Skanda Amarnath

And yet we've also seen the labor market is not...

signaling red right now is signaling something that's at least solid.

Maybe there's been some pickup actually in some sectors that have been soggy for a long time.

So the labor market's not at the left tail and the inflation stuff's closer to the right tail.

That's a little bit different macro picture.

The one constant has been the AI boom is continuing to boom.

And that kind of tells you, look, financial conditions, pretty supportive.

Growth, better than expected.

Inflation, higher than we want.

That's a different picture than the one we were telling ourselves maybe 12 months ago.

Yeah, I'm very surprised that the consumer has been as strong as it has, despite a housing market that's been pretty frozen for a while.

I mean, we're seeing maybe some relief on inventories finally.

Inventory is starting to come down, and maybe you'll start to see some home price appreciation.

But the labor market has been soggy for a while, as you said, in terms of job growth, in terms of wage growth.

Those are generally slowing throughout 2024 and 2025.

And some of that's obviously supply side, immigration, but it's still less money earned through your paycheck.

And that tends to matter for consumer spending over time.

So where are you funding this consumer spending?

If you look at the personal saving rate right now, it's kind of collapsed.

So it tells you that on some level, consumer spending growth is just outperforming.