6: But you also ask are they not enough? Yeah? Generally
- 23:05Speaker 6: if the goal for you is not that you don't
- 23:09Speaker 6: need them, by the way, you always need them. But
- 23:10Speaker 6: if the goal for you is to just avoid probate
- 23:13Speaker 6: and reduce taxes and or protect assets from the nursing home,
- 23:18Speaker 6: the will, having just a will won't do any of
- 23:21Speaker 6: those things.
- 23:23Speaker 2: So look, you've got a lot of listeners here in
- 23:25Speaker 2: New England. Are there certain asset thresholds somebody needs to
- 23:29Speaker 2: be worried about? And then before you go to again
- 23:31Speaker 2: a very basic concept, but what does the five year
- 23:35Speaker 2: lookback period relate to? Because everybody always knows about the
- 23:39Speaker 2: five year look back, but they have no idea what
- 23:41Speaker 2: it's actually involved in.
- 23:42Speaker 6: Yeah, So two questions. The threshold, you know what are
- 23:46Speaker 6: the thresholds in mass So again, if one of the options,
- 23:49Speaker 6: one of the objectives you have is to avoid Massachusetts
- 23:53Speaker 6: a state tathlists, forget about federal for a minute. The
- 23:56Speaker 6: threshold in mass is if you're over two million, there's
- 23:59Speaker 6: tax too, But if you're married and you can do
- 24:01Speaker 6: a simple revocable trust or even an irrevocable trust, you
- 24:05Speaker 6: can double that exemption from two million to four million.
- 24:08Speaker 6: So those are your thresholds. So I think if you know,
- 24:11Speaker 6: the basic documents are not enough, certainly if you're over
- 24:14Speaker 6: two million. But then again you asked about the five
- 24:17Speaker 6: year look back, and that has nothing to do with
- 24:19Speaker 6: taxes or probate. It has to do with protecting from
- 24:22Speaker 6: a nursing home. So you could be over you could
- 24:25Speaker 6: even be under the two million dollar exemption, but still
- 24:28Speaker 6: want to protect your assets from the nursing home. Well,
- 24:30Speaker 6: now you need to deal with the five year look back,
- 24:32Speaker 6: which is set up an irrevocable trust to put the
- 24:35Speaker 6: assets in get the five year clock running. But that
- 24:38Speaker 6: trust can also even though you don't need it to
- 24:40Speaker 6: avoid a state taxes, you still need a trust to
- 24:43Speaker 6: do the nursing home piece and avoid probate. Piece, so
- 24:46Speaker 6: folks lots to think about when it comes to it.
- 24:48Speaker 6: And basically this guide we're giving away, which is now
- 24:52Speaker 6: at the end of the month, folks, you got to
- 24:53Speaker 6: get it if you want it back to the basics.
- 24:55Speaker 6: It talks about all these basic documents and in fact
- 24:59Speaker 6: the near vocable trust. It's basically my engagement letter on
- 25:03Speaker 6: a four million dollar estate explaining how to do an
- 25:07Speaker 6: estate plan. So it's great if it's going to help
- 25:10Speaker 6: you kick off your estate plan. It gives you things
- 25:13Speaker 6: to talk about before you go to the lawyer and
- 25:16Speaker 6: get ready for your estate plan. And you can even
- 25:19Speaker 6: put your own numbers right into this this plan and
- 25:22Speaker 6: see if it actually works for you. So help get
- 25:25Speaker 6: your estate plan off the ground. Call and get the
- 25:27Speaker 6: guide back to the basics. Eight sixty six eight four
- 25:31Speaker 6: eight five six nine nine or Legal Exchange Show dot
- 25:35Speaker 6: com again eight sixty six eight four eight five six
- 25:38Speaker 6: nine nine or Legal Exchange Show dot com, or go
- 25:42Speaker 6: to our Instagram page Cushing Dolan PC for more information.
- 25:47Speaker 2: Todd, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate you
- 25:49Speaker 2: have a great weekend and cheers to spring someday.
- 25:53Speaker 6: Thank you you as well.
- 25:54Speaker 1: Take care the proceeding was paid for and the views
- 25:56Speaker 1: expressed are solely those of Cushing and Dolan. Cushing and
- 25:59Speaker 1: Dolan and or Armstrong Advisory may contact you offering legal
- 26:01Speaker 1: or investment services. Kushing and Armstrong did not endorse each
- 26:04Speaker 1: other and are not affiliated.
- 26:06Speaker 2: Jack Dorsey's block to lay off for Oh no, sorry, Mark,
- 26:09Speaker 2: We're going to get back to Jack Dorsey and him
- 26:13Speaker 2: laying off thousands of workers. But I wanted to go
- 26:15Speaker 2: back to the subject we were talking about, which is
- 26:18Speaker 2: concentration in the markets and how that could resolve itself
- 26:23Speaker 2: or there are multiple ways.
- 26:27Speaker 3: Ahead.
- 26:27Speaker 5: I'm not sure it's a problem. I know that sounds odd,
- 26:30Speaker 5: but it's not clear to me that just because investors
- 26:32Speaker 5: have decided to bid up the price of certain companies
- 26:35Speaker 5: a lot relative to others, and that's how they get
- 26:37Speaker 5: bigger as a percentage of the whole. We've all seen
- 26:40Speaker 5: there right about future profits go.
- 26:42Speaker 2: I would also say that compared, I haven't done a
- 26:45Speaker 2: real comparison, but we have had a lot of failed
- 26:48Speaker 2: anti trust cases. There has not been a lot of
- 26:50Speaker 2: breakup of major companies in spite of them being sued
- 26:53Speaker 2: by the government. For instance, what was it? Google declared
- 26:56Speaker 2: a monopoly and no break up there. So there's a
- 26:58Speaker 2: few reasons you could use to maybe justify part of
- 27:01Speaker 2: our companies.
- 27:02Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, undoubtedly the political environment is part of it.
- 27:06Speaker 5: But is it a bad thing? Well, it's unprecedented. You
- 27:09Speaker 5: made that point in the last segment where it historically
- 27:13Speaker 5: never seen before levels of concentration in terms of top
- 27:16Speaker 5: ten company market capitalization relative to the rest. So suppose
- 27:20Speaker 5: you think that's bad, and suppose you think it won't
- 27:24Speaker 5: be sustained. That could resolve itself in a couple of ways.
- 27:27Speaker 5: The top ten could fall in value by a lot,
- 27:30Speaker 5: Investors could change their conclusion and that repricing will shrink them,
- 27:36Speaker 5: or their growth rate could slow and the rest of
- 27:39Speaker 5: the market could catch up. I don't know. That's probably
- 27:42Speaker 5: the optimistic, orderly way that this gets resolved. If you
- 27:46Speaker 5: think it's going to get resolved, I'm not presuming that
- 27:48Speaker 5: it should or will.
- 27:50Speaker 2: And frankly, we've seen some of that this year. It
- 27:54Speaker 2: appears to be happening fairly miraculous that markets. I mean,
- 27:58Speaker 2: while markets are pretty flats and October, they haven't gone
- 28:01Speaker 2: through a major downturn or correction. But individual large components
- 28:06Speaker 2: such as some of those giant names that I talked
- 28:09Speaker 2: about are down double digit and.
- 28:10Speaker 5: Thus the pressures on pees priced to earnings, which we
- 28:13Speaker 5: sometimes use is shorthand for how expensive the market is.
- 28:17Speaker 5: Pressure on pees has eased. They've come down a little
- 28:20Speaker 5: bit by some measures. If we could coin a phrase
- 28:24Speaker 5: on this show, we could call it the miraculous compression.
- 28:27Speaker 5: That's a play on the miraculous disinflation idea that we've
- 28:31Speaker 5: only seen play out a couple times in history, arguably
- 28:35Speaker 5: most recently from twenty twenty three to twenty twenty five.
- 28:38Speaker 5: But it would be a miraculous compression because normally when
- 28:41Speaker 5: pees shifting, I'm shifting the subject here a little bit,
- 28:44Speaker 5: but it's closely related. When they get extreme, they come down,
- 28:49Speaker 5: and they come down because the P falls, it's not
- 28:51Speaker 5: because the E goes up.
- 28:53Speaker 3: That's been the trend. We've got to take a quick break.
- 28:55Speaker 2: When we come back, we're going to be getting to
- 28:57Speaker 2: the latest in the AI disruption narrative with Jack Dorsey's
- 29:02Speaker 2: block and layoffs. There quick break, we'll be right back
- 29:04Speaker 2: on the Financial Exchange.
- 29:06Speaker 1: When business news breaks, we are talking about it on X.
- 29:09Speaker 1: Watch the Financial Exchange everyday live on X. This is
- 29:13Speaker 1: the Financial Exchange Radio Network. Thanks to us six one, seven, three,
- 29:18Speaker 1: six two thirteen eighty five with your comments and questions
- 29:21Speaker 1: about today's show and let us know what you think
- 29:24Speaker 1: about the stories we are covering. This is the Financial
- 29:27Speaker 1: Exchange Radio Network.
- 29:30Speaker 4: This segment of the Financial Exchange is brought to you
- 29:33Speaker 4: by the US Virgin Islands Department of Tourism. Experience America's
- 29:37Speaker 4: Caribbean at fall naturally and rhythm with the heartbeat of
- 29:39Speaker 4: the islands while enjoying incredible beaches, world class cuisine, and
- 29:43Speaker 4: unforgettable sunsets. The weather is perfect all year round, so
- 29:47Speaker 4: head to visit USBI dot com and book your trip
- 29:50Speaker 4: to Saint Croix, Saint Thomas, or Saint John. Enjoy one
- 29:53Speaker 4: or all three on the vacation of a lifetime. The
- 29:56Speaker 4: USBI is America's Caribbean Paradise. Plan your winter escape now
- 30:00Speaker 4: at visit USBI dot com. That's visit USBI dot com.
- 30:05Speaker 3: Mark.
- 30:05Speaker 2: When we talk about Aii, there is one common theme
- 30:08Speaker 2: that people seem to be concerned about beyond valuations and
- 30:12Speaker 2: everything else, which is jobs and job loss and what
- 30:15Speaker 2: if the technology replaces all of us humans Because it's
- 30:18Speaker 2: pretty much designed to replicate us.
- 30:21Speaker 5: Can we stop right there? Sure, where's the demand going
- 30:23Speaker 5: to come from? If it replaces all of us humans,
- 30:25Speaker 5: if we're all unemployed. Nobody thinks that explained it through.
- 30:30Speaker 5: You'll always have a relative advantage at something, even if
- 30:33Speaker 5: we can't do anything absolutely better than a computer. And
- 30:36Speaker 5: the same applies to trade. By the way, the same
- 30:38Speaker 5: arguments that you would apply to technology apply to trade.
- 30:40Speaker 5: And I'm gonna say this is not obvious. It is
- 30:43Speaker 5: obvious to see somebody lose their job and then get
- 30:45Speaker 5: scared and think that could happen to me. Yes, it's
- 30:48Speaker 5: not obvious to think through, well, what happens, what's happening
- 30:50Speaker 5: behind the scenes. People will fewer people will go into
- 30:54Speaker 5: that industry because wages will go down. They'll go elsewhere.
- 30:57Speaker 5: They'll go where humans still have a relative work comparative
- 31:00Speaker 5: advantage and probably always will over computers.
- 31:03Speaker 3: I'm using, as Paul said, is going to go cut trees.
- 31:05Speaker 5: Cut hair, cut trees, deliver financial advice where you're ninety
- 31:10Speaker 5: five percent psychiatrist, correct me if I'm wrong. You have
- 31:13Speaker 5: to tell me, ay, stay in the market or don't.
- 31:15Speaker 5: You're managing expectations and psych in psychology, not always cranking
- 31:22Speaker 5: out the type of stuff that isism of what I
- 31:24Speaker 5: do will probably be is almost certainly going to be replaced.
- 31:27Speaker 5: Hopefully they still need someone with judgment to make sure
- 31:29Speaker 5: the output is right. But anyway, the point is, Mike,
- 31:32Speaker 5: wages will go down in some industries, and that will
- 31:34Speaker 5: the wages are prices. They give us a signal, they'll
- 31:37Speaker 5: tell people to go elsewhere. There are lots of examples
- 31:39Speaker 5: of this historically.
- 31:40Speaker 2: And in any case, we found a company that is
- 31:41Speaker 2: finally benefiting from their announcements about AI this year, which
- 31:45Speaker 2: is Block. Jack Dorsey's company, founder of Twitter, now runs
- 31:49Speaker 2: Block and just suddenly announced this morning or yesterday perhaps
- 31:53Speaker 2: that the company plans to lay off forty percent of
- 31:56Speaker 2: their workforce, more than four thousand employees, due to artificial
- 31:59Speaker 2: intelligence tools.
- 32:00Speaker 3: And I gotta tell you, I.
- 32:03Speaker 2: Don't buy it. You don't buy what I think they
- 32:06Speaker 2: are going to lay people off. Don't oh that.
- 32:09Speaker 5: That's the rationale.
- 32:10Speaker 2: I don't buy pretext that your business. I see, yeah,
- 32:14Speaker 2: yesterday needed four thousand employees and today doesn't.
- 32:17Speaker 5: No, no, no, it's a pretext for it's.
- 32:19Speaker 2: A marketing campaign. It's a pretext to fire a bunch
- 32:22Speaker 2: of people because you don't need them anymore. Maybe part
- 32:25Speaker 2: of that is because of artificial intelligence, But it seems like, again.
- 32:28Speaker 5: You're right, that doesn't happen overnight. Would you just roll
- 32:30Speaker 5: out the software and discovered four out of ten we're obsolete? No,
- 32:34Speaker 5: not not plausible.
- 32:35Speaker 2: So maybe they've been developing this for five months. Maybe
- 32:39Speaker 2: this is just the final announcement, and maybe it was
- 32:41Speaker 2: all designed to make a big headline splash. But be clear, like,
- 32:44Speaker 2: that's that's what it is here as an attempt to
- 32:46Speaker 2: make a big headline splash. He recognizes that. And by
- 32:50Speaker 2: the way, stock is up today sixteen point eight percent,
- 32:55Speaker 2: so it's working. It is functioning the way I think
- 32:58Speaker 2: he wants it to, which is, hey, let's make a
- 33:00Speaker 2: big splash, say that we can reduce headcount costs by
- 33:03Speaker 2: four hundred fifty to five hundred million dollars by firing
- 33:06Speaker 2: all these people that do things that we don't think
- 33:08Speaker 2: is necessary anymore.
- 33:09Speaker 3: But is that truly just because of AI?
- 33:12Speaker 2: My guess would be no, it's probably also because you
- 33:14Speaker 2: don't really have a growing business.
- 33:15Speaker 5: Don't extrapolate from that. Don't think that this is what
- 33:17Speaker 5: every company is going to do. Maybe Dorsey doesn't know
- 33:19Speaker 5: how to run his business. Maybe he doesn't care about
- 33:21Speaker 5: his people. Maybe it's hemorrhaging and he needed to cut costs,
- 33:24Speaker 5: and this is the pretext he was waiting for. I
- 33:27Speaker 5: don't know. I'm just saying you cannot generalize from that
- 33:30Speaker 5: to say, O, my god, Ai is coming for all
- 33:33Speaker 5: of our jobs. Even if that were true, human beings
- 33:35Speaker 5: will always have a relative or comparative advantage, just like
- 33:38Speaker 5: America will always have a comparative advantage with its trading partners.
- 33:42Speaker 5: Even if Japan can produce airplanes and radios and whatever
- 33:47Speaker 5: your favorite example is more efficiently. In an absolute sense,
- 33:50Speaker 5: we always have a relative advantage, and that's where we'll specialize.
- 33:53Speaker 5: The same is true when it comes to technology, Mike.
- 33:56Speaker 2: It brings back to mind the the highlights from the
- 34:01Speaker 2: piece by Sutrini Research.
- 34:02Speaker 5: G Yeah, I was gonna say garbage. That's harsh, but
- 34:04Speaker 5: it was garbage.
- 34:05Speaker 3: Well, it just was science fiction, to be clear.
- 34:08Speaker 5: And it was all it was.
- 34:09Speaker 3: It was a research step.
- 34:10Speaker 2: It was a research report written from the perspective of
- 34:12Speaker 2: somebody in twenty twenty eight, So it was science fiction
- 34:15Speaker 2: more than anything else.
- 34:16Speaker 5: Like when whenever anybody tells you the value of all
- 34:19Speaker 5: labor is going to go to zero. You can stop
- 34:21Speaker 5: right there and say this person's economically illiterate. That doesn't happen.
- 34:24Speaker 5: Labor always has. People always have some comparative advantage first
- 34:28Speaker 5: of all. Secondly, ask well, where's the demand going to
- 34:30Speaker 5: come from if we're all unemployed hunting squirrels working for
- 34:34Speaker 5: an android? Jack Dorsey investment is just these these tech guys,
- 34:39Speaker 5: with all due respect, should stick to coding their Their
- 34:42Speaker 5: grandiose pronouncements about the future are as valuable as minor
- 34:47Speaker 5: yours said, they're worthless.
- 34:50Speaker 2: You put it one way, I guess the other way
- 34:52Speaker 2: that I put it is I know that artificial intelligence
- 34:55Speaker 2: is a different tool. It's different than any technology that's
- 34:57Speaker 2: existed before, just like every new invention has and definition
- 35:01Speaker 2: new invention before it. But do we really believe that
- 35:05Speaker 2: this new invention in twenty twenty six that we are
- 35:08Speaker 2: all seeing is going to be so much different from
- 35:11Speaker 2: the invention of the internet, from the invention of the
- 35:15Speaker 2: printing press. Yes, I do believe it'll be different of electricity.
- 35:19Speaker 2: Will it be different in terms of its impact on society, labor,
- 35:23Speaker 2: and the world economy. That's where I break down.
- 35:26Speaker 5: I believe the Internet changed the world, but it didn't
- 35:29Speaker 5: change the trend in per capita growth. It didn't change
- 35:31Speaker 5: the trend in GDP. Look at the chart. AI might
- 35:34Speaker 5: change that trend. We might grow a little faster due
- 35:37Speaker 5: to productivity enhancements. But the idea that it's going to
- 35:40Speaker 5: it's going to have us all subservient to it, waiting
- 35:44Speaker 5: to be you know, given our daily ration of soilent
- 35:47Speaker 5: green or whatever. I think that's what it was in
- 35:50Speaker 5: the movie, is preposterous. Their investment is just future consumption.
- 35:54Speaker 5: Why would anybody make investment if there will be no
- 35:57Speaker 5: future consumers. These hysterical science fiction s type pieces about
- 36:01Speaker 5: AI and the pronouncements from our current cohort of tech gods,
- 36:07Speaker 5: they don't acknowledge basic economics.
- 36:10Speaker 2: I am very comfortable saying one thing about labor. I
- 36:13Speaker 2: do believe, like every other technology that's come about, that
- 36:16Speaker 2: AI will disrupt entire industries of workers. There will be
- 36:19Speaker 2: certain categories of workers who, if they have a job,
- 36:22Speaker 2: there's far fewer of them than there were in decades past.
- 36:25Speaker 2: There will be just like there are now fewer travel
- 36:27Speaker 2: agents than there were.
- 36:28Speaker 5: Find a turpists today there were a million in nineteen seventies.
- 36:31Speaker 2: So there are people with specific skill sets. I have
- 36:35Speaker 2: a client whose son just got laid off doing website design,
- 36:38Speaker 2: and I don't know if that person, who is unfortunately
- 36:41Speaker 2: in their fifties, will ever have a job in that space.
- 36:43Speaker 2: Again genuinely, that is, as you know, something that I'm
- 36:47Speaker 2: genuinely concerned about for that individual, that does not then
- 36:51Speaker 2: extrapolate to and therefore none of us will have jobs ever.
- 36:55Speaker 5: Again, that's what all these pieces do. They immediately generalize.
- 36:58Speaker 2: So I don't do that because around all of your
- 37:02Speaker 2: time worrying about that then, and if.
- 37:04Speaker 5: You're listening to this show, you're probably my age, early
- 37:07Speaker 5: fifties or older.
- 37:09Speaker 3: You've seen no Our key demo is sixteen to Night.
- 37:14Speaker 5: You remember pre Internet, and you know how life changing
- 37:17Speaker 5: it was. Life's better in many ways because of it.
- 37:19Speaker 5: But interestingly, it didn't change the trend in growth. Something
- 37:22Speaker 5: else would have come along. I don't We'd probably be
- 37:24Speaker 5: just as rich today if the Internet had never come along.
- 37:26Speaker 5: As crazy as that sounds.
- 37:28Speaker 2: New England is living up to its reputation because forty
- 37:31Speaker 2: eight ounce buckets of Duncan iced coffee have already sold
- 37:35Speaker 2: out at many New England stores. I thought that this
- 37:38Speaker 2: was one of those AI jokes on Facebook that I saw,
- 37:41Speaker 2: but no, it is in fact real. You can go
- 37:44Speaker 2: to Duncan in some locations and get a forty eight
- 37:46Speaker 2: ounce bucket of coffee that weighs three.
- 37:49Speaker 3: Pounds for how much ice is in that though?
- 37:52Speaker 2: You know, right, yeah, yeah, it's only really like thirty
- 37:55Speaker 2: ounces of coffee.
- 37:56Speaker 3: So what are we even talking about here? Yeah, come on.
- 38:00Speaker 2: Yeah, ridiculous. Congratulations New Englanders. You earned it after a
- 38:05Speaker 2: giant snowstorm. Go get your forty eight ounce bucket of Duncan.
- 38:08Speaker 4: How does any fit in the cup holder?
- 38:10Speaker 2: It does not in the cup holder holding your lap.
- 38:13Speaker 2: It's going to be a real proud ride for us.
- 38:15Speaker 2: We've got to tech take a quick break. But a
- 38:18Speaker 2: lot more to come here on the Financial Exchange, including
- 38:21Speaker 2: Michael sand totally joining us a little bit after this
- 38:24Speaker 2: here on the Financial Exchange