Rob Armstrong

in real inflation-adjusted terms, is something like 7%, 7.5%.

So we're going along maybe tripling or quadrupling the standard rate of growth this quarter.

It is like an amazing event we're seeing.

And it goes a long way to justify the dizzy heights that markets have hit.

Each dollar of profits costs you the same thing, right?

And so there's just more of the profits.

But there's also one of the sectors that's growing earnings at a very lively pace this quarter is industrials.

Like these metal banging, real world living in heavy metal kind of companies are doing great.

And part of that, I wrote about this in the newsletter last week, is there's a handful of them working.

where they're just building data centers and they're like putting in the air conditioners for the data centers and throwing the wires in the ground and putting the building up and et cetera, et cetera.

So there is a handful of industrial stocks that have just gone bananas because literally they are beyond their capacity to serve the construction needs of the data center.

You know, you can't put the air conditioners in fast enough.

Caterpillar, which makes industrial machinery for mining, construction and such in a characteristically yellow color, also makes generators that produce backup energy.

So they'll roll up with a huge backup generator for your data center.

They can't sell them things fast enough.

And that's been like the best, you know, one of the very best stocks in the S&P has been Caterpillar earnings wise.

Yeah, they've been great.

So two things working in banks' favour.

One is if you're a bank that has a trading desk, so you're one of the big global banks, it's been a volatility playground out there.

A trading desk doesn't need markets to go up.