Markets, Memory, And The AI Jitters

February 17, 2026 | Season 8 | Episode 4

We trace how AI fear is hitting tech, why foreign markets are gaining on a weaker dollar, and how history—Greenland negotiations and central bank fights—frames today’s headlines. We add actionable ideas in dividend ETFs, Stellantis, and EXOR, and explain Medicare’s AI pilot.

• AI disruption risk versus productivity upside
• dollar trends and global equity flows
• Greenland as a strategic bargaining chip
• Hamilton to Jackson and the bank wars
• Panic of 1837 as policy cautionary tale
• futures, earnings, and AI supply chain pressure
• dividend ETF options with international tilt
• Stellantis valuation, risks, and catalysts
• EXOR’s NAV discount and Ferrari exposure
• GDP drivers: productivity and population
• Medicare’s AI prior authorization pilot scope

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Transcript

Opening And Today’s Agenda

Alan Eppers 0:00

And now introducing Mr. Keith Manton.

AI Hype, Fear, And Market Impact

Dollar, Recency Bias, And Global Flows

Greenland’s Forgotten Bargain

America’s Long Fight Over Central Banks

Panic Of 1837 And Policy Lessons

Futures, Headlines, And AI Supply Chain

Currencies And Foreign Outperformance

Geopolitics And Corporate News

Dividend ETFs With European Tilt

Keith Lanton 0:03

Good morning. Today is Tuesday, February 17th, halfway through the second month already of 2026. Hope everyone financial markets enjoyed a day of day of rest. President's Day yesterday here in the United States. In Asia, a few Asian markets closed in celebration of the lunar new year holiday in Asia. So we have a four-day trading week this week here in the United States, and we have a lot to discuss this morning. I'm going to talk about what's been going on in the financial markets, some of the concerns about artificial intelligence. So the excitement about artificial intelligence and all the wonderful things that artificial intelligence can do for us, but which many of us have personally experienced, is now turning into fear that artificial intelligence perhaps can replace so many of the industries and software that we currently use that perhaps the threat to some business models is very real potentially for artificial intelligence, and there is this growing wave of concern about artificial intelligence supplanting lots of different companies and businesses, some investment banks like Goldman Sachs out over the last few days suggesting that these fears are overblown. Not nonsensical. There are certainly some industries and some companies that could be swept up or impacted or have their business models completely disrupted or blown up by artificial intelligence. But the general thinking is that artificial intelligence will probably morph many businesses, supplement the offerings of businesses, force businesses to up their game, up their offerings, hopefully enhance productivity, make products better, and ultimately potentially generate higher profits for many of these businesses. But that's not the mindset at the moment. But some of the investment banks suggesting that to be the case, I think that personally is the most likely outcome. Certainly winners and losers, but winners could be significant in terms of how much they are able to win. And we'll talk a little bit about that. That fear is continuing to persist this morning as futures are lower here in the United States. But we're gonna talk about a little bit that the United States, perhaps after many years of robust outperformance relative to the rest of the world, we're seeing a catch-up trade. We're seeing recency bias in the sense that the rest of the world has been performing well in terms of their markets. We see a weak dollar, we're gonna talk a little bit about that and why that may be changing the mindset of some investors as well as potentially some of the actions that the United States is taking with respect to how how we view the world and what implications that may have in terms of others being willing to hold our currency and therefore affect our dollar. Now, we're gonna talk about what we've talked about many times before is that what feels like things that are brand new that have never happened before. When you go back and study history, Ray Dalio will tell you this to go back, study history, study financial history, study American history, European history, Asian history, that you will learn a lot that the world has existed for a long, long time, many thousands of years, and many of the things that have have been happening have happened in some way, shape, or form, not identical to what we're experiencing now. So there's a lot to be learned from the past, even the relatively immediate past. Many of us here in the United States think if it didn't happen in our lifetime or perhaps in our parents' lifetime, it's brand new because it's happening now. And we'll talk a little bit about what's taken place here with recent U.S. demands or or strong strong language with respect to Greenland. And we'll also talk about the Federal Reserve and the U.S.'s longstanding relationship with a central bank and how that has been very tumultuous at many times in our history, and President Trump, who has been taking actions with respect to the Federal Reserve, certainly taking very unorthodox or unusual language towards the current Fed president relative to history, recent history, and we'll talk about how the past may may shed some light on what's taking place now and may educate us that what we're seeing today is is not necessarily something that has not happened in some form in the in the past. And then we'll talk about the financial markets, what's taking place this morning, what took place last week, and then we will talk a little bit about Barons and what what they're thinking about in terms of opportunities in Europe as well as a couple of individual equity ideas in in the financial markets, and then if we have time, we'll talk a little bit about what the government's doing with Medicare. Certainly, if that's a program that you're utilizing, you certainly want to be aware of what's going on with respect to Medicare. So let's start it out. Let's talk about Greenland. And the New York Times week or two ago ran an article saying how a century ago that Greenland was something that the U.S. deeply coveted, and this goes back to the administration of Woodrow Wilson, and how there was a deal or a bargain struck back in 1917 in which the United States agreed to respect Denmark's control of Greenland in return for a deal to buy the Danish West Indies, which are a group of islands in the Caribbean. Many of us today know the Danish West Indies today as St. Thomas, the British Vir the not British, but the U.S. Virgin Islands. And the deal to purchase these three islands in the Caribbean was struck in 1917, ratified by the U.S. government, in fact, in January of 1917. And these islands had been coveted by the United States for at least fifty years, mostly for commercial and military reasons. And the U.S. bought these islands from the Danes, the dead from Denmark. At the same time that we were seeking these islands, we s had a very strong interest in Greenland as well, also for national security concerns, minerals and rights, and oil was not as much at the forefront at that time, but we were very much covetous of of Greenland as well back then, similar to you know a lot of the a lot of the mindset that we're hearing from the current administration. In fact, in 1917, the U.S. paid $25 million in gold, one of the final expansions of U.S. territory after the 1800s, where the U.S. was dominated by idea of growth, also known as Manifest Destiny. United States in the 1800s grew by 70 million people and 29 states, as the U.S. acquired states west of Kentucky and south of South Carolina. Now the U.S. had been trying to buy the Caribbean Islands, now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands for many years, but in 1916, the United States, which had not yet entered World War I, was very concerned that the Germans might invade Denmark, and that would allow German Germans to station troops and perhaps a military fleet in the Caribbeans. And the Danes at the same time were aware of the Americans' concerns and also aware that the Americans might might occupy the islands if the Danes didn't agree to sell those islands to the U.S., especially with the prospects that the Germans might invade Denmark. So in 1917, both Greenland and the Danish West Indies were under Denmark's control. Both had been desired by American leaders in the past, but especially Woodrow Wilson at the time, and the interest in Greenland was tightly tied to the U.S. interest in the Danish West Indies. And ultimately, the United States made a strategic decision, and at the time we decided that we wanted the Danish West Indies or now the U.S. Virgin Islands more than we wanted Greenland at that time because that deep harbor port in the in the Caribbean and a vital shipping lane was viewed as more valuable at the time than a ice-bound expanse in the Arctic at that time. So, what the Danes did is they made a strategic decision and they used leverage to get the U.S. to back off from Greenland in return for agreeing to sell the U.S. Virgin Islands or the Danish West Indies to the United States at that time. And at that time, the U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote, the United States of America will not object to the Danish government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland, and this was in return for the sale of the Danish West Indies to the United States. So, again, period where we were highly desirous of not only the West Indies, Danish West Indies, which we ultimately acquired, but also of Greenland. So here we are a hundred plus years later revisiting that situation. Now let's take a situation that's more dear to our economic conditions, perhaps our wallets, and let's talk about some history having to do with the Federal Reserve. So Barons did run an article this weekend talking about the U.S. having debated a central bank since the very founding of our country. So here we are at the dawn of the United States, and at that time we had a big debate going on here in the United States. obviously we were a brand new nation, and our far founding fathers were divided into two very entrenched, some would say warring camps. And Alexander Hamilton, known for his financial prowess, argued for a strong state that supported rapid industrialization with a central bank as its linchpin. But one of our other esteemed founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, envisioned an agri nation that required minimal government and no central bank. So in 1790, these two gentlemen took their arguments to President George Washington, who at the time landed on Hamilton's side, but nevertheless the debate has never truly been settled even today. So the first U.S. bank, which was created in 1790, was put out of business after about 20 years, and it was allowed to expire. Congress did not reauthorize the first government central bank, first bank of the United States, it will it went and expired in 1811. But then what happened is we had the War of 1812, and the War of 1812 was a disastrous performance for the United States. The United States at the time was routed by British regulars, the capital in Washington burned, and what the government here in the United States had to do was we had to borrow, ironically, from London bankers in order to finance reconstruction here in the United States after we had just had a war with the British. So, what we did is we chartered the second bank of the United States in 1816. But it too had a short life. Let's talk a little bit about the Second Bank of the United States. It was a private corporation, not a federal corporate entity like the current Federal Reserve. It held all the government gold and silver, it issued paper currency and controlled the nation's credit. But come late 1800s, war of 1812, about 16 years in the rearview mirror, and we had a president named Andrew Jackson. And Andrew Jackson viewed the central bank as a hydra-headed monster, monster that favored the wealthy elites of the Northeast over the farmers and laborers of the West and South. He believed the Constitution did not give Congress the power to create a union bank. He was very wary that much of the bank's stock, remember, this was a this was a not not a government entity, but a private entity, and its stock was held by many British aristocrats. He also accused the bank's president, perhaps some echoes here, different different method, different accusations, but some accusation nevertheless. He accused the bank's president, who is Nicholas Biddle, of using bank funds to bribe politicians and influence elections against him. So in 1832, Jackson , along with some of his political political allies, pushed for a pushed for a dismissal or an end to the bank. And the folks on the other side in 1832 felt that it was a good time to be aggressive and push to continue the bank because it was an election year. And they didn't think that Andrew Jackson would oppose this during an election year because it was highly controversial. But they were wrong. they pushed through a bill, Andrew Jackson vetoed it, and he said at the time, the bank is trying to kill me, but I will kill it. And after he won that election, Andrew Jackson, in 1832, re-election, he withdrew all federal deposits from the national bank. Now, again, think of this in today's terms, shutting down the Federal Reserve, obviously it was a slightly different institution at the time, and taking all the funds out of the Federal Reserve and moving them to what people at the time called pet banks, because these were banks that were viewed as allied or loyal to Andrew Jackson. So Andrew Jackson ultimately what happened is he won the war. The second bank's charter expired in 1860, 1836. But perhaps a lesson for us today, that victory did have consequences. So we no longer had a central bank to regulate the currency, and what happened very quickly is inflation started to skyrocket because these pet banks started issuing paper money, not backed by enough gold and silver that they had in their reserves. This inflation caused land prices to surge, and you may have heard of the panic of 1837. Fortunately for Andrew Jackson, he was out of office in 1836, but in 1837 we had a massive panic. Many banks failed and collapsed, and at the time this was called a massive depression. This is what was known as the depression until the depression that we referred to as the depression of the late 1920s, early 1930s. Well, the panic of 1837, for the folks living in the 1800s, that was the Great Depression, and it lasted up almost until the Civil War. So, over the course of the next roughly 77 years until the Federal Reserve Bank was established, the U.S. went in and out of booms and busts, largely as a result, some would argue, of the fact that we didn't have a stabling force in a central bank. One of the big ironies of the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 was shortly thereafter the Federal Reserve was issuing currency, legal tender, and several years later, on the $20 bill, we have a picture of President Andrew Jackson, which is certainly ironic because this is someone who was steadfastly opposed to a central bank. He was also steadfastly opposed to paper money. So, again, today we have a situation where the Federal Reserve feels like it's more controversial than more politicized, perhaps, , than we've been accustomed to. But go back to the founding of the country, 1790, go back to the pre-war of 1812 days, 1810, 1811, and then go back to the 1830s, and we all see periods of great uncertainty regarding central banks, lots of vitriol with respect to the establishment of central banks, and lots of wariness with respect to central banks. And when we talk about Greenland, we can see that this despite the fact that many of us first time we've heard of Greenland being a bargaining chip or something that the United States covets, we are a nation that has coveted land and territory throughout our history, and despite the fact that this is something with respect to Greenland that hasn't come up in our lives, it is also not new. All right, let's go take a look at financial markets this morning, and what we are seeing this morning is we are seeing futures to the negative this morning coming off its worst levels now. The Dow is down about a hundred points, SP is down twenty-nine, NASDAQ the biggest decliner, it's down about two hundred and thirteen points to about twenty-four thousand five hundred, down just under one percent. Oil moving slightly higher this morning and bonds up modestly. Last week U.S. equity future U.S. equities fell as the market became concerned that new AI developments could disrupt entire industries, including transportation and financials, while software stocks extended their decline. SP ended last week down 1.35%. European equities hit new record highs early on before falling back as the concerns about AI in the U.S. spread across the Atlantic. The Euro stocks 600 index did up and the week up modestly about one-tenth of one percent. Japanese equities up significantly last week, up 3% after Japan's ruling party secured a landslide majority in the country's SNAP election. Now let's talk about markets. I I mentioned before that we're seeing some relative weakness here in the United States, but seeing strength overseas. I talked about recency bias. So, what's gone on in the last year when I talk about recency bias is that we have seen outperformance of foreign markets relative to the United States, and sometimes that can create momentum and create a situation where folks are drawn to areas where we've had success, where things have been moving in the right direction. If you're a technician, then you perhaps have seen that that charts are starting to look better in some of these markets versus the United States. So, what's been going on? Well, if we look back one year from today, we take a look at and we've got to look at two things. Think of yourself as a, let's say, a Japanese citizen. If you're a Japanese citizen, the dollar up until last year had been going up against your currency, against the yen. So holding dollars, if the ja dollar was up twenty, thirty percent against the yen, just by sitting still, even if your investments are in zero, you were up twenty, thirty percent in your currency. If on top of that the SP 500 is up ten or fifteen percent, well, not only are you up ten or fifteen percent in equities, you're up twenty percent in currency, you're having a real good return when you're looking at yourself as a Japanese citizen converting your U.S. investments back into Japanese yen. But things have been reversing. So last year the Japanese yen had largely stopped sliding against the dollar for the first time in quite some time. the yen was down over the past 52 weeks about 1.5%. But over that time period, the Japanese yen is up about the Japanese stock market's up about 47%. So your currency is down one and a half, your stock market's up forty-seven. Alternatively, you could have been invested here in the United States, and the U.S. over the last year was up twelve percent. So last year, you would have done a lot better being invested in Japan as opposed to investing in the United States, and that's the first time that that dynamic took place in quite some time, and we're starting to see perhaps a perpetuation of that as people chase what has worked. If you're sitting in Europe, what's the story? Well, again, SP is up about 12%, and European stocks index, the stocks fifty, is up about 8%. So a little bit of outperformance for the US versus Europe. But again, when you take a look at the currency, the story or the narrative shifts. So what had been happening is the dollar had been appreciating against the Euro, the European currency. If you go back about 15 months ago, there was a lot of talk about the Euro going to parity. It almost did go to parity, meaning that one euro would equal one dollar. But what has happened in the last 13 or 14 months is the euro has appreciated significantly against the dollar. So in the past 12 months, we have seen the Euro appreciate about 14% against the dollar. So when we look at 14% Euro appreciation plus 8% for the stocks, if you're investing and you're a European, well, you're you're looking at 22% return versus 12% for the SP 500. So you're starting to see a period here, you're starting to see not just appreciation in in Japan, but appreciation in Europe. And if you're sitting in Latin America, the trend is even stronger. Very strong currencies, very strong financial markets. So what we're seeing here is that perhaps capital is flowing to other areas of the world, perhaps healthy redistribution, things have gotten very heavily U.S. centric. But nevertheless, once once the these dynamics start occurring and these trends start taking place, they tend to, no guarantee, may not be, but they tend to take place for for more meaningful periods of time. It's only been one year, so there is a potential or a probability that we may see continued outperformance in foreign markets, and that's one of the reasons perhaps we're seeing some of the capital flow elsewhere, and perhaps some of the reasons why we're seeing some, you know, again, modest weakness here in the United States versus some of these other financial markets. So as I mentioned this morning, markets pointing to a lower open. On Friday, we did see markets higher, but as we said last week, the markets here in the U.S. on a whole had losses in the neighborhood of one percent. the large cap tech stocks performed poorly because of that AI disruption, and that is continuing to ripple, at least at the opening this morning. Right now, headlines relatively quiet, though there is a smattering of earnings releases coming out this week. On the geopolitical front, the Financial Times is reporting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has assured European leaders that the United States will not leave NATO. Separately, Reuters is reporting the U.S. and Iran are holding diplomatic talks today. President Trump saying that regime change is the best thing that could happen in Iran. Reuters reporting the U.S. military is preparing for Iran operations that could last weeks if President Trump orders an attack. Bloomberg reporting that portions of the Strait of Hormuz will be closed for several hours today as Iran conducts military drills. Iran saying that aircraft, energy, and mining deals are on the table with the United States. CNBC is reporting the White House is considering forcing data center builders to absorb utility costs. This is something that could have an impact on not only data center shares but utility stocks, because that would mean perhaps less data centers. And the DHS is entering a shutdown as talks with respect to the shutdown there for funding continue this week. Life sciences firm Danaher is closing on a $10 billion deal to acquire Pulse Oximeter Maker Masimo, according to the Financial Times. Activist investor Elliott Management has built more than a 10% stake in Norwegian cruise lines and plans to push for changes within the cruise operator, Wall Street Journal reporting this morning. Apple is expected to release new iPads and Macs on March 4th. And Micron Technologies, which makes , among other things, RAM for computers and data centers for AI, is aiming to spend $200 billion to expand memory capacity, according to the Wall Street Journal. And that is significant because RAM prices have been increasing significantly, and one of the reasons for this is because the amount of RAM that is being used by artificial intelligence chips, specifically the chips made by NVIDIA, has been increasing significantly. So if you go back just a few years ago before AI was on the tip of many people's tongues, and you looked at a computer, 32 meg of RAM was a lot of RAM. 32 or 64 was a lot. Latest chip from NVIDIA requiring almost 300 meg of RAM, and that's one of the reasons that we're seeing RAM shortages, and we're seeing the stock prices of companies like Western Digital and micron technologies take off as there is a shortage in RAM, and that is the primary reason why, because these artificial intelligence chips requiring so much RAM. All right, we talked about Europe, and we talked about how Europe has had a good year in the past 12 months, and Barron's saying that U.S. dividend seekers might take a look at the European markets, investors here in the United States who want to take a European vacation, but in U.S. listed shares there are a few different options. One is the State Street S ⁇ P Global Dividend ETF, the symbol is SDY, holds about 100 consistent high-yielding dividend stocks from around the globe, including the United States, and that yields about 5%. Then we have IDV, the iShares International Select Dividend ETF, similar to that SDYO I just mentioned, but without U.S. stocks, that's yielding about 5.1%. And finally the Vanguard International High Dividend Yield ETF. Symbol there is Victor Yankee Mary Ida. It is the most diversified of these ETFs I just mentioned, 1,500 non-U.S. stocks, and it yields about 3.8%. All right, let's shift gears here to just a macro discussion, a big discussion about the U.S. economy, and the U.S. economy is by all by all accounts, has performed well. We've seen gross domestic product north of 4%, and this has been one of the major reasons that financial markets in the U.S. have performed well for the last several years, , has been the consistent growth here in the United States. But Baron's pointing out that there are two primary drivers to gross domestic product, one of which is productivity growth. If you can be more productive and artificial intelligence potentially can make us more productive, you can grow your economy in real terms, you know, without inflation, let's factoring out inflation. The second area of growth comes from population growth. If you have more people within your territory, you will have more potential output, and that is the second source of growth. But the United States has seen their population growth slow dramatically in the last year, and this could create a drag on this gross domestic product growth or economic growth, and therefore could be something that could p impact U.S. markets going forward. So U.S. population growth in the last year was about 1.8 million or half of 1%, and that means that there are fewer consumers, which limits demand and spending. If if we take a look here at where we were a few years ago, and a lot of this growth is being reduced because we're having less babies, and of course because there is less immigration into the country. So, what are the sectors that will be perhaps most impacted by slowing population growth? Number one would be housing, less less less new people coming into the country, or less household formation, less demand for housing. Number two, health care. Every single person who's here, however they got here, obviously hopefully they are citizens here, every person has and uses health care. Also, they tend to eat, so with less less growth in population, well, you're gonna have less people dining out. This we're already seeing a potential impact to some of the stocks in the food services business, like Chipotle, although McDonald's just bucked that trend recently. If you're thinking about this from specific geographic regions where population growth seems to be slowing the most, you would take a look at Texas, California, and New York. All right, let's stick with our international theme. I'm gonna talk about a stock in Barron's mentioned positively, and this is a stock that has not performed well, but Barron's thinks the stock can kick itself back into high gear after stalling. That is an automotive metaphor because this is an automotive company. The stock is Stallantis, symbol S T L A. The stock tanked 24% last Friday after management gave an update. To be sure the update didn't exactly inspire confidence. The Chrysler parents, Stalantis owns Chrysler here in the United States, included a one-time charge of 22 billion euros, that's about 26 billion dollars for EV, electric vehicle write downs, and warranty-related items. And they also said the second quarter profit would come in below guidance. Oh, and by the way, there'll be no dividend in 2026, and they also issued 5 billion euros in convertible debt to shore up its balance sheet. So some analysts suggesting that with all that bad news that perhaps things can't get dramatically worse. Some also suggesting perhaps management just throwing in the kitchen sink. In other words, get all the bad news out there so that in the future hopefully you have better news to report. Barron's suggesting that different than some other businesses, that the fundamentals of the car business aren't a mystery, and that Stellantis can get profitable if it gets its products and its distribution right. They have a new CEO, Antonio Felosa. He was tapped to run the company in May, and he has announced that they will be building five new cars. To be clear, the brands of Stillantis include Jeep, Ram here in the United States, in Europe, Citron, Peugeot, and Maserati in Europe. North America is about 40% of total revenue, Europe just slightly behind that 40%, and the stock, which is currently trading around seven dollars and seventy cents a share. Analysts discussed in this article that they say a path to ten and a half to eleven dollars a share. Stillantis' stock is as cheap as it's been at any point since the pandemic. Shares traded for about 0.15 times sales. That's not that's not 15, that's 0.15 times sales. Ford trades around 0.3 times sales, GM about 0.4 times sales. Historically, Stellantis has traded about 85% of the price to sales ratio of Ford and GM. Now it's at about 44%. So even if it got back even halfway to the historical 85% ratio, that would mean the stock would be at about 14 or double from where it currently is. There's no guarantee, of course, there are risks from that happening. Consumer spending, always a concern for automakers. Also in Europe, Solantis is having significant challenges from inroads that the Chinese are making into Europe, specifically BYD, as they increase their market share in Europe. But here in North America, they which has historically accounted for the majority of the profits, they're currently insulated from Chinese competition for now is the U.S. has very steep tariffs making it uneconomical for the Chinese automakers to come in. So Barron's saying there's a there's time for Stellantis to get it right, and proof will be in the pudding, management needs to execute, but they think the risk reward is good, but obviously there is certainly some risk there. Second company I will mention from Barron's also a European country company, it's called XOR, EXOR, trades in Europe under the symbol EXO. In the United States, it trades under an American depository receipt that's relatively thinly traded. The symbol is EXXRF, Echo X-ray, X-ray, Romeo Franc. And this is another company that has not performed well recently. This is a company that is a holding company. They own a piece of many companies, including Stellantis. So we'll tie that back into our previous conversation. But this company's biggest position is a 20% stake in Ferrari, symbol R-A-C-E, which is the top luxury car maker in the world. They also own interests in Stellanthus, farm equipment producer CH Industrial, Phillips, the European maker of medical diagnostics, as well as a smaller portfolio of private holding stakes as well. So the past two years have been subpar for XR, which has dropped more than 20% over the past year alone, part of that due to Ferrari, which is down 25% in the last year after having very strong performance for many years. So XOR stock is currently trading at around 8575 when looked at from the price of the American depository receipts, which means it's trading at about a 50% discount to the estimated net asset value, which is about $190 a share of the value of its public company stakes and the estimates of its private holdings. Barron suggesting the discount is too extreme. Management of XOR is led by John Elcan, who is a member of the Agnelli family, which used to own Ferrari. His track record has been strong at XOR. He's been running it since 2009, and he's grown the net asset value at about an 18% rate at the same time that European markets over that period, if you're looking at a benchmark, have gone up about 11%. So good track record for management hitting a bump in the road, trading at a 50% discount, not a lot of debt, about $2 billion versus assets of $40 billion. Looking at a dividend yield of just under 1%, conglomerates typically trade at a discount to their underlying asset value, although a 50% discount is extreme, even in cases where you have large family holdings like you do here, which makes breakups or sell-offs less likely. So current discount is 50%, and if you look at the discount historically, it's been about 30%, so the discount about 20% wider than it's been historically, even though the shares are beaten up. You could view XOR as a backdoor way to invest in Ferrari, since XOR owns about a 19.5% stake, which is valued at about 14.8 billion, or represents about 40% of XOR's net asset value or 80% of its market value. So some perhaps some opportunity in EXOR. Alright, last thing I will mention is Medicare and artificial intelligence coming to Medicare. Now we're not talking about Medicare Advantage, we are talking about traditional Medicare. The Trump administration has started experimenting with artificial intelligence in Medicare. Goal is to curb waste in the program, and what that means is that if you use Medicare, you know, this is traditional part A, Part B, not Medicare Advantage, it could mean that some enrollees face more hurdles for covered procedures. Right now, if you have an advantage plan, it's very likely that you would need to seek prior authorization before getting a procedure. But with traditional Medicare, that is not the way it's traditionally worked. But under a pilot program that started January 1st of this year, prior authorization will be required for some procedures in traditional Medicare in a few states. And these states are Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington. Now, the current the current plan for the test case, which is going on right now, only applies to a handful of procedures, such as skin and tissue substitutes, this is to replace damaged skin, electrical nerve simulators, and knee arthroscopy. Still, procedures in the model, these procedures accounted for about 5% of all Part B spending in 2024. Now, how is Medicare doing this? Well, they are partnering with AI firms to implement the program, and those AI companies, those tech companies, will get a cut of the savings attributed to their reduction of wasteful spending. So what's going on here is we have a little bit of a blurring of the lines between Medicare Advantage, which currently requires some pre-approval, and Medicare, which traditionally hasn't. Again, it's only in a few states, it's only for a few different procedures, but something to keep an eye on to see if this expands. If you do fall within the scope here of this program and you are denied coverage, you do have the right to appeal, so keep that in mind if you do run across that situation, either yourself or a loved one. That's everything I've got.

GDP Drivers: Productivity And Population

Alan Eppers 37:47

Thank you for listening to Mr. Keith Lantern. 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 38:05

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 security doesn't have risk and material does not constitute investment advice or trade recommendations,