Enlightenment - A Herold & Lantern Investments Podcast

Santa Rally Meets Gemini: Even Rudolph Is Rebalancing

• Keith Lanton • Season 7 • Episode 44

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December 1, 2025 | Season 7 | Episode 44

Markets don’t move in straight lines, and neither do we. As December kicks off, we zoom out to habits and time—how focus shapes results—and then zoom right back into a surprisingly strong rally that flipped leadership from NVIDIA-linked names toward Alphabet’s fast-rising AI stack. Gemini’s leap and seventh-generation TPUs put Google’s custom silicon and data advantage in the spotlight, while shifting rate-cut odds, a firmer BOJ tone, and commodity strength stirred the macro mix.

We unpack why December often favors equities—tax-loss selling fades, window dressing appears, and holiday sentiment lifts risk—and where that seasonality can mislead. From there, we map the rotation: NVIDIA demand remains intense, but investors began pricing credible competition and diversified AI exposure through Alphabet’s platforms. On the company front, we break down Barron’s bullish case for Alphabet’s monetization runway across Search, YouTube, Cloud, and devices, then pivot to Amazon’s staggering capex engine. Three-hour delivery in select cities, expanding same-day reach in rural areas, one million robots, and AI tools like Rufus demonstrate how logistics, software, and ads compound into conversion and cash flow—especially if capex normalizes after the buildout.

No AI story is complete without power. That’s why we explore Dominion Energy’s setup as data-center demand reshapes the utility outlook in Virginia, even as offshore wind risks ease and load growth accelerates. Finally, we translate looming 2025–2026 tax changes into action: Roth-only catch-up contributions for higher earners, updated deductions, and planning choices that can lift after-tax returns. The throughline is clarity—identify real leadership shifts, connect them to the physical infrastructure beneath them, and align with a tax framework that supports your goals. If this helped you think sharper about year-end moves, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a quick review—what rotation are you positioning for next?

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Keith Lanton:

And now introducing Mr. Keith Lanton

Alan Eppers:

Good morning. Today is Monday, December 1st, as we begin the push into holiday season, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year, and of course the end of the year for financial markets and all the planning that we should be doing not only for the holidays and to reassess our personal lives and our goals for 2026, but also how to position our financial portfolio to be in line with our goals so that we can have our money work for us to help us achieve our goals. And we'll talk a little bit about all the changes that are coming in 2026. We've talked about it throughout the year with the big beautiful bill that passed this year and a lot of the changes that brought, as well as some other changes that have been in the works for a number of years that are now going to be implemented in 2026. So now that December is upon us, good time to re-examine what those changes are so that we can make sure that we are making the best decisions for our portfolios. Last week we had financial markets start out looking very precarious. We had the week before, we had NVIDIA come out with their earnings, which were spectacular. We had Meta come out with earnings, which were excellent, and we had all sorts of artificial intelligence worries. Going into last week, we were set up for lots of concern that perhaps the artificial intelligence trade was getting played out and that being the leader that the markets were perhaps getting tired. And then we had last week where we had an extremely strong market, and we'll talk about that. We'll talk about what took place, which was rotation. This morning we are seeing futures down a little bit this morning. We'll talk about that. And we'll talk about the month of December. We'll talk about some quotes to get us started, to think about things that we may want to think about, give us some perspective going into this week, holiday season, and 2026. So what we want to start thinking about is thinking about what habits perhaps that we want to work on, because keep in mind that a habit is something that we do regularly, and if we can change our behavior to incorporate new habits, better habits, perhaps we can incorporate change which is so hard to do and so hard to make. So Aristotle said, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, this is not an act but a habit. And then when we think about what we do, the philosopher Seneca said, it is not that we have a short time to live, that but that we waste much of it. And in this era of social media, scrolling on our phones, it's easy to get lost and for time to just go by and for us to look up from our phones and say, where did those last two hours go that I've been sitting here reading my phone instead of perhaps reading a book or doing the work that I wanted to do, or hanging out with the friends or family that I'd like to spend time with. So think about how we can utilize our times more fully. M ammad Ali on this on this same theme said, don't count the days, make the days count. So again, don't just keep track of things and checking boxes, make those make those days count. Mark Twain said the secret of getting ahead is getting started. Steve Jobs, your time is listed is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Again, perhaps another reference to what we have going on here in terms of social media. And then finally, the Dalai Lama said, happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions, so sitting there on your phones or on the internet scrolling around looking for what's gonna make you happy is probably not gonna find the answer there. So today is December 1st, so let's put this into context of what else has happened in December 1st and what what achievements we've had, and this will help give us some context into where we are in history and perhaps give us some context into the financial markets and all the euphoria surrounding artificial intelligence, perhaps, as well as perhaps some thoughts on you know politically the divisions that we feel like we have here in the United States, , you know, looking back what what history looked like here in this country before. 147 years ago today, the first telephone was installed at the White House. The president was Ruthard B. Hayes. So 147 years ago, the great new technology of the telephone made its way to the White House. Going back a little bit further, 202 years ago today, the Monroe Doctrine was enunciated. This is really pertinent because the Monroe Doctrine was a statement from an up-and-coming United States in 1823 saying to the Europeans who we had just fought a war with the British in 1812, we had almost fought a war with the French in 1800. So here we are in 1823, United States still a relative newcomer, and President Monroe saying to the Europeans with the Monroe Doctrine, you know, we'll stay out of your backyard in Europe, you stay out of our backyard in Latin America, and here we are today in 2025, once again showing our presence in Latin America with what's taken place in in the waters in Latin America at this very time. Just 70 years ago today, remarkably 70 years ago today, Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of a bus in the South. And that was in 1955. Feels like that was a lot longer ago to many of us, but that was just 70 years ago. And in terms of technology, one of the greatest technologies ever brought to the business world was unveiled 112 years ago today. In 1913, Ford's moving assembly line started rolling. So the Ford Motor Company introduced the world's first moving assembly line for mass production on an entire automobile, which was the Model T. It cut the time to build a car from 12 hours to 93 minutes. So when we think of the changes taking place today and we think about the transformation of artificial intelligence and how it's going to change our world, think about a moving assembly line, moving the production of a car from 12 hours to basically an hour and a half, and what that meant in terms of productivity and efficiency back then. So, yes, we are living in an extraordinary times, but in the past there were lots of extraordinary events as as well. And if we think back to those times in the early 1900s and the 1920s, we had all these great new technologies like the automobile, we had a very exuberant stock market, so we need to just keep in mind that we may think that this time is different, but it may not be as different as we think because we are living it for the first time. We are living through changes that we haven't seen before. Doesn't mean that changes like this haven't happened before, and we can learn a lot from the study of history. Looking at history, we are entering the month of December. Futures are down this morning, so we're bucking a little bit of the history. But typically in in December, the SP, and this is data going back from to 19 50, the SP is higher 73 percent of the time since 1950, and since 1980, it's higher by 75% of the time. So December, one of the best months typically for financial markets here in the United States. The typical gain is somewhere between 1.3 to 1.5%, making it typically one of the best performing months of the year. You may say to yourself, why is it that December is such a good month for financial markets? Well, there are a bunch of theories, no one knows exactly which one, if any, are correct, but some say that tax loss selling is coming to an end. Investors selling losing stocks for tax deduction do so earlier in December or late November, and that removes some selling pressure towards later in the month of December. Of course, we have the holidays coming up, perhaps that lifts the mood of investors, helping spark higher prices. Also, we have lots of folks who go on vacation, especially institutional investors, , away from their desk. Perhaps that has a effect on financial market performance. And others say perhaps at year-end we get what some call year-end window dressing. What does that mean? It means that lots of investment managers have a fiscal year end, some have year ends in October, some have December 31st, especially lots of mutual funds, December 31st, year end, quarter end, and these funds may do some extra buying to put the stocks that have performed really well throughout the quarter and throughout the year into their portfolio so that when investors get their year-end statements and they see what their funds or their ETFs own, they say, wow, those were the right stocks to own. I'm I'm glad I own this ETF. Maybe I'll buy some more of it. Alright, so let's talk a little bit about what happened last week before we get to this morning's news. Last week we had, as I said, investors feeling cautious about tech, and we were heading into last week with all sorts of worries, but last week we had one of the strongest post you know pre and post-Thanksgiving rallies in a long time. The Dow gained about 2.7, 2.8%. S P was up 3.7%, and the NASDAQ was up 4.9%. And what's interesting about the rally that we had last week is as I mentioned, it was on the heels of some weakness in the arguably the leading stock for the market for quite some time, and that was NVIDIA. Nvidia sold off significantly over the last ten days, and the markets were able to overcome the weakness in NVIDIA and and move to the upside. Some some reasons for that. One is, which we're gonna talk about in l in a in a minute, is some rotation out of the NVIDIA, let's call it, ecosystem, into the Google or alphabet ecosystem of artificial intelligence. We also had market expectations for a interest rate cut change significantly, so markets were very tentative after some commentary from some Fed governors about interest rates. Last week we got some additional commentary at the end of the previous week from Fed Governor Williams in New York, some more iterations that perhaps the Fed would still cut rates, and now the probability of a rate cut this morning is as high as 90% at the Fed meeting on December 9th and 10th. We also got some inflation data last week, be it a little bit belated because of the government shutdown, but that reinforced the view that there was room for a rate cut because that inflation data came in largely in line with expectations. We also got retail sales last week, and that that number was somewhat disappointing. So we did everything wasn't all perfect, but nevertheless, markets feeling feeling optimistic about the fact that the Fed's gonna cut rates and that we can continue to grow the economy. So let's talk about this transition. I think it's important that we acknowledge it and and and view it as potentially healthy, that the market was able to pivot and overcome weakness in the NVIDIA universe, at least as of last week. Stocks that were tied to NVIDIA, which are typically OpenAI, which doesn't publicly trade, but Microsoft acting as somewhat of a proxy as a big owner of OpenAI. Advanced microdevices, Core Weave, and Oracle, all stocks that that have closely aligned themselves with NVIDIA. And last week that that group was up about 2.7%. But stocks that tie themselves to Alphabet were up about 16%, and this is the universe of Alphabet itself. Broadcom, which works with Alphabet to design its chips that was something that came out last week that Alphabet was potentially selling chips that compete with NVIDIA to do artificial intelligence processing called TPUs, potentially to Meta, also using those chips to train their own artificial intelligence in-house at Alphabet. Also a company called TTM, which works with Alphabet to make circuit boards, technology solutions company Celestica, and Lumentum, which makes optical and photonic products for cloud and networking, all tied to Alphabet, all seeing significant gains last week. This is after Alphabet last week released an update of its Gemini AI model, which appears to have leapfrogged the competition. And as I mentioned, investors are focusing on Alphabet's Tensor processing units, which have powered its AI tools. So, speaking of those Tensor processing units, well, they made their debut in 2015. It's important to understand what's going on here. Fast forward to 2025, and Google is on its seventh generation of Tensor processing units, also known as TPUs. Google slash Alphabet continues to use them internally for its own products. More recently, Google was able to find new customers who otherwise would have probably been doing the same work on NVIDIA hardware. Apple trained its Apple intelligence models on Google's Tensor processing units. AI startup and Anthropic also has a TPU deal as part of its multi-cloud strategy. Now, NVIDIA's chips are certainly still seeing incredible demand. This is the first time we're seeing a potential threat to that, so this is not necessarily a a call to sell NVIDIA or suggest that NVIDIA is no longer successful at what they're doing, but it's an acknowledgement that there is potentially some competition here and that and that Google, which had been viewed as falling behind, has resurrected themselves and perhaps is being viewed as potentially a a not only a company that's a significant player, which it always has been considered in the artificial intelligence space, but perhaps emerging as as perhaps the new frontrunner time will tell. Varens did write an article very favorably on Google, and we will touch on that as well. All right, so let's take a look at what's going on here this morning. As I mentioned, futures are weaker at the start this morning. Dow futures are down about 210 points, SP futures are down about 45 points, Nasdaq futures down about 235 points this morning. Renewed pressure in the market is somewhat being sparked by a sell-off in cryptocurrency, which we're seeing Bitcoin down this morning by over 5%. And we're also seeing some concerns because of the Bank of Japan coming forth with some hawkish comments, meaning that they may raise their rates in Japan. That could potentially boost the yen, which has been falling, but also some concerns that that might slow the economy, as well as the fact that the Japanese economy is so dependent upon debt, and therefore increase in interest rates could be something of big concern to the Japanese in paying those debts. At the same time this morning, we are seeing strong strength in commodities. Oil this morning up about 45 cents a barrel. We're seeing Brent trade above $63 per barrel. We're seeing strength in gold this morning up significantly. gold quietly approaching all-time highs, gold up $31 to $42.86, silver rocketing higher as well, up 62 cents to $57.79. And I mentioned copper also moving to the upside. Over the weekend, Airbus said that they had a software glitch and they needed to update the software in about 6,000 of their A320 aircraft. Stock is down about 3% this morning, but they say the vast majority of those software upgrades have now taken place. Bloomberg is reporting that President Trump said he knows who he will pick as the Fed chair, though he has not yet announced the name of the candidate to the public. Candidate Hassett has indicated in a quiet kind of way that he thinks that he is the nominee, although that has not been officially announced, although there was a trial balloon floated last week when they suggested that perhaps he'd be the nominee, and the markets didn't react poorly. In fact, some could say they reacted well. Kevin Hassett over the weekend out on the talk show suggesting that when his name was floated out there that the bond market reacted well, so he's advocating for for the Fed chair nomination. We will probably get that sometime in the next few weeks. Some companies in the news this morning, Synopsis, symbol SNPS, the developer of design automation models and software, jumped 8% after NVIDIA invested $2 billion in Synopsis as common stock as part of a broad strategic partnership. Leggett and Platt, which is a furniture component manufacturer, received an unsolicited all-stock buyout proposal valued at about $12 a share. That stock is up about 14%. Win Resorts up about 2% after Goldman Sachs included Wynn on its conviction buy list. In the technology space, , NVIDIA is down about 1.5%. Micron Technologies and Marvel Technologies each down about 2%. Moderna, the vaccine maker, down about 4% after the FDA issued an internal memo that linked Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine to the death of 10 children that per The New York Times. Cryptocurrency link stocks like Coinbase trading lower this morning. Chevron Texaco is up this morning, upgraded to buy from hold at HSBC. In the Asia Pacific markets, starting the week mostly lower, with the exception of China, which is modestly higher. Japan bringing down the indices in Asia down about 2%, sliding toward its November lows after the yield on Japanese government bonds climbed to fresh highs for the year, after the comments that we discussed from the Bank of Japan's governor boosting expectations for a rate hike later this year. Other news this morning CBS News announcing that the Trump administration will pause all asylum decisions following the National Guard shooting. Wall Street Journal reporting that President Trump told Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro that the U.S. would consider force if he didn't leave power voluntarily. President Trump saying airlines should consider Venezuelan airspace completely closed. Axios reporting that the U.S. and Ukraine made additional progress on a peace plan, and Steve Whitkoff plans to present the plan to Russia on Tuesday. Washington Post reporting the congressional committees will investigate the Pentagon over the killing of Caribbean boat survivors. And Reuters reporting that the Chinese Central Bank has stable coin concerns. What's going on this week? Holiday shopping season officially underway. Today's Cyber Monday, Friday, Black Friday, Saturday, Small Business Saturday, tomorrow Giving Tuesday. We do get some retailers reporting this week to give us some indications of what things look like going into the holiday season. We have on Tuesday Dollar Tree. And five below coming out on Wednesday. Also this week, we have Kroger reporting on Thursday and Victoria's Secret on Friday. In the technology world, we have Salesforce headlining this week's earnings on Wednesday, also with earnings this week. On Tuesday is CrowdStrike, Marvell, and Okta. On Wednesday, Snowflake and Sentinel 1 on Thursday. And then on Friday, we will get a double dose of inflation data. The Bureau of Economic and Analysis will release the personal consumption expenditures price index for September. This is a closely watched number. Fed's preferred inflation gauge. Now keep in mind this is a September reading. So again, through the government shutdown, this is a delayed reading, so not quite as current as we'd like. So we'll see what effect it has. Nevertheless, they're looking for that number to come in at 2.8%. Also on Friday, the University of Michigan will provide an update on year-ahead inflation expectations when it releases its consumer sentiment index for December. This is more current data. We're looking for consumers to expect inflation to run somewhere between 4 and 5% in November. This report showed consumers were looking for inflation of 4.5%. We'll see if that changes in terms of the expectations. Interesting statistic to start your morning. If you're looking at the unemployment rate, it's 4.4%, historically very low. But of interest is that 25% is the percentage of unemployed Americans over 25% with a college, four-year college degree. That is the highest on record. So the highest percentage of the unemployed with full four-year college degrees who are 25 or older is 25%. So seeing some change in terms of what's happening with the folks with college degrees and their ability to find jobs. Alright, let's transition to barons. Let's talk about what's coming in 2026. Let's talk about taxes and tax changes that are going to be taking place. One tax change that is going to affect high earners, and high earner is someone who is earning more than $150,000 per year. Starting in 2026, if you're making more than $150,000 a year, when you make your catch-up contribution to your IRA, so if you have a retirement account, not your IRA, but your I'm sorry, your 401k, if you are participating in a plan, whether it be a 401k, 403B, and you're making contributions. Starting next year, you can contribute $24,500 to your 401k. In addition, you can make a catch-up contribution if you are over the age of 50. That catch-up contribution is $8,000 if you're over $50, and if you happen to fall on the window of being between $60 and $63, you can contribute $11,250. Well, starting next year, that contribution must go into a Roth contribution. It can no longer be a traditional $401K, $403B contribution, meaning that you will be able to write it off on your 2026 taxes. You will now have to make that as an after-tax contribution into a Roth account. This isn't necessarily bad. It means that you will delay or defer the benefit in a sense because you will be paying the taxes now. But in the future, because it is Roth, you will not be paying taxes when you take the money out. But if you are looking for that tax benefit in 2026 for those funds, well, in 2026 that won't be there. Again, this only applies to folks who are making $150,000 a year or more. Also, next year, this one actually applies starting January 19th, the day President Trump was inaugurated. So this one starts in 2025, and that is that you can deduct 100% of the cost of equipment for your business. This is equipment that has a life of 19 years or less. So if you purchase a piece of equipment, let's say it's a truck that you use for your business and F-150. F-150 costs $50,000. You can now deduct 100% this year, as long as you bought it before after January 19th, you can deduct 100% of the cost of that truck as a for its depreciation, take 100% depreciation and get that tax benefit before the change in the law. You would have been able to take a 40%. So that $50,000 truck would have given you a $20,000 deduction. In 2025, truck purchased after January 19th. In this example, it doesn't have to be a truck, just business equipment, 100% the deduction. Starting next year, deduction of up to $10,000 for loan interest on U.S. assembled vehicles purchased for personal use. Deduction phases out for joint filers earning more than $200,000. Single filers earning more than $100,000. If you're wondering, used cars don't qualify, so it's got to be a new car, the interest on a new car, whatever that interest component is, if you qualify by earning less than the deduction phase outs, you'll be able to write off that interest starting next year. Starting next year, taxpayers can deduct up to $25,000 of tips and up to $12,500 of overtime for singles and $25,000 for joint filers. Seniors, taxpayers who turn $65 may be eligible for a new senior deduction of up to $6,000 for singles or $12,000 for married couples. So let's move on as we think about what we're gonna do with our taxes and think about well what what we may be doing with our portfolios. I'm gonna talk about three different stocks that Barron's profiled, one of which we've already talked about, but Barron's out speaking very positively and favorably about Alphabet or Google, saying that Google has been the clear AI winner and the gains could keep on coming. So even though Alphabet stock has gained about 70% over the past 12 months, reaching a record high, with half that gain coming from PE multiple expansion and the other half coming from earnings growth, Alphabet, nevertheless, perhaps still has more gas, so to speak, left in its tank. Now, if you think about Alphabet slash Google and the businesses that they have, you will see that you can make a strong argument that they have a very good competitive advantage when it comes to artificial intelligence because of the data that they have. Alphabet runs YouTube, YouTube TV, they have the self-driving ride-hailing company Waymo, they have Google Maps, they have Waze, they have the Android operating system, they have Gmail, they have a cloud business, and they have a foundational AI in Gemini, and now they have AI chip technologies. Arguably, if you even were to look at these as individual businesses when there was a risk that these companies may be broken up, that each of these component pieces arguably added together could even be worth more than the current whole. But the good news for Alphabet and Alphabet shareholders is is after a recent federal judge decision, is it doesn't look like that that will be happening. So the stock trading at 26 times earnings is still the second cheapest of the Magnificent 7. Only Meta at 20 times forward earnings is trading at a lower PE ratio. Alphabet, with each iteration of its AI apps, they continue to improve and continue to be able to reach more and more users. Google's unveiling of its Gemini 3 AI model on November 18th demonstrated that rather than falling behind in the AI arms race, they are closing the gap. And if you're looking at Google's Gemini versus the arguable leader, which is ChatGBT, well, ChatGBT has about 800 million weekly active users. Gemini is now up to 650 million active users, and some say they are closing that gap fairly quickly. So with all of the data that Alphabet has, whether it's because they can see your email, whether it's because they can see what you're searching on, whether perhaps you have an Android phone and they can see the apps that you're downloading, perhaps you have YouTube TV and they can see the shows that you're watching. perhaps you use YouTube and they can see the videos that you are watching. Perhaps you are an advertising company, they can see what ads you're placing, they can see where you're placing them, they can see why you're placing them, where you're placing them. So you can see that Alphabet has a ubiquitous universe. They have maps, they can see where you're going, they have Waymo cars, they can see the layouts of cities and what people are doing and what the traffic patterns are. All this data potentially gives Alphabet quite a strong competitive advantage relative to its other competitors when they come to being able to create generative or enhanced artificial intelligence because they have so much data to feed into their model based on their existing business model. Next up is another large technology company that many of you have probably visited more than once over this Black Friday holiday week, and that is Amazon. And Baron's out favorably on Amazon, saying the everything store recently has shortened its fastest delivery option into select cities to three hours. So try competing with that delivery in three hours. You may say to yourself, well, what about in those rural communities? Well, Amazon, now in rural communities, says that they can get same-day and one-day shipments. The number of rural communities that can get same-day and one-day shipments is up 60% in the last four months. And JP Morgan out saying that Amazon has a much larger assortment of items than even Walmart or Target available on their website, and JP Morgan in their analysis suggesting that Amazon is about, in general, not always, 10% cheaper on many of those items. Retail sales in general are expected to be higher this Christmas season. At the moment, analysts are calling for 3-4% growth for retailers, and JP Morgan out suggesting that Amazon will capture even more of those online sales. They expect Amazon to not increase by 3-4 but to increase by 7%, increasing Amazon's total share of retail spending to just under 25%, 24.8% of all retail spending at Amazon. And if you're thinking about just e-commerce, Amazon right now is at 46% of e-commerce spending, and JP Morgan looking for that number to increase modestly as well. Now the most interesting thing about Amazon, Barron says, isn't how much it's selling, but how much it's buying. So if you look at the competition, let's take a look at Target, which is playing catch up at the moment because they have not invested arguably enough in some of the systems that that Amazon and and and and Walmart have invested. Well, Target is investing a big number into capital expenditures to improve their stores, to improve their warehouses, to improve their sorting centers, to improve their automation. They're investing four billion dollars a year. And after that four billion dollar investment, they're left with about two and a half billion in free cash flow. Walmart, different league than than Target. In fact, they just announced their first online profit recently. Capital expenditures for Walmart are expected to be about $24 billion. Free cash flow is expected to be about $15 billion at Walmart. So if you're thinking about investing in improvements, well, Target's investing $4 billion in improvements. Walmart's investing $24 billion in improvements, six times more, making it real challenging for Target. So now you may say to yourself, well, how much is Amazon investing for improvements? How much do they put into CapEx? $124 billion. And at the end of the day, they have $21 billion in free cash flow. At the same time, Amazon is continuing to fire on all cylinders as they build out their ecosystems. So those of you who have Prime accounts know that you also get Prime Video as part of your Prime membership, and Amazon has been significantly enhancing Amazon Prime Video that enables you to watch movies and now live sports, and this section of their business is growing rapidly and it is largely being driven by advertising. Advertising revenue from Prime Video, 17.6 billion dollars. And for those who have been using Amazon's website, they may notice that they've been incorporating artificial intelligence. Many of you may have used Rufus over the last few days. Rufus customers now having 250 quarter of a billion dollar uses so far since being launched, and Amazon saying that Rufus has contributed to 10 billion in Amazon annualized sales, and Rufus users are 16% more likely than others to buy. Beyond Rufus, Amazon's AI helps sellers to make their pitches more presentable. Shoppers use it to get size recommendations, to skim highlights like customer reviews, and search for objects by pointing their cameras at them. Their supply chain workers use it to predict demand surgers and stock goods closer to buyers. This year, Amazon deployed its one millionth robot and treated its fleet of delivery trucks to an upgrade in software that has improved travel time by 10%. AI is also improving the success rate of advertising, and there is no end-of-spare surface area for sponsorship, including Rufus Chats, so the possibility that Amazon may roll out Rufus Chats or the AI capabilities to its to its clientele, those Amazon small business clients who are using Amazon Web Services potentially could get a version of Rufus, of course, for a fee. And why is this all relevant? Well, if you're thinking about all this capital expenditures that Amazon is doing versus what their competition is doing, and as they widen the gap between themselves and their competition, well, at some point they will have built out a very large infrastructure and will not need to invest so heavily in CapEx. Think of it as $124 billion. Well, if that $124 billion was to narrow just back down to what Amazon was doing a few years ago, you might have another $80 billion in free cash flow. And that's still with investing $45 billion a year, almost twice as much as Amazon as Walmart is currently investing in capital expenditures. So there's lots of buyerpower potentially at the fingertips of Amazon. Finally, I will conclude outside of the world of the Mag 7 with a company that nevertheless is benefiting from artificial intelligence and increased demand for power. This is in the boring utility sector, which isn't quite so boring anymore. And the company that Barron's highlighted is Dominion Energy, symbol D, like David, saying it's a utility play with AI upside, saying that it is a buy. Now Dominion stock down 23% over the past five years, underperforming the utilities sector spider ETF. Some of this is on concern because Dominion has invested heavily in the coastal Virginia offshore wind project, which is now about two-thirds complete, about $8 billion invested. There was concern that the Trump administration would put the kibosh on this project. They had threatened to end as many offshore wind projects as they could, but it's now looking more and more likely that this project will prevail. Judges have recently ruled in other wind farming situations that the administration hasn't articulated a reason to terminate construction at many of these projects, and therefore they have allowed them to move forward. In fact, recently in a project off the coast of Long Island, the judge ruled that a wind project sponsored by Equinor could move forward, and now the administration's even endorsing it. So probability of this project, which had been a grave concern of moving forward now is looking a lot more promising. Of course, there's still risk that there will be hurdles, but nevertheless, Barron's suggesting the risk reward is favorable, certainly not a guarantee of reward, but favorable. And based on this and other aspects of their business, like big presence in Virginia, lots of data farms being built there. We're expected to see increasing demand for for their power, 6% annual growth forecast, 6.5% annual earnings growth forecast for the stock, which is trading in around 17 times earnings and yielding 4.36%. That's everything I've got.

Keith Lanton:

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.heroldlantern.com.

Sophie Cohen:

Opinions expressed herein are subject to change and not necessarily the opinion of the firm. Test 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. The material does not constitute research investment advice or trade recommendations.