Think Forward In Turbulent Markets

April 20, 2026 | Season 8 |Episode 12

Oil is ripping higher, the Strait of Hormuz is back in the headlines, and markets are doing what they always do during geopolitical stress: swinging between fear and relief. We step back from the noise and focus on the skill that actually improves results over time, thinking forward. If you build your decisions around what’s happening today, you’ll feel constantly behind; if you train yourself to look six to thirty-six months out, you start acting more like the market itself.

We use financial history as a practical tool, drawing on ideas highlighted from historian Joseph S. Moore’s How to Get Rich in American History. The point is not nostalgia, it’s context: debtor’s prison shaped risk in the early 1800s, repeated banking panics punished complacency before the Fed, and 1970s inflation rewired how a generation thinks about stocks, bonds, and oil. That long view helps us spot recency bias in our own assumptions, including the belief that stocks “always” work and that what felt safe in the last few decades will remain safe forever. We also dig into how returns have shifted from dividend-heavy investing toward price appreciation and what that does to valuation and expectations.

From there, we connect the macro to the personal. One of the most uncomfortable takeaways is that a huge wealth driver can be household stability, including who you marry and your ability to stay married, because daily money behavior can overwhelm even a great portfolio. We close by hitting the week ahead: earnings season, AI spending scrutiny, inflation and interest rates, and a noteworthy Barron’s-style bullish case on Intel’s turnaround and partnerships, with a reminder that volatility demands a plan.

If you found this useful, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s stuck in headline mode, and leave a review with the one market story you want us to break down next.

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

For full disclosures, ADVs, and CRS Forms, please visit https://heroldlantern.com/disclosure **

To learn about becoming a Herold & Lantern Investments valued client, please visit https://heroldlantern.com/wealth-advisory-contact-form

Follow and Like Us on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn | @HeroldLantern

Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Market Setup

Alan Eppers 0:00

And now introducing Mr. Keith Lanton.

Think Forward Not With Headlines

History As An Investing Antidote

Recency Bias And Market Exceptionalism

The Biggest Wealth Decision: Marriage

Optimism And Buffett’s Risk Mindset

Hormuz Tensions Move Oil And Futures

Earnings Season And AI Spending Watch

Keith Lanton 0:03

Good morning. Hope everyone had a enjoyable weekend and was able to complete their taxes or at the very least file for an extension and hopefully put in for their refunds. Getting started today is Monday, April 20th, and we had developments over the weekend with respect to the situation in the Middle East, and that has impacted oil prices and futures markets this morning. We are going to spend some time talking about the current situation with oil markets, as well as talking about some history, but we tend to get caught up in the very near term, the short term, the events that we're experiencing at the moment, and very often financial markets are looking further and seeing things out differently than many of us who get caught up in headlines day-to-day, all the emotion that we feel we are being bombarded constantly by media trying to propel us to some sort of action that is not necessarily for our benefit, for their benefit. So we need to take that step back and think about what it is that we truly want to accomplish in our lives, as well as when it comes to investing, what makes the most sense going forward. Keep in mind when it comes to investing, thinking forward, many of us are caught up in today. Financial markets are not looking at today, they are looking forward. If you're focused on today, you probably will have a lot more difficulty being successful. In financial markets, you need to think of where things will be six months, twelve months, one year, two years, three years forward. Of course, we're in the middle of an artificial intelligence boom and arguably dramatic revolution, and those who foresaw this coming three, five years ago are in a better position than those who saw it coming three or six months ago, but that doesn't mean that anyone cannot learn and be able to think forward and take in what is happening. And once again, one of the best ways in order to accomplish that is by thinking about history, and we'll talk about the new book out How to Get Rich in American History by Joseph Moore. It actually comes out April 28th. Joseph S. Moore wrote that book. And I'll talk a little bit about that. Bloomberg highlighted it over the weekend. We'll also focus on what took place in financial markets last week, focus on inflation, and a little bit of talk about interest rates and the bond market, because of course that is a critical component to our investing strategy. And then we'll move on talking about the events coming up this week, and we'll talk a little bit about what Barron's had to say over the weekend and one stock that Barron's highlighted that I thought was outside their usual thought process, so noteworthy when you hear something that you don't expect from a publication like Barron's, which has a long history of their thinking. So let's take a look at what's going on in the world and markets. You can find whatever it is that you're looking for. If you're feeling optimistic, bullish, and you focus on the positive, well, you will certainly be encouraged by all the innovations that are taking place in artificial intelligence. You'll be encouraged by the big beautiful bill and the fact that taxpayers are able to take advantage of it and potentially getting refunds as we speak. And we also have corporate profitability kicking in, and we are starting to see some of the benefits of artificial intelligence as companies reporting strong earnings, markets remaining robust. There is lots of liquidity still in markets, and that could arguably be attributed somewhat to the lower taxes and also to some deficit spending. So those who want to look at the glass half empty, well, they could focus on well, job markets looking like perhaps artificial intelligence, the yin and the yang artificial intelligence is weighing a little bit on new hires, young people coming out of college, companies perhaps needing less entry-level workers, so you could focus on those concerns. You can certainly focus on the geopolitical world and what's taking place in the Middle East and all the uncertainty around that. You can also take a look at the inflation that's being wrought by that and the higher energy costs as a result of the conflict in the Straits of Hormuz and the deficit, which could potentially get a double tick up. one from the war in Iran and having to replenish and restock and perhaps spend more on the military. I mean, secondarily, this talk this morning that the portal is open and this potential for $166 billion in refunds going back to corporations that paid tariffs that may be able to be able to get their money back from those tariffs, even though in many cases consumers paid those fees. Some were passed on, some weren't, but the companies are the ones who ultimately may be able to get that money back. And you could also focus on the ongoing political polarization here in the United States and and draw lots of concerns. So the glass half full, glass half empty, we're gonna talk about how to get rich in American history, and one of the things that we will conclude with is it typically pays to be optimistic. So we talk a lot about history, we talk a lot about the benefits of history and being able to learn from history so that we can become better investors. And much of what we know today about saving and investing is based on a relatively short span of time. Most of us, the timeline that we associate with the world is the timeline that we have been alive. So if you're 30 years old, your timeline might be about 20 years of memories. If you're 70 or 80 or 90, you know, if you're 90 years old, you might have 80 years of memories, which sounds like a lot compared to 20 years of memories, but relative to the history of financial markets, it's still a very small amount of time. So when we overfocus or over-emphasize recent experience and assume tomorrow will resemble today, well that is called recency bias. So in his new book, How to Get Rich in American History, historian Joseph Moore pulls back to examine 300 years of financial advice, showing just how much history and context, color attitudes, and beliefs about money and retirement. The book is a timely reminder that a good grasp of financial history is the best antidote to getting caught up in short-term turmoil, and that many of the most important financial decisions that we make are ultimately personal. So going back in time, if we were to go back just a little over 200 years ago to the early 1800s, if you were thinking about investing your money, you would have a mindset that you would be really fearful about running into debt, and therefore you might take a lot less risk. So in the early 1800s, if if you were to hit a significant ditch in the road and you were to accumulate a big chunk of debt because life wasn't working out for you financially, well, there's a good chance you would end up in debtor's prison. And knowing that, if you were to go back to that time period and you were to be an investor, well, you would probably be a lot more risk-averse than you are today, knowing that if you did get into that proverbial mess, that you very likely would wind up in prison. And then let's fast forward to a little bit later in the eighteenth century, mid-18th century, late 18th, 1800s, I should say. We back then did not have a Federal Reserve. We had lots of banks that issued their own currencies, and we had a series of panics here in the United States that led to significant recessions and depressions. So we had the Great Panic of 1837, the Great Panic of 1873, the Great Panic of 1893, and moving into the 20th century, of course, we had the Great Depression taking place beginning with the stock market crash in 1929. more recently, if you were an investor and it's starting investing, you know, in the period beginning in the 1970s, well, you would have experienced skyrocketing oil prices, bond yields soaring, and 15 years of a stock market that went nowhere. So if you had experienced these factors in your lifetime and you were an investor, well, you might have a very different sense of what an appropriate stock market allocation would look like relative to what you're thinking today. So just about all current investors, perhaps there's still a handful of real old timers out there, and this is due to recency bias that we've just talked about, what you've experienced in your lifetime. Well, these people who are alive today, including us, have experienced an extraordinary period of U.S. market exceptionalism as the U.S. stock market has spent ex much of the period from 1996 to 2026, so much of the past 30 years in a series of bull markets with relatively short, notable bear markets mixed in. So it's easier to understand why owning stocks has come to seem like an obvious long-term strategy. But as Joseph S. Moore points out in his book, what is safe and sure and always works shifts over time. Looking across a longer span, the history everyone says proof stocks are always good for the long run is less than a century old, which he says is a rounding era in the history of humanity. The market has also shifted, with return shifting from being weighted toward paying dividends from companies' profits to price gains. If you were to be an investor in the 1950s when Warren Buffett started out, lots of attention on how much capital companies were returning to shareholders, very cash flow centric. Now we are much more appreciation-minded. So he says, this is Mr. Moore says, you are no longer buying companies, right? You're not buying cash flows and businesses. What he says is you are you are buying future buyers of companies. Those are the folks that you hope will be the ones that buy the stock from you when you no longer want to own those specific stocks. Many investors may view their worst financial mistake as having kept too much cash in the market over the last 40 years, missing out on more gains and compounding of returns, which you're looking at the SP 500 over the last 30 plus years has gone up, depending on which investments you've made, you know, four, five, six, seven percent. One factor that Joseph Moore in the book suggests has not changed in terms of how to invest and how to become wealthy is one of the most important financial decisions you will make, and this is unchanged throughout history, he would argue, is your decision on whom to marry. After all, marrying someone is is a decision that you will be bonded to that person for the rest of your life, potentially, and therefore how they handle financial matters as well as what financial equity they bring into the marriage will all be significant. So one of the major factors of the importance of how you of who you whom you choose to get married is the ability to stay married, since divorce is one of the main culprits of financial destruction. Also, whom you marry and what their financial responsibility is is critically important. If this is someone who is a spender and you are a saver, this could lead to conflict, as well as the fact that it could lead to financial difficulties. And of course, one of the oldest and tried and truest paths to riches in America has been to join a wealthy family by birth or marriage, because capitalism, after all, is a team sport, and who you choose to marry and what they bring into the marriage, obviously, for obvious reasons, is something that you can potentially leverage. And one of the factors what one what one can bring into the marriage, it can be financial or it could be an accumulation of knowledge and intelligence so that they can offer guidance in terms of how to invest and how to spend your time. They could also be the person that could be a tremendous caregiver in this day and age, could be a man or a woman. And if if one spouse is a tremendous caregiver and is a great steward of the home, well, this will give the other spouse the ability to go out and focus on endeavors to grow the wealth of the family. If one spouse is is is assumed to be taking care of the family at home and is not having a good success at doing so, well, the other spouse may become extremely distracted, and the f spouse that was focusing on growing the family's wealth, well, that spouse may be unable to to maintain that that that direction. So who you marry, real important. Go back in history. Perhaps one of the oldest examples here in America is our founding father, George Washington. He married Martha Custis, who at the time was one of the wealthiest women in the United States, or soon to become United States. At the time was still colony of Great Britain. Her net worth was the equivalent of more than eight million dollars today. George Washington, by marrying Mary Custis, became one of the richest men in America, all because he knew an important piece of financial advice, and that was to marry well. Some other examples. Well, Cornelius Vanderbilt, , most of us think of him as you know a self-made man, and in many ways he was, but he was anchored by his wife, Sophia Johnson. So while Cornelius Vanderbilt was busy battling for control of New York's waterways, Sophia ran a highly profitable inn in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her business savvy provided a steady cash flow that fed and educated their thirteen children and allowed Cornelius Vanderbilt to take massive high-stake gambles on steamboats and eventually railroads. Without her holding down the fort financially, his early aggressive expansion would have been nearly impossible. Recently, , we had a president here in the United States, LBJ Lyndon B. Johnson, who was a career politician, but his personal wealth was built on a media empire funded by his wife, Claudia Ladybird Taylor. Ladybird used an inheritance from her family to purchase a struggling Austin radio station in 1943, and she was a shrewd manager, but she also happened to marry LBJ, and his political influence in Washington helped secure favorable FCC rulings that allowed the station to expand into a lucrative TV monopoly in the Austin, Texas area. By the time they reached the White House, the Johnsons were worth millions of dollars. Another president was Andrew Jackson. Many had suggested that he was a good or great military leader and general, certainly capable on the battlefield, but he was considered crude and crass and not a member of high society. But he married Rachel Donaldson Robards, and the Donaldson's one of the most prominent and wealthy families in Tennessee. So through this union, Andrew Jackson, who then became president, gained the social status and land holdings necessarily to transition from a frontier lawyer into a member of the wealthy planter class, which back then was a prerequisite for a rise to political power. How about someone perhaps even more recent? We can take a look at Mike Bloomberg of fame of the Bloomberg Terminal. He is often viewed as the quintessential self-made billionaire, having built a financial data empire from scratch after being fired from Solomon Brothers. But it is worth noting that his early career at Solom Brothers and the social capital required to navigate the 1970s Wall Street was supported by his marriage to Susan Brown, who came from a well-to-do British family. While she didn't give him the Bloomberg Terminal, the social and financial stability of the marriage during his early career provided a robust foundation for his eventual risk taking. Now, when it comes to financial wealth and success, it is a combination of nature, which is what you have lived through and perhaps what you are God given and nurture. So what you have learned and experienced in your youth and how you view money is also a critically important component to financial success. So marrying well certainly is helpful, but you have to be able to keep and maintain those funds, even if you are fortunate enough to find the right person and for that right person to be on top of that, the right financial partner. So in order to be successful, you need to focus on the upside and take calculated risks instead of always protecting your flank. So the ability to take those calculated risks often is supported by that person at home, being able to manage other aspects of the of the household. And being able to take those risks requires, and we're circling back, requires us to be optimistic. If you are optimistic, you're much more likely to take risks than if you are pessimistic. And Joseph Moore writes in the book, our culture swallowed a pessimism pill, and it isn't doing us any good. So if your brain is wired to be anxious about money and you are wired to be fearful, well, you will have a lot less opportunity and potential to be successful. You need to be positive and positive looking and thinking the future will be brighter. This is one of the things that Warren Buffett often talks about in his success. He said, I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute. He said the mother load of all opportunities runs through America. And what he said about other people getting pessimistic, he said pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy. So when other people become overly pessimistic because perhaps they got too euphoric previous to that, that is an opportunity. And he said pessimism and low prices, that's an environment in which he wants to do business. Not because he said we like pessimism, but because we like the price it produces, because he is optimistic. So these quiet ho quotes highlight a blend of patient long-term optimism with a cautious, data-driven approach. Alright, so let's try and take that mindset into this morning here on April 20th as our earning season gets moving forward. We will take a peek here at markets which are at the moment recovering off of their lows, as there is talk that the United States and Iran might be meeting. So the talk this morning was the U.S. was sending a delegation over to Iran, and we weren't sure if the Iranians were going to be present. The Associated Press is now reporting that Pakistani officials said Iranian authorities are still willing to attend the second round of peace negotiations in Islamabad this week. In addition, Chinese President Xi urged the Strait of Hormuz be reopened during a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. So this is lifting the futures from their lows to down about 200 points right now on Dow futures, Nasdaq futures now Dow less less than 100 points. Oil up significantly but off its highs. Oil's up about 5.5%, $4.62 a barrel. And the bond market 10-year treasure yield is up one basis point to a $4.25 from a $4.24. Taking a look at some other commodities, oil I just mentioned up, gold down about 1%, about $52 an ounce, silver down more, down about 2.5%, down about $2.18. All of this coming on the heels of the optimism last week about the end of an Iran war. I mean, that sparked a celebration in financial markets, even though many knew that the official call for the war having been coming to a conclusion had not yet been announced. And on that optimism, the Dow was up about 3.5% last week, the SP 4.5%, the Nasdaq up six and a half percent, SP and NASDAQ hitting multiple record closing highs throughout last week. Last week's returns certainly impressive, and if you go back and look just a little out over the last two to three weeks, in just 12 trading days of 2025 this month, the NASDAQ is up more than 10%. The SP has added more than 8%. That's no small amount. 8% is above the average inflation adjusted return of the SP 500 since the 1950s, so in just 12 trading days, basically we have equaled the returns that the markets have been experiencing on an annual basis. But this morning we are getting reminded that perhaps may have gotten a little too far out over our proverbial skis. News that the Strait of Hormuz was fully open on Friday sent prices of oil tumbling, but over the weekend we got reports that the Iranians who said that the strait was opened were reclosing their side of the Straits of Hormuz in protest that the United States was still blocking Iranian ports, and then concerns grew over the weekend, and this morning on reports that the U.S. had fired upon an Iranian oil tanker, taken out their engines, and that this was a ship that was attempting to run the blockade. So this morning after that, the tension, we are getting reports that perhaps these two sides will sit down and meet. Perhaps a big tell will be to see if J.D. Vance, who is negotiating with Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkop, if if J.D. Vance's plane takes off for Islamabad. Reports were that he was still in Washington. Washington earlier this morning. So, what else we got going on? A lot. We got second quarter earnings season, which just started. Big banks got off to a good start. Then we got a report from Delta Airlines with some positive results, and overall expectations for the markets and for financial forecasts are moving up across sectors, and that is providing a tailwind for stocks. So far, over half of SP 500 companies that have reported are raising their guidance. Currently, consensus estimates now call for the SP 500 index earnings per share to rise more than 13% from last year. On track for a sixth straight quarter of double digit growth. Of course, earnings growth is perhaps the most important factor in rising stock prices. Companies make more money, they are generally viewed as more valuable. We did get one exception last week from a large cap SP 500 stock, Netflix, slumped after its earnings Thursday. And starting next week, we will get the big tech headliners, Google Parent Alphabet, Facebook Parent Meta, Microsoft, and Apple all starting to report next week. Moreover, tech as a whole is once again expected to deliver the lion's share of profit growth with earnings per share set to gain based on expectations more than 40% year over year. But what we learned last quarter is these companies reported stellar earnings, but we got concerns that perhaps they were spending more than the markets were comfortable with on artificial intelligence. So we will hear what they have to say, A, about earnings and B about their spending in AI and see how markets react to that that mix of information. One other factor that we will all be keeping our eyes on, of course, as well, is inflation and inflation forecasts and how that affects the bond market and how the bond market affects the stock market. Higher interest rates mean that earnings get discounted back at a higher rate, which means future earnings for companies are less valuable, which makes companies' stock prices less valuable. Higher interest rates also cause companies' borrowing costs to rise, which means less money for profitability. It means they may be less likely to engage in future investment, which also means down the line potential less profitability. So all eyes will remain on oil prices and the jump in oil prices that's taken place since the Iran war started. Most economists expect the impact of higher energy costs on inflation will be relatively trivial. Some are even invoking the T-word, that is transitory, that Ben Bernanke made famous when he was talking about the Biden era inflation post-COVID, which proved not to be transitory, but hope springs eternal, and the hope here is that the energy inflation will possibly be transitory. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle, even after oil sold off last week and Iran said it would reopen the Straits of Hormuz, we we didn't get oil prices falling all the way back to anywhere near they were at the start of the war, but we did get some relief. So lots of lots of folks will be keeping an eye on the talks that may be taking place over the next day or two and to see what action is actually being done in the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz. Either way, it looks like with this wait and see approach that the central bank will be on hold for the months ahead, and some are suggesting even possibly into 2027. Even those who were previously calling for significant rate cuts, most of them now are suggesting a wait and see approach, a handful still you know calling for those cuts. But with Americans being burdened with $4 gasoline, many suggesting that inflation, at least perhaps transitory, is nevertheless here with us at the moment. This is weighing on consumer sentiment as many folks who do not have tremendous amounts of savings are bearing the burden of having higher day-to-day costs without the benefits of portfolios that are appreciating and investments that are paying them interest. So those are the folks here in the U.S. that this inflation is weighing most heavily on, and that is still 50% of U.S. consumers. So eyes will be on the Straits of Hormuz, , traffic still near a standstill, talking about energy prices, energy check Secretary Chris Wright told CNN that U.S. prices may remain at $3 a gallon or higher even until next year. This statement somewhat contradictory with Treasury Secretary Bessent, who said last week that he was optimistic that prices will ease over the driving season, so getting a little bit of a mixed message from two different cabinet members. This week we'll get a little bit of insight into what's taking place with our next potential Federal Reserve Governor, Kevin Walsh, who is going to be taking place in a Senate hearing where lawmakers will likely press the Fed chief nominee to flesh out his monetary policy and economic ideas, as well as what fundamental changes he is looking for. With respect to Fed nominee Walsh, we have standoff taking place here with the Senator who is in charge of the Senate Banking Committee holding up his nomination until the allegations against Chairman Powell are dropped. President Trump expressing great dismay that his new Fed chief may not be installed, has threatened potentially to fire Chairman Powell. So we will still have some work or wood to chop and to see what happens here at the Federal Reserve before we get a new chairman and get his views on policy and get those views implemented. Moving on to a couple of individual stories this morning. American Airlines, symbol AAL. That stock had moved up significantly last week. A lower oil prices, and B speculation that the United Airlines might be interested in merging or acquiring American Airlines. This morning, Americans saying they rejected merger talks with United and the stocks down about 50 cents or about 4%. Marvell, the chipmaking company, MRVL, is in discussions with Alphabet to construct new artificial intelligence chips, that according to the information, and Marvell's stock up about $8 or 6%. Reports that Meta platforms plans to reduce its workforce by about 8,000 workers. Markets in the Asia Pacific region began the week on a higher note, even though the conflict with Iran appeared to be escalating, and this is before the discussions this morning that perhaps the meeting will take place. Major European indices off their worst levels of the day, but down in the neighborhood of half a percent to 1%. Some major headlines this morning. President Trump saying the U.S. fired on and seized an Iranian flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Amman that attempted to run through the U.S. blockade. A Wall Street Journal reporting the U.S. military is preparing to board and seize Iran-linked ships in international waters, so not just in the Gulf. President Trump held a White House Situation Room meeting amid the closure of the Straits of Hormuz, and Axios is reporting the war could resume in a few days, absent a breakthrough in negotiations. Bloomberg reporting that airlines continue to increase cancellations and groundings amid a fuel price surge. Wall Street Journal reporting the United Arab Emirates has requested a wartime financial lifeline from the United States. Bloomberg reporting that Commerce Secretary Lutnick has ruled out Chinese investment in the U.S. auto industry. Last week, Wall Street Journal was reporting that perhaps Chinese auto companies would be able to build plants here in the United States, and the U.S. auto companies expressing concern. CBS is reporting that Supreme Court Justices Alito and Thomas are not planning to step down this year. And Axios talking about the Trump administration is opening up a the tariff refund portal today. Many executives at big and small companies are going to have their fingers on their computer keys, much like many of us do when we are seeking to get concert tickets in order to get those requests in for the $160 plus billion that may be available for tariff relief. This week we have about 90 S P 500 companies reporting earnings. Tomorrow we get retail food and services sales for March. We're looking for the retail sales to be up 1.3% month over month. That sounds like a lot, but a lot of it is because of the elevated cost for gasoline. So if you take out autos and gas, retail sales instead of rising 1.3%, they're expected to be up two-tenths of one percent. Thursday, we get an important statistic. We get the Manufacturing and Servicing Purchasing Managers Index for April. This is the manufacturing and services that are taking place here in the United States. On the manufacturing side, we're looking for a 52.5 reading. Services is 50. Anything above 50 is considered expansionary, so the services are expected to be flat, but the manufacturing obviously expected to increase but be down from last reading, which was 50, actually up slightly, 52.5. Last reading was 52.3. So a little uptick expected in the manufacturing. All right, moving on to Barron's. One article in Barron's talked about artificial intelligence and being able to perhaps spot artificial intelligence in the business world and to get a handle on how pervasive artificial intelligence is when it comes to Fortune 500 companies. And one way they say that you might be able to pinpoint or identify when you see artificial intelligence at work is when you're looking at or listening to company conference calls or reading shareholder newsletters or news releases or other corporate communications. One of the biggest tells they say is when a sentence is constructed, it's not X, it's Y. This is one of the big ways that artificial intelligence often will summarize. It's not X but Y. So for some recent recent financial commentary from different companies that Barons points out as examples of this. Citizens Financial recently said it's not just a win for the private bank, it's a win for the enterprise. Synopsis, the CEO saying on an earnings call, saying that engineering AI's future is not just a software challenge, it is a physics challenge. Charles Schwab recently saying on a call, independence is not just a business model, it is a mindset. So interesting when you start seeing this lingo, perhaps surprising, but perhaps not, that many of these calls now and the wording in these calls being fed into artificial intelligence models. So if you personally are using artificial intelligence and feel like perhaps you are doing something that you shouldn't be doing or cheating, well, you can see that corporate America is certainly embracing artificial intelligence and using it. Many of us may think that we can identify when artificial intelligence is being used, and this tell might be one of the more obvious ones, but in fact, lots of academic debate on whether or not humans can actually detect the difference between a human and artificial intelligence. One interesting note is that artificial intelligence is writing and evaluating new code to identify artificial intelligence, but they say one of the big flags that is a false positive is when is when people are who are using English as their second language are writing, very often that is flagged as an artificial intelligence person when in fact it's just someone who uses English as their second language and speaks a little bit differently than someone who is taught in their native language. So we'll certainly probably see a lot more artificial intelligence in our lives, and we will see what what the pervasiveness that we see in everything that we see and do, and see how good we are at identifying if it's a person or if it's something that has been constructed by a computer. Finally, I mentioned there was a company mentioned in Barron's that I thought was not typical of their usual method of operation in terms of choosing a company. Barens usually has a value tint or or a company that has not gone up significantly in valuation that they choose to highlight. But this week Barrens wrote a very positive article on a stock that has rallied 220% over the past two twent past 12 months, so up almost more than threefold over the past year. Normally a jump like that would have many profit-taking fear and thinking that they've recognized most of the gains that have taken place, and other investors may say, hey, I missed that boat, I've got to go find a new one. But Barron's saying that this company that we're talking about here is a company that still merits lots of potential for investment, and that company is Intel. Barron's saying that Intel is not only back, they say it is just getting started even after this significant run-up in price. So what's changed? Well, they say for years Intel was the tech world's cautionary tale, missing out on mobile and watching NVIDIA run away with the AI crown, saying that things started to change in March of 25 when Lip Boutan took the reins as CEO. Tan is a venture capital veteran known for engineering turnarounds. Last company that he was CEO of was Cadence Design Systems. That stock was up 3,200% over the 12 years that he was the CEO, so 32 times versus a little over three times. So perhaps more room in the tank for Intel to start moving higher. Barron saying that since he has taken over Intel, that LipBhuton has not wasted a second. He's cut 20,000 jobs and turned Intel's free cash flow positive for the first time in years. But the real alpha generation is in the partnerships. Intel is now deep in the AI fight, collaborating with Alphabet and even Elon Musk on his massive Terra Fab project to build AI chips for Tesla and state SpaceX. Perhaps most surprisingly, even NVIDIA is putting skin in the game, investing $5 billion to use Intel's cost-effective X86 CPUs along their own high-end GPUs. Now let's talk numbers. Critics point to Intel's high valuation, trading at over 100 times forward earnings, but that's because profits are still recovering from historic lows. , Baron's saying as they fix their manufacturing and bring production back to U.S. soil, profit margins are expected to significantly improve. If Intel hits its 2029 targets, analysts see the stock climbing to $150 per share. That's from the mid-60s now, 140% higher. It's a high stakes, high volatility play. But as the only major U.S. based manufacturer in an AI-crazed world, Intel is moving back to the head of the table. Baron says if you're looking to get in, consider dollar cost averaging to handle the swings. Um, but they say whatever you do, don't look away now. That's everything I've got.

Alan Eppers 38:00

Thank you for listening to Mr. Keith Lanton. This podcast is available on most platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify. For more information, please visit our website at www.heroldlantern.com.

Sophie Cohen 38:18

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