Brad Gerstner

And and, you know, the nature of it is we have this two tier economy.

The low end consumer is faltering.

The higher end consumer is hanging in there.

But the consumer thing is making people nervous.

Now, compounding that is U.S.

credit card delinquencies are now back to, you know, 2009 levels.

And so you have, okay, consumer cracking a little bit, delinquencies, and now we're seeing regional banks roll over, et cetera.

We're seeing the credit markets beginning to crack a little bit, credit spreads blowing out a little bit.

And then if you go to this next slide, this goes to what Sachs has talked a lot about on this pod, that we're still in highly restrictive territory when you look at the 10-year tips.

you know, the Fed is still, you know, got the market tight, because they're seeing, you know, the market at all time highs, they're seeing AI stocks rip.

But under the surface, I think there's a lot of concern and question about what's going on.

The good news about this is we still have firepower.

So what's going on in this earnings season?

You know, this next slide, basically, earnings have come in really strong, you know, so we have 70% of companies that are beating, they're beating by wide margins.

you know, in earnings.

But if you look at the forecast, you know, basically earnings have come in about 11% higher than last year.

And the stocks are up about 13 or 14%.

But the real question is, as we roll into next year,

And so, you know, Scott Besson, on the one hand, is saying, listen, in Q1, we're going to have some big tax refunds because of no tax on tips, no tax on overtime.

And he thinks that'll give it a boost.