Dan Caplinger

This is September data that we're looking at.

Retail sales up 4.2% year-over-year from September 2024.

That includes a bunch of stuff.

It does not include natural price increases, though.

You take a look at CPI up 3% over the same period.

You're really looking at just like a 1.2 percentage point increase in real terms, inflation adjusted returns on retail sales.

And when you look at the numbers, Travis, it's not quite as good as that because a lot of that extra spending is really more towards the essentials, the staples types of areas, things like food.

clothing essentials.

When you look at discretionary spending, not quite as healthy.

We saw some strength in autos, but I think some of that, again, September numbers, we saw a pull forward in September as EV credits expired.

I think that the picture here, maybe not quite as rosy as those headline numbers would make it sound.

Asit, it's interesting because I've taken that.

It's sort of shifted my investing philosophy a little bit.

It used to be that I kind of shied away from over-investing in high-tech stocks because I kind of felt like my job had a lot to do with the success of those high-tech stocks.

And now at this point, it's sort of like, well, if high tech has a potential to replace me, it's sort of like, where's that income going to come from, Travis?

It's going to come from my holdings of the high tech stocks that are profiting from all this stuff.

So in many ways, it's a career hedge in a way that before I kind of shied away from it as a career concentration.

Yeah, that seems to me to be how retail has evolved, is that retail has figured out that in many ways, they can't do things based on their traditional model.

They need to take advantage of these intermediary platforms that expand their visibility, widen the scope of their products.

I mean, I've got