00:00 Speaker A
It’s so ironic that consumer sentiment’s low, yet the market keeps on setting new highs. But of course, a lot of that is just with the incredible uh earnings season we had. It was the strongest earnings season we’ve had since 2021 with earnings up about 27, 28%. Wow. Uh net profit margins are near 15%, which is actually the highest since Facset started tracking that in 2009. So there’s just from a fundamental perspective, just a lot of things to be bullish about and this AI movement is so powerful. It’s it’s helping create tailwinds amongst other sectors.
00:52 Speaker A
Of course, the the the big uh elephant in the room is the conflict in the Middle East. I think when investors have been betting that it’s going to be short-lived. And now, you know, investors are paying attention, the market’s moving when they get updates either positive or negative on the the the status of those peace negotiations.
01:21 Speaker B
Are you surprised by that? Cuz for a second there, it seemed like they were kind of turning an eye to it. So are you surprised about the momentum though you’re seeing as to close today because of those talks?
01:33 Speaker A
Um, as far the momentum with the just overall with the market. Yeah.
01:38 Speaker B
You returned back to the market. Yeah.
01:40 Speaker A
Yeah, yeah. I I I think the one thing that I think the the investors are concerned about is that this conflict is reigniting inflation and we knew it was going to ignite uh oil and gas, but it’s starting to bleed through to other parts of the CPI, PPI between airfare costs. We think food prices may go up because fertilizer is dependent upon the straight of Hormuz and even uh transportation costs because of the diesel fuel going higher. So the last thing we want and especially the last thing the White House wants is to see inflation reignited and potentially talk about rate uh hikes in the future. We’re not there yet, but I think everyone’s paying attention to that.