Christina Hooper

There could be more discretion and more thoughtfulness around spending.

So I certainly think there's a little of both there.

I just, as an outside observer, seeing the incredible, incredible amount of money and excitement, there's nothing like it, I think, since what we've seen in the late 1990s.

We know how that ended, so we should just think of it as a cautionary tale and say, hey, maybe we should be diversified.

Maybe we should have some exposure to China AI, given that the risks aren't the same, the vulnerabilities aren't necessarily the same there.

So I certainly think we are seeing consumer weakness especially among lower income consumers but also some middle income consumers.

And I think we can just look to the Chipotle earnings call last week for signs of that growing weakness.

September and October were difficult months where the frequency of visits went down for a lot of

customers, many of whom are young.

And so that could very well be giving us an inclination of what could come and what could spread.

Because keep in mind, we are seeing a lot of white collar job layoffs being announced.

we could see more coming, and that will likely impact middle to higher income consumers, many of whom are still spending quite robustly.

And that could create a much bigger problem for the economy.

Thus far, it's been a two-legged stool, and it could very well go down to one and a half legs.

Well, we could still have a very strong holiday quarter driven by those higher income consumers.

My concern, though, is that there are vulnerabilities there.

And especially as we go into 2026, we could see more in the way of white collar layoffs.

We also know that the higher income consumers are not so sensitive to inflation, but they are very sensitive to the stock market.

And so if we were to see some kind of stock market sell off, I think that would be problematic and would certainly reduce

high-end consumer spending as well.