Positively Sloped
Positively Sloped is where markets, culture, and momentum collide — because the most interesting things in the world are the ones trending up and to the right. Jake and Scott break down what’s moving — in the markets, in the headlines, and in your group chat — with sharp insights, real opinions, and just enough irreverence to make finance actually fun. These are the conversations we’ve been having for years — debates, hot takes, and deep dives — just now with a mic in front of us.
Positively Sloped
17. AI Arms Race, Oil Volatility, and the Fed’s Next Move
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of Positively Sloped, guest co-host and portfolio manager Neil Peplinski joins the studio to break down the high-stakes intersection of geopolitics and finance. We dive deep into the Iran conflict's impact on oil prices and whether the recent S&P 500 rally is a fundamental shift or just a headline recovery.
Explore the "AI Arms Race" as we analyze the staggering valuations of OpenAI and Anthropic, and compare today’s tech hype to the .com bubble. We also tackle the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate, looking at how recent job losses and persistent inflation put Jerome Powell between a rock and a hard place heading into his final meetings. Finally, we wrap up with March Madness picks and our "Fades or Trades" for the Detroit Tigers and the March jobs report.
© 2026 Kingsview Wealth Management
Important Disclosures:
Kingsview Wealth Management is an investment adviser registered with the SEC. Registration does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the SEC nor does it indicate that Kingsview has attained a particular level of skill or ability. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.
All opinions expressed by the Positively Sloped participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Kingsview Wealth Management, its parent company or any of its affiliates. You should not treat any opinion expressed on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of an opinion. Such opinions are based upon information the Positively Sloped participants deem reliable.
Kingsview Wealth Management serves as portfolio manager to separately managed account strategies and investment adviser to exchange-traded funds. As of the date of this recording, those strategies and funds held positions in NVIDIA, Dell, and Palintir, and did not hold positions in Raytheon or Hewlett Packard.
On today's Positively Sloped, the guest co-host in the studio with me is Neil Paplinski and I take on the Iran conflict and how it's affecting the oil markets before we go ahead and discuss the Fed's dual mandate, both the recent jobs report and inflation data and how that'll affect their meeting next week. Before we discuss the AI arms race and what's going on with anthropic and open AI, and wrap up with some March Madness talk. Okay, let's talk shop. Today is Wednesday, March 11th, and welcome to Positively Sloped. We've got a fresh face in the studio today. So Neil Paplinski, portfolio manager of Kingsview, is replacing Scott while he's uh out of town this week. And Neil, you've got uh big shoes or big walking boots, should I say, to fill, but I'm confident that you'll be able to do it.
SPEAKER_02Just so I'm clear, you make you make this sound kind of temporary, but I was told by my agent that this was going to be a high-paying permanent position.
SPEAKER_03We'll see what we can do, spice it up a little bit, get some fresh takes. Sounds like an audition, but okay, go. Yeah, that might be that might be true for this week. We've got a lot going on in the markets again. Uh obviously, the the war in Iran is still waging on and and dominating headlines and shifting prices on stocks and commodities, oil, etc. Uh, so we're gonna hit you know the recent uh Iran updates and talk about some oil. We're gonna talk about the jobs report that we got last week, not very good, and what that's gonna do for the Fed next week, as well as, you know, I'm interested. You're you're a coder, you're an AI guy by nature, probably not an AI guy by nature, but you're a coder, uh numbers guy by nature, I should say. And so we're gonna talk about the uh the AI arms race, hit on anthropic and and open AI, what's going on with them, valuations, etc. A lot of fun stuff in that stuff. Dive into it? Sure, go awesome. So just to give a quick recap of where we've gotten this week. Uh so Monday we woke up, uh, all major indices gapped down about two plus percent. Uh, oil was up to I think 120. It peaked at uh just on on the escalations in Iran and and the significant geopolitical risk from from the Strait of Hormuz being closed and possibly you know, Iran launching missiles at should there be ships going through. Uh, and so you know, we had a tough Monday morning, turnaround pretty quickly. Around lunchtime, uh that a tweet leaked, or the tweet, you know, was was written that President Trump said uh that the war is pretty much done, you know, very close, pretty much. Um, and the SB rallied. You know, we got all major indices up um above their their close from Friday, and we had a pretty strong day, all things considered. So, first thing I want to ask you, Neil, is is do you view this market as pretty fundamentally strong and just the news is shaking prices every other day? Or, you know, do it seems like to me that you know earnings seasons was really, really good. Scott and I covered that a few times. We had 14% earnings revenue growth in the SP 500 beat estimates by all things considered. Um, and so it seems to me that we just need some good news to go higher. How do you look at the current state of the market?
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think if you're talking about the you know, good news in the context of what's happening in the Middle East, to me, that's kind of decoupled from market fundamentals. I mean, we're not talking about, hey, the the the economy's on good ground. So the minute that it looks like maybe the straits gonna be open back up or the the conflict is dying down, that we're gonna rally. To me, uh all of the the the short-term volatility that we're seeing now is really about what's gonna happen with this specific conflict. And when you have, you know, a Middle Eastern conflict, like we're seeing, historically, you know, the US, we've we've we don't have the greatest track record in in uh estimating where Middle Eastern conflicts are gonna go.
SPEAKER_03And I think how long they might take.
SPEAKER_02Exactly right. Like I in fact, uh not only do we not have a good reputation of estimating it, I think we historically underestimate just what is involved when you try to uh get something going in that region. And so I think when you see the short-term vowel and and President Trump comes on and gives this cryptic tweet, which I guess depending on how you want to read it, you could conclude one or the other thing. But if if people view that as some sort of uh maybe he's looking for an off-ramp, maybe there's gonna be some sort of fairly uh you know resolution to this in the short term, that's what's gonna influence everybody. And then you're gonna see uh a lot of that pressure off and the market's gonna rally. Is that you know, lots of times those rallies are just making up for the headline decline? Yeah. Uh so in my mind, um, I think the economy, you know, is fine. I think kind of under underneath the layers here, um, we've got certainly some inflation, some jobs, things we can talk about. I'm sure we'll get in that a little later. But I don't think that it's that we're in such great shape that any piece of good news rallies. I think it really is limited specifically to this conflict.
SPEAKER_03Fair enough. It's an interesting point that you make that the rally is really just making up for the gap down. It's it's kind of the difference between the intraday movement and the interday movement, where like I said, Friday closed, Monday morning we gapped down two percent. And in Nasdaq on on Monday, we closed up one percent. So a really, really strong day. But as you know, that's a three and a half percent intraday trading move, which is which is pretty wild. I mean, is that are we in? I feel like since COVID, to use a word you just used, we've been decoupled a little bit data points, uh, social media, and the market. So we see we've kind of normalized two and a half, three percent moves as being, you know what, that's just what happens when we get a tweet midday or we get an interview midday or some good uh data piece. So it do you do you think that that's new to this recent environment of the world and information traveling fast in social media, or has it always kind of been like this, just in a different form?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I don't think we so there's a couple comments there, I guess. Well, certainly from a volatility perspective, I think you will, if you go searching for it, you'll find evidence that the intraday ranges that we're seeing today are higher than they were maybe 10 or 15 years ago. Um, to which I would attribute that largely to just the breadth of information that is available so rapidly. And, you know, I mean, clearly if there was a clear message in all of this information and people could just look at it and absorb it, you wouldn't have any volatility. Everybody would do the right thing and the market would go in whatever direction it's supposed to go based on that information. But we know that having all this information at the rapid uh pace that we see it doesn't mean that people can process it correctly. And as a consequence, uh I believe that really contributes to those intraday volatility. If if you look back 20 years ago, yeah, you'll find 2% days, but they're the frequency that we're seeing them is definitely higher now.
SPEAKER_03Interesting. I speaking of volatility, yesterday was uh uh the the largest intraday drop in oil prices since 2022, basically, since uh Russia invaded Ukraine. Like I said, we we gapped up to about 120 on oil prices, or we we you know climbed the ladder to 120, fell back to about$80 a a barrel, which was that that decline. And now today uh we had news that you know there's there's a few things happening. We have uh maybe Iran put some mines in the Strait of Hormoes to deter ships from going through. You know, Iran hit three UK vessels, and then also we had the IEA come out today and say that they're releasing 400 million barrels to kind of soften the blow of whatever or however long this goes in the straight of horror moves with this conflict. So um, we've had some pretty wild oil moves. How do you look at that as a portfolio manager from a commodity perspective and ownership in a portfolio?
SPEAKER_02I mean, again, like if the epicenter for energy volatility is the Middle East. So a conflict like this is just going to uh have a magnification effect that that you don't see elsewhere. And so when you think about the the the energy industry, in it it's inherently complex, of course. And I'm not an energy expert when you think about understanding all the nuances in in the Middle East, but a lot of there's when you have a conflict like this, there's a window of time where uh you can get things resolved and then the net impact to the to the energy is is is minimal. But every day it ticks on, you know, what's the biggest what are some of the variables that are impacting this now? Well, if you think about uh the minute Iran kind of said, hey, we're we're gonna no passage through the strait, you have all these producers that have to do something with the oil that they're pumping out, and they can't just shut the wells off. It's not like a uh a faucet. So they have to do something. They load up tankers, they put them in the Gulf, they fill all their storage tanks, and that buys you time. The Persian Gulf. And so it buys you some time, but the longer the conflict streams on, now you have these business decisions that are they shutting wells down, um, and you shut a well down, which you would have to do if you have no place to put the oil. That has a a lot a longer lasting impact because now, again, you can't just fire these wells back up. So when you when you uh consider all those variables, you get this massive volatility in the short term. I'm not an energy trader, but what I would probably do in this case if I if I were is I would step to the sidelines and is let this thing um kind of settle down. For sure, if I was making any kind of trade, it's not gonna be long or short, it's gonna be volatility-based. Do something that can play off of that vowel piece of it. But it's very difficult, I think, for portfolio managers, especially one if you're thinking about it's not your niche to be an energy trader, it's your business to be a retirement planner for clients. This this thing, situations like this can definitely wreak a lot of havoc. And sometimes the best thing to do is to just take a pause and not get too caught up in it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I think if you're an investor, uh, you're probably not looking at trading oil or trading volatility on oil or commodities, but you might be looking and saying, should I own energy stocks? Should I own oil stocks? I think you're probably already too late to that trade. Um, I mean, these these things tend to fade out quickly. You and I were just talking about the gas uh price you paid in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine and how astronomical those prices seemed. And now they're they're down 50%, you know, only three years later. And that was the case shortly after that conflict started in the middle of the summer. So these these issues in terms of pricing on on oil tend to fade pretty quickly. And it's it'd be very difficult. You know, we always say it's difficult to time the market, it'd be very difficult to time the market on an energy stock or an oil stock when when likely, right? This conflict didn't come out of nowhere. It's been building, um, you know, companies that are in energy and oil have have been in preparation for another Middle East uh conflict, which seemed to be ongoing all the time. So you're probably too late to the trade already, I would think.
SPEAKER_02I would think so. Uh that's why I say taking a step back is probably the way to go, or building some sort of long-term approach, but but not reacting to these to these uh conflicts when they were up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. You mentioned the the impact that an an oil increase could have on inflation. We'll get to inflation or the other side of the the Fed's dual mandate um in a in a second. I want to touch on first, uh last Friday we had the non-farm payroll report come out for for February. Um January was a surprise number that we covered. We got that mid-Fed because of the partial shutdown that we had um or that we are having right now. It still is not resolved. We had a surprise upside of about 130 jobs added in January. So you're expecting some momentum. Well, February comes in and kind of poo-poos everyone's parade, and we lost 92,000 jobs. We also had negative revisions per usual to January and December. So it seems like, Neil, we went from a decent labor market or a you know strengthening labor market compared to last year to outright job losses. You know, is that showing a slowdown or is this just noise?
SPEAKER_02Um, so certainly the data points on any given month can be pretty noisy. Uh, I think, you know, I don't the labor market's been showing signs of softening for a little while now, due in part because of a lot of this noise that you see. It's the idea of hey, it's not just a nice steady uptrend. We are getting these downward revisions. And of course, some of them are event-driven, like the healthcare strike that we saw that that obviously impacted some of the more recent numbers. Um but from a revision perspective, you know, like there are both positive and negative revisions. So I don't think we should like they seem all negative. Well, I think to me right now, the way I would read that is that's probably a sign that we're we're moving into more a weakening of the labor market. Not so much that they always seem to be negative, but the fact that we're seeing these negative revisions to me gives me some pause. Uh, the BLS survey approach to getting the jobs numbers in general, is there's a lot of issues with it. Uh, it's hard to get accuracy. It this there's there's so many impacts to it. So you kind of have to come to expect and accept some noise in the process. But to me, I would, you know, the the the continued downward revisions, um, you know, quite frankly, with the backdrop, the political backdrop that we have right now, which is really President Trump wants to see these jobs numbers always be very rosy. And so uh, you know, you can only fire the head of the BLS a couple of times, and then you gotta like, you gotta kind of live with what the data are saying. Right.
SPEAKER_03And and and so I'm I'm not, you know, I'm a little bit paused, a little bit cautious on the labor market for sure. Okay. So we've got to accept and expect, as you say, uh, you know, some noise in the data. How does a Federal Reserve you know expect and accept that noise when they are driving monetary policy based on that? So we, you know, the the other piece of this puzzle is that we had a CPI number come in today. Uh core CPI is still two and a half percent, CPI was 2.4%. So again, the theme that we've been harping on for months is inflation has stabilized, but it's still it's stabilized above the t-shirt level as Scott likes to say, 2% target. So you're still not down to that mandate. So typically, when you get a a negative jobs report like we had in February, that would be probably an indicator to the Fed that maybe we need to cut rates, 25 basis points, but you also have persistent inflation. And I think it was described um you know as a rock and a hard place for the Fed. Meaning you've got uh weakening labor market and also persistent inflation. We've got a Fed meeting next week, and then we have another Fed meeting at the end of April, the last of Jerome Powell's tenure as as chairman. So how does this I sure he needs to maintain some influence for sure if we're gonna have any sense of normalcy in the Fed going forward? But how do they take these data points and that may not be um cohesive and and transition that into a decision on monetary policy in next week? Well, if you have conflicting data, do nothing.
SPEAKER_02Do nothing, yeah. Uh basically that's that's the summary. I think we have, you know, obviously we the the Fed has all the data that we see. Uh they also have a lot of expertise in analyzing those data. So I, you know, I give them the benefit of the doubt of having maybe a little more visibility to what the the intricacies of what's happening than we do. For sure. But when you just kind of on that basic level say, hey, job market's not looking that great, inflation's persistent, one of those wants you to cut rates, one wants you to raise rates, uh, you probably are inclined to keep it steady until you really see some some compelling evidence that one of those is taking over.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I I don't know that we're gonna see that uh that inflation number come down anytime soon. And of course, the longer the the war in Iran wages on oil is gonna go up, which is you know, at first gonna increase energy, but then it will filter through to basically all aspects of the economy, you'll have that inflation print probably be even higher than 2.4%.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, and obviously there's a million ways to measure inflation as well. I think um so there's there's there's the baseline quantitative measures that you can pull up and see what the numbers are. And I think second to that is uh, you know, what is what is the consumer feeling? And when you think about oil, I mean when we talk about the the inflation rates that the Fed are going to look at, they'll back out oil, the back out food prices, right? And and and get to something that they think is more kind of a stable number, because we know food and energy prices are so volatile. But I think those that's not to say they're not relevant, because ultimately, you know, if you have this mid Middle Eastern crisis continue and and the price of oil stays elevated, like you said, that will trickle through. We're going from everything from not just the the what we pay at the pump, which uh you know is a huge expenditure for most for most consumers, to to you know, fertilizer for your garden, like just every aspect of it'll start to infiltrate.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's that's uh a great point. Is coffee included in that in that food ex-food and oil? I mean, coffee. I mean we were talking this morning. Yeah, you as a coffee drinker.
SPEAKER_02As a coffee drinker, I was uh so you know, I um for me, coffee and gas are kind of the same. I'm gonna pay whatever I have to pay to fill my tank, and I'm gonna pay whatever I have to pay to get my cup of coffee. But the yeah, that was I was shocked to see uh some of the the the rising cost of of the coffee prices that you know for a typical ground uh pound of ground coffee went from like four bucks, you know, six years ago to almost pushing nine to ten bucks now. It's not inflation. It's it, I mean it's definitely because we don't have a hundred percent inflation. We we don't have that. I mean, obviously tariffs play into that, uh, but you know, it's and and of course not necessarily directly driven to by the Middle Eastern crisis, but but every every data point you have where it's hard on the consumer, um, I think that really is what's going to matter more because that will then play into what really happens in the economy. These measures that we track are great because they give us some visibility, there are things that we can write down. Uh, but when you that consumer and the sentiment, I mean that when you think about an economy, the US economy, you know, 70%-ish is the consumer. And so if the consumer's not feeling well because of the Middle Eastern crisis, even if it's not the price of oil, maybe they're just nervous about what does this mean for, you know, like domestic terrorism and or or whatever, whatever unsettling there might be. Uh, we want a happy consumer that can afford to get the things they need. And anything that puts that in jeopardy is really what I think underpins what can happen in the economy.
SPEAKER_03It's an interesting dynamic to a dichotomy because we have University of Michigan uh surveys all the time, every month, that come out and say the consumer is at the sentiments basically at all-time lows for the last six months or so, and the market's still doing well, you know, the economy's still growing. So it's a weird push and pull. I think there's a lot of consumers that are driven by news and noise and uh politics that are going on. For sure. So from from a uh to wrap up on this topic, from a portfolio manager manager's perspective, when you get a, you know, we've got a handful of portfolios that we run that you and Scott built based on economic data prints. And one of the factors in that, in those uh data points that we consume is is the unemployment data. And so when you've got like a temporary shock, like you mentioned the healthcare strike going on in California, that um the report said was attributable to 31,000 of the jobs lost because they're striking. How do you know are you able to filter out that noise in your portfolio construction? How does that work so that you're not getting whipsawed based off of these super temporary factors?
SPEAKER_02Right. So for sure, if you're reading the headline number, you are likely to get whipsawed. I mean, there's that there's no way around it. Uh, in our strategies, like the ones you mentioned specifically that are based on the economic model that we put together, there's a natural filtration in that process. By natural, I mean we've we've built the model to uh kind of incorporate trends over being overly influenced by a single data point. So that part of it works, it's works into it. It's not completely immune. You know, you get enough of these shocks kind of spaced at the right interval, and and and and we'll see that even in our own models. But in general, we when we create a model like the one, like the economic model that we use behind several of the uh portfolios is really designed to kind of smooth some of that out. Yeah. And then read the headline for entertainment's sake.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And and headlines and entertainment sake are are abundant right now in Galore, uh, especially when we talk about the AI space and and AI companies. We're sort of in this like friendly AI arms race between open AI and Anthropic right now. Um, you know, last week there was this whole situation where Anthropic was negotiating terms to with the US government. You know, uh Palantir has used Claude in some of the recent missions in Venezuela. Um, it was said that it was used in Epic Fury as well in Iran. So certainly using uh AI to assist in in some of these military operations. Um Anthropic came out and said, you know, we want to we want to do a deal with the government, but cannot be used for mass surveillance, it cannot be used for for to be a killing machine, basically. Um and Sam Altman of of OpenAI came out that night and said, you know, we stand with Anthropic. And then by the time I woke up, OpenAI had a$200 million deal with the government, and Anthropic was labeled a supply chain risk. Is that what it is that it is?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, supply chain risk, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So a lot of I mean, a lot of stuff going on right now in in the AI space. And then also the valuations on these companies are are mouthwatering, really. I mean, uh OpenAI is up around$850 billion after a recent$110 billion round of funding, and Anthropic's at$380 billion uh after a$30 billion round of funding. So, you know, are are these are these valuations worrisome to you? Um, do they remind you of the dot-com bubble? How do you kind of digest what these companies look like and if they may go public?
SPEAKER_02I mean, a lot to unpack there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think uh one question for about two minutes of the whole topic.
SPEAKER_02So I think like AI for me as a technology and as a space is uh it's it's exciting and scary all at the same time. And I think let's step back to anthropic for a second. And you know, like when you think about it, there's a lot of uh credibility, credibility to the argument that says, you know, subcontractors to the government shouldn't be able to dictate what the government's gonna do. And so, you know, you would see that with you get Raytheon that makes a missile, they don't get to tell the government which targets they can use that missile on, which they can't. So that makes sense, except in this case with AI, we're dealing with consequences that we don't really know what they are yet. Like this is a a you know kind of blooming technology that we that offers a lot of promise, but also comes with a lot of risk. And then there's a whole side of it of the, you know, what are the unknown unknowns? And so uh, in some ways, I think. Anthropics request of if you view it from the lens of hey, we just want guardrails on this technology, maybe because we don't really know how it might react to some of these situations. To me, that seems prudent right now until the technology has developed itself further and we can understand maybe where some of those risks lie. Um, I do find it odd that I feel like OpenAI had that same kind of same mentality, but now they step in and take the government contract. So that you know, that's uh that's there's probably a lot going on behind the scenes there that we don't know about and never will know about. Um, it makes the optics look a little weird to somebody like me, but you know, that will work however it works. Hopefully it works out uh favorably. The valuations, man, they're not mouth watering, they're mind-numbing, and in my opinion. Like, I can't even put my head around a trillion dollar valuation on a company, which is where open AI would be pork-assed to be if it ever went public. And I like I mean, that seems insane. And I don't really have anything else to say. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, so you know, what does it okay? I do have some more to say. Yeah, but go ahead. Uh you know, is there really$850 billion worth of value there?
SPEAKER_03I mean, that's that's the that's the debate right now. So uh, you know, they're private companies, so the the publishing of their of their data and revenues and all that good stuff is is not um, you know, it's not gap uh audited. So by no means is it the same as NVIDIA coming out and sharing their earnings report. But um the CFO of of OpenAI come out and say they did$20 billion in revenue last year. Anthropic said they did uh$9 billion in revenue last year after$3 billion the year before. So their run rate's ticking up. That puts, given the valuations that I said earlier and those those revenues from last year, that puts them at both at about like 42 times price to sales, which I know is a metric you like to look at when you're looking at tech companies. For reference, NVIDIA is at about 22 to one right now. Palantir is at 86 to one, though. So people are clearly buying what Palantir's got to sell, and that's at double what the price to sales are. Now you could argue that you know these are private, like I said, private companies. Who knows if the revenues are the revenues and where which streams that they're coming from within the company lines, but they're not as uh they're not as ridiculous and nebulous as they were a year ago when we when open I open AI had like two billion dollars of revenue and we're picking up hundred billion dollar deals left and right with tech companies.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean like even okay, so we talk about yes, they are private companies. And so as a as a consequence of that, there's a level of transparency that we don't have. So, first question is that$20 billion in revenue is it real? What is it tied to? Is it you know, lot is it uh is it some creative accounting that's not you know that technically is is not wrong, but it's just it's creative, yeah. And so until you know, the the another way to think about the question would be if open AI went public tomorrow and at an$850 billion valuation, where would the stock be six months later? Yeah, I guess is lower.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh so how much lower, I don't know. This is gets back to um when you compare it to some of the public companies, the public AI winners. You know, we don't we don't we don't see it there, but uh so again motivates me to think that that we would we would end up with a uh a kind of an IPO hype that ultimately settles down to something that's more tangible, more real. Um maybe it's still higher than than you know 30 or 30x, but something that at least at that point can be more openly justified. And and we'll see now, you know, you talk about mentioning this, how does it, does it, does it, are there parallels to this with the dot-com bubble? Um there, I think there are. There's there's some parallels dealing with new technology, uh, but more more to the point, I think, dealing with a lot of, I don't I don't like to say hype, yeah, but it's really hype. Yeah, it's promises, right? Promises of what this technology will deliver. That's very equivalent to to what we were seeing back in the in the dot-com days, although I would say it's this is like dot com on steroids, because AI can solve every problem ever known and every problem that's not even known, and that's gonna be the greatest thing ever. Uh, I don't I don't have that vibe. I didn't get that vibe back in the dot-com. I know that was dot com is pre pre-Jake, but it's pre-consciousness for sure. Yeah. So um, but I think that's when you step back kind of on the on the emotional front, you it's really that. It's like, will these companies deliver on their promises of what they can do with this, with this technology? You and and you and I were in an engagement uh a few months ago, and that was one of the points I was making up that I think is important, which is if you want to get into this space, try to see if you can separate out the hype. Uh, the reason part of the reason NVIDIA is doing so well is because it's got hardware, right? And it's like delivering a product, right? And now, you know, some of the companies buying their product, just stacking it, waiting for future expansion, and we'll see where that goes. But in the in in as long as NVIDIA doesn't get creative on, hey, pay me later, you know, yeah, I'll pay you on Monday for a hamburger to me.
SPEAKER_03I mean, they they look sort of circular, but yeah, not to the same extent as they were previously, right?
SPEAKER_02And that's where like uh when you when you're kind of crossing that public to private line, you that's where some of the stuff can kind of get shaded.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and then when everybody's public, you kind of see some of that. But you know, in general, I'm I like the space, and I would I I think if you can stay kind of in that tangible realm right now, don't don't get too caught up in the as soon as they hit, you know, this LLM milestone, uh, you know, I'm gonna be our company's gonna be great because we're gonna be a little bit of this. That's the stuff you want to kind of avoid, I think.
SPEAKER_03I like that, I like that IPO hype because that's what we've seen kind of in the last three, four years with spacks that were really hot coming out of COVID, is that these companies that that get all of these IPO hypes, and we've seen some, we've seen only larger and larger IPO valuations, obviously, as as companies are generating more and everything's worth more now. But those companies do in the first six months or nine months tend to drop uh you know relative to their IPO price. I totally forgot to bring this, uh, and it was on my list to remember. But my dad was cleaning out his house the other day and uh found a 2000 the 2000 Times magazine Y2K edition. And so to add an anecdote to my uh my pre-consciousness sort of time fry time frame, uh, there was a three-page ad in that magazine for Compaq, which was the largest computer seller at the time. And part of their ad was that at some point, I think it was like a letter to the people in 2100, the year 2100, that they'd be having computers in their hands, like a laptop in their hands. So I don't even I didn't even know what compact was. I think it's still publicly traded, so they still do something.
SPEAKER_02Uh so I think they're still the brand. They were uh so back in the day it was like compact and Dell. Like you, you know, those are kind of competing tech, yeah, competing uh brands. Dell won out. I think uh compact was bought by Hewlett Packard, I believe. Okay. Uh, and then and I thought Hewlett-Packard closed the brand down. Um, but they might have had like I think in some pockets around the world, maybe you can still find uh the compact brand. But um, for the most part, I associate compact with Hewlett Packard now.
SPEAKER_03Okay, yeah, yeah, it's not currently sold. So that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. So the but I mean how you know how uh like pretty good call back saying 2100, you're gonna have I mean 700 years, 80 years late, but yeah, well I mean I think we uh the the other thing that everybody always references like the late 90s, early 2000s, people thought we'd be in flying cars and teleporting, and we'd be back on the moon, and if not Mars, and none of that's happened yet. So um well that we know like that's true.
SPEAKER_02We have I mean you can get like we're starting to see already uh you know, autonomous uh drone taxis, so kind of like a personal helicopter. You know, I mean NASA talking about going back to the moon. Um funding cuts are gonna prevent that, but not the desire or the technology. So all this stuff like sounds crazy, but there's a lot of it that rings at least true on a couple notes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. When you when you were saying autonomous drone, that's not where I thought you were gonna be going, but uh that's a better that's a better route than what I was thinking.
SPEAKER_02Um I mean, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, even just the word drone right now, maybe is like yeah, you know, four-letter word, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03So I know something that could drone out some of the bad news, at least for us sports fans. Uh we have turned the calendar, I said this last week, to March. Um, right now, you know, we're we're looking at the pit right now, and these guys have Bloomberg on one screen and uh the start of the conference tournaments on the other. Um favorite memories from March Madness, Pep? What do you got? Oh and you're a Michigan man, I'll I'll intro that for you. So we didn't have to intro it. Didn't even need to intro it. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_02Beautiful. So um, you know what? I've got um pretty much a love.
SPEAKER_03It's nice to have a another real national championship uh school session. That's right.
SPEAKER_02No, yeah, of course, yes. Uh you know, I gotta say, when it comes to the tourney, uh, I got a kind of a love-hate relationship with Michigan and in the bracket. I mean, in my lifetime, I've seen them lose four times in the championship game, I think. Four?
SPEAKER_03So the Villanova was the most recent.
SPEAKER_02Well, it was the Fab five back-to-back years. Yeah, and then uh I think maybe 2013, 2018.
SPEAKER_03So 13, yeah, yeah. 18 would have been villa to the Villanova team. Yeah, I think that was Trey Burke. Yeah, I don't know if Trey Burke was 2018 or 2013, but that was my buddy Jalen's team.
SPEAKER_02So all right. So, I mean, I'm excited for yeah, like frankly, I I actually probably watch more basketball this season than than I typically usually I wait till March and then I get into it because that's when everything really matters anyway.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But Michigan has been a lot of fun to watch this year. Um, plus my son goes to Wisconsin, so even that loss was kind of fun to watch because he was pretty thrilled to see Wisconsin beat Michigan at home, which is like I don't know how that happened, but uh I think Michigan has a good shot. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm excited to watch the tournament. Okay, but given my history, I gotta take it with a grain of salt and be prepared.
SPEAKER_03So I last week I gave uh I gave Michigan as my pick. I think Florida's my second option. The guy to my right, Scotty, said Duke, where do you land? Are you are you giving a homer pick or you got someone else?
SPEAKER_02I like I like Duke, but um, I like Duke. Look, I can't I can't go on the record for going against Michigan, so go blow.
SPEAKER_03You are on the record right now.
SPEAKER_02No, because well, I'm saying I'm that's why I'm saying I still go with Michigan. Logan go with Michigan right here. Like let's do this right here. Put it right there. Um I think I would I gotta tell you this. I would love to see a Duke Michigan champion. And and then and then and then a you know a blue win on that, like as a kind of a payback.
SPEAKER_03A blue win. Are you being you know funny because they're both the blue? I mean, they're the blue devils. So that doesn't count.
SPEAKER_02The go blue blue.
SPEAKER_03So you want Michigan to win. I want Michigan to win.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I want Michigan to win, and I'd like to see him beat Duke in the final.
SPEAKER_03All right. Very cool. I mean, it'll be it's gonna be an awesome. This these three weeks are always awesome. Uh, this season's been amazing. There's been so many upsets. Wisconsin has three of the biggest wins this season, and probably three of the biggest losses this season. That's the funny thing.
SPEAKER_02Like Wisconsin, like they're just they're the they're a funny team to watch this season, right? I mean, we again have a son there, so it's like I have a vested interest, but how can you how can you have those wins and those losses? It's just it's just perplexing. Yeah, I guess.
SPEAKER_03I mean, my my Hoosiers take on uh Northwestern tonight and probably a do or die game for their tournament hopes. I think if they lose, they're probably firmly on the wrong side of the bubble. So we'll see. We've got football. Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_02You don't you don't care about basketball anymore in Indiana?
SPEAKER_03No, we're a football school, right? Um Pep, let's wrap it up with uh with our fades or trades for the week. So I'm gonna I'll I'll give these to you first. You give your whether you're gonna fade or trade it and then why, and then I'll I'll rebound as well. Um, first fade or trade of the week, March jobs report will be negative. It says surprise to the downside, but will be negative coming off the back of the February reports.
SPEAKER_02All right, so I wanted to comment on surprise to the downside because I that's like a I think a an element to this because when you think about even if we just look back at you know the most recent report, the February report, where we were expecting I think plus 50,000 or 53,000, we get a negative print. One of the things I would say is like why do why do we think the 53,000 estimate was any good, right? So we know that economists are horrible at trying to forecast where the jobs like then they're never the the the amount of time that they're right is a very low percentage. Uh not just in like it's a it'd be difficult to call a number to the exact thousand, but uh just how often they can be wrong. So that was gonna be my my comment on to the surprise to the downside, but I think um I think I I think we do probably see a negative print in March.
SPEAKER_03Yep. So you're trading that it'll be negative. It would be, yeah. All right. I I will I'm gonna fade it. Okay. I'm gonna fade it. I think uh to your point, um, we had a we had a 50,000 job growth expectation in February. Obviously, we didn't get that. We talked about some of the temporary factors that were involved in that. You say economists uh typically aren't able to predict it. I think directionally they're typically right. Magnitude, maybe they're not. Uh so I'm gonna say that we we do get a positive print in March. This is actually something I just thought of this second, and I don't know if this is true or not. You could tell me, but would the the struck jobs, if they are back so if they're back working, would that be a positive?
SPEAKER_02So, like I was just gonna put that caveat on it because the one thing the one thing that would that would yeah. I fade it, sorry. So those jobs coming back online could impact the positively. So I'm still gonna go with a negative print because I said it, um, but I had the same thought as you did, kind of after the fact.
SPEAKER_03So that'll be an impact. Yeah, that'll be interesting. Second fader trade of the week. Uh, we've got Jerome Powell, as we mentioned, with two Fed meetings left before his chairmanship is over. Uh, we mentioned the conflicting uh data for their dual mandate that we got in this past couple weeks. Um, Fed cuts rates in the next two meetings. Do you fade or trade that?
SPEAKER_02Um, I don't think it happens. So fade it. So yeah, fade that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Okay. No, no explanation needed.
SPEAKER_02I mean, look, look, I think uh again, what I don't have anything to say. One of the two driving things we talked about on inflation and jobs. Yeah. I think there's a greater risk at this moment in time, um, that that the Middle Eastern conflict in particular, plus the kind of we we admitted earlier we have some lingering inflation, and then now all these global events are only gonna support that. So I think it's gonna come down to uh the the pressure's probably gonna be more on the inflation side, having the you know, kind of like motivating the Fed to do nothing. Yeah. Uh, because they obviously don't want to take the chance on the job market. But so I think they stay flat.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna fade that as well. I don't think similar to what I said a couple weeks ago, I don't think we fade in the next two meetings. Um, I think we actually stay put until the back half of the year, which I think Scott called me crazy for, given that we'll have a new chairman that is more than likely going to be at least taking or having Trump's ear a little more than Powell does in this term. Sure. Um, third fader trade. Your team. So you're you're a Michigan, as I said, Michigan guy, Detroit guy. Uh the Tigers, really good season last year, faded at the end of the year, which was really weird. Yeah, it was weird. Um, but uh, will they go over their 85 and a half win projection?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm going with that one. Got Verlander back. I'm trading it. Yeah. This is gonna be an exciting year for the Tigers.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, uh, I'll trade that as well. It's an exceptionally weak uh AL Central as it typically tends to be. But the Tigers are extremely exciting. I mean, they were two years ago, they were a year early. So last year they took a step back um a little bit. Yeah, last year their timing was just bad in the like it's like the worst time to fade.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So I think I think you got to learn how to win. I think they're they're gonna. I like the Verlander edition, if nothing else, just for the veteran in the room. Scoobyl is a is a bona fide perennial haas. Uh, I think they they will win the ALA set uh central, and I think they'll be uh uh factor in the playoffs. Tough because I think the World Series is just the Dodgers to to lose, and then we'll have no baseball in 2022.
SPEAKER_02There's so much parody in baseball anyway, it's like like any given year, but I feel good for the takership.
SPEAKER_03Uh this one, this fourth one here, and this is our last one because we had a random ticker roll, but as you guys can see, the ticker is uh off back there. So let's wrap up with this one, Neil. The the 2026 0.9 grape harvest. Are you fading or trading it?
SPEAKER_02So what is 0.9? So 0.9, uh, for those from since nobody knows what 0.9 is, it's a private label for uh my private label. Um started a vineyard a couple years ago. We're going into our third growing season. Uh in the first couple years, you drop the fruit so you don't have a crop. Third year is kind of your you can have something uh by year four, you're usually in full production. So I'm feeling really well, I should say I was feeling really good about it. Last night we had a bunch of really, really freaky weather uh hit hit the mid-midwest. The hail was insane, it was huge. Uh the good news is like we're not in the growing season yet, and I don't think we actually got a hail storm up in the in the Leon Law Peninsula in Michigan, where the vineyard's located. But uh, I don't have an on-the-ground report yet. So assuming we dodge the weather, uh, I'm feeling really good about it. We're gonna see, we'll we'll have, you know, again, we won't be in full production. We'll have something to play with. I'll make some wine in the fall and we'll drink it a year later and we'll decide how it turned out.
SPEAKER_03Love it. I'm trading the hell out of that a year a year from now. I've tasted a couple bottles, delicious. Obviously, these are your new grapes now. Uh, so I'm trading the harvest. How can I fade my, you know, yeah, my guy's harvest here? No. And I mean, even if the harvest doesn't provide, you should wait another year. So we're good. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Neil, appreciate you stepping in today. We'll see what the uh what the viewers and listeners say for your audition, and that may determine how often you'll be back. That's right. All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll see. Vote for Pep and we'll see you next week. All right.
SPEAKER_01Kingsview Wealth Management is an investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the SEC, nor does it indicate that Kingsview has attained a particular level of skill or ability. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. All opinions expressed by the positively sloped participants are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Kingsview Wealth Management, its parent company, or any of its affiliates. You should not treat any opinion expressed on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of an opinion. Such opinions are based upon information the positively sloped participants deem reliable. Kingsview Wealth Management serves as portfolio manager to separately managed account strategies and investment advisor to exchange traded funds. As of the date of this recording, those strategies and funds held positions in NVIDIA, Dell, and Palantir and did not hold positions in Raytheon or Hewlett Packard.