Tech Wrecked: Who Leads The S&P 500 Higher Next?
36:27 Share

On the Tape.

When will M&A activity pick up? Will this year mark the return of IPOs? Listen to Strategic Alternatives, a podcast from RBC Capital Markets to get insights on these questions and more. Explore the trends and market forces impacting deal flow and find out how companies and investors are shifting their strategies to drive growth and unlock value. Listen and subscribe to Strategic Alternatives today, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to the Risk Reversal Podcast. I'm Dan Nathan, joined by Guy Adame. Guy, good morning. Yo, what's going on on this fine Monday? Monday on the opening, Guy. We have a down opening, a gap down opening. We have treasury yields at 4.2%. That is the 10-year. We have your gold, 3,100, higher there. We have a Dixie at 104. We have a VIX at 24. Things seem a little ripe right here, Guy.

Well, that's the story, I think. I mean, they're all stories, obviously, but the VIX, if you go back and look last week, I think we had a VIX that got south of 17 at one point. And I know we actually talked about the next round was coming to a theater near you. And here we are. And the speed with which we've gotten back to 24, I think, should be

somewhat concerning, or maybe it's a good thing because, you know, if we were to get north of 30, maybe that would speak to at some point, capitulation on the downside. But again, the VIX is, has been a story. I think it will continue to be a story. And that's something we've been talking about now for a while. Yeah. To your point, we had a VIX that,

almost kiss 30. This is back on March 13th. That's also when the S&P 500 was down at like 5504, which was the intraday low. So here we are today. By the time you're listening to this, it's going to be in a different spot. But here we are at 5514. So we're flirting with those

recent lows. Obviously, we have Wednesday, which is tariff day. I think the president was calling it liberation day. We also have at the end of the week, the all important March jobs report guy. That's going to be really exciting. A lot of stuff in between here and there. Not a whole heck of a lot of earnings. There are some economic data, but I think obviously tariffs and the reciprocal

nature of those from some of our trading partners. It's going to be the most important thing, plus jobs. Let's go back to Friday because this was –

and I don't mean to put too like fine a point on this, but this core weave IPO, okay, this was a hotly anticipated IPO. This is a company that operates data centers for the major hyperscalers, predominantly 62% of their sales comes from Microsoft. We've been talking about the lead up to this IPO. I want to feel like for a month or so, the importance of it to us was really sort of a litmus test on the,

the enthusiasm about the generative AI trade. There was a bunch of hair on this deal in our opinion. We don't have to go through all of it, but it ended up being priced at $40 on Friday, down from a range of 47 to 55. They raised about $1.5 billion guy. I think their interest expense

a year on their eight billion is north of one billion dollars. So why was this important to you? Why were you and I talking about this a lot as we're speaking about it right now? It's at thirty seven and a half or so.

Yeah, well, you've been talking about this for a while, and then people started picking up on it middle of last week. And obviously, in terms of how IPOs go, I don't think that was a particularly good one. I think initially, and you probably have the numbers in front of you, I think they were supposed to issue like 39 million shares. I think they wound up issuing like 35 or 36, maybe 37 million shares at a lower price point. And

And the fact that they actually said, and I think when it was they, I mean, Core, we've said, you know, without NVIDIA, this deal probably doesn't get placed. It probably doesn't get priced. And that should be, again, concerning to everybody out there. I mean, their biggest basically concern

customer relationship, whatever you want to call it, needed to sort of step in to sort of stem the tide. You also said correctly that insiders were selling stock at a feverish pace ahead of the IPO. And your point was, regardless of whether or not it was a good move or not, the optics around that were really bad. And if they're selling, why should you? Why should you buy something, I guess I should say. So there's all that. And I think for so many people,

This was sort of a benchmark for not only the AI world, the AI community, the AI trade, but more importantly, the broader IPO calendar, which is the biggest deal we've seen in a while and didn't go particularly well. So none of those things, by the way, are market positive. And I think one of the reasons the market sold off the way it did on Friday was on the back of that

pricing. Yeah. And let's just talk about like the price action in the market. So again, I think you and I were both in the camp going back a couple of weeks when the S&P was 5,500 that sooner or later the, you know, I know you hate this term. I kind of hate this term, but like the White House put or something was going to come into place, right? Where you're going to have a backing off of some of the narratives in and around trade. And that was one of the big issues causing the market to sell off. And we got to go back to, I think it was February 19th where the S&P

was at all-time highs. There was still a lot of enthusiasm about this pro-growth agenda, opening up the deal market, whether it was M&A, whether it was the IPO market. And here we are at the end of the quarter, and things don't feel particularly good. If you think about just the uncertainty in and around the economy, some of the weakening data that you've been talking about,

the economic data. That's why that jobs report on Friday is going to be so interesting. You know, the NASDAQ is down about 12% of the year. The S&P is down almost six and a half percent of the year, obviously down a bunch more from their all time highs. And when you're looking around the market, it's kind of hard to find some leadership, right? And the traditional defensive stuff has acted okay. To me, the capitulation in the market, or maybe the

put comes in when you see not just the fateful eight, not just some of these kind of, you know, you know, growth, your sort of stuff come in. It's when you see everything come in. You just see like correlations go to one that includes Bitcoin. That includes, you know, the defensive sectors, health care and energy or staples and that sort of thing. So are there any like

bright spots that you can see in this market right now, because to me, it really does come down to what sort of clarity we get on Wednesday on the tariffs and then how weak of a jobs number we have, or for that matter, you know, how hot it is, because that does actually impact rates, which we know the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Secretary are very focused on the 10 year. Yeah, well, let's not try to sugarcoat anything. I mean, if there is a bright spot

Maybe it comes in the form of sort of energy as we're sitting here at 935, 940 on Monday morning. The XLE is actually positive on the day. So maybe there's some rotation there that's been going on. By the way, that's something I thought would happen a year and a half or so ago. Maybe it's finally starting to take place. But as I say all the time, in our business, early is wrong. So that, to me, is one of the lone bright spots. Maybe if you're long the bond market thinking it needs to go down, you've made a case for that.

maybe that's a potential trade. But again, the yields are going down, in my opinion, because the market's getting smoked. And I think people are looking for some sort of perceived flight to quality. And the other bright spot, obviously, comes in the form of gold, which continues to be off to the races. Short of that,

There's not a lot of things to be encouraged by. Now, you can say I'm encouraged by the fact that we're trading down the levels we saw on March 13th, March 14th. Maybe that's a good thing. But the fact that we bounced the way we did and have given it back so quickly, I think is somewhat concerning. And so when you're looking for bright spots, as I know people want to do, and I'm sure at some point today the market will bounce and you hear the commentary, we're well off the lows and those types of things, that's not particularly helpful.

You're trying to figure out where things are going and why things are going to those levels. Quickly, I know we don't like to talk about the SMH. It's the SOX now, but they look very similar. In terms of that one ETF, you're talking about levels we haven't seen in quite some time. At least for me, and this has been going on for a while, that semi-trade that everybody's been talking about, we're looking at levels we last saw in April of last year in the SMH.

something that really hasn't traded particularly well now, if you really want to look at it since July of last year. Yeah. And I guess part of the semi trade is just how narrow it was. You know, we brought this up probably a hundred times over the last six months or so. It really was about Nvidia and it was about Taiwan semiconductor. And then when you think about like a broadcom, when it joined the faith late guy in December, as you like to call it, um,

you know, that was one that seemed to be kind of picking up some slack from some of the rest of the, um, you know, semi space that has not been participating in the generative AI. But, you know, one thing in 2022 during that bear market, you know, on fast money or other shows that you and I would do on CNBC, we get asked this question all the time. What do you buy? What do you buy? Right. And no one knew when the market was going to bottom in 2022. But when I look around and I say to myself, okay, I want to, I,

the whole idea that the prior leadership wouldn't be the new leadership on the way out. I kind of like reject that notion, especially in a market that's so concentrated among these top 10 names or so. And I used to say, Q's and two's, Q's and two's. Like to me, the way we were going to come out of the bear market in 2022.

was that the prior leadership, let's just call it that, you know, now it's the faithful eight, you know, leading to the upside, just getting way overdone. We knew a bunch of those stocks, whether it be Nvidia or Netflix or, you know, Tesla and, you know, Meta, they were all down 70%. We've talked about that from the highs in 21 to the lows in 22. But to me, it was going to be those names leading us out. And then it was also going to be a scenario where the Fed, which had been raising interest rates, we're going to start to

cut. That's why you wanted to own two years, right? Like that was my trade. But right now, guy, when you look at the faithful eight and you look at like a Broadcom that is making lows, it's down 35%. Every one of those names is down at least 20%. But then you think about the narrative and this goes back to core weave a little bit. The idea that there's no demand for a company that buys a lot of GPUs from Nvidia, puts them in servers and

And data centers that they lease that they don't own because there's fear of an overbill to data centers, right? And we've been talking about this for a while. And again, early, but the narrative was kind of correct, okay? It's like, I don't know how they lead like anytime soon. I think they're in the penalty box for a while.

Yeah, nobody wants to hear you sort of, not you, nobody wants to hear anybody talk poorly about their perceived champions. And the vitriol you get at times if you say something even remotely negative about the names you just mentioned. But on the top of that list is obviously Apple for a long time. But Nvidia's made that list pretty quickly as well in terms of please don't say anything negative about it. You don't understand the story.

How can you not see this type of thing? But quite frankly, yeah, there have been times where we've obviously missed the boat on NVIDIA. But there have been at least three times over the last year where we've warned of some downside coming in a way that the market was not prepared for. It happened in March of last year. It happened again in June. To a certain extent, it happened in the late fall. But it clearly happened in January when you saw that earnings report. You saw that engulfing pattern on the next day when it made a new all-time high of 153 and changed, closed on the lows and

But outside of a couple bounces here and there, we've never really looked back. And here we find ourselves either side of $105. And I think we're on the way to the levels that we saw in August of last year, which you probably have it in front of you, was probably either side of sort of $91 or so. And people will be like, how can you even say that? How is that possible? Well,

If you start to do the math and start to look at some of these things, I think it's very possible. And then maybe we'll have a conversation. You know, people will be quick to blame zero data expiry options for this move to the downside in individual names and in the broader market. And yeah, maybe that's some semblance of the truth. But of course, the problem with that is

When the market was going up every single day, those were equally to blame on the upside, but nobody wanted to point that out. So there are clearly a lot of things at work here. The market's trying to figure it out and flush through some things. And I think valuation finally mattered for some reason. And we're starting to get to at least pushing down to levels where we can start to sort of look at things through a different lens. Listen, we've talked about this now, I think, since week one of us doing the podcast, going back to...

you know, early 2021 and my friend Dan Benton, who used to be a semi and tech analyst at Goldman Sachs in the early 90s. I think he was there when you were there. He became a very successful hedge fund manager at Andor and he has this list of trading, you know, tech stocks. It goes back 30 some years or so. And a lot of these points that he wrote down and used to talk to clients about all those years ago have remained the same.

when earnings estimates, when margins, when they start to come down for tech stocks that are growth stocks, that are momentum stocks, that's when you want to start selling them, right? And so this is something that was telegraphed in like an NVIDIA for a very long time. You had been saying it, outkicking their coverage. You're talking about the margins and people were explaining away, this isn't just a hardware company. They have this software ecosystem, but when they...

demand starts to slow, when competition starts to come in, when the pricing power that they've had starts to abate, that's when margins are going to come in. That's been the story for the last six months. It's one of the main reasons why the stock had been stuck in the mud for a very long time, underperforming the broader market, right? And that sort of thing. So again, I just think that stuff is all important to keep a close eye

eye on. The question is, you could say, well, did it get overdone on a price perspective to the upside? Might it do the same thing to the downside? And so, you know, that is actually the reason why people are focused on valuation again. And, you know, this looks like the cheapest stock in the faithful eight right now. Well, if you're talking about NVIDIA in terms of valuation, yeah, maybe price to earnings, it looks reasonable. But, you know, there's still a problem, I think, on

on a price to sales metric. And if those margins continue to come in, that price to earnings, which is robust now and attractive, becomes very unattractive very quickly. And then people sell first, ask questions later. And the other thing to mention, this is something you've talked about, and I know I've brought it up as well. I mean, so much of this move has been predicated on future CapEx, right? Future CapEx. All these companies have talked about how much money they're investing, because if we don't invest, when we left out

and left out on the side of the road, left out in the cold. And again, maybe that's true. And maybe I've used the word, I think you have as well, maybe there is a sanctity to this CapEx, but I'm telling you, if things slow down in a meaningful way, the first thing that's going to get cut is CapEx. And obviously, I don't think that's priced into this yet either. ♪

Introducing Event Contracts from CME Group for individual investors who want a new, less complex way to trade some of the world's most recognized futures markets. They're smaller, lower cost, with predefined risk. Event Contracts let you trade your views on daily up or down price moves in equities, gold, oil, and more. The markets you know and use every day. Take a position by choosing a side with Event Contracts from CME Group.

Learn more at cmegroup.com slash eventcontracts.

In today's hyper-fast markets, it's never been more important to consider every option to raise capital, drive growth, and create value. Stay one step ahead with Strategic Alternatives, a podcast from RBC Capital Markets. This season, RBC's experts examine how corporates and investors are adapting their strategies, reassessing their portfolios, and reallocating capital to navigate uncertainty and volatility in the current macro environment.

Tune in to Strategic Alternatives, the RBC Capital Markets podcast today. All right, switching gears a little bit because, and before we kind of really drill down on some of the tariff stuff, Guy, you know, earnings season gets started in less than two weeks. J.P. Morgan reports on April 11th. So here we are, you know, again, it's not so far off. And I think the guidance and the commentary out of some of these companies, important ones,

like JP Morgan that are not so tied to this generative AI trade. While the CapEx guidance is gonna be really important, while the cloud growth numbers are gonna be really important for them, what JP Morgan has to say about the consumer, and that's also Bank of America, it's Wells Fargo, it's Citi, those are gonna be really important.

I'm less interested in Goldman and Morgan because I think this core we've deal, which is going to look like kind of embarrassing for them if it goes from 40 to 30 by the time those guys report, it's going to literally be the death knell. I believe for the first half of the year for IPOs and for M&A, how important is what Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan have to say in this environment where a lot of their corporate customers have no idea?

no idea what's going on as long as this tariff cloud kind of you know what i mean stays over their heads and then the consumer because the consumer has got to be on pause until they know what things are going to cost yeah i'd like to think it's important but i think you know this and you know i've sat through a lot of these things and i've heard from jamie dimon uh in in times other than just earnings calls and he's been very cautious in the half dozen to dozen times that he's spoken x

earnings and enduring earnings as well. He has painted a bit of a cloudy picture. Now, as he was painting that picture, for whatever reason, the market chose not to listen to him. Maybe this time around, they'll listen a little more carefully because quite frankly, a lot of the things that he's concerned about are starting to come to fruition. So

I always think it's important. I think you would agree with that. I don't think the market is necessarily listen to him or he did any warnings. He's put out there over the last year and a half for two years, but maybe this time with the price action of the market sort of the backdrop.

more people tune in and more people listen closely. And, you know, maybe you can glean something from that. But my instinct suggests he's going to be pretty consistent on some of the things that he's been saying for a while. Yeah, no doubt. That'll be really interesting as far as a sector to keep an eye on. The last one I'll just say is like, are we going to see some pre-announcements from some companies outside of financials that people even do that? You know, you talked about that last week when we were younger, that used to be a thing.

seemingly you got him a few a month that were both to the upside and the down, maybe more than a few. Now, you know,

You rarely get them if ever. Well, you know what's interesting? So this is about 10, 15 years ago. Semiconductors used to have what they called mid-quarter updates. They used to do it the first week of the third month of a quarter. And so it was basically kind of narrowing the guidance that they gave in the prior quarter, that sort of thing. Now, they did away with that. They just thought that too much transparency is probably not a good thing. But there used to be rules about if your quarter, whether it be earnings per

or sales were going to come with, you know, X, a certain percentage or something like that, that it was just good practice to pre-announce. And the only reason I mentioned that is because we saw that on the CapEx front from some of the big hyperscalers that had come out prior to, you know, giving some soft guidance on CapEx. And they probably thought that was an important number to get out of the way. And again, who knows, you know, how that happens one way or another, but I'm

My only point is, is like if we're living and I know you're not a golfer, I'm not either. But the whole idea is like you kind of have a mulligan right now. If you are a CEO of a company, you know what I mean? If you, you know, our friend John Butters over there at Fax Out, I guarantee you at some point over the next few weeks, he's going to be tracking how many times the word tariff has been used on, you know, on calls. And so that's, you know, earnings calls by CEOs or CFOs and like it's.

And it's going to explode, right? Because you know the more that you use it, the more cover you might have as it relates to your guidance. So that's something, you know, I guess I'm tracking you as a market participant. Does that matter to you if these companies are blaming, let's say, weak performance or cloudy guidance on, you know, just kind of, you know, what's going on with the trade war? Yeah, I think you're right. You know, 500 S&P company, excuse me.

500 companies in the S&P 500. Thank you, Guy. You'll probably get 65% or 70% of them in some way, shape, or form acknowledge or mention tariffs. And maybe that'll be some peak thing. And maybe then we've reached peak tariff in terms of what it means to the market. And I do think there's this digestion period going on. But I also think, and I think you would agree with this, the tariffs, as important as they are in as many cable news shows and

mainstream media shows that talk about tariffs

To me, that was just sort of the straw that broke the camel's back. Like everything we're seeing now was in place. I think tariffs just sort of tipped the scales a little bit. So here we are now. And I think that rhetoric, especially with an S&P at 5,500, you know, I don't want to say alarm bells are going off in the White House because they tried to get in front of this. They talked about how there was going to be some short-term pain. And when they said that, whether it was Treasury Secretary Besson or President Trump, I think they were specifically talking about the market.

But there will be a level where they convene and say, you know, we need to sort of start talking about things in a different light to sort of create some stability here for the market. And I've thought for a while at this sort of 5500 level for a lot of reasons makes sense. So we'll see. So now you have to be it's like you say all the time.

If you're playing from the short side, you're pushing against something that you might get right back in your face on the back of some mundane, ridiculous headline. I think the trajectory is still lower in the overall, in the aggregate, but I think we're at levels now where some of the spikes you could see could be pretty significant.

All right. So the next 48 hours to me are really interesting guy because, you know, Trump has talked a big game on the tariffs. He talked about not narrowing the scope, not kind of lessening, you know, some of the percentages that he's thrown out. He's been talking very aggressively about reciprocal tariffs, depending upon what some of our trading partners, you know, allies and adversaries alike. So the question really for him now is whether they blink.

because they've already laid out what are some of the worst case scenarios, and really it's kind of up to them what they do. Why would at this point, if you're Canada or Mexico or the EU, and you've been showing a strong front, would you just cave

You know what I mean? On the eve of these tariffs, because in many ways, you know, the way that some of these reciprocals have been done by our trading partners, they are targeting red states. Right. They are targeting places where people voted for this sort of action. And I'm not putting trade in tariffs at the top of the list that Trump ran on by no means was it.

But this is one of the first areas that he got really aggressive in. And I think a lot of folks, definitely CEOs who kind of back this administration, you know, the pro-growth agenda and the like, I think they were expecting to get the tailwind of tax cuts, whether it be in the economy and the markets. And then you could do some of this difficult sort of sledding as it relates to tariffs, which is what they did in the first administration.

So I guess now you look at this and I listen, I personally think and you'd say it comes from my biases or whatever. I think he's a really bad negotiator. I think the art of the deal guy is not good at it. He always says the quiet thing out loud. And so if we get to, you know, Wednesday and none of these guys, you know, they're calling his bluff. Then we have a scenario where I don't think anything gets fixed anytime soon, guy.

There was a scene in the first Wall Street movie, Hal Holbrook played the guy that ran the trading desk. And when Bud Fox was doing really well, Hal Holbrook embraced him, probably knowing that he was embracing somebody who was maybe doing things outside the lines, waiting for the inevitable fall. And at the end of the movie, when Bud Fox was

handcuffed and taken away, Hal Holbrook under his breath said, I never liked the guy, basically. So I think there's some of that going on with corporate America. They're embracing the person that's leading the race right now, waiting for, I don't want to use the word inevitable because that's not fair, but waiting for a potential misstep. And I think to a certain extent, that's going on. They needed to embrace him for obvious reasons. But if these policies are

that are trying to be put in place, continue to sow some backlash or some have some negative impact on their stocks or on the economy, then I think you're going to start to see some pushback. Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned what Treasury Secretary Besson said and what –

Trump said about the detox, about the short-term pain, that sort of thing. I think they were speaking to consumers. I think they were speaking about their 401ks because you wouldn't speak to corporate America about the stock market. You would speak to them about the economic impacts, right? And so when I think about that, I think what you just said is probably the most important point because they were speaking to voters. But if you are corporate America, you're going to back

that horse because you basically feel like the first town around, they gave us the tax cuts. You know what I mean? They deregulated that sort of thing. This time around, it seems a bit ass backwards. But again, we'll see how that plays out. We'll see what the mood is behind the scenes because we've heard a lot about a lot of reporting about what the auto execs are saying or, you know, the steel execs are saying to them. So that is all interesting because I just don't think that our trading partners or I think they're going to try to call the bluff.

Okay, here is an article and this is kind of in the same vein guy that I saw on the Wall Street Journal. I think was yesterday or this morning Harley-Davidson wants payback if Europe targets its bike. So I'm going to get into some of the specifics in a second. But this reminds me of some of these agriculture tariffs that we had back in 2018. We collected let's call it collected 60 billion dollars in tariffs. Okay for incoming agriculture, but our farmers

demanded $60 billion in payback from the government because they were going to drown under these terrorist situations or whatever. So when you think about that and you read an article like Harley Davidson, these bikes are made

predominantly in Milwaukee, okay? So the heartland of America, but a lot of them get shipped overseas and they've been gonna be, you know, nailed with some huge tariffs, right? And they're gonna be competing with some local brands and the like. And so I think this is interesting. In 2018, this is what the article says, the EU imposed a 25% duty on Harleys during a global trade spat over metals.

The fee stood for three years. The company absorbed $166 million. Okay, that doesn't have a B. $166 million cost to hold down retail prices and move some production. You ready for this? From the U.S. to Thailand. The tariffs caused them to move production to Thailand. So here's a consultant to this article speaking. He said, even a 10% to 20% increase in pricing plus antipathy towards America brands...

in general would be a death knell. Explain that to me, that the reason for the tariffs is going to cause U.S. manufacturers of motorcycles to move production to Thailand. Yeah, think about it. You do what you need to do in corporate America to survive. I mean, you want to... I'm sure there's some companies out there that would love to have sort of a nationalistic bend to it, and I get it. And you know what? There used to be when I was a kid,

the Made in America tag meant a lot. And I think the world has changed a lot. And for a lot of reasons, companies are producing things overseas. I mean, we can get into it. We talk about it all the time. But again, the unintended consequences, you know, I think the headlines make sense to a lot of people. It resonates with a lot of people. We're getting ripped off and we're going to extract our pound of flesh. But in doing so,

you may extract that pound of flesh, but you got to give something back in return. And they're sort of the hidden danger of this whole thing. You know, companies will figure this out. They have very clever people running all these different places and be careful what you wish for. I say it all the time because you may get it. It's not just as simple as everything's going to be reshored and

And you're going to be penalized if you don't. I mean, that's the headline. But below the surface, there are obviously a lot of other things at work. All right. Before we get to the jobs really quickly, last story I want to hit here, guys. So get your tiny little violin out if you have it near you. This is an article from Bloomberg Magazine.

Musk says Doge Roll is costing him as Tesla shares slump. This is an interesting one. He said, it's costing me a lot to be in this job. He said this from a town hall event in Wisconsin last night on Sunday night. He is in Wisconsin because him and some super PACs associated with him have spent $20 million for an election campaign.

on Tuesday of a Supreme Court judge. The election is really important because this seat tips the tips of the Supreme Court one way or the other. And then it's really about redistricting for congressional seats. And what he's saying is, is that the outcome of this, the country weighs in the wings because if the redistricting happens and the Democrats win the House in the midterms, you know, this is his most important focus. But

in the same event, he's talking about how his shares are slumping and it's costing him a lot. And I think this is like a really important quote here is what they're trying to do is put massive pressure on me. Okay. He says, I don't know. Stop doing this. My Tesla stock is the stock of everyone who holds Tesla has gone, went roughly in half.

I mean, it's a big deal. I mean, like, I don't even know if that was English. That's a direct quote from this event or so. I mean, if you are putting your toe in the water as a CEO of this company and many really important companies, that's politics. But he's also on the policy side, on the Doge side. So are we meant to feel bad for him about this? Because he's got his hand in a lot of cookie jars. And the one he's whining about are the ones that I guess are most important to us and our listeners.

Do you ever have trouble sleeping by any chance? Yeah, last night. Last night, a little bit. See that? So it's interesting. So you're a Shakespeare fan? A little bit. I know what you're going to say, but go ahead. So Henry, well, there you go. Henry IV, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. You know, he was having trouble sleeping because of all the responsibilities associated with the job. And I mean, that's just...

Part and parcel. I mean, again, with with with with what people that have been given great things, great things are expected of and their responsibilities associated. And this is one of them. So do I feel I feel sorry for people that lose their jobs? I feel sorry for people that are stricken with cancer. You know, all those different things. It's hard to feel sorry.

for me at least, for the wealthiest man in the world who's getting some pushback on the automobiles that he manufactures because of some of the actions that a lot of people deem unsavory. So I don't feel particularly good or bad. I'm sort of ambivalent about the whole thing. Well, it's just interesting because you had the Commerce Secretary Lutnick, this was two weeks ago, I think on a Sunday show, telling everybody they should buy Tesla stock. You had Trump on the

White House lawn with Tesla's there telling people to buy Tesla's. It just seems so goofy. All right, last thing. Friday, jobs report. What do you think the market wants?

See, that is the question of the week. Now, theoretically, the market should want a really hot number, like a great jobs number, because that would theoretically put the Fed firmly in place for a series of rate cuts, because the market seems to think that at this point, what can save us are rate cuts. So I think the market is looking for a really strong number. That might be beneficial for the market in short term. I really don't know.

weak number, though, I think is more likely, then you have to start figuring out. And what the third piece of this sort of stagflation puzzle, by the way, again, it was like almost 12 months ago that Jerome Powell said in response to a question, I believe, in what he thought was a very clever way, I see neither the stag nor the flation. And he

Here we are 11, 12 months later, and you have a lot of people, a lot smarter than I am, which is not a high bar, talking about exactly that. And the third piece, I think the most important piece to that stagflation is an unemployment rate that starts to move higher. So as much as you might think you want to see a weak number that puts the Fed in play,

I don't know what to tell you here at this point, Dan. I don't know what the market is rooting for. Yeah. Last thing I'll just say is that when he said the stag or the flation, I don't think he was considering the fact that we would be on the eve of a trade war just as it really became apparent. You know what I mean? You know what? Are you giving him a pass? I know. No, no, I'm not. No, no, no. I'm not giving him a pass. What I'm saying is.

if he was looking at the playbook from Trump one, one Dotto, he probably thought that they would get again, the tailwind of an easier tax situation. And then they were going to do some of the harder things, which is what they did the first time, which actually counterbalance. So now what you're doing is, and I think the worst things get right now, the longer this goes, the more difficulty they're going to have, especially with this very, very narrow lead in the house.

of pushing through an extension of the tax cuts first time around. So that to me is what's very different. Who knows how it's going to play out? I think on Friday morning, we're going to have a lot more clarity both on tariffs and on the jobs report. And it'll be interesting if the next week we see some Fed speak and kind of indicating where they are likely to go on this thing. We don't have a meeting in April. We got to get to May and then we're going to hear a lot of earnings guidance.

A lot going on over the next month. I think you and I both agree that 17 in the VIX last week was totally too low. We're going to be potting all week, and so we'll see where the VIX gets. We'll see who blinks on this trade thing. But we covered a lot of ground. Guy, this week, we have a big week as it relates to podcasts. You don't only have to listen to Guy and me all week. We have Deirdre Bosa of CNBC.

Her pod is going to drop with us on Wednesday morning. We have Ben Callow from a Baird company. He is a Tesla analyst. We're also going to have Tesla's deliveries are going to come out, I think, on Wednesday, guys. So we're going to have Ben on the pod with us on Tesla. Josh Brown joins me for the Friday pod. He is of the Ritholtz management. You would just call him T.R.B.

The TRB. The TRB. So a lot going on this week. Stick with us here, people. We're kind of strapping in just like all you guys are. So we appreciate it. Thanks, guys.