How Are Geopolitical Tensions and the Federal Deficit Reshaping Investment Strategies?

April 15, 2024
Season 6 | Episode 14

Unravel the intricacies of a world where finance and global politics collide head-on, and discover how they shape our investment decisions. As the ticking clock counts down to the April 15th tax deadline, we're here to arm you with the insights you need to navigate the murky waters of tax filings, extensions, and last-minute IRA contributions. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The financial markets are reeling from underwhelming bank earnings and volatile market trends, all while the specter of geopolitical unrest looms large over the Middle East and Ukraine, threatening to further destabilize an already fragile economic equilibrium.

With Keith by my side, we dissect the week's financial tumults and triumphs, analyzing everything from the unexpected bond yield spike to the ebbs and flows of stock market giants like Cisco and Goldman Sachs. We don't sugarcoat the setbacks, addressing Apple's logistical nightmares and the metals market's tremors in the wake of Russian sanctions. And as the geopolitical chess game intensifies, we scrutinize Israel's strategic posturing, the economic ramifications of Bitcoin halving, and the simmering political tensions back home as Trump voices his stance on Ukrainian aid. It's a whirlwind tour of the financial landscape, peppered with expert insights, designed to equip you with the knowledge to make informed choices in these unpredictable times.

** For informational and educational purposes only, not intended as investment advice. Views and opinions are subject to change without notice.

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Transcript

Alan Eppers: 0:00

And now introducing Mr Keith Lanton.

Keith Lanton: 0:03

Hi, good morning. Today is Monday, april 15th. That day may ring a bell Today for most of the country, except a couple of states. Today is the day that you either file your taxes or you file an extension. Of course, if you do owe federal taxes, even if you file an extension, you must make your payments. Otherwise you'll owe federal taxes. Even if you file an extension, you must make your payments, otherwise you'll be subject to penalties and interest. Interest rates, I believe, are 8%, so I want to make sure that you address that today. Also today, last day to make contributions to IRAs and Roth IRAs. If you're up against a deadline hadn't thought about it you do have until the end of the day today, because you can send in your payments to whomever is custodying your retirement account. As long as the envelope is postmarked today, those deposits can be deposited for 2023 contributions.

Keith Lanton: 1:05

So this morning, of course, there's lots to talk about. We had our attention certainly dramatically move from earnings season to what's taking place in the Middle East the Middle East. So let's talk about the financial markets, talk about the events that took place over the weekend and try and put it all into context and summary so that we can make intelligent decisions regarding our investment portfolios. What a difference a week makes. Last week on the call, we were talking about how there was a shift in what investors were focusing on, moving from their focus on interest rates to earnings. Now that doesn't mean that interest rate concerns have gone away, but the earnings season kicking into high gear. Expectations. The Federal Reserve is not cutting rates anytime soon. Therefore, earnings better deliver in a meaningful way.

Keith Lanton: 2:04

We started to get earnings on Friday from a few banks. The numbers were better than previous quarter's numbers, but didn't necessarily live up to expectations. At least that was the market reaction, as we saw the market sell off and all the major banks sell off on Friday. Now the market may have been selling off on Friday because the last two Fridays the market had sold off in possible anticipation of some chaotic events in the Middle East. This weekend we did get some of those events in the Middle East, obviously, and markets are reacting, at least at the moment, favorably. So now we have the narrative changing and narratives change quickly. So now we have the narrative changing and narratives change quickly, we have earnings, not necessarily in the rearview mirror, but moving a little bit further into the periphery, and we have two new issues moving towards the center, sort of sharing the stage with interest rates and earnings, and those are obviously number one, the geopolitics and number two is the federal deficit, and we'll talk about both of those concerns coming to the forefront Again. Neither of these two issues are issues that were dead and buried. We certainly were keenly aware that the world was an unstable place, but we weren't so focused on it. And, of course, the deficit has come and gone in terms of how much the markets choose to focus on it, and I would argue that the markets are starting to focus a lot more on to the deficit and what that may mean for the US economy.

Keith Lanton: 3:40

Geopolitically, the Middle East conflict, specifically the confrontation between Iran and Israel, is something the markets are coming back to, obviously with the events over the weekend, but this started a long, long time ago. There's been a lot of tit-for-tat between Israel and, specifically Iran, specifically Iran. Tensions escalated when Israel bombed the consulate in Syria that was maintaining some significant operatives for Iran, under the presumption that these operatives in Iran and that the consulate were helping to bring weapons into the West Bank to sow discord within Israel. And Israel felt that they must act, and then Iran after that suggested that they were going to react to that action, and we got that over the weekend. And then we're seeing more and more attention being focused on the war in Ukraine because Russia, arguably, is now winning that war. This is a war of attrition and it is not going well for Ukraine. They have less people and without the West's help, they also have fewer weapons to fight off specifically artillery Now this morning.

Keith Lanton: 5:03

To fight off specifically artillery, now this morning, former President Trump saying that he could possibly see a path to helping Ukraine and helping them through loans, and some Democrats have suggested that that is a solution that they'd be open to.

Keith Lanton: 5:17

So perhaps this week we will see the House put forward a proposal to provide aid to Israel and possibly even provide aid to Ukraine.

Keith Lanton: 5:28

Now these two events are coalescing into the other issue which we just discussed, which is the federal deficit and our ability to service that deficit. That becomes an increasingly challenging proposition as we provide more and more aid to our allies, and we'll talk a little bit about that as the morning progresses. Finance and economics are all interconnected, so these issues and themes are overlapping in a sense like a Venn diagram. You've got interest rates, you've got the earning season. You've got the geopolitical problems, in other words, the conflicts that are taking place and, arguably, the wars that are taking place in the Middle East and in Russia and Ukraine, and you've got the federal deficit. These all are interrelated in various ways. Yet this morning, if you look at the futures, you will see that futures are higher and this is, in a sense, expressing some relief that Iran took the actions that they took, that there weren't a significant amount of casualties and the fact that Israel has not responded.

Keith Lanton: 6:41

And I would say yet to the actions over the weekend. Now, this optimism can turn very quickly on a dime, literally into pessimism, if there are reactions to what's taken place and there is escalation and we are certainly dealing with a fire. That seems that the embers have subsided. But, as we know anyone who's played with fire knows that all it takes is a little bit of a wind, a little bit of miscalculation and all of a sudden that fire starts blowing up and possibly could blow up beyond control. So we're at the critical juncture here in the Middle East and the key question is are we at the beginning of the end of the conflict between Israel and Iran, or are we at the end of the beginning Now? I personally believe that Iran did not want their actions to escalate into a full-scale war with Israel. If they had wanted that, they may not have taken some of the actions that they took. Number one they took this action over the weekend, which arguably is something that's more favorable for financial markets. So financial markets were not sent into a tizzy of uncertainty. We had time to digest what took place in the Middle East. So perhaps their actions had some thought process in place in terms of not being too disruptive, for example, to the price of oil or to markets. Now, iran is obviously not keenly and firstly focused on markets. They're focused on what's best for them and they possibly decided that what's best for them is not to have this escalate out of control. If they wanted things to escalate out of control, they could have exacted more damage, potentially to Israel, by not waiting two weeks to respond to the bombings or almost two weeks to respond to the bombings of the consulate. Arguably they gave some notice to the United States and our allies, although the US is saying that they did not have notice. Other countries are saying they did have notice, but nevertheless, the US, the French, the British were able to position warships strategically to be able to thwart the missiles and drones and cruise missiles that were raining on Israel. Whether or not there was notice given and the ability to set that up was just fortunate or there was more than fortune involved, perhaps we'll never know. Iran possibly chose to target more remote areas. Obviously we won't know that either. Specifically, what they did do is they made clear before they attacked that they weren't targeting US assets in the Middle East, so that the US knew that attacks were not necessarily imminent. And what they did do is they signaled before the end of the bombardment that they did not intend to pursue this any further, at least this action that they were taking. Now. Obviously, israel will decide with the appropriate response, and that's, of course, the million-dollar question at this point.

Keith Lanton: 9:57

This was a direct attack on Israel. This was not a proxy attack. This is not a proxy attack, and Iran and Israel have been exchanging you know, the conflict here has been strictly through proxies. This attacking Israel proper is clearly, clearly an escalation, and something could have easily gone wrong. When you hurl 300 projectiles loaded with explosives in any country, no matter how much foreshadowing and forewarning you may have, it's very possible that you could have dramatic consequences that you did not intend. Now, ironically, at the moment the most serious Casualty here is an Arab girl who was hit with some shrapnel in the Israeli desert. So we've got the conflagration here taking place.

Keith Lanton: 10:52

The uncertainty of what the response is going to be, the markets taking away at the moment that this outcome is something that they think is more favorable than not, as I said, could turn on a dime, but nevertheless, one of the results here is that the US is talking about providing more aid to Israel, and now we're starting to talk about providing some aid to Ukraine. And this brings us to the second concern that the markets are starting to really turn back to, I would say, and that is the deficit, and the market's turning back to the deficit. Number one because of this talk about providing aid, and aid costs money. Number two, because it means that the US is going to continue to spend on their military and to build up our military and to be able to defend our country and, secondarily, our allies. If you think about the US coming to the aid of Israel and intercepting a lot of these missiles, just think of the cost of each of those missiles that went up to intercept one of those missiles and that all has to be paid for by US taxpayers. And we're probably talking about millions, possibly tens of millions or hundreds of millions, just in action over the weekend in the Middle East.

Keith Lanton: 12:03

But the bigger picture is the fact that interest rates are going to stay higher for longer and the interest component of our debt looks likely to get worse, not better, anytime soon. Now the thinking was if interest rates were going to start to decline, well, at least the interest expense component of our deficit was going to start to at least feel less pressure. Now the interest component of our deficit because interest rates are expected to be higher for longer means that the interest component is not going to go down anytime soon and may go up. So let's put this in perspective. Currently, the US is running about a $2 trillion a year deficit. We're running that deficit in peacetime and we already have $33 trillion in debt and we are building on it and adding to it. So, if you think about it, every 1% increase in interest cost raises the cost to service our debt by about $350 billion roughly per year. Put that in perspective. That is just a little bit less than one-third, or actually a little bit more than one-third, of the cost of our military budget, which is approaching $1 trillion, about $900 billion. So this increase in the cost of servicing our debt is very real and very problematic.

Keith Lanton: 13:28

And if we are unable to cut our military spending which I'm not suggesting that we do, but if we don't cut that component and we do not have our interest cost component in check, what are the other big levers that we have to control the deficit? Most of the other spending outside of Social Security and Medicare are minimal and do not have a big impact on the overall size of the deficit that we are running. So therefore, we have this issue of how do we control our Medicare and Social Security spending. It doesn't look like either political party wants to touch this third rail, but the reality is that our country is aging, medical costs are rising, social Security people are living longer, there are more elderly that are being supported by less younger folks who are paying into the Social Security system. So, without a significant change to the Medicare policies and to Social Security policies, it looks like we are going to continue to run very large deficits, which means that the potential for interest rates to be higher for longer to sustain that deficit is looking increasingly likely, and therefore we are starting to see the bond market start to weigh in, not just on the economy and measuring interest rates based on the economy, but the bond market starting to weigh in and suggest that one of the interest components now is going to be how are we going to service all of this debt?

Keith Lanton: 14:59

And in order to service all this debt and in order to encourage folks to buy our debt, we may have to pay a higher interest rate, regardless of what the inflation rate is. Obviously, inflation rate is still something that people are seriously concerned about. But if you're issuing tons and tons of debt, if you need to have all this debt sucked up, well, how do you entice buyers? Well, you got to give them a good price. What does a good price mean? Good price means higher interest rates, and higher interest rates could mean lower equity prices, because you're having competition for equities from the bond market as a result of these deficits. So everything comes together. You got to really know each piece of the equation here to formulate an opinion.

Keith Lanton: 15:44

But things are once again becoming more and more complicated and we as investors need to evaluate all these different inputs and decide what the best allocation of our capital is and, most importantly, knowing ourselves and knowing that when the tide does go out as invariably will at some time, as Warren Buffett has said how we will act and react with our own portfolios. You need to think about that before it happens and restructure your portfolio so that you can withstand that storm when it happens. It's not a matter of if it will happen. History has shown that it happens over and over again at times when we do not anticipate it, and your portfolio must be structured so that you personally, knowing yourself, can structure your portfolio so that you can, knowing yourself, can structure your portfolio so that you can ride out that storm. All right, so this morning, what's going on?

Keith Lanton: 16:41

Well, futures are approaching their highest levels of the morning, as strong retail sales and earnings are contributing to the upside, as well as the sort of relief that the situation at the moment in the Middle East looks like. We have some understanding of the current situation and hope that things do not escalate too much out of control. So what do we've got going on? One is we have oil this morning moving a little bit lower, as the hope is that the situation will not get worse in the Middle East. So oil is down about 60 cents a barrel. Natural gas is down about $0.05. The other commodity that will give us some insight into the worry in the markets is gold, which is down about $4 an ounce. Silver up modestly, copper up modestly this morning. So some hopes that we will not have full-fledged war in the Middle East.

Keith Lanton: 17:53

And we're seeing the same narrative in the bond market, with bond yields spiking higher. We're at the 10-year all the way up to $4.60 this morning, as the markets and that flight to quality we saw on Friday and the safety getting unwound and the 10-year Treasury all the way at a $4.60, the one-year Treasury all the way at a 4.60, the one-year Treasury all the way up at a 5.20, and the two-year approaching 5% again is at a 4.98, also up about 10 basis points. Cisco stock this morning CSCO is upgraded to buy from neutral at Bank of America. It's up about 1.2%. Goldman Sachs, with earnings this morning stocks up. Last I looked it was up about 3.3% or $13, a little over $400 a share. They beat by $2.85. They also beat on revenues. Salesforcecom is down about eight points. They are in discussions to purchase Informatica symbol INF-A. Logitech downgraded to underweight from equal weight at Morgan Stanley. Stock's down about two points. And Tesla this morning is down about two points.

Keith Lanton: 19:07

Two newsworthy items here. Number one is that Tesla is going to be dropping the price of their supervised or fully supervised driving system, which used to be called sort of automatic pilot but now called fully supervised. That is going to drop to $99 a month from $199 a month, so a 50% price cut. Also reports that Tesla is scouting out locations for the first India showroom. But most importantly, reports that Tesla is going to be cutting 10% of their global workforce. Also, apple in the news this morning.

Keith Lanton: 19:45

Apple saw the steepest decline in iPhone shipments since COVID. Lockdowns as Chinese sales flagged and a resurgence from rivals such as Huawei and a ban on foreign devices in the Chinese workplace took their toll on iPhone sales. The 10% drop in the first three months of the year was worse than projected and is at odds with a broader rebound in the smartphone industry. Apple, as a result of these diminished shipments, has lost their top phone maker spot to Samsung. This morning reports In international news Israel out saying that they vowing to exact a price from Iran following missile strikes, but they are still discussing options.

Keith Lanton: 20:29

President Biden told Israel the US would not participate in any offensive operations against Israel. Reuters reporting that Hamas has rejected a ceasefire proposal. New York Times reporting that Donald Trump's lead over President Biden has narrowed. The race is getting closer. Donald Trump's still retaining, according to this latest poll, about a 1% lead over President Biden, but this is down from about a 5% lead, about a five-point lead in February. Interestingly, nearly 80% of voters in this poll rate the nation's economic conditions as fair or poor. House Speaker Mike Johnson received a lifeline of support from President Trump amid threats from Marjorie Taylor Greene to remove him. According to the New York Times, the Hill is reporting that President Trump, as I mentioned earlier, is open to Republicans approving aid to Ukraine in the form of a loan.

Keith Lanton: 21:22

Bloomberg reporting that the US has imposed sanctions on the use of Russian metals on exchanges. And Bitcoin halving, bloomberg is reporting, will have an impact on miners to the tune of about $10 billion, meaning that miners will be receiving about $10 billion less because they'll be receiving about half the amount of Bitcoin as a result of their mining operations. Barron's had a big piece on Bitcoin. Perhaps Wall Street's warming to Bitcoin is directly related to Wall Street's ability to participate in the profits from trading Bitcoin, and that previous skepticism from Wall Street may have also been tied to Wall Street's inability to participate. Now that Wall Street can be in this business and the trading of Bitcoin more reminiscent of the Wild West with wider margins, perhaps Wall Street finds that their like of it is definitely tied to their suggesting their ability to make profits from it.

Keith Lanton: 22:29

Okay, what's going on this week? Not a lot of economic news, but a lot of earnings. 40 companies in the S&P 500 report earnings this week Financial firms, making up nearly half of them, companies like Charles Schwab this morning we got Goldman Sachs, we have Bank of America, bank of New York, morgan Stanley Tomorrow, us Bank on Wednesday, blackstone Thursday, american Express on Friday, also some mega cap companies and healthcare, farmer and technology reporting results this week Johnson, johnson and UnitedHealthcare. Tomorrow Abbott and ASML before the open on Wednesday, netflix and Taiwan Semi on Thursday and Procter Gamble on Friday. Moving on to Barron's Barron's talking about earnings and specifically tech earnings, saying tech earnings are almost here and they say it's still all about AI or artificial intelligence.

Keith Lanton: 23:26

But what they say is so far, most of the benefits of artificial intelligence have gone to the pick and shovel companies like the chip stocks, of course, poster child NVIDIA Stocks, of course, poster child NVIDIA, but stocks like NVIDIA, amd, micron and Dell and Super Microcomputer which are providing those picks and shovels. But Barron's saying in the long run, ai can't just be about capital spending. Someone has to use this stuff and that's why this quarter the focus shifts to software companies. Ai has seen these software companies fanatically writing new code and revamping their products to incorporate artificial intelligence and investors, as a result, have bid up the shares of software companies, anticipating an eventual AI profit afterburner and sooner or later these software companies have to deliver, and the markets are hoping that it will be sooner rather than later. As these earnings come out, there will be lots of attention paid to what these companies say. Some things that will be carefully followed this earnings season are what Microsoft will have to say about their AI co-pilot, for which the company is charging $30 a month. Microsoft isn't likely to provide a lot of specifics, but expect upbeat color. Also in the spotlight from Microsoft is the Azure cloud business, which is expected to grow 28% in line with the December quarter, and the CEO, satya Nadella, recently saying we've moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale.

Keith Lanton: 24:56

Another company which has not been super active in AI but has said that they're incorporating AI chips into their latest computers, and that is Apple. So far, 2024 has been rough on Apple shareholders. That's partly thanks to the antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice, but perhaps more troubling has been the competitive conditions in China and a general lack of growth. The competitive conditions in China and a general lack of growth. Apple is expected to make a flurry of AI-related announcements at their June Developers Conference, but when they report earnings, there'll be lots of attention on what Apple has to say with respect to artificial intelligence.

Keith Lanton: 25:37

Also, Alphabet, which is one of those companies that's more difficult to evaluate.

Keith Lanton: 25:44

Alphabet, through their Google search engine, could potentially be a big beneficiary of AI as they start putting more muscle on their Gemini product, formerly BARD.

Keith Lanton: 25:57

But there are concerns that AI in general, and even Alphabet's own product, could catabolize their existing search business, from which they earn very handsome advertising margins.

Keith Lanton: 26:22

So a lot of attention will be paid to what Alphabet has to say with respect to artificial intelligence and what it may mean for Apple's advertising revenues going forward. And then the other companies that are in the AI space that sort of become somewhat unexpected beneficiaries are Dell Technologies and Hewlett-Packard, as they recently said that surging AI server demand was serving up very good profits for these companies. And now there are signs that some companies are moving their workloads back to their data centers from the cloud, and it'll be interesting to see what this means for some of these cloud services, because running AI, they're finding, is cheaper to run it on their own processors and their own computers than it is to run it in the cloud, and they also feel that they can better protect their data and have more control over their data when it's in-house. So an interesting result of the AI revolution is starting to affect where some of this data is housed and some of the recent trends that we've seen in financial markets is housed in some of the recent trends that we've seen in financial markets.

Keith Lanton: 27:23

Finally, before I turn things over to Brad, talk about one final interesting result that's taken place in financial markets, and this is, I would say, as a result of not the artificial intelligence revolution but the renewable energy revolution Not the artificial intelligence revolution, but the renewable energy revolution and Barron's cover story talking about big oil companies and how they are shifting their business models. They are becoming more and more aware that gasoline consumption, at least growth of gasoline, and therefore there's less demand for gasoline than was anticipated, let's say, 10 years ago when electric vehicles were in their infancy. So what have the oil companies done? Barron says these oil companies are pivoting to the one end market for fossil fuel, whose peak is decades away, and that is chemicals, and these chemicals often are used to produce plastic. So Saudi Arabian Oil, the world's largest oil company, plans by 2030 to send about a third of its oil to chemical plants, mostly to be used to plot plastics. The $100 billion project could transform Saudi Arabia from a mid-sized player in chemicals to a powerhouse capable of single-handedly supplying enough plastic for all the cars and planes built each year here in the US. Chevron, CVX, whose CEO has said that no large-scale fuel refinery will ever be built in the US again, is constructing two major chemical plants through a joint venture with Phillips 66 and Cutter Energy one in Texas and one in Cutter.

Keith Lanton: 29:32

And the problem is that now too many companies are ramping up chemical production at the same time, leading to a serious glut that looks like it will last for years. Chemical companies could be looking at years of diminished earnings, taking some of the shine off of their stocks. Already, prices for the most abundant chemicals which go into plastic production have fallen more than 50% in the US since 2021. Clearly, this is not bad for inflation, but not good for chemical companies. The plunge hasn't dissuaded most companies from planning even more new factories. Plants with capacity to produce millions of tons of unneeded plastic are sent to swamp the market before the end of the decade, even as the chemical industry says it wants to reduce plastic waste. The glut could lead to both financial and environmental damage. Shell recently opened a chemical complex the size of 300 football fields in Pennsylvania, with capacity to produce 1.6 million tons of plastic pellets a year, and China has built so many plastic factories in the past five years that it's on pace to add as much capacity by the end of the year as currently exists in Europe, japan and Korea combined.

Keith Lanton: 30:43

The global ramp-up is swamping an already saturated market. Barring shutdowns of existing capacity, this oversupplied situation will extend into 2030 and beyond. So this is something that could potentially impact the major integrated oil companies as they send more of their oil to make plastics and these plastics may not have the margins they're anticipating. This could impact these companies that are doing the refining, as there is potential for excess glut in the post-refining of gasoline products into oil that could be used for chemical manufacturing, and certainly this can have a very dramatic effect on the chemical companies that are churning out chemicals as a result of using oil to make these chemicals, to make plastics, to make industrial chemicals. So this is something to think about when you think about which companies you're investing in, as this second derivative or secondary effect of the changes in the electric vehicle market and the engine market are having in terms of producing a potential glut of chemicals to make products that are byproducts of oil. So something to think about.

Keith Lanton: 32:01

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Brad to give us his thoughts and comments this morning. Good morning, brad.

Brad Harris: 32:05

Good morning, keith. So I look forward this morning to coming in and seeing a continuation of a stabilization interest rate that started on Friday. Thank goodness that's not the case. I would love to see rates stabilize at these levels, with the 10-year now knocking on the door of about 4.6%, which is up more than 75 basis points in yield in just a few months, or the equivalent of about 6% off its high price. This bond market has been bruised badly, but no one wants to see lower rates created by a world war or any geopolitical disasters for that matter. We also do not want to see low rates because of a bank blow-up or some other domestic disaster. We want the market to work itself out properly and in a timely fashion to get to this level of stabilization. So for the time being, let's just accept that the rates are here. They're higher. Those who have new money are the opportunity to continue to rebalance from large profits, and the equity markets still have the opportunity to buy these decent rates, and that's a good thing.

Brad Harris: 33:17

As for Jamie Dimon's comments about the possibility of our heading to 8% rates, I wonder how the country would actually fund the $5 trillion of interest alone on debt that would be created at that level.

Brad Harris: 33:29

Obviously, jamie Dimon is one of the most powerful and smartest CEOs in the world, but his comments like these, which are not helpful and, in my opinion, just scare the hell out of retail investors who are just trying to quietly save. As I say almost every week, try to drown out the noise and pay attention to your portfolio and risk tolerance. For the long term. Municipals still are a decent investment on a taxable equivalent basis, depending on your risk tolerance or thoughts about the markets. Without going into specific details, you could buy municipals five to seven years out with yields better than 3%, which is better than 5% tax equivalent yield, or you can buy 20-ish year municipals better than 4%, which is better than 6.5%, on taxable equivalent yield. In the meantime, and more importantly, let's pray for peace in the world as well as at home. With that, I'll pass it back to Keith. Thanks for listening.

Alan Eppers: 34:23

(Keith Lanton) Thank you, brad. That's everything I've got. (Alan Eppers) Thank you for listening to Mr Keith Lanton. This podcast is available on most platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Pandora.

Sophie Cohen: 34:45

Opinions expressed herein are subject to change and not necessarily the opinion of the firm. Past Performance is no guarantee of future results. The information presented herein is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide personal investment advice. It is important that you consider your tolerance for risk and investment goals when making investment decisions. Investing in securities does involve risk and the potential of losing money. The material does not constitute research, investment advice or trade recommendations.