I welcome to Yahoo! Finance is morning brief on this Wednesday April 1st, 1st day of the 2nd quarter on myosalvan. That is Ryan Payne. He is with Payne Capital Management. Ryan, thanks so much for stopping by. Let's talk a little bit about the calendar. How do you feel about calendars in general? I think in the news business, calendars are a big deal. We are now in Q2. We exit in Q1. I went through Monday, Tuesday, this week with the team. We are like, okay, we have to go through top five of this. Bottom five of that. Really make a big deal of it. How are you thinking about the setup here as we exit? Again, time is arbitrary, calendar based, and of what has been an eventful Q1. I personally feel looser calendar. That is my life. But no, I think obviously when you think about the calendar in the markets, I follow it pretty closely.
You think about earning season as you come into April. It brings back a lot of chaos back to focus on the actual fundamentals. Obviously, every day, we are talking about this year. You just wake up in the morning. What are you missing in the news that you have to catch up on right away? At the beginning of the year, I don't think I was going to predict that we were going to invade Venezuela. We are going to war in Iran. The list goes on. You just don't know what is going to happen right now. I feel things are more day to day, maybe a little less. Focus on the cyclical calendar or the cycle of the calendar, as you like to say. I guess I am curious. You follow markets. You have to talk clients through their concerns.
People are going to call about this at the other. But at the same time, my perception is, you can correct me if I am wrong. For me, it is like wake up, hairs on fire. If we have more bombs drop than Iran or Trump says something. He has got lessons out overnight in Switzerland. It is like, oh my gosh, we have got to plan around this. How do you think about those distinct news events, which may or may not set off a chain reaction within your own firm's communication? No, no, it is a good question. First off, you always have to be prepared ahead of time. Because let's face it, no one predicted the beginning of the year that oil is going to be the place to be. Commodities are going to be the place to be.
I think by having that proverbial all-weather portfolio, what fascinates me is everyone of my clients hated commodities for years. They did nothing. I am kind of like bad cop. I am like, you need to own your commodities and your portfolio. So, right when you are this year where commodities are up over 25%, energy infrastructure and report flow is up 25%. So it is just fascinating to me that someone who is in the business who thinks about all the time, you just can't predict the future. So you always have to have all your basis covered because whatever is going to happen or whatever is going to work in your portfolio, it is probably going to be unexpected. And I find that really interesting because I am like, thinking of being in the air like, there is no way I could have actually factored this into my asset allocation.
And if you think about going into this year, everything was about going global with your portfolio. It is a nice seven and going to start going up again, which we are still patiently waiting for. But whatever we are obsessing about, tends not to be what is actually going to happen. So let's talk about the commodities part of it because I am curious how you think about decomposing. Let's call it heavy industry because I think it is commodities but you have also got utilities, materials, a lot of things that have worked in there. How you decompose, if at all, what piece of it is still the AI trade, still a bunch of people buying materials to try to build these data centers.
But then there is obviously all the geopolitical headlines, which have been a huge boom specifically for oil prices and how you have seen that impacting the stocks of some of the majors. Yeah, no, it is really good point. I think we have gone back to old school economy versus new school economy. We have seen that transition. I know I got so tired about talking about it. It sure makes this way as well as the journalists. I don't want to talk about meg seven anymore. I am so tired of it. We will talk about them in a little bit. I am sure we are going to talk about them. Having said that we are going to talk about the meg seven. But no, I just think you get to a point where there is just so much brain damage to figure out, OK, open AI is not profitable.
When are they going to be profitable? How does that factor into all the spending by the hyperscalers? Are they going to see a return on an investment? There are so many variables there where I like the old school, I guess investment theme is just so easy to understand. It is like, OK, everyone is boosting their defense budgets. We have got urbanization happening rapidly in places like Southeast Asia, India where obviously you need a lot of old school base metals for all of that, right? All this has been undermined for years now. You are just seeing these old school industries, industrialization happening and you need all the metals to do that. You need all the different commodities to do that, minus gold because gold really isn't that much commercial years.
What is kind of fascinating here is all the stuff trades super cheap around the world, like if you look at a lot of the mining stocks that are in places like Latin America where a lot of these deposits are, you have had the dollar a week and a lot of the last two, three years. All this stuff has come to life and it is really the antithesis of this digital trade that we are all talking about. Actually, I find it refreshing and it is a component to our portfolio. You get lots of big dividends, lots of lower valuations. I just feel like everybody needs to have this in their portfolio and not to say the Iran Wars a gift from the gods, but as an investor, since the dollar is kind of strengthened here, a lot of stuff sold off here, you are getting a nice window here to diversify your portfolio outside of the AI trade, which is like again, it is like everyone is just so over concentrated there.
You know, the phrase you brought up, which when I left Yahoo for a little bit went to a fintech where we were investing and I came back, right? Like a phrase that used to come up a lot was this idea of brain damage. It is like in an investing context, it is a really interesting one. We rarely bring it up on this program, but to me, it is, so here is my interpretation of it. Here is how I always thought about it, how do you think about it now? Which is basically like, okay, are we going to spend huge amounts of our time and resourcing to try to figure out something that it feels like literally everybody else is also trying to figure out when we could just move on and not have to have a strong view about the best model.
Like in this case, the way you referenced it, we don't have a strong view on the best model, the best AI research lab. The best LLM wrapper around a healthcare solution, all this got like, if you are venture capitalists, maybe you need to do that. But in the public markets, like everyone had a view on where Meta's cash flow was going to go, whatever it is, you know, how we want to do it. It is like, why don't we just do anything else with our time? Let's just do anything else and it feels like you are like, okay, let's have an industry in Southeast Asia. There is an opportunity that I don't hear about every day.
Mag 7, it is like, I am just going to move on, I am going to take back the time as people might say and just choose to sit this one out in a way. And I think as an investor, you don't hear that often or we don't hear a lot of investors too often tell us like, you know, we decided that our time was just better used somewhere else. And maybe it's because I am talking to more specialized people who run a portfolio that is only this or only that and you guys are looking at full sleeves for clients across all kinds of needs. But yeah, I think that concept is very interesting.
Listen, I don't need to figure this out actually. I can find plenty of other ways to make money. No, I mean, amen. It brings the grind. I think it comes under two things. Number one, I think people forget investing is a low IQ business, not a high IQ business. I think more. I think it's said that. I'm from Philadelphia. It's like really simple. So I think the other second part of that is the index is going to figure that out anyway. It's capitalization weighted. So like 90% of fund managers in the growth space have underperformed their benchmark.
So when we sit here and we debate about like, I'd rather own more meta than more, you know, Google or AlphaBetter, whatever, the index is going to figure out already for you. So you don't have to do that. So we're like, you know, why are we wasting all this time? At your point, there's all these other huge geopolitical opportunities happening right now where valuations are much lower and you don't have to think that hard. And I like not to think that hard. It's like my goal in life.
Yeah. So then let's go back to like the diversification part of it. And I guess the way, like on my head, I see that you probably look at it. The JP Morgan, like quarterly review slide deck. Yeah, right. That they update every quarter. Yeah. That is where I pull my favorite stat from, which is that on average, the S&P goes down at least 14% every year, peak to trough. Yep. And that's also the chart where I pull stocks usually go up because that's the one that shows. Goes back to like 83. And I think it's like every year except six, you have counter your gains, basically. Or, you know, not just counter your gains, counter your gains in excess of 10%. Et cetera. And there I'm seeing the investment quilt where every asset class is a different color. And you can track all the colors moving around. And commodities last year, right? Commodities, gold. All these things international, specifically, back at the top of the list after spending years just languishing in the bottom.
Like do you look at that? And to your point, you're like, this is just going to come back to me. Like I can just be patient. And this shirt clearly shows a durable pattern over time where different assets outperform and I don't need to again, like worry too much about not having nailed every last inch of big tech leads the markets, which I think it did, you know, for three straight years. Yeah, I wish I could like say it's more complicated than that miles. It really isn't. It really isn't. And I think that's the other great thing about investing is the compounding effect. Right? If you look at international specifically, like to your point, you know, underperform every year and then it became obviously international is going to underperform until it didn't last year. I dramatically outperformed, but you know, you're getting three, four percent dividends for like over a decade. So that compounding effect is huge because you get one big move up in international markets like you did last year.
And now you have all these shares you've been compounding so that returns, then came into overnight, it comes a big return. And I think I like that to me. That's like great investing. It's not trying to again try to figure out what's the hot momentum trade and how do you play that trade. And if that was that smart, you know, I'd be on my yacht, man. Right. You know, but I think it's really hard to figure that out. And I think people who actually do figure out a lot of times they get lucky. But yeah, but I think the fact that you just had such an underperform such a long period of time, the cyclicality says it's time for stuff to come back into favor. And again, like commodities, a great example, it's just the fact that so many commodities have been undermined for so long because that sector didn't do that well. But now there's this huge catch up, which makes all those investments that much more valuable as a buyer right now.
All right, I want to spend some time talking actually just about your business and like the business of financial advising and the way that's changing. Yeah, right. No, I mean, like we could do investing all the time. We'll do investing tomorrow. We'll do it Friday, etc. So I'm just curious like for one, what millennial clients, let's say your clients under 45, like how that's different from older clients, what they're looking for and like what the shape of managing money is going to mean for like our peer set versus what I think our parents probably wanted. Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I think everyone eventually turns into their parents. I think if you look at millennials, it's the same. It's just the same stuff all the time. Well, kind of the kind of, because like I noticed the shift when millennials and oldest ones are in their 40s now, they start looking like their parents before that, right? The crypto trade obviously is a younger person's trade. There's not a lot of baby boomers calling me like, hey, like I need to get an Ethereum yesterday. Right? That just doesn't happen.
You see with most younger clients, they'll say they probably have a crypto portfolio. They're probably sad they have it right now because not doing so well. Wasn't the hedge that everyone promised that it would be. But I also think the other component right now it's really interesting is all this private credit that's been sold. And I've been doing this for 25 years. I think it's Jesse Livermore, the famous trader from the 20s, has a famous quote that was, there's no new errors on Wall Street. Stock speculations is older to the hills. So in my mind, whenever something new or something Advent Guard is happening in the market, I'm just like, okay, what in the past can we learn from this?
And private credit has been pitched very hard to firms like mine. And I was just thinking, man, this reminds me so much of the real estate crisis when we had all those mortgage-backed securities where they love to sell you something that has a really high yield. And guess what? It doesn't price. So it doesn't feel like it's volatile, but it's just not priced. And there's like gates around when you can get your money out. And when you have ill-equity and retail clients, it's like the worst combination ever. So to me, I saw this happening a couple of years ago. I was like, oh, this is going to end up just like a way a lot of these other funds during the financial crisis ended up.
Now, I don't think it's systemic for the whole financial industry. But anyways, in these funds, those things, that valuation is just going to keep just a rowing over time. It's going to keep just deflating, in my opinion. So I think there's a lot of. You guys didn't feel the need to then go and start stuffing client portfolios with a bunch of this stuff and didn't feel like that had to become whatever, a 10, 15% part. Unless I mean, people can ask for it. You can go and do it. But it wasn't like, seems like you didn't sit there, get the pitch and say, you know what? You guys are right. I'm going to totally reshape how I put my standard client into some of this stuff.
Whenever I hear something that was for institutions is now for you, walk away, run away from the table because you know it's not going to end well. So yeah, so to me, it just felt very much like a lot of what we saw during the financial crisis. And that's where the scars in my back come from. Yeah. Going through a great financial crisis. Going back to this generational, generations of investing, you have two generations now, Gen Z and Gen millennials that didn't go through the financial crisis or they weren't old enough to experience it with actually money to work.
I started my firm during the financial crisis. So I acutely remember exactly how that transpired. So no one really understands, you've got a lot of investors that don't really understand what a credit crisis looks like. We haven't had one since then, probably have one at some point in the future, they always happen. So I think there's still a lot of naive tape that maybe around some of the younger investors. Yeah, I was going to say, do you feel like there are conversations that you have with, again, a younger client that maybe they're just unrealistic about what you say to them, like, okay, we're going to do this at the other and we think 7% 8% is like a nice bogey and they're like, that's it.
I was told there would be much more than that in terms of returns. We feel like there's an unrealistic expectation from a lot of folks in that 35 to 45 bucket around what you can get from any kind of financial asset, obviously stock market or primary among them. 100%. And the only way they're going to learn is to actually go through some sort of financial crisis. The old saying is all the sheep will be shorn. So I just think it's got to happen, deverage generation. For the baby boomers, it was when the tech bubble burst. I'm technically on the Cusp Gen X. So I really experienced the financial crisis. As well, I actually got in right at the, we're in the bubble burst, the tech bubble.
So I'd actually been through two big crises and also like, you can't compare that to the pandemic. Yeah. That was like an engineered shutdown. They added stimulus right away. It's not the same thing as a real credit crisis. Like that's not the same thing. You have an experienced real pain. I don't believe it. Yeah. Well, it does feel like, and I look at the market, you know, not to make it like two day to day, but whatever. That's the world I live in. I was talking to whether it's the folks here, like texting my buddies yesterday, the way the market behaved with like a couple of headlines that had sort of been recycled, but were kind of new on like, there might be an end to this.
The market was just ripping. I mean, as the NASDAQ's up 3%, and there's so much memory, it feels like whether it's from, you know, pod shops, which are a big part of that kind of marginal bid, which are mostly staffed by millennials at this point. And then also the retail millennial bid to your point that hasn't seen a prolonged downturn other than 2022. And it's like any sign of anything positive, it's like buy everything. Buy everything by the worst things, actually. That's where all the opportunity is. And there's just such an ingrained like caught, like call and response. It feels like with within the market, but then I think even probably broader.
Like people are going to say, oh, well, the market rebounded after this and that. And you might have a meeting set with them for six weeks from now. And they're going to bring that up. They're like, hey, markets ready to rip. Like what are we doing here? And I feel like that's probably a different conversation than it is with a different kind of client who's seen a different amount of cycles. Yeah, I think the old saying is there's old pilots and there's bold pilots, but there's no old bold pilots. And I think like you see that overconfident. Every millennial is maverick now, I guess. Well, he's maybe he's both, I think.
Maybe that's the point of the movie. That's a great analogy. Yeah, but I think that's so much true though. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So I'm curious another part of this, and this is, I'm not just pumping you for information, but I'm like, okay, so I have learned about costs as the only thing that matters, right? Or it feels to me, like I don't have any edge investing wise. Only thing I care about is like I'm just going to get the cheapest thing I can. And that is how I'm going to essentially generate my personal alpha, right? By the S&P for the least amount of cost.
Do millennial clients have any different expectations or young clients around what you're charging them for your services? How do they think about just how do they think about the role that financial advisors play in their lives? Because, you know, I mean, my dad is old enough to remember, you got a call of a broker and it's 10 bucks to do a trade. And now it's like, that's crazy. And that all goes downstream, I think, to, you know, to your firm and you're in the part of the business that's growing the fastest as well. Like that advisory piece of Wall Street is the fastest growing thing that's out there.
So I'm just curious if at all this is, I don't know, just a different mind. A mindset or resistance you see from filter, how you've changed your approach to these conversations. Yeah, no, no, it's a good question too, because I feel like, you know, you have two kind of buckets of advisors. You have ones that are maybe pitching on performance, alpha. And again, the dirty secret of our industry is, well, you can buy an index and it performs 90% of the fund managers, which I always love on some broke old school brokers, I guess, a stock strategy.
I'm like, okay, that's the dude or do that. That's going to outperform the index. Like he's one has that inside information or that inside, gifted insight, we'll call it, not inside information. But I think that's a very hard value ad because then that's when you start pitching some of these more exotic products like private credit that you're getting 10% on, you know, where you're really predicated on performance. And I think it's a dangerous game to play. And I think that's one type of firm, the other firm, which essentially is where I've run money.
I started one of the big wire houses, Merrill Lynch back in the day, which kind of exists as Bank of America now. They went out business. I love to date themselves by referring it to as Merrill instead of V.E.V. Even though it's been V.E.V. Merrill for like 15 years at this point, but you can sound cool by referring to Merrill and stuff. I just make it feel old. Yeah. That doesn't exist anymore, right? That's like I was at, you know, EF Hutton or whatever. Right. So, first boss then guy.
Yeah. So I started there. I left it in the summer of 08, then Merrill Lynch went out of business and that fall. So it was clear because I left the firm. Bad joke. But I think the real value ad for as an advisor is giving holistic, which is kind of overused financial advice. Like people want, they want real advice on their money. Like they want retirement projections run. They want to figure out how might invest my money? How is it quarterly to my goals? You know, what are all the other fats of my financial life that need to be addressed?
So it becomes a very, very, someone's like the Ritz Carlton of your money. You know, you want somebody who's like very, very service-oriented and actually most of my advisors are millennials, which is an old industry. Like it's 100,000 advisors like me, older dudes that are going to retire in the next 10 years. So there's actually really like a big gap in terms of employment there. But I think the bottom line is if you're not giving real holistic financial advice, then you got to justify your fee. And that's a hard place to be. But if you're actually giving that real advice on their money and also just like simple diversification, like how many people have commodities or energy infrastructure in their portfolio, which is a cheap hedge, by the way. I buy them as ETFs.
Yeah. And then all these other people are going on buying like private credit and all these quote, unquote alternatives, which are supposed to be hedges when the market goes down and they're even more of a disaster. So I think it really is about like the foresight with your process and you know, how it ties into again your goals. And I think that people like put a shingle out there as they do financial planning like every insurance person. Yeah. But they don't really do it. They just want to sell you a product and charge you a commission like you said. Yeah. So that's like the difference. And I think that's where you're really impactful. You need to do a great job for people versus like you're just a product salesman selling something for commission, hoping to get paid.
Well, it's like one of these things where you know, you'd be surprised how many people send their kids to private school, but like haven't really thought about how that's going to impact them financially or like, you know, like, okay, you can afford that now. Can you afford that for like the next nine years when this is like a million dollar tab over this and that of time or it's stuff like you drive around. You're like, how does everyone afford these cars? And I'm always like, they don't. They just buy stuff they can't afford. And so it's like a lot of people probably just need someone to be like, hey, let's be realistic. Like, here's the cash in, here's the cash out. And if you're spending this, that the other on, you know, this, that and the other, like you might not have as much leftovers, you think.
I think the nominal dollar game of like, I make whatever the high number is. And at the end of the day, I've got a much lower number than I thought. Some people just, or feels like a lot of people just can't get their heads around that kind of math. That's really, you know, something that this younger generation that has a lot higher nominal incomes than their parents did. Like, a lot of people just, you just need to hear that of like, hey, this isn't going to go as far as you think that's okay. But like these are the decisions that are available to you.
Yeah, I think that's part of it also. It's just like exploiting every tax strategy available to you. There's so many simple things you can do for a tax perspective. It's like, you know, Roth conversions back to a Roths, you know, okay, if you're, you know, there's more small businesses opening every day in this country, about their record high for that. Like, what kind of plan can you set up for your business? Right? So there's just a lot of things you can do from a tax perspective that aren't complicated, that aren't illiquid products that these big brokers from going to sell you, that you can solve a lot of these problems.
So I just love a simple versus a complex solution. And to your point, just like figuring out how much you need to be saved. What's your saving strategy at miles? Mine. Yeah, I'm curious. Well, right now, so right now we're saving for a house project. So it's basically as much cash as possible after you max out your 401k. And we actually, I've actually switching away from a Roth to, to, you know, like, there are some, that's like a very simple minor tax thing you do. I've only ever been Roth, but I've kind of looked at it. We've got hiring earner now, right?
Yeah, well, it's like books now. Right. So you're trying to find ways to, to, you know, to double, double W2 household. And it's like, yeah, and we own one house. So there's nothing that I can really do outside of like very small, you know, whether it's an FSA kind of thing. We kind of export HSA, but I don't know, the two little kids, whatever. But yeah, same as much money as possible. And then in three years, take the whole back of the house off.
Yeah, I hope that like the world is fine. I guess that's just tragic. But that's good. You got more out of me than anybody else has, of course. Now the audience knows what's going on with me. Unfortunately, we'll leave it there. Ryan Payne is the president of Payne Capital Management, also hosts the pain points of wealth podcast. Ryan, thanks so much for stopping by. This is a lot of fun. Good to hear about. Thanks, man. Great. All right. Coming up next on Yahoo Finance, we have Brian Sazi and opening bid. Much more come here on the first day of the second quarter of 2026.
It's funny. So my good Wednesday morning. Welcome to opening bid. I'm Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sazi, coming to you live from our New York City headquarters studios, actually in our studio today. Here's what's on my mind right now. The word of the day, at least for right now, is optimism in the markets. That after President Trump suggested the war on Iran can end within three weeks. The president's slated to address the nation at nine p.m. today. Markets around the world, trading with a bullish bias in the wake of these comments from the president.
I caution you though that if you are one of these bulls, this is a news-driven market. And the news in Iran is literally changing every 10 minutes or so. It seems I didn't like the quarter or outlook out of Nike last night. Meanwhile, more on the stock plunge shortly. And mag seven bulls enter the second quarter bruised after steep pullbacks in the first quarter. Oracle's mass layoffs and botched job on the messaging don't exactly swing bullish for the mag seven trade out of the gate in the quarter. At least that is my opinion.
On the open to bid round table today, Peter Berzen, BCI research chief, global strategist and director of research, Adam Coons, Winthrop Capital Chief and Investment Officer and Yahoo Finance senior reporter. And as for right, and as I want to get over to you out of the block here, eyes remain fixed on oil. We still oil trade off on these comments from the president. What's the latest here? Right. The president saying that it could be another two to three weeks, also indicating that Iran wants a ceasefire and that the US would be willing if the Strait of Hormuz were to be open.
And that is really the question here, whether or not the Strait of Hormuz will be open if the US decides to pull out of this war. And you're seeing oil prices right now that are slightly lower, but they're still around $100 a barrel. You have B.A.V. that came out with a note this morning that is saying that they are seeing a mild stagflation, the risk of mild stagflation, if oil stays around $100 for the rest of the year, which is their base case. And that is if the ending fights by the end of April.
Peter, let me get over to you here. Let's say the president comes out today at 9 PM and says we're about near the end of this war. I guess the economy goes back to what happened to be prior to the war, re-accelerate, stocks go hit new records, right? Maybe not. I mean, the problem is that the president has been declaring victory now for three weeks. It's really more of a question of what the Iranians are going to do. They clearly want to avoid a situation where they get bombed six months from now, especially after the midterms.
So they feel that they need to send a message that, listen, you know, if this happens again, we're going to close this strait again. And what's complicating the situation is that there's probably no real true leader within Iran now. There's just a lot of infighting within the upper circles. And the problem is that when you have that, to become the leader, you need to sound tough. And you don't sound tough by saying, okay, we're going to do what the Americans want. So I suspect that this is going to drag on for a while longer.
Peter, what has been the damage to the economy because of high oil prices and in terms of consumer sentiment as it relates to this war? I mean, so far it's not visible in the data, but you wouldn't expect it to be that visible yet. We know that this is going to have a major impact on the economy. Gasoline prices are up a dollar. Diesel prices are up about $1.70 per gallon. And that's going to affect everything from the cost of transport to other important expenses that households face, fertilizer prices are going up.
So this is going to weigh on the economy. And at a time when the economy was not particularly strong to begin with, outside of health care, we've barely had any job growth now for 12 months. Adam, let me get over to you here. What do you think this means? Let's take the president on face value that the war will end within three weeks. What does this mean for the outlook for rate cuts or rate hikes in this country from the Fed? Yeah. I mean, I think if we really do get at least a tapering here, it probably means that we're not going to see much out of the Fed either way.
Obviously, we've got a little bit of an issue where we're going to get a change of the Fed chairman with Powell leaving. But any short term blips with inflation, I think the Fed's going to overlook. They understand that, you know, energy prices that obviously have a vast impact. But it probably would be short term if this really does end soon. But like you guys are just saying, it is very unlikely that that's going to happen. So there's a good chance that this extends inflation and possibly the stack inflation, I agree with that extends. And that would really put the Fed in a difficult position. And as I do wonder, you know, going back to what you said about stack inflation, I'm on board with you. I think it's really right.
What does this mean that gold trade comes back into focus? It does. I mean, oh, sorry. Go ahead, Ness. Oh, yeah, definitely Wall Street is saying that they are seeing gold going higher. I mean, what you saw in gold till over the last month, okay? There was a liquidation. There was a sell off. But they're saying from here, it's going to go higher. And they're also expecting that the Fed will need to turn dovesh at some point, that at some point, this is going to be about a growth story and that you're going to see a softening labor market.
You've got Goldman Sachs that's still expecting two rate cuts by the end of this year, a total of 50 basis point because they are saying that you're seeing a softening labor market. And if the Fed has to choose, they're going to choose that. At a max seven, didn't have a good first quarter in video, didn't, didn't do great despite Glitz, EGTC. Gold didn't do good. I mean, these were trades that dominated 2025. If this board does end, should investors go back to these names that work so well last year here in the second quarter? I mean, they should be giving it a hard look.
I think the difference this year from last year is that it's not going to be a market where high tide is lift all boats. So there aren't going to be this vast, you know, winning pool of AI players. It's something like a video, obviously, it is big in the space. So probably be a winner. There's some other names we like. I think if you go down the chain and start looking at different software names, those have really been beaten up and they were all kind of beaten up the same way, even though they're not all the same.
And we do think that there are some AI stories where, you know, it actually is an enhancement to the business model. Not death to the business model. So I think you look for those names and those of a venture would be the winner. I think volatility is here to stay for the near term. So it's not going to be this just rock it up. If we do get some reprieve in the conflict, I think there's still many, many things outside of it. Obviously, there's focus on this conflict in the Middle East, but there's still a lot of other economic and kind of macro issues that I think are going to add to volatility this year.
Peter, you've written a lot about how AI is powering the economy. I think you just wrote about it in your latest aloe piece that I really, really enjoyed. On the one hand, we had Oracle sending people 20 to 30,000 people reportedly emails at 6 a.m. say, hey, you're fired. Get your ass out of the building. That was yesterday. That continues here today. But they had open AI, open AI raise what, $122 billion, largest ever capital raise in Silicon Valley. What is the state of AI growth in this country? At the same time, we were still going through a war. Is it continuing at the pace it was last year?
I think investors are becoming increasingly worried about the magnitude of the spending on data centers. In Oracle's case, it's a real concern because Oracle now is negative free cash flow. They're spending more money on catbacks than they're generating and operating earnings. And so they're increasingly reliant on external finance.
Yeah, let me, I think Peter, we briefly lost your audio, Peter. Let me get over to Adam. Peter was talking about Oracle and these mass layoffs. Is that a warning sign that the mag seven sell off that we saw in the first quarter? That is justified here at current levels. Well, I'm going to go back to, I think it is stock and company specific. Oracle is its own kind of animal. And that was a stock that we saw. I really hype up what they were going to do and how they were going to do it.
And then, you know, it's the worst thing you can do on Wall Street, which is over promise and under deliver. And that's what they did. And you saw this, that was one of the first stocks to sell off. They're raising a lot of debt and they were already fairly levered coming into this cycle. So I think that there are one off story that, and I think you're going to have other one off stories like that, but I don't think you want to kind of loop them all in together.
Oracle has a lot of headwinds. So it's one I would stay away from, but I think there are other opportunities where they said this is just really a story with Oracle and some other specific kind of AI stocks that have kind of like said done that over promise under deliver. And as I don't think Oracle's done here, it's a company that had what, over 160,000 employees, their powering AI, I think they're just getting started on how many people they're going to lay off. And especially as they try to now focus more on their free cash.
But I know you're also taking a look at all things Polymarket this morning. Yeah, so I was taking a look at all things Polymarket with respect to the S&P 500 Bitcoin and also gold, as you mentioned earlier. And if you take a look at what betters are expecting for this year, they're expecting gold to outperform the S&P 500 and also a Bitcoin. So they're expecting gold and look, you've got 18% that is saying that the S&P 500 is going to outperform this year.
So it's interesting that as you're talking about this broader theme, about the Mag 7, about tech, which makes up so much of the S&P 500 that there is not that much optimism that that will do better these of these gold or Bitcoin. Peter, let me get back to you. I think we got your audio sorted out here. If I read your note correctly, you're still are you still looking for the S&P 500 to finish the year lower compared to where it is today?
Well, I mean, I wrote that the S&P was due for a bounce and we've seen a bit of a bounce, but I do think that it's a bit like a ball bouncing down a set of steps. It's going to end up lower in the end, even if it temporarily goes higher. Because I do think that A, the economy is weak and probably going to weaken further and B, the whole AI trade is starting to unravel. We saw that with software. I think increasingly we're going to see it with hardware as investors reach the conclusion that we can have an AI powered world without trillions of dollars and data center spending.
Peter, if you've done a lot of work on how AI is impacting jobs, we're going to get this job support later this week. I've been reading a lot of surveys that are suggesting more corporate use of AI in the workforce. This comes alongside. You see big tech driving a lot of layouts. I think this is a tip of the iceberg. How severe could the job loss be as a result of AI?
I mean, so far a lot of the job loss has come from companies that are cutting staff in order to have more money to buy and video chips. In terms of actual efficiency gains, we're starting to see that, but I wouldn't say it's broad-based. If you look, for example, at a chart which shows the degree to which particular industries are seeing a lot of AI usage versus job openings in that industry versus employment growth in industry, you don't see a strong correlation. I think those efficiency gains are coming. I don't think we're seeing that in the data quite yet.
Peter, Adam and I stick with me. We are just getting a cooking here on opening bid. For more, Polymarket odds, you can scan the QR code on your screen to go to the Yow Finds prediction market tub powered by Polymarket. Coming up, I'm taking a Hershey and Nike to task. More on all this next. I think I got a shout out to Brad Rees. Brad, I thank you for setting the table for Hershey to be my stock of the day.
I'm still digesting Hershey's investor day, which was all day Tuesday. A real saga. I like hearing a lot about new products coming in the snack category, but I really liked that Hershey is ditching fillers in iconic products like Reese's and recommitting to milk and dark chocolate. This comes after HB Rees to send it. Brad Rees took to LinkedIn on Valentine's Day and ripped Hershey for using ingredient fillers to boost its profit margins. Rees said at the time, Hershey wasn't living up to the Reese's high quality name.
Now, Hershey recently, a moment to go to send me a statement, reiterating everything that just wrote in my story that's now on our whole page. Brad Rees is posting a lot about me on LinkedIn saying what Hershey was doing was creating a lot of brand risk. Again, a lot going on. I go into more on this on my Instagram account, so check that out after my show ends today.
But let me put this to the opening bid round table by cell or hold Hershey. As I know, you're not going to tell me by Sarah Holt. However, at the end of the day, this is a defensive stock in Hershey that has it been doing well right now at a period of really strong market volatility. And I look, I'm surprised. And when input costs are going up, look, I will tell you what the street is thinking.
You've got six by 18 hold and one cell on Hershey right now. But the fact that they are going towards classic milk, dark chocolate, the fact that they are leaning into healthier, what consumers want, consumers will pay more for something that has not as much sugar, less sugar than some of the products that are out there. So this is all leaning into the right direction of what consumers are asking for. And as I'm tired of this crap, that is shrinkflation. I mean, I open these candy packages and as the product sizes are down, the products don't taste the same as that when they tasted to me like in late 80s, early 90s, like at some point, this has to stop.
I mean, Hershey was using something called compound coatings and it has, I don't even know what the hell that stuff is, but it sounds horrible. I have no idea what it is, but I will tell you that people will pay more for things that are, why would you buy that if you are still paying a lot of money anyways? Because these these candy bars are like 250, there can be three bucks now at the grocery store. So why would you pay that if you can pay for something that is healthier? And to your point about shrinkflation, I saw this first hand when a little kid the other day took this little snack that was one of these little Dorito things and he's like, this is so small.
And I thought to myself, wow, this kid is even noticing that shrinkflation. Amen. And as that's you are my, you're my new food correspondent. Thank you, Nes. Adam, let me get over to you here. Look, I want to check myself because I just mentioned a lot of these consumer staple stocks. I've grown up and I imagine maybe you two do thinking stocks like this, they pay a healthy dividend. They are safe havens. I think it's time to just put the bed and this view that consumer package goods and especially food companies are safe haven companies because they pay dividends and they have steady income and revenue.
That's no really no longer true in terms of revenue and set in terms of revenue and profits. I mean, they're being attacked by GLP ones. The consumers under pressure and inflation is sticky. Like what what in the world will make these safe havens? Yeah, I mean, the difficult thing is it seems like the consumer has gotten pickier and so that adds to the variability and they are more volatile. The cash flow isn't there, like it used to be and that's a large part to the input cost.
So I get the shrinkflation thing, but as a, you know, as a executive of any of these companies, they've got to try to find some way to squeeze margins out and I would agree that trying to go down market is not the right way to do it. I think you want to go up market. And so I think that's really going to be where you're looking for the traditional staple consumer good where you're looking for more steady cash flow. You know, contrary to maybe the way it used to be in this new regime, it's going up market because, you know, you hear about it a lot, but the K-shaped economy is real and so trying to go towards those higher and consumers, they're stickier, they have a bigger wallet and they can kind of be more resistant through kind of economic fluctuation.
So I think it's really smart for Hershey to try to go in that direction rather than try to go towards, you know, cheaper goods. And you know what I mean, that story like this is Taylor made for me. So I dropped a saucy fun fact. Let's throw that on the screen here. A little fun fact on Hershey, there I am. I mean, I'm smiling. That's me. I think that picture was taken after I ate a competing or a competing chocolate bar. I should note that Brad Wies originally attacked Hershey on Valentine's Day. Stock has traded down really ever since and despite that big investor to yesterday.
But Peter, the stock like we've been talking about here is still valued at a premium to the broader market. I mean, do you think it's time to just take these CPG companies off the safe haven table? Well, that's been the problem with a lot of consumer staples. They've been trading at very, very expensive multiples. And Walmart, Costco, even big players trade at a premium to the overall market. And of course, what's happening now is that input costs are going up. If you look at commodities in general, but especially oil and food commodities, like most agricultural commodities are up five to 10 percent already.
If you look at the futures, that's going to hurt the bottom line of these companies. At a time when underlying sales growth is pretty weak. Now, population growth has really slowed. The job market is not particularly strong. So this is not a great environment for a lot of these companies. They're generally safer. So they're probably not going to do poorly in relative terms, but in absolute terms, they could still struggle.
All right, staying on all things consumer. Nike stocks and smacked around after a rough quarter and not so great outlook. Important to me here when Nike is that it called out an uncertain cost outlook, surprise week, just in Europe and a modest growth in fall, order books likely because of cautious consumers. I should say a modest fall in sales, that is. My question of the day is this. Did Nike just give the market a taste of what we will hear from corporate America this earnings season?
Peter, what's at you? Yeah, I mean, I think consumer discretionary is probably the last place you want to be right now because households around the world are going to be spending more on energy products, which means that they're going to have less money to spend on other goods, other discretionary goods in particular. So this is not a sector you want to be in a weakening economy.
I also boil this quarter down kind of like what I did with Hershey. Let's throw that up on the screen too. Some areas of concern. As you're digging through this Nike quarter, I also put a video out on my Instagram, on my X-Fee. I should say this morning breaking down this Nike quarter even more. But a lot of my concerns are this. I mean, the European business under severe pressure, the guidance really wasn't up to snuff, the China business under pressure.
And Adam, I didn't get the sense that this business that is Nike was nearing some form of an inflection point. So there's a market. There are my concerns on Nike. I don't see a lot of these abating anytime soon. What I'm concerned about is hearing some of these concerns from other companies not in the consumer space is earning, starting the wires.
Yeah, I, you know, I would say that this story with Nike is a little bit idiosyncratic. Nike has been a tremendous failure recently and maintaining and propping up their brand name, brand image globally. And so I think that's really what's happening here. Now, we'll probably, like I said, the consumer is weakening and you're going to see some of that.
But I'll go back to what I said earlier about the K-shaped. I think you're going to still see specialty retail do just fine. But where you've had some of these companies that like Nike that have deteriorated their brand a little bit trying to go down market, Nike's trying to pivot right now, but they've really blown a lot of collaborations and different projects that they've worked on.
And so I think this is more of a Nike story, more of a brand deterioration story than a kind of holistic retail issue. And as last word to you, the other thing I didn't get a sense from on Nike is how big a lift if any will the world cup be to sales over the next few months? Yes, and that should be a huge event here, at least for Nike and also all the all the sports sort of brands.
But to the point, look, Nike's last all-time high was in 2021 for the stock. It is in the middle of a turnaround plan. What concerned me and what would I listen to in that conference call was oil prices, input prices are going up, disruptions from the Middle East, Terra. So all of these headwinds at the time that they are trying to go through this turnaround plan.
The vertical Wall Street seems to be unique more patients for this turnaround plan for now. But you are seeing two downgrades as of now Wall Street downgrades today. I would implore Nike to make a start making some sustainable shoes, but look how that ended up for all birds. That business sold for $39 million yesterday. That is absolutely awful to see.
All right, big thanks to Peter Adam and it is good to see y'all. Appreciate it. I saved the date for you friends. Tomorrow at 8 AM, a new episode of my opening bid on filter podcast drops. I sat down with Insomnia Cookies founder Seth Berkowitz on how his recent sale to a private equity firm may impact the future of specialty cookies.
And yes, my healthy self tried one of these Insomnia Cookies on camera. And I can tell you this, those cookies did not shrink in size, like a lot of the products that Hershey sells. Tune in on Y'all finance or YouTube to watch the episode or listening on Spotify, Apple or Amazon, Market Catalyst is coming up next.
I'm Brooke Topham. We're now 30 minutes into the US trading day. Let's take a look at all three major averages because what we are seeing is this return to momentum after we heard from President Trump this morning via truth social post that essentially Iran is looking for a ceasefire that the US will talk if they do reopen this straight, but all waiting to be determined because if that doesn't happen, he said that escalation will continue. We saw the Dow come off at highs of the day now up about 6 tenths of a percent. The NASA, we're going to see if they hold on to the momentum that we saw yesterday likely continuing into today at this start this morning up about 1 percent.
And the S&P 500 after its worst first quarter since 2022, now seeing an upbeat start to queue to this is the first day of trading not only for the second quarter, but for April. So lots to look out for the S&P 500 trading higher up about 6 tenths of a percent. But taking a look at crude oil, what we are seeing there is a bit of a reversal similar to what we have been seeing so far this year. Every time that markets are moving higher, we have seen an inverse reaction when it comes to crude, crude down about 2 percent today and Brent after its largest monthly gain on record, now moving lower down about 2.5 percent.
On top of that, we also did get March ISM manufacturing index that did rise to 52.7. The estimate that forecasted was 52.3. So coming in just slightly above expectations there that is taking into consideration for investors this morning. On top of that too, we did get a stronger than expected private sector jobs report from ADP and a stronger than expected retail sales report in the month of February. And then optimism continuing when we look at the NASDAQ here at Google Tesla, trying to hold on to momentum that we saw during Tuesday's trading session as well, mostly in the green today.
We'll see if they can hold on to this momentum like I said before. But I do want to take a look at retail because one stock that is dragging the retail sector lower is Nike this morning. Nike down about 13 percent to start the day. And Nike has had quite the year taking a look over the past year. What we've seen so far is this optimism when it came to the timeline around August, September, but now from that we're down about 30 percent over the past year. And Nike now, yesterday afternoon, did issue a disappointing outlook despite topping third quarter expectations. The retailers turn around progress being weighed down by ongoing weakness in China.
Joining me now is Sydney and Seagullis, Guggenheim Security, senior managing director Simon, a city in Sarasinian, walk us through exactly what we saw during this past quarter. And how this is sort of playing out, is this reaction sort of overblown here? Hey, bro, yeah. So I think that it's a good question leave frame it because what happened this quarter versus the guidance are two different things. And so there is no question investors are losing patience with Nike. We're seeing that and that chart on the very green looking day, that chart of yours looks scary. And it tells us all we need to know, right?
People are saying I don't believe you. People are saying Nike of the past, Nike's dominance of the past is exactly that it's in the past. I think what is interesting is if you actually look at the quarter, there is a lot of nuance. And I'm not going to say that it's all green, but Nike North America is growing. People were worried that Nike North America wouldn't grow again. We're seeing Nike North America grow. Now ex tariffs, gross margins are actually looking pretty good. Ex severance, the EBIT, the operating profit looked a lot better, but they're not telling that story or at least people don't really buy it because the go forward number you still have to worry about all the things that made Nike good in the first place was that they were global.
Now right now the global pieces are setting up these other dominoes that people are worried about. And so I think the primary question is does this guidance set a floor? Is this finally we're troughing estimates we can make expectations as bad as they need to be and then start building back up? Or is it just pushing the recovery out further? The market's telling you it's the latter. Simian, when you do take a look at that guidance particularly for their greater China segment, we are seeing expectations that they're going to see sales drop by roughly 20% next quarter. When you hear that, what do you make of that?
You know, is that warranted? Is that approved an approach? Are they sort of saying this is worst case scenario here? So it's always worth asking yourself, we look at guidance as if it happened. They're going to beat that number, right? That Nike gives low guidance then they beat it. And so setting a very low expectation, the question is where do they round out? Today we're looking at 20. They just came off of doing down seven. The quarter before they were down 17. And so if they wouldn't have guided what we would have been saying about China is, oh, you just went from a down 17 the prior quarter. By the way, that was a down 20% in units because price versus units is important. They were selling much, much fewer goods last quarter. Now that number sequentially improved. So it's still down seven, but that's a lot better or it's a lot less bad as the right way to frame it. If that's all we had, then we would say, okay, we're really on this great progress.
We're moving in the right direction by next year China will be growing again. The same way that last year North America had huge declines. And now it's growing. The problem is your point, right? The problem is no, they just told us it's going to get worse again. And so if it does do down 20, then we have to understand like, yeah, then there's a serious demand issue. If that down 20 is them level setting a bar, they can then be the same way that they did it this past quarter, then that's going to be another story. And so I think what is interesting is we're looking at America, we're looking at North America, Emia, this kind of European region. And then we're looking at greater China. China was the big problem. This quarter was not. Emia started becoming a problem. We have to see where it goes from there. And so I think what people are looking at is I'm like, how many problems am I going to give you credit for as opposed to watching you're actually taking care of each problem as they surface?
Now in a report that Bloomberg just had put out it said that Elliott Hale the CEO over at Nike said that he's tired too of this turnaround progress. He said, quote, I'm so tired of talking about fixing this business. What still needs to happen? And what's sort of the tie up because we saw this stock run up. Now it's down 30% since September. It seems like once liberation tariffs, liberation day tariffs, sort of were in the rear view mirror. The company was able to get ahead. Now we're hitting this halt again. So what's the hold up here, Simian? So I think, I think you can take quotes and decide where we want to take them. I think Elliott still very much believes in the business. I think the line you said he's tired of talking about it. Right. What's interesting about Elliott vis-a-vis if you think about different types of CEOs, there are CEOs that want to get stuff done and there are CEOs that want their name out there. Elliott's not the latter. He's been thrust into that spotlight because of how high of a level Nike was.
But if we think about the prior. Gus from whatever $15 million to $45. So I think what that line, my guess is, I don't want to put words into his mouth. My guess is what he's saying is it's getting very tiring. Have to talk about this. Let me just do it. But maybe that's not the case. But so I think that is an interesting point. But I think what we have to do, listen, there is a lot of pieces. It does feel a little bit like whack-a-mole. And that's why the stock is showing us what it's showing. And I think for better or for worse, a reality is the tariffs are here. If the tariffs weren't, I think you and I would be talking about a North American business that's growing sales and profits after people thought it wouldn't. And that would then give people at least comfort and that they could do it again in China and in Europe as it happens.
On the other hand, because you can't show that, because tariffs are weighing down North American profits materially, people are looking at this and saying, well, nothing is fixed yet. And if nothing is fixed, then it is whack-a-mole. And so I think that's probably what he's seeing. He has to see the nuance and say, no, my underlying business, North America, actually is healthier. And therefore, I feel really, I feel pretty good about what I can do to fix the problems as we go forward, which was effectively the tone on a conference call last night. But it very much becomes a burden of proof on execution because unfortunately, those tariffs and they put out a lot of severance and didn't one time it out like most companies do made it look like the profits are being pressured as well.
So, I mean, 30 seconds here. Is this a red flag for what we could hear from other retailers about tariffs? Well, so it's a good question. I think that the reality is this right now is Nike specific. I think we know the tariff pressures that we are getting. Nike, I think, is more at the tail end of an earnings report than the beginning of an earnings quarter. So I think right now that's okay. I think what we saw last quarter by and large was an acceleration in revenues across retail and then maybe a pressure point on costs. And so they felt that you are, they got price lifts because of tariffs, but they also absorb some of the costs. I think we'll see kind of an ongoing version of that.
Simi and Segal and Guggenheim, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Appreciate your time. Good to see you. AI startup and Thropic is racing to contain the fallout after an accident leak of its source code. The company attributed the leak to human error now in Thropic representatives are using a copyright takedown request to force the removal of more than 8,000 copies and adaptations of the raw cloud code, construction, according to the Wall Street Journal. The accidental release came to light in a post on X linking to the code and garnered more than 30 million views.
The leak has touched off thousands of posts online, with people saying they've scoured the code. The accidental release marked in Thropic's second security slip-up in a matter of days, but the company says no customer information was released. However, security experts are warning on vulnerabilities now that the code can be studied. And coming up, all your market's action ahead, stay tuned. You're watching Market Catalysts. The US stocks are rallying yet again amid hopes the war in Iran will soon come to an end. The president says the US will be leaving in a matter of weeks ahead of his plan to address the nation tonight.
But is the market getting ahead of itself? Joining us for more is Lizanne Saunders, she's Charles Schwab, Chief Investment Strategist. Lizanne, are we getting a bit too optimistic here? Maybe. Maybe not. Tell me what the next post is going to be. What the next narrative change is going to be. I think there were perceived lessons that were learned in the first week of April of last year when the April 9th announcement of the 90-day delays, the whole notion of Taco. And I think that has been ingrained in a lot of at least shorter-term traders' mindsets.
What's different, of course, about this time is that even if the war ends, whatever the heck that looks like, the dislocation and disruption associated with the Strait of War moves, not just in terms of the feeder of energy to various regions, but everything else that goes through that straight, the fact that stockpiles built up, production has been shut down, not to mention some of the military conflict bringing out other production, particularly in LNG out of Qatar. It's going to take a while to bring that back. So I think the economic ripple effects wouldn't immediately be behind us. I think that's something that's going to still have to be assessed.
So do you think the investors right now are taking that into consideration and do you think maybe this could be the sort of Q3 where we can even see the real effect? Well, this is a very important earnings season coming up because analysts have not done much adjustments to estimates based on the implications of the war. We've seen an increase in 2020's success estimates largely because of up-adjustments for the energy sector, duh. And a pretty significant increase in technology estimates, but largely concentrated in just two stocks, Micron and Nvidia, as those estimates go up.
For the most part, though, analysts are not making many adjustments. I think until they start to hear from companies. So I think that's the next phase we have here where we might be able to put some meat on the bones in terms of the impact of this war on actual companies. If you're an investor and you're looking at this market right now, you're trying to take into consideration all those posts that we're getting, taking into consideration the president speaking this evening, how do you sort of think about, okay, how can I get into this market? Well, there's so much uncertainty, so many unknowns of when exactly this war will end.
Well, I'm glad you asked me the question with a couple of specific words in there, get in. And I always say, either get in or get out as an investing strategy. That's just gambling on two moments in time, which I don't think investors should ever do that. Let alone in today's unique set of circumstances. Investing really needs to be a disciplined process over time. I know it doesn't make for good FinTV to talk about why diversification matters so much, why rebalancing matters so much. But that's really what we're talking about.
I love to do jigsaw puzzles. This is a big puzzle right now that we're dealing with. And I often will pose a rhetorical question, what's the most important piece of a jigsaw puzzle? People will say the corners are the final piece and I always say it's the picture on the box. That's the plan. And so that's the way to navigate through this is to actually have a long-term plan, strategic asset allocation, use diversification, use rebalancing strategies without having to try to sort of pick entry and exit points, especially in an environment like this where narratives can change literally on a dime. When you see so many investors maybe rotating into energy right now, rotating utilities, how do you create this diversified portfolio while also thinking, okay, what about those AI concerns? What about the private credit concerns that we had back in Q1 that got overtaken by this conversation of the war?
Yeah, I think we've had a strong bias toward quality. And I know that seems like an obvious statement as an investor, would you always want to consider quality? But there are times where you want to sacrifice a little quality if you're sort of anticipating a turn out of an economic crisis. But we think you want to stay up in quality. The other thing to understand about things like sectors, sector rotations have been really rapid fire. Not to mention the fact that be careful about monolithic sector-based investment decision-making, especially given the concentrate, we talk about the concentration problem at the index level, less so at the sector level. Communication services, the two main stocks represent between 75 and 80% of that entire sector. So it was certainly over there. Even energy, the top two stocks, represent more than half of that sector.
So this is an environment where you've got to go just a layer deeper to understand not only how to think about diversification in the context of sectors or industries, but also understanding the mechanics of the market. And what is happening from a short-term leadership-ship perspective? So what are you looking for in this coming Ernie season with this all in mind, especially as we are seeing maybe a return a bit to the Mag 7? So obviously an important Ernie season because we haven't seen much of that adjustment yet on the part of the analyst to 2026 numbers. So we'll have to see whether there are major pre-announcements on the part of companies, either positive pre-announcements, those typically would have already happened. Companies like to get the good news out, or negative pre-announcements, particularly industries and companies that have high energy costs as an input, how are they handling that?
Are they making adjustments in other areas where they can contain costs? Are they looking at a potential hit-to-profit margins? And even on those subjects to your point about AI, that again has to come back into the conversation. It sort of became second-page news, but that was the whole story we were all- Hitting in a discussion with X. And even just heading into March, the AI disruption story and the combination of, I think, in the AI space investors figuring out who's being disrupted, but who are the biggest beneficiaries of that? So certainly once we get through this war, whatever the heck that looks like, I think there's going to be a shift back to, okay, what were the fundamentals we were grappling with?
How do we think about profit margins? How do we think about valuations? You know, the good news about going through a corrective phase like this, in this case in particular, is it was all valuation compression because we haven't seen the deterioration to underlying denominator in the PE equation. We'll have to see whether that stays part of the story once we get into reporting season. Well, the Z-Star to Q2 to say the least, Lizanne's honors. Thank you so much for coming in to the studio. Appreciate it. And it's coming up. We're taking a look at some of today's trending tickers. Stay tuned. You're watching Market Catalyst.
Now time for some of today's trending tickers. We're watching R-E, I'm sure. And so there's a big, anytime you have a big down day, you got to look at what's happening under the hood. But let's go out after some of those numbers that really kind of spook the street here. Near term demand is looking softer than the bulls wanted. That's really what the headline is there. So first quarter revenue guide with the projection for the first quarter, that is down 2 to 4%. And then fourth quarter revenue rose only 3.7% to 843 million. That was a little bit light there. Bloomberg intelligence, I got a quote from them saying the outlook for a 2 to 4% first quarter revenue decline following a fourth quarter miss. This just points to a sharp drop in demand that could extend beyond the first quarter.
Then you have international expansion. That's weighing on margins. City, which rates to stock a neutral. Price target is down to 150 from 183. They're saying that the sales ramp and margin recovery is going to take longer than expected. And then cash generation is still the main bull counterpoint. So that's not, that's a decent area right now. Full year 26, adjusted free cash flow guide is 300 to 400 million. Full year 25, free cash flow was 252 million. Morgan Stanley saying ongoing improvement in cash generation is encouraging. But obviously not enough to power the stock today.
Since you mentioned the stock, let's go to the Wi-Fi interactive. And I just wanted to chart this real quickly. This is intraday. Let me just go to a six year. And I used six year to show you what happened at the beginning of the pandemic. Everybody was buying furniture. Everybody there was a huge home improvement boom. And it's just kind of been from the upper left to the lower right, which is now when you want to see in a chart since then. And then you also had tear off stood against consideration, the impact of that. Exactly.
And what we're looking at now is a heat map of my home furnishing spaces. You can see our H is at the bottom today. But let me just show you it's been kind of a rough year for a lot of these names. Wow. There's a lot of red, a lot of dark red there. So it's been challenging for its peers. And then you have idiosyncratic risk, you know, execution. It's kind of a show me story right now. And it might be that way for the whole industry.
And on top of that, think about it. This has been a worse winter than what we could have anticipated. The weather certainly taking impact on that. We did get a note from Chelsea advisory group pointing to that unfavorable weather in January that did weigh on the quarter. But some are sort of pointing out, like, okay, there's long to potential when it comes to those 20, 27 to 20, 30 financial targets that they had pointed out. They do expect a bounce back in revenue growth.
The 10 to 12 percent in 20, 27 reaching about 5.5 to 5.8 billion dollars in sales by 2030. But it just doesn't seem like the street is buying it because of all this consumer headwinds that they're up against right now. Anytime you're at multi year lows, you know, it's a show me story. And so we're going to have to be showing a few more quarters here.
Right. Next up, let's take a look at Boeing and Lockheed Martin because the Pentagon has signed a seven year contract with the company. It's a triple production capacity for the PAC three missile pack three missile. So when you think about this, tripling production, they're obviously not too much reaction on the street, sort of a muted reaction, but Boeing is down about a rather up, rather about 4.7 percent. What do you make of this story?
Yeah. So this is kind of an incremental story. So here's the deal. There's a seven year Pentagon production ramp agreement around this Patriot PAC three MSC missile program. And this is this whole deal is meant to help scale output much faster as demand for air defenses rise. And that's of course with all the geopolitical ramp that we've seen recently.
So here's what Boeing does in the deal. They make the secret. This is the guidance piece that sits inside the interceptor that helps it find and hit the target. Boeing had already been set to make about 3,000 plus of these up to 750 a year through 2030. This framework now points to an even bigger ramp.
And here's what Lockheed does. They are the prime contractor for the full PAC three MSC interceptor. So in January, Lockheed said that they had a framework to lift this production from roughly 600 a year to about 2000. This Boeing deal is now going to help solve one key part of the bottleneck. And here's why investors should care. This is really a capacity plus supply chain certainty story.
So for Boeing, it supports a steadier defense manufacturing growth lane. And then for Lockheed Martin, it improves the odds that it can actually hit some of those big targets with no pun intended with those missile output. Yeah. And also when you think about it, this is a seven year contract agreement. That's a pretty long timeline for investors to think about right here.
And what we actually heard from Jeffries was that they were sort of saying that this is additional cast neutral Boeing investments throughout the production value stream, also modernizing manufacturing, workforce development, strengthening the supply chain. So lots of sort of tailwinds, so to say, for these companies as well.
The US government spends a lot of money on defense. And let me let's go to the left one. And this is something that we've been seeing over the past month. These stocks began popularity. Yeah, you know, it's been interesting because defense stocks, let's go to the Wi-Fi interactive. Defense stocks have done very well over the last year. So and that goes back to that remember of Liberation Day when we had that huge rally off of the lows. Defense was one of the better performers there. And in fact, they didn't even take that much of a hit over Liberation Day. So it was kind of like, you know, defense in multiple and multiple aspects there. But you can see there's a lot of dark green here in some of these stocks. Here's Raytheon up 47 percent. But over the last month, we saw a bit of a hit there.
So ironically, when the war kind of ramped up about one month ago, a lot of these companies that had done so well over the last year, well, they it was kind of like a cell the news story. But that doesn't mean that the theory that the thesis is dead. Defense is here to stay in terms of all this spending. And so you got to think, okay, maybe that was a near-jerk reaction. Maybe we're about to see a little bit of a second leg here. And here's what we're seeing today in that sector. Right. We're definitely seeing a return to optimism here as you make your way. The possibility that this war could come to an end. Let's get to our last stending ticker.
And that is Canagra, the food and snack company, is seeing elevated costs from a volatile macro environment. They also sort of point out to higher inflation than expected during the quarter. They did trim their full year earnings outlook to the low end of the range. They also said that consumers are just shopping less. They're under this economic stress. This is what we've been hearing about snack brands for years and years. It seems like these companies just cannot get ahead. You know, I keep hearing that salty is here to stay. And that seems to be the one constant. But yeah, in terms of sugar input, things fall out of favor.
And it's a very fickle industry. And then you have the GLP craze, which kind of upset the a lot of these staples a few years ago. And I'm going to get to the charts in a second here. Let me just go over some of the earnings stuff. So underlying sales were better than the headline. Organic neck sales rose 2.4%. Even as reported net sales, they fell 1.9%. Profit guidance still getting pinched their full year adjusted DPS. Now seen at about a buck 70 cost inflation. That's still running around 7%. That's very high for this company. Barclays, which rates is talking overrate, price target of 21.
Saying notably management has called out a 10 cent headwind from ardent mills relative to its original four year 26 assumption. And then you have cash flow in the leveraging those remain a support being there. So the company's paying down debt or they're trying to anyway while they're generating free cash flow, which seems to be at a decent clip here about 105%. But you go to the charts. Let's go to the Wi-Fi interactive one more time. I'm going to show you what's happening in food today. And you can see a lot of red there. Here's what she is Unilever. Yeah. All those good guys. But check out what happened over the last month.
There was just I'm going to sort by equal weight. So you can see a lot of the bottom row there. These names off by 20 30%. Staples did really did really poorly over the last month. In fact, they were the worst performing sector of March. I think in part that's because they had picked up in December and January and they were outperformers. And so they just kind of got sold the most in March. But this is another story where you got to wonder, okay, is this a one off? Are we going to see staples kind of lead again where they were in January, February? We'll have to see. But maybe not today because that's kind of a red pick.
And Jared, this week around look could also be an indication of what we could hear from other food companies when it comes to the impact of this war and rising oil prices. So definitely keep a lookout for that. Jared, look great. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. And fun rises. Pushing back against a short seller position against the company's public publicly listed tech innovation fund. The VUNDWEN public in mid March with the aim of giving investors access to private venture capital across the tech sector. Yowl Finance is Josh Lipton spoke to fund rise co-founder and CEO Ben Miller. Ben, great to have you on the show.
Maybe to start sort of big picture, Ben, just your viewers, you might not be familiar. Just explain, Ben, a little bit more about your innovation fund. Like what do you sort of offering everyday investors, Ben, and what's the problem you're solving for? Yeah, so we created the first public venture fund about four years ago. We went to the SEC and created this investment company that allows anyone to invest in venture capital. And then over the course of the last three and a half years, we've invested in Anthropic, OpenAI, Android, Databricks, Canva, basically among the top tech companies in the country. We have had about 100,000 ordinary investors invest in the fund over that time period invested about half a billion dollars. It grew our average client returns about 40% a year.
And then we listed it about two and a half weeks ago on New York Stock Exchange. The fund had a meteor increase from when we listed it, went up a lot. It spiked last week. It's kind of moderated to a little bit more normalized price. And the whole idea is that democratizing investing in the best private tech companies, private tech has been one of the most important sources of American growth. And yet ordinary people, everyday investors have not been able to access it, especially not in a low-cost regulated wrapper like VCX. Your point there being that you have these great American companies, Ben, but they're private and they're staying private for longer. Explain that trend to us.
Why is that happening? Well, I mean, what's amazing is over the last 20 years, private companies can now raise all the capital you need in the private markets. You can raise primary capital. You can raise a secondary capital for employees and venture funds to cycle out. So at this point, private markets, rival public markets, you no longer need to be public. You heard to access capital for the company or for the employees. And so since there's no reason to go public anymore, and there's a lot of negatives of being public, a lot of regulations, a lot of drama, a lot of extra work, companies don't have to go public. So I would they. And so they're not.
And so what's happened is over the last 10 years, I would bet you that the top 20 companies built in the last 20 years are all built in the private markets. There may not have been a world-class company built in the public markets in 20 years. And so as a consequence, American investors are missing out on a really important part of the economy. And that part of the economy is growing very quickly and becoming more and more important over time. Who is your investor, Ben, in this fund? I'm just curious. Do you have sort of line of sight into the kind of average demo?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our investors are every day person, average investment was $5,000. You know, it was 100,000 investors averaging about $5,000 in investment. Their average person is in their mid 30s. You know, they're normal like they work in tech, they work in a healthcare. They're just a normal person who previously could never have access to these companies. And so we made it possible to invest in the best companies in the world in a very low-cost wrapper. And now I think what's what's it's become more and more important at the moment because AI is a transformative technology. And if investors don't have access to this technology as an owner, not just as a consumer, I think it's going to have very significant social effects.
Then we mentioned in the intro this criticism from Citron and listen, you know, Citron speaks people, people tend to pay attention. They listen. And it sounds like what they're saying is, you know, your stock surge, they're arguing and now training kind of just way above the net net asset value. And here's what they posted on March 26 on X. Again, this is March 26. They said, listen, it's training at 400 plus its assets are worth 19 simple math. They say, what was, I mean, you obviously saw that. What was your response to that, Ben?
Well, that was, you know, that was a week ago, the price is now moderated from it was a $5.50. Now it's about $100 a share. So I mean, you know, I mean, basically what happens in public markets is that lots of people can go long and go short. It's very, very normal in any stock. Typically, there'll be two to 10% of short sellers. This stock actually, I think, is only one or two percent short sellers. Very, very low right now, at least. And so some people like to grab news and that's basically how they drive their business. But for us, it's not really relevant.
It's essentially like, I think about these great AI companies, the rocket companies, you know, what's these companies are, the most important companies emerging out of the private markets today. And if people don't want to invest in them, they don't have to. But I think it's really important that they are able to. Citron, Ben, they made this direct comparison between you all and destiny tech 100. They say it's the same product. And their point is they face the same issue they say and investors and their words ended up just getting destroyed there. Is that a fair comparison, Ben, between products? That's Citron is making.
基本上,我认为这些伟大的人工智能公司和航天公司是当今从私人市场中涌现出的最重要的公司。如果人们不想投资这些公司,他们完全可以选择不投资。但我认为,能有机会进行投资是非常重要的。Citron 和 Ben 对你们和 destiny tech 100 做了一个直接比较,他们声称你们提供的是相同的产品。他们的观点是,他们面临着相同的问题,他们说投资者最终遭遇了重大损失。这样的比较,Ben,是否公平?Citron 这样说。
I mean, I don't think it's very, I mean, there's some comparisons with both of us invest in private tech. I think that company had a different portfolio. As you have different portfolio, we had 100, we had 100,000 normal investors before we went public. I think those investors have done pretty well. All things considered. They're up over 100%. So to me, I don't really, I'm not really focused on where something trades in the short term. Like where there was a point when Amazon had fallen 98% and now it's a $2 trillion company. And so over the short term, the market is a voting machine of a long term is a weighing machine.
I think that really, if you're a long-term investor, you're focused on AI, you're focused on deep tech, you're focused on technological change, then that's what we're about. And if you're not, if you're a trader, I don't know how to speak to traders. I'm not a trader. I'm not a short-term investor. Ben, great to have you on the show today, sir. We appreciate your time. Thank you.
Thanks. Coming up, ETFs, you might not know who they want to consider as we kick off the second quarter. That's next on working catalysts. Equating ETFs, notching a nine-month low for inflows in March, still overall ETF volume continues to rise and there may be more opportunities ahead as we kick off the second quarter. Todd Sons, your teagus, your chief ETF and technical strategist joins me now for this week's ETF report brought to you by Pimpco. Todd, walk us through what areas you have seen over this past week, past month, get hit the hardest.
So I think it's actually if you've had volatility rise, if you've had geopolitical volatility rise and that has you filtered in, as you mentioned, a nine-month low for equity ETF inflows. Well below a six-month average, well below a 12-month average, restraint for investors is on the rise. I like that because you're cooling off of sentiment. You're seeing flows out of tech to a pinch and you're also seeing some money come out of areas like financials too. I think this is all necessary but painful to some extent.
Now you said in this note as well that this is sort of similar to what we saw last year. Of course around this time now, let's remind our viewers. This is just ahead of the liberation day. Can't even believe that it's been almost a year. So what do you make of that similar sort of move that you see in? If you think about the backdrop, 23 and 24 strong years, and then we got very aggressive on the sentiment front via flows and investor surveys and then the liberation day the tariffs were the catalyst took more cause of correction.
We rebounded great. And then now it's a similar environment where folks were very bullish and now we just have this kind of war event to wipe out sentiment. So I would expect sentiment to be cooling equity flows to cool off and there'll be a little bit of hesitancy, right? Is it all clear or not? And I like that because it allows you to rebuild and rally in the back half of the day. Sort of get back into this market. Exactly. And now one thing that you did see is industrials lead sector flows since November, I believe.
So what do you make of that? And also is that a risk moving into the second quarter given that we've seen this string within the sector? Right. So there's no doubt industrials have been leadership. Right. This is a broad sector. You know, machinery and defense professional services and whatnot. I look at sector flows as a temperature. It's gotten very, very hot. So I'm worried about the tactical risk for industrials in the second quarter that maybe you could get a little bit more volatility, a prolonged pullback.
I would use it opportunistically. Just be mindful that if you're there in a tactical sense, I would be mindful that you're not alone. It's a very consensus long here. So just stay patient on the industrial. What's the timeline look like for the type of investors that you're watching right now? I would say three to six months quarter to quarter, right? You know, longer term, we still like the sector, but in the very over the next three to six months, when for some of our clients that matters, that's the risk.
Yeah. All right. So let's say your mindset into the second quarter. What are some ETFs that you're looking at that people might not know? So one of the extra I'd like to do is say, okay, you have the core of your portfolio, the S&P 500. We know it's large cap growth. It's AI dominant. How can you complement it? Right. So we're looking at risk managed strategies, buffery ETFs because they protect on the downside. We are looking at low-vol ETFs in case of volatility. It's high. You want to have the low-vol exposure. And then we're also looking at thematic sectors, tech financials utilities, especially in the actively managed space to help complement that S&P exposure.
Yeah. And now some of those particular names, there was one that stood out to me, this Invesco Bloomberg Financial Data Providers ETF. It actually is sort of betting on the exchanges that are looking to get into prediction markets. Exactly. So why is that now the time maybe to consider that in Q2? So prediction markets are clear again, big, whether they are having regulatory issues or not, we'll see. But it's a question for our clients. How do we get exposure to this? So FDIQ, which is from Invesco, takes all the exchanges, right? CME, CBOE, ICE, and ones abroad too. Packages them up into an ETF for a niche-y financial-themed ETF.
是的。现在有些特定的名字,其中有一个引起了我的注意,那就是Invesco Bloomberg Financial Data Providers ETF。这实际上是在某种程度上押注那些希望进入预测市场的交易所。那么,为什么可能在第二季度考虑这个呢?预测市场无论是否面临监管问题,依然是一个大趋势。这是一个我们客户关心的问题:我们如何在这个领域获得投资机会?由Invesco推出的FDIQ,将所有这些交易所,比如CME、CBOE、ICE,以及一些国外的交易所,整合进一个主题鲜明的金融ETF中。
And that's the way because those companies are getting it to prediction markets. They want to be there. Whether you like them or not, it's clearly an important factor. And so we look at as another way to say, hey, you have financials, but it's mostly banks, get the more thematic exposure from financials via the exchanges. Any other one or two topics? I would take a look at TTEQ from T-Row. That's actively managed tech exposure because tech is going through a speed bump now. Okay, lots to watch out for the beginning of Q2 at the state tuned. Thanks so much, Todd. Appreciate your time.
And coming up, Nissan America's Chair on the Outlook for the region, you're watching Market Catalyst. See with us. Let's get a check on crypto brought to you by the National Cryptocurrency Association. What we're seeing now is you make your way into Q2 also the first day of April. Is it a bit of a return to crypto? Bitcoin moving higher up about 2% Ethereum also moving higher up about 3%. And if you take a look over the past two days, what we have seen is this larger momentum return to cryptocurrency with Bitcoin now up about 2% over the past two days.
To take a look at our heat map, what we're seeing there across the board is green and intraday trading across the board. Here, including Solana, which was down earlier this week. Now up about 2% as we make our way into today's trading session. And this sort of momentum is extending into crypto stocks as well. We have Robinhood and Coinbase trying to hold on to some momentum here. Not too much when it comes to strategy PayPal Circle. They are down. But would you take a look at year to date? This is an industry that definitely has gone a bit rocked by investors. We have Robinhood Coinbase down double digits, Robinhood down 37%, Coinbase down 22 and a half percent.
So definitely something to watch out for. As we do see a bit of optimism return to the cryptocurrency market. Meanwhile, the New York Auto Show is in full swing with the automotive industry facing several geopolitical challenges ahead. Yahoo, finances, processing, and green is down at the Auto Show now. Cross-ready. Thanks a lot. So we're at the Auto Show. Oh, yeah, hey, I've seen a lot of good stuff out here. But yeah, we're at the Nissan stand now. The company is in the midst of a turnaround. So they say, I'm familiar with Christian Munia. He's the head of Nissan America's here. Christian, thanks for joining us.
So we talk about Nissan a little bit of issues before in the path, but now things are improving. Talk to you about that turnaround and how that reset is going so far in 2026. I think it's super exciting, because in the last few months we've had some pretty good success re-growing the business again. And we're rediscovered that scale is important in our industry. That scale is giving you the ability to get the cost of the right place and get the product at an affordable price for people to be able to buy them.
And we're bringing some really good product lately. We've launched the new leaf. We launched the new centra, we launched the new armada, and all these products are doing pretty well in the market place. We've been growing the business with fastest growing brand in retail in the US for the last six months. And we're very proud of that. I'm proud of the team. And we're going to keep doing our best to keep that trend. I think the frontier might be part of that, part of that story too. So Nissan wants to grow sales by 10% I believe this year, which is a bit more for the company. President Trump also talking about the company positive things to say about you. Congratulations. He's saying I'm building more in the US even massive plant in Tennessee, I believe.
Talk to me about how you're going to improve or sort of build up American manufacturing here in Nissan. You're already building a lot of cars here anyway. So we have three plants in the US. We have two plants in Tennessee, one for powertrain, one for manufacturing, and we have one big plant in Mississippi. We're very proud of our people building the best cars we've ever built. And obviously the US product, the US product that are not impacted by tariffs are the one that have been really growing the most. My baby, the frontier V6 that you can see behind, but also the pass finder and the rogue have been very, very successful and on infinity side the QX60 yesterday will last week will reveal the QX65. We're very, very bullish on what we're going to be able to accomplish with these cars, all made in the US for the US.
So you need to understand that when the tariff came in play, obviously we had a plan to localize aggressively, but the tariff was not a bad thing for us because it forced us to really accelerate our plan. And we're around 45% of a volume sold in the US, made in the US. Now we're 60, 65% want to go to 80%, we're going to bring a hybrid technology to the US. And that's the rule of the game and we need to build where we sell. That's, that's, there's no magic. We're in a big corporation and that's what we need to do. Obviously we have some cars coming from Mexico and affordability is important.
So, hopefully we're going to get some good news on the tariff from Mexico. Still at 25% hard to sustain. You know, I know that the kicks in central are built in Mexico and that's kind of the problem for affordabilities. How do you get those cars into the US competitively and USMCA negotiations are coming up. What do you want to hear from those negotiations to make it such that you can bring, so bring these cars into America because they're cheap cars. People need them here. We need them in the US. And I think that's the, that's the discussion we've had with the US government and the Mexican government.
I think it's important that we keep the affordable cars, the entry sedan and three SUVs. Made in Mexico makes a lot of sense because obviously labor rate are a little lower than they are in the US. And ultimately there are a lot of components that we put on a central and a kicks made in, assembled in Mexico, but the parts most of them are coming from the US. A lot of engineering resource is in Michigan as well. So altogether is not a bad thing for the economy and it's good for the American people because they can afford these cars. And enough of these cars that $50,000, $60,000 that people can't afford, right?
You know, we were talking about off-air about cars like the new X-Tera, even cars like the Frontier. Trying to make these cars run $40,000, right, to be affordable for regular people. The Versa was one of those cars which no longer is that duly departed Versa, right? Under $20,000, you know, it got you around town. How do you, what do you tell Americans that if you're going to make it harvester import cars in Mexico, how can I address that affordability? What can you do? I think it's part of the DNF or product and a brand to be affordable. Affordability, durability, quality, and at the same time, I have a spice.
You know, we're not bringing vanilla products. We're not appliance. We love cars. We're passionate about cars. And it's not only about mobility. You know, the car is an extension of your personality and I think with the design we have and the product we have, we bring some passion at the same time. With X-Tera, we're going to bring that. That's really the DNA of Nissan. Affordability, quality, and the edge, the spice and X-Tera is the new baby. We're going to bring in a couple of years. That's going to be the symbol of the turnaround of Nissan and big success and growth in the United States, which is the power engine of Nissan globally.
Yeah, you know, we saw the new Z-Nismo over there at the six-speed manual. That's going to be my pick. But the frontier is a good car to you. So, we're at the New York Auto Show. Talk to me about why this show is so important to Nissan's tri-state area. A lot of buyers here. What are those buyers looking at on the floor here from the Nissan one of you?
I think it's a huge market and it's also an opportunity for us to celebrate, you know, the new portfolio we have, the fact that we're bringing hybrids this year on the CSUV, the compact SUV on the road. This is one of the key markets for Nissan in the United States. A big, least market. We have a lot of very strong dealer foot print in New York and that's really also an international show. It's one of the few that has remained a big show for us and we keep investing in it.
I think the Z-Nismo manual transmission is a little bit of a symbol of what Nissan is about. It's not only about mobility, what I said. It's about fun excitement. Obviously, mobility is a key component of it. It's a affordable fun that we bring to market. So, I think the three things are building interesting cars that are that are that are that are you're passionate behind. It's affordability. It's also building an American, right? I think that's the main in the US.
Okay. Christian Muni, Nissan Americas. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Back over to you, Brooke. Expect to hear a full review of what car we should be looking out for, 2020, 2020, 27. So, more to say on that, but that's it for our catalysts. I'm Brooke DiPomma. Thanks so much for watching. We're young who find it ahead.