Enlightenment - A Herold & Lantern Investments Podcast

Markets, Mindset, And The Holiday Week

• Keith Lanton • Season 7 • Episode 43

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November 24, 2025 | Season 7 | Episode 43


Markets can rally on headlines and still slide by the close, and this holiday-shortened week is a masterclass in that tension. We open with the travel surge and a shaky tape, then dig into why NVIDIA’s stellar results sparked selling, what “violently flat” really signals, and how investor positioning, year-end incentives, and shifting rate expectations can outweigh even the best earnings day. If you’ve been wondering why AI euphoria keeps colliding with red screens, you’re not alone.

We also bring a different compass to the chaos: Warren Buffett’s nonfinancial playbook. Kindness, integrity, patience, and independent thinking aren’t just virtues—they’re risk tools. We translate those principles into practical investing habits: making a virtue of inaction when noise is loud, protecting reputation through process, and keeping enough liquidity to avoid being “dependent on the kindness of strangers.” That mindset frames how to navigate volatile sessions without chasing every tick.

From there, we widen the lens beyond the Fed to the Bank of Japan, explaining how years of ultra-low Japanese rates powered global carry trades and why even a modest shift can ripple through tech, private equity, and risk assets worldwide. We track sector and single-name movers, from Alphabet’s Gemini momentum to healthcare rotation, and spotlight where selective value may be hiding: European equities still early in a potential rerating, Disney’s bold cruise strategy aimed at margin-rich experiences, and Bristol Myers’ blend of low multiple, sturdy dividend yield, and evolving product mix.

If you want a grounded read on liquidity, sentiment, and where patience can still pay, this conversation is your roadmap. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s watching futures at dawn, and leave a review to tell us where you’re finding opportunity—or what’s keeping you on the sidelines.

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

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Alan Eppers:

And now introducing Mr. Keith Lanton.

Keith Lanton:

Good morning. Today is Monday, November 24th. Last Monday of November. And we are here at a holiday shortened week. Thanksgiving on Thursday, financial markets in the U.S. are closed on Thursday, and on Friday, we do not have a full day of trading in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday. So want to now extend good wishes to all and safe travels for all who were traveling this Thanksgiving week, which is on par to be a record week in terms of travel. Airports expecting a record number of travelers this holiday season. Sunday expected to be the busiest day of the year. FAA saying that if you are traveling on Sunday that in the northeast they may slow air traffic down if the skies are too congested, so keep that in mind if you're traveling. So moving on here to the investment world, we have a lot to consider here as November winds down. Last week we saw going into the end of last week, we saw a lot of weakness in equity markets, concerns on whether or not the artificial intelligence, also known as the AI phenomena, has gotten too exuberant. , this despite the fact that we saw really strong earnings from NVIDIA last week. And we'll recap those and talk about the results and perhaps do some Monday morning quarterbacking on why the results from NVIDIA led to the market reaction that they did. Kind of confusing on the surface when you have fantastic earnings, fantastic guidance, and then you have a sell-off ensue later in the day after you digest all of that news, and we will try and make some sense out of that. We also have had over the past week lots of divergent views from different Fed governors with respect to the direction of interest rates and this all happening in the fog of a lack of economic data. This is perhaps causing some of the consternation in financial markets, and we'll talk about that, and then most importantly, we'll talk about some potential opportunities and some of the more value-oriented equities. Barron's also talking about opportunities that they continue to see in European markets. European markets have had a strong 2025, , but some market pros expect this to be the beginning, perhaps, or the the beginning of the end, but not the end of the move in foreign stocks, specifically not European stocks, thinking that there is a lot more potential to go there, something you might want to think about and analyze and decide whether or not if more international exposure makes sense for your portfolio if you have a super U.S. oriented tilt to your portfolio. Before we get that all started, though, we're gonna talk here about Morningstar last week, had an article entitled Ten Things We Can Learn from perhaps the greatest investor of all time, Warren Buffett. So 10 things we can learn that have nothing to do with money. Some things perhaps we can incorporate into our lives so that we can make not only better personal decisions, but also potentially better financial decisions. And this top ten list begins with be kind. Kindness is costless but also priceless, Buffett has said. He also says to praise by name and to criticize by category. Very often we do the opposite. And he's famous for saying, write your own obituary and reverse engineer it. In other words, think about what people are gonna say about you when you're no longer here, and if you're not happy about what you think people may be saying, perhaps, perhaps you might want to think about changing your behavior. Talks about integrity, number two, to make sure you have it. Takes twenty years to build a reputation, he says, and five minutes to ruin it. He's famous for saying in testimony to Congress when he assumed control of Solomon Brothers back in 1991. He said, lose money for the firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of your reputation for the firm and I will be ruthless. Ask yourself if you would be willing to have your actions appear on the pages of a newspaper the next day, I guess in this world it would be in a post or posted online as opposed to the newspaper. One thing Buffett is very famous for, and number three here, is patience. Patience, patience, he says. When asked why few copy his investment approach, Buffett answered, because no one wants to get rich snow slowly. He said life is like a snowball. The important thing is to find wet snow and a really long hill. He says when he's talking about that metaphor, he doesn't just mean about the compounding of money as it as that snowball gathers, gathers more and more snow and gets bigger and bigger as it goes downhill. He's talking about all sorts of things that you accumulate in life, like relationships and friends. He said, make a virtue, and this goes back to patience, make a virtue of inaction. When in doubt, he has said, keep holding. He has said, I've made most of my money sitting on my ass. The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient. He also says to use caution. You absolutely never want to be in a position where tomorrow morning you will have to be dependent upon the kindness of strangers. And he says when doing this, when when being cautious, he says many people are cautious in the sense that they say to themselves, you know what, I think there's gonna be a big storm. Let me take those chairs in, let me make sure that my outside cushions don't blow away. But he said, if you really think there's gonna be a big storm and you really want to be cautious, well, maybe maybe you want to build yourself an arc. And then no matter what that storm brings in, you're gonna be okay. So that's goes back to that mentality of that building that protective fortress or a fortress-like balance sheet like he's done at Berkshire. And be positive. One thing if you've read Buffett over the years is he has faith in America. He is not somebody who is pessimistic, he is realistic but not pessimistic. So he said markets will occasionally fall 50%, and that's happened many times under his sixty years of management at Berkshire. But as he wrote in the 2008, 2009 financial crisis, America will come back, and so will Berkshire shares, he said. Think independently, don't get all caught up in group think, don't get all caught up in what others are telling you. One of his famous quotes with respect to this is be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. And you are not right or wrong because people agree with you. You're right because your facts and reasoning are right. Be humble. Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing. And he says, Don't beat yourself over past mistakes, learn from them, move on. He also says that you need to be content, not to be continuously in a state of distress. He says that envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that is no fun to commit. The purpose of life is to be loved by as many people as possible, among those you want to have love you. And then with the respect to Berkshire and him stepping down from Berkshire, this he has said before. He stepped down from Berkshire, but he says that it's important to value continuity, keep things going. Longevity is in of itself a form of success. Ruling from the grave does not have a great record, so we'll see how the next generation of Berkshire leaders is able to take some of this advice and continue the tradition that he has built. And then finally, I think Warren Buffett was a little early on this. We see this very commonly referenced today in this fast-paced world, but he said this in a slower-paced world, practice gratitude. He says, I was born in 1930, healthy, reasonably intelligent, white, male, and in America. Wow, thank you, Lady Luck. It's what he has called winning the Ovarian Lottery. So some things to think about and incorporate potentially what is valuable to you into your daily practice. So this morning talked about what's going on in financial markets, what the setup is here going into the holiday shortened week, and as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, and then it's very quickly on to Christmas shopping, Black Friday, typically a time when financial markets have what's known as a Santa Claus rally, and we're exhibiting a little bit of volatility as we go into this period. And Barons talks about this and says that they have two articles and two different descriptions of what we potentially are experiencing, a violently flat market. I mean in one article and another article, they call it a worrywart market. So last week was was a rougher week for financial markets than we've been used to, because we've been used to very unruff weeks. The Dow was down 1.4%, the SP down about 1.7, the NASDAQ down a little over 2%, but perhaps most worrisome for investors was the losses came despite a lot of good news last week that you would have thought would have sent stocks higher. Thursday was one of those days that we may look back upon. We had NVIDIA providing earnings and guidance that some might say were spectacular. And initially the stock in the mar and the stock market rose. The case for buying got a further boost by a delayed September jobs report, which was weak enough to restore hopes in a Federal Reserve interest rate cut despite beating estimates. In early trading that day, the market turned positive for the week, and the bull market looked likely to continue. But then those who are watching on Thursday know, with little explanation, market started selling off. Nobody knows exactly why the market sold off that I know, but there are lots of folks who have offered up explanations. Amongst those was some concern about Bitcoin. Bitcoin has fallen 32% from its record highs, and that was one potential culprit. So was the fact that NVIDIA's solid numbers reinforced concerns about artificial intelligence spending rather than alleviating them. It could be that investors wanted to sell the news, creating a situation where there were more motivated sellers than buyers. So the market is potentially waiting for that metaphor for the next shoe to drop going into those NVIDIA earnings. The SP right now has broken through its 50-day moving average. Its Thursday low of about 6522 was just below the low of October 10th when President Trump threatened additional tariffs. So if you're a technician, if you see the SP dip below that 652 6520 level, you might say to yourself that that would be something that could potentially set us up for some more losses. Now, this doesn't mean that the market is necessarily doomed for the next few months. Friday we had a recovery in financial markets. Futures are up this morning. We'll see if the futures hold. We've had a recent history where futures are giving up gains that were seen early in the morning. This is a relatively recent phenomenon. But Friday we did see gains, 80% of the S P 500 constituents rising. And this is despite the index coming under pressure on Friday, it was a volatile session due to concerns about the artificial intelligence stocks. Good news is third quarter earnings has been very strong. Most companies beating not only revenue but earnings estimates. So the potential may exist now that earnings are behind us, that we may see we may see markets move on to focus on other factors, and perhaps that could create some more impetus for buying. It's also possible that some of the institutional professional investors are looking to lock in their gains for the year, got a little nervous here in late November. They're looking and thinking about their year-end bonus checks and want to make sure that they're not leaving too much money on the table. So as those bonuses get set, perhaps that will also be something that the markets can move past. Now, all of this though doesn't mean that the rest of 2025 will be easy. I mentioned the last two months of the year are typically seasonally strong, so it's a little disappointing so far to see the SP 500 at least as of now, headed for its worst November since 2008. And we also saw the SIBO Volatility Index, the VIX, which measures volatility in the market, which usually accompanies some downward movement. We're reaching 26 its highest since April. Back in April, of course, is when we had the tariffs initially being announced by President Trump. So the setup into year-end is somewhat tricky. Dennis DeBuscher of 22V Research saying there's no case, no strong case to buy aggressively, but it's also not a clear shorting environment, and he says markets will remain violently flat with no sharp moves in any real direction. And the up and down Wall Street and column in the Wall Street Journal talking about the worrywort market. Last week we had those really strong earnings from NVIDIA. We also got the employment report for September, so a little bit of a while ago, so the market putting some attention there, but recognizing looking pretty far in the rearview mirror. But in September, the market said at 119,000 jobs. Mark market was expecting 50,000 jobs, and that stronger number could be fodder for interest rate bears at the Fed who are against the December rate cut. But the unemployment rate did tick up to 4.4%, highest rate in nearly four years, and payrolls for July and August would downwardly revised 30,000, so 30,000 less jobs than originally thought about getting created in July and August. Interestingly, the tick up in the unemployment rate wasn't due to folks losing their jobs, it was due to more people entering the workforce, which perhaps suggests that some people who had felt the possibility they could take some extended time off, see the need to return to work also somewhat concerning about about the overall economy. Moving on to what's going on this morning, and there certainly is a lot. We will take a look here at equity futures, which are pointing to a higher opening. Mega cap and tech stocks have lagged in recent sessions, investors rotating into more defensive plays, healthcare seeing some activities. The megacap's mostly higher this morning, and as I mentioned, technology has had a habit of giving back gains the last few sessions, so we'll see if this holds. Some other companies that are in the news this morning. We see Universal, their movie Wicked for Good, raked in 150 million in domestic ticket sales this weekend, second biggest weekend opening for a 2025 film release, largest ever debut for a Broadway adaptation, perhaps demonstrating that if there's something people want to see, they will still attend movies in the theater. Novo Nordisk, company well known for their GLP1 or weight loss drug, competing with Eli Lilly, stocks down about 10% this morning after the Danish drug maker announced that their Alzheimer drug did not meet its main target. Eli Lilly also weaker by about 1% this morning on that on that report. Also this morning reports that Warner Brothers, , which the company that owns CNN and the streaming service like HBO Max has been the subject of a bidding war between Comcast and Netflix and Paramount, and reports here this morning that Paramount is the company that may be coming out on top. I mentioned Bitcoin and markets perhaps somewhat following Bitcoin, and Bitcoin this morning is falling again. if you were looking at it over the weekend, you'll notice that Bitcoin was up about $2,000 to around $89,000 over the weekend, and this morning Bitcoin is down about about $1,500 from Friday's close, trading around $86,000. So Bitcoin not able to hold on to those gains. Alibaba stock, the symbol BABA, the Chinese megacap company, they came out with a app QN, QWEN, drew more than 10 million downloads after it was relaunched, boding well for its long-term effort to rival the technology from ChatGBT. This morning we are seeing lots of strength in Alphabet. on Friday, Alphabet announcing an update to their artificial intelligence app, Gemini. Some suggesting that Gemini may now be the strongest of the artificial intelligence applications, and that stock moving up another 3% this morning on the heels of that news. Also in the news, Treasury Secretary Bessant said in an interview that the U.S. is not at a risk of recession, although he did say that there are pockets of sectors of the economy that are struggling, but the overall U.S. is not in recession and that there will be substantial tax refunds next year. He said that to NBC News. Bloomberg reporting that the Trump administration is preparing to impose tariffs with the other authorities if the Supreme Court strikes down their emergency authorization. Bloomberg reporting that the European Union is not expecting a deal on tariffs during the first U.S. visit. Axios talking about rep Marjorie Taylor Green saying that she will resign from Congress on January 5th, shrinking the Republican majority to 218 members versus 213 for Democrats. The White House releases a joint statement from the United States and the U and Ukraine saying that discussions between the U.S. and Ukraine with respect to the war in Ukraine and the proposal put forward by the Trump administration, that the discussions between the U.S. and Ukraine are showing meaningful progress toward aligning positions and identifying clear next steps. This is after the initial proposal was met with some skepticism by our European allies as well as some senators, including some GOP senators. NBC News reporting that New York City mayor elects Zoran Mamdani, who had a visit to the White House on Friday, and some may be surprised that seemed to be a relatively friendly meeting between the New York City mayor-elect and President Trump, and NBC News reporting that he says in an interview that he is open to alternatives to fund his agenda besides increasing taxes on businesses and high earners. All right. Finally, some good news in the pharmaceutical world and good news for Bayer stock, the German company Bayer, announcing that they have a experimental stroke prevention drug that showed positive results in a late-stage study, and Bayer in Germany is up about 10%. So this week we have third quarter earnings winding down. 95% of S P 500 companies have reported results. As I mentioned earlier, 80% of beaten earnings per share estimates, similar percentage of beaten on sales expectations. We have a few more results this week. Agilent and Zoom communications announce results today, and later in the week we get Dell, HP, and on Wednesday Deer holding a conference call. On tomorrow, on Tuesday, even though the federal government has reopened, there are still delays in reporting economic data, but we will get retail sales data for September. Looking for those to be up six-tenths of one percent when we get that data tomorrow. We also will get a producer price index report this week, which will also be something that the Federal Reserve very well may consider when they decide on their interest rates on December 9th and 10th. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will not be releasing another jobs report or CPI, consumer price index, before that meeting. So this producer price index may be all that they get in terms of prices in the marketplace before that decision. Interestingly, perhaps some of the reason for the rebound on Friday was that the New York Fed governor speaking on Friday suggested that he was open to lowering interest rates after several other Fed governors had expressed skepticism about lowering rates at this meeting. So we have seen a lot of change in the expectations on what the Fed's gonna do. Originally we were up at north of 90 percent in terms of expecting a Fed rate cut at this meeting on December 9th and 10th. We'd get that decision on December 10th. Now what we're seeing after the probability had gone down significantly to about 30 percent after several Fed governors had spoken. After Fed Governor Williams has spoken, we're now north of 70 percent expecting a rate cut. So that's certainly one of the reasons behind some of the volatility we're seeing in financial markets. And then, of course, we already talked about it on Thursday, Thanksgiving. Markets here in the U.S. are closed. Now, lots of attention, including the attention that I just focused on this interest rate decision here in the United States in a couple of weeks. But Barron's suggesting that of equal or perhaps more importance than the U.S. Federal Reserve decision is the decision that the Bank of Japan makes with respect to the interest rates in Japan. And the reason that the Japanese interest rates are so important is because a lot of the capital that has been sloshing around the world has been courtesy of very low rates in Japan. So how is it that the Japanese interest rates can affect our interest rates? Something we talked about a little bit in the past, but just to re-go over this because it is so important is interest rates in Japan have been held very low for a very long time, close to zero. And if interest rates in Japan are close to zero, what this allows is lots of financial institutions throughout the world, including here in the United States, to seek low sources of capital. In other words, capital that is not very expensive. In other words, where can they basically borrow money at a really low rate and then take that money that they're borrowing at a low rate and invest it elsewhere throughout the world, perhaps here in the U.S. in private equity investments or artificial intelligence companies or NASDAQ 100 stocks, but this source of capital, which creates leverage, lots of it is emanating from Japan. Because what you do is you short Japanese government bonds, you sell them short, you pay the interest on those bonds, quarter of a percent, half a percent, you're taking currency risk, but you're paying a very low interest rate in Japan, perhaps you hedge away some of that risk, and you take those funds and you seek to invest them at a higher interest rate than the rate that you're paying, and , and therefore you can create leverage and potentially positive returns, and this creates lots of money sloshing around throughout the capital markets throughout the world. So if the Japanese decide to continue to raise their interest rates, well, this makes the borrowing of those funds more expensive, makes the likelihood that folks will continue to borrow from Japan less likely, and in fact, it makes the probability that folks who have already borrowed money may be more likely to pay it back because the potential for attractive returns starts to diminish. In fact, this borrowing of funds starts to get expensive and problematic, and therefore liquidity that's been created gets taken back, and therefore we see selling throughout the world to pay back those loans. So arguably what the Japanese decide to do with their interest rates could have a greater impact and a more silent and quiet impact than what, in fact, the U.S. Federal Reserve does. So keep a close eye on what's going on in Japan, not just what's going on here in the United States. All right, couple of companies in the news this morning. One is Disney. This was written up in Barons. Disney stock has struggled of late. But what Disney's doing, interestingly, quietly, something you may want to keep your eye on, is they are going big on cruise ships. So Disney, most of us think of Disney as a company that produces movies, certainly has theme parks, owns ESPN, certainly are making a big push into streaming. But perhaps some of the future success or failure of Disney will ride on their bet on building cruise ships. Disney seeking to be one of the largest operators of cruise ships. They bolstered their fleet with the treasure last year. They launched a ship called the Destiny this past week, and it expects its largest ship, the Adventure, in March. So Disney investors over the next year were paying lots of attention to the cruise line business. The new ships could add $2.8 billion of revenue over the next year and $500 million of operating income. Now, Disney has been spending a significant amount of capital to build these ships. their capital expenditures increased from $5.4 billion to $8 billion, mostly due to fleet expansion. And the CFO of Disney saying that they expect cruises to be a meaningful contributor to growth of experiences, particularly in the second half of 2026, as these ships become fully operational. And next up, I will mention Drug Maker that has not had a lot of a lot of good news of late, but Barron suggesting that the stock has gotten too cheap and that it is now they are recommending investors to consider adding it to their portfolio, and that is Bristol Myers, BMY. Bristol Myers trading at about seven times earnings, and Barron suggesting that there are multiple growth drivers. Revenue has increased 3% year over year, and that's despite a 59% drop in one of their biggest drugs, Revlimid, in the past year. There's lots of concerns about the pipeline at Bristol Myers and the expiration of patents, like for Revlimid. But Baron's pointing out that growth products now constitute 57% of total sales. That's an 18% increase year over year. And the company, as I mentioned, trading at seven times earnings versus the average in the industry somewhere between 12 to 14 times earnings. And shares of Bristol also offer a compelling dividend yield north of 5%, well above the industry average of less than 4% for major drug makers. Perhaps more importantly, or equally importantly, they have a solid and under-leverage balance sheet, confidence that the payout is sustainable, making it an attractive income idea while potential investors wait for some of the appreciation in the stock as some of these growth drugs make their way to market. Now, Bristol Myers, Barons points out is far from perfect, but they feel it is positioned to reward shareholders as it evolves into a high-growth biopharma leader. That's everything I've got. Thank you for listening to Mr. Keith Lanton. This podcast is available on most platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. For more information, please visit our website at www.heroldlanter.com.

Sophie Cohen:

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