00:00 Speaker A

Now time for some of today’s training tickers. We’re watching Alphabet, Bloom Energy, and United Health Group. First up, Alphabet shares are rising as Google announces it’s rolling out its Gemini AI assistant for smart watches with the Galaxy Sam Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 getting the technology first. It’ll roll out to other watches in the coming weeks. The wearable version of Gemini supports voice interactions that can create tasks and offer a more enhanced experience than Google Assistant. The news coming out of Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event. We talked to, um, our Dan Howley of course, earlier at that event, and those Alphabet shares are rising in today’s session along with a lot of other large cap, uh, tech stocks that we have been seeing move higher. Um, I guess Kevin Gordon who’s still with me here. I guess Alphabet’s one of the few that we haven’t hadn’t yet when we’re talking about large cap technology. Um, but, um, you know, certainly Alphabet has been holding its own, but it’s not been an out performer within large cap tech, which speaks to our theme earlier of things sort of now, uh, not all moving together.

00:57 Speaker B

Yeah, it it even within a sector, this is actually a good case of sort of the fragmentation that we’ve been talking about so far this morning. Um, you know, Alphabet and Meta are the two largest stocks in communication services. And actually if you combine them, you’re looking at more than 70% of the market cap of that sector. So actually the ultimate concentration risk is is really within that sector, but it speaks to how, you know, you’ve seen almost, um, almost mirror-like performance for those two at least year to date, where Alphabet’s been struggling more than meta. Um, not that I cover the stocks, but I think looking at that, kind of using that almost as a case study of how there has been this fragmenting even within the two largest names. Clearly there have been more idiosyncratic things at play, but I think that’s again, part of the broader story for the mega caps. You’re seeing the split in tech, you’re seeing the split in communication services, consumer discretionary. If you’re going to round out kind of all the mag 7 sectors, that is a little bit of a different story where Amazon and Tesla, the two biggest companies, those have lagged year to date, almost in sync with each other in terms of the the lack of willingness to kind of get up and going. But I think that it’s probably part of a broader consumer discretionary weakness story where a lot of those companies and industries within that sector, um, they just face a lot more of a tariff risk than the other two.

02:57 Speaker A

Right, right. Makes sense. Um, let’s talk about Bloom Energy as well. It’s soaring on an upgrade from JP Morgan. The firm lifting its rating to overweight from neutral on a surprise tax credit. Fuel cells will qualify for the clean electricity investment credits as part of the new Trump DAC tax bill. The analyst there Mark Strauss writing that the tax credits could push hesitant Bloom customers over the finish line with order activity to increase accordingly. Um, I mean, not for nothing, Kevin, I think it’s so interesting here that the stated, um, goal of the bill is not to create winners and losers in the energy industry or to advantage some over others, but clearly it is doing that.

04:02 Speaker B

Yeah. Well, I think even what’s more interesting, um, if you can, and this, we always use the energy sector as as a bit of a case study for when it comes to investing with your political bias, um, as an investor. Because if you look back at the first Trump administration, um, what did really well was sort of the renewable energy space and everything sort of green related. The in terms of stock market performance. Um, it was the traditional energy sort of oil and gas that got crushed relative to those names. It’s actually energy from inauguration day to inauguration day from, you know, Trump one to the end of the end of that term. Um, energy was the worst performing sector. It was also the only sector that was down. Vice versa. If you look at under the Biden administration, you know, the rhetoric was, the narrative was that a lot of that was going to flip where renewable would do well, uh, where traditional energy wouldn’t do well, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Energy was the best, you know, one of the best performing sectors. So it’s interesting to see today, you know, a little bit even a reversal of that dynamic where even other Trump two, and I wouldn’t put it based on any political bias from any administration under this, uh, sort of second round, energy, traditional energy has been, I mean, you know, sort of in the in a worst performing spot.

06:11 Speaker A

Yeah. Well, drill baby drill is not great for oil prices on the.

06:16 Speaker B

Especially when oil prices are down, yeah.

06:19 Speaker A

Yeah, exactly. And finally, United Healthcare reportedly under DOJ investigation around the insurance company’s medical billing practices and how medical diagnoses are documented. That’s according to the Wall Street Journal. The report says former United Health employees have been questioned by prosecutors about the company’s efforts to encourage documentation of certain lucrative diagnoses. This includes testing patients, implementing procedures to make sure medical conditions were captured and sending nurses to patients’ homes. The journal reported back in May that the healthcare fraud unit was overseeing a probe of United Healthcare’s Medicare business, and that investigations date back to at least last summer. Um, now I know, Kevin, you can’t talk about United Health specifically, but you can’t talk about the healthcare group more broadly. We talked earlier about how it’s a traditional defensive group, and it’s been, I don’t know what other word to use. It’s been a weird year for healthcare, right? Um, when it comes to insurance and situations like this, when it’s come to pharmaceutical tariffs, maybe, you know, it’s been sort of tough to navigate.

07:51 Speaker B

Yeah.

07:52 Speaker B

I just, I mean, whenever we talk about the healthcare sector, especially with our clients, um, you know, it’s such a big sector, not necessarily just in market cap terms, but you look at the different industries and how how different they are from each other, whether it is insurance, whether it is pharma. Right there you face two totally different sets of risks from a trade standpoint. But even if you include something like biotech, which, you know, tends to get swept up in really high momentum, high beta trades at times, especially in this most recent rally we’ve seen, actually what’s been leading is a lot of the non-profitable companies. So that biotech tends to be sort of at the center of that trade. So even within a sector like healthcare, which has lagged a lot this year and relative to the S&P is still hovering near its lowest levels since 0809, um, you can find some significant outperformance at times. That doesn’t necessarily mean it lasts for a long time because I wouldn’t necessarily say that the unprofitable trade is one that is a secular grower over time. But I think within a sector that’s so large, that’s an important thing to keep in mind.

09:18 Speaker A

Yeah, most definitely. And as always, you can scan the QR code below to track the best and worst performing stocks with Yahoo Finance’s trending tickers page.

09:29 Speaker B

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