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Chapter 1: Why are stock markets hitting record highs despite geopolitical tensions?
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of rising income inequality in today's market?
Today's number 107. That's how many rounds of golf Trump has played during his second term. He's been in office for 456 days. Ed, what's the difference between a golf ball and a woman's G-spot?
Oof, I don't know.
A man will spend 10 minutes looking for a golf ball. Claire's nodding her head. I've got approval. All right, we were talking about the Pope earlier. All right, how did the boy save the priest's life, Ed? How? He found a lump on his scrotum. Oh, that's wrong. Now Claire's head is in her hands. I don't really get why it would save his life. Spell it out, Claire.
Yeah, there we go. I got it.
Our little head's growing up. Our little head's growing up.
That just salvaged the whole thing. You're not understanding. Makes it funny.
My stupidity makes it funny. See you about Princeton.
Ed, how are you?
I'm doing very well. Yeah, I'm excited about this live tour. Tickets are flying off the shelves. It's all selling out.
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Chapter 3: How does 'timeline fatigue' affect investor sentiment?
It's almost too late, unless you go right now to ProfiteerMarketsTour.com. Everything's going well.
How are you doing? I'm good, except people keep calling me and asking me for a free ticket. I'm like, it's a hundred bucks.
Just get on it. You know, they don't, they don't give us that many. I mean, I'm sure we could just solve that ourselves, but we haven't been given that many friends and family tickets. I think we only have like 10 between us and then we've got a whole production team.
Yeah, but fortunately you don't have any friends. So what are you doing this weekend, Ed? What are you up to? Not that I care, but I'm looking for a banter here.
We could always just skip the banter. We don't have to do this. We can do whatever we like. It's our show. If you hate talking about people's weekends, we can skip it.
I like the banter. It's my opportunity to fuck with you. What are you doing this weekend?
You're not going to like my answer. I'm working all weekend. Except actually I'm having dinner with my mom who's visiting. So I'll see her. And so that'll be nice. That's nice. I'm glad to hear it. Yeah. What are you doing?
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the growing backlash against AI?
Gosh, I have strikingly few plans this weekend.
Lame.
Yeah. No, I don't have a lot going on this weekend.
It's not hit as well when I make fun of you.
Yeah. I have a friend in town. I'm looking. And then I'm headed back. I'm going to have dinner with my son Sunday night. Yeah, I don't got a lot going on. Not a lot going on.
That's nice. Very wholesome, very wholesome vibes from Professor Galloway this weekend. That's very exciting.
Yeah. No, this is a laugh riot. Should we get on to the headlines? Is this how you talk to other people? I'm curious. Pretty much. See above, I have no plans this weekend.
What a shocker, right?
I have no plans. Not a ton of people calling and saying, hey, let's get together. Yeah, no, not a lot of plans, Ed.
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Chapter 5: How is public sentiment shifting regarding Big Tech companies?
Today, we're discussing why stocks are hitting record highs, despite everything that's going on in the world, rising backlash against AI. And we will check in on your stock pick of the year, the Profiting Media stock pick of the year, which is turning out to be kind of a good pick. We'll see how it goes. Let's start with our first story.
You'll have plenty of the wherewithal.
It was a turbulent week, geopolitically and economically. Peace talks with Iran collapsed. The U.S. blockaded the Strait of Hormuz and surging oil and gas prices are feeding into higher inflation and also weakening consumer confidence even more. The International Monetary Fund warned that further disruptions in oil markets could raise the risk of a global recession.
They also reduced their forecast for global GDP growth. And yet... Despite all of that, the S&P hit an all-time high and the Nasdaq hit an all-time high. And the question for investors now is why are markets so bullish? Why do markets continue to go up? Why do stocks continue to go up? I have a lot of thoughts here. This stuff is fascinating.
It is kind of the biggest question on every investor's mind right now. But I will start here, Scott, with your reactions. What do you make of the fact that all of this is happening, all of this conflict, all of this war, gas prices surging, and yet the stocks continue to go up?
People often refer to this economy as the K-economy, meaning some people doing really well, other people doing not so well. I like the term, or I just made this up, the ketamine economy, and that is ketamine is a disassociative drug. You literally kind of leave your body and see your life for what it is, and it can be very helpful.
That's really a bad description of the effects of ketamine, but... It's disassociative. And I've said for a long time, I think the NASDAQ and the Dow are two of the worst metrics or most unhealthy metrics ever invented because they give the illusion that people are doing well. And it really is. It's a proxy for earnings and a proxy for the wealth of the top 10%.
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Chapter 6: What factors are driving the bullish outlook for big tech stocks?
So what do you have? All right. So, I mean, think about it. If the majority of our markets now are being run by 10 companies that are in the business of AI or online or software, do they care that gas prices are up? In addition, there's this phenomena of
buying the dip, and that is, if you look at the last three exogenous events in America, you would say the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and then 9-11, and maybe COVID, let's go four. Well, I guess the Iraq War is linked to 9-11. Basically, there was a dip, and then the markets ripped back the following year. The markets had above-market returns the following year. And we did have a drawdown here.
We had a 10% decline in the Dow in March at the outset of the war, and it's ripped back. And I think what's happening is the cycle time between fear and uncertainty around a war and the opportunity to buy is compressing. And now people are like, let's move to the part of the program where we make money.
I also think there's a bit of a, in my view, overly optimistic viewpoint that the war is going to settle down and the straits are going to be... unblocked, if you will. But mostly what I think this is about is that the markets have disassociated from the majority of people's wellbeing and their prosperity.
I mean, just to look at how stocks have performed so far this year. So we are, as we said, we're at record highs for the S&P. I mean, it hasn't been a tremendous increase in the stock market, but it's gone up and the stock market was already very high at the beginning of the year. It's gone up, so now we're at a record high. And so you think about, okay, what are the reasons why that's happened?
So year to date... when you look at the sectors that have outperformed, the biggest winners have been industrials up 11%, materials up 12%, and energy up 24%. And the laggards, at least leading up to the war, were things like tech, communication services, and financials. Since we hit the bottom,
from the iran war so that was march 30th that was the market bottom thus far it's been a very different story it's actually reversed energy has fallen it's down nine percent since the bottom and the winners have been financials up 11 communication services up 18 and tech up 17 so
The big trouble here is trying to understand, and this is always an impossible question, but it's trying to understand, what are the markets actually thinking here? We had this steady, steady decline where the markets weren't taking an elevator down, but they were taking the stairs down as the Iran war unfolded.
We kept on getting this kind of scary news where things weren't really resolved, and then we kept dropping more bombs, and then there was more conflict. Markets went down and down and down.
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Chapter 7: What are the key predictions for Amazon and Microsoft in 2026?
And then on March 30th, something happened. We hit the bottom. And then since then, we've basically been shooting up. And a lot of people have been saying, well, the markets must think that the Iran war is over or they're too optimistic that this thing is going to be resolved. And I think that that's possible. But again, we should sort of remind ourselves, like, why are they up?
It's basically because everyone's piling into tech again. I mean, we had this massive drawdown in the tech sector. Everyone was very, very bearish on the sector. And now we're seeing that actually people are fine again. And so I think the question is trying to identify what exactly happened here? What are investors thinking about this? And I think it's a few things.
I think that one, investors are recognizing some of your points, which is that... I mean, the stock market is not the economy. If gas prices go up, yes, it might have some impact on lower income consumers. And we can get to that because it is very interesting. But ultimately, high earners are completely price insensitive. Doesn't matter to them. They drive consumer spending.
Same thing with big companies. Same thing with tech companies. They're going to be fine. But then the other side of it that I do think is quite interesting, and you mentioned the word dissociative there. You call this the ketamine market, which I think is interesting. Yeah.
I wonder if there's also been a little bit of what I would call timeline fatigue, where we thought we understood what the story of this war was. And there were all of these different plot points. We strike Iran, we kill the Supreme Leader, but then the son is appointed. Then Trump says that we've had productive talks and we think that maybe the negotiations are going to go somewhere.
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Chapter 8: How does income inequality influence consumer behavior and market dynamics?
Then they don't. Then he says, open the fucking street, you crazy bastards. Then he says, a whole civilization will die tonight. We think that the climax is going to happen, that there's going to be perhaps some event that ties a bow on this whole situation. And then since then, it's just been a mirage of confusion.
I mean, they say there's a ceasefire, then they say there's not a ceasefire, then there's a blockade, then they blockade the blockade. And I wonder if this is investors basically saying, you know what, we don't really understand this, so let's just go back to the basics here. Big tech is extremely good at what they do. They are crushing it on the AI front. Earnings are ripping.
So let's just go back to what we know and let's just go in and buy tech again. And that's the only thing that we know to be true. So it's, I mean, I'd like to hear a response. Because there are so many different reasons that you could give as to why markets are behaving the way they are.
But that is the closest thing that I can draw to what I believe is the truth about what investors are really thinking right now.
I buy all of that, but I see it just again as a symptom of income inequality. Does it really matter to you? I mean, you may not feel rich, but you are relative to your peer group. You're already in the top two, if not 1% in terms of income earner. Do you give a shit that gas is at $6 a gallon? No. The people driving the Dow are unaffected by oil prices.
And, you know, again, everything gets outsourced in our country. Basically, we're becoming a country where the whole, the bottom 99% are, we optimize the bottom 99% and treat them as nutrition for the top 1%. And the reason the bottom 99 put up with it is that in America, the bottom 99 all thinks at some point they'll be in the top 1%.
So, but all of this pain is outsourced to lower middle-income households. Lower-income households spend 22% of their income on energy costs. So this really, I mean, this really whacks them, right? So, but the people responsible for 50% of consumer spending, the top 10%, AI, like what the fuck does AI care unless they start bombing the data centers in the Gulf, but they have redundant resources.
infrastructure and also in the US it's a bit, I don't wanna say it's a wash, but we have, we're net exporters. We have a lot of energy companies that I can't imagine what's happened to the stocks of the companies that build the materials for pipelines. We have Exxon and Chevron. I mean, you know, those companies are making a lot of money. Those companies are actually doing pretty well.
So, and then when there's, it's almost, you know, it's unfair, but it's true. When this type of insecurity hits the world markets, there's a flight to safety or the least unsafe place. And that's the US and tech stocks and the dollar. It's sort of like, well, where do we go? We don't know. Well, okay, let's go back into tech.
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