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All right, so let's talk about retail if we may, because investors like in some of the results, not so much Macy cutting its outlook, demand trends worsening, but the stock rallying after initial drop. This morning, we've got Nordstrum shares jumping better than expected quarterly results, and Matt we have Dollars General stock plunging. It slashed its annual profit forecast, citing rising economic pressures on its shoppers, which always gets me worried because that's the low end of retail.
Right, I mean, I was just going to say, that's a wide range, right, completely different shoppers I would imagine completely at Macy's or Nordstrums than Dollar General. On the other hand, Nordstrum is seemingly doing better because of their discount, and I don't know how cheap it is actually at the I imagine Nords from RACA is still pretty expensive, right.
Yeah, it's so cheaper, and but I will say that they've been going through a lot of stuff, right, They've been having some difficulties, so you know they've they've been beaten up for a while. But yes, it's not inexpensive, but that's where you go for bargains anyway. Someone who really knows what's going on is Mary Ross Gilbert. She's senior retail analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence and she joins us on Zoom from Los Angeles. Hey, Mary, nice to check
in with you. So a bunch of you know, retailers reporting kind of wrapping up the retail earning season or getting close to it. Let's start with Macy's, which I still feel like Lisa Bromwooz hit it right on the nose earlier today. I think Macy's is still trying to figure out what they want to be.
Well, you know, that's interesting that you say that, because when I think about what's happening at Macy's, I'm really seeing an improvement in the overall execution of the business. But I think as you started to talk about the differences in the consumer, you spoke about dollar General, where the consumer there's getting really hit and there at the low end. So if you look at Macy's, their core customer is earning somewhere around under seventy five thousand a year.
And so that's where you're seeing the real hit on the Macy's side. Now on the Nordstrom side, and you brought up Nordstrom and then Nordstrom rack and you sort of wondered, well, hey, are they a little bit higher end? And the answer is yes. So the average consumer household income for the rack is one hundred thousand.
Where is it.
At Nordstrom the banner It's actually over one hundred and fifty thousand, So you can see that there is a difference there the higher end.
So they're in Nordstrom the head the headlines door, it's one hundred and fifty thousand. That's the average household in for and had the rack, it's one hundred grand, and at Macy's it's seventy five.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's for their for their core customers.
I always think of Macy's as really fancier because Bloomingdale's is across the street from us, right, and Bloomingdale's is Bloomingdale's.
Because I was speaking specifically about the Macy's banner, So Bloomingdale's the banner is going to be akin to Nordstrum, and in some cases, I feel like it's higher end because they have that designer element within Nordstrom that really crosses over well with Bloomingdale. So I would say that their customer base is very similar.
So why do you think Macy's sold off? I know why they sold off initially, and then why do you think they rallied? Is it just the market bounce? I found that hard to believe because it was a pretty substantial low. I think it was down about five six percent at its lows today.
Yeah, it really was. I mean, it's hard for me to know exactly what's going and you know, going on in terms of the stock movement. If I had to venture a guest, I'd say part of it could be shortcovering thinking that, you know, maybe this is the end of the bad news, especially since Macy's came out dramatically cut their guidance for the year, and I think they did it to really leave room for upside, especially in
the second half, to outperform in the second half. So I really think that that was sort of the key element there.
It was.
I mean, to me, a little bit concerning to read what Jeannette said, and I think I wrote it down to myself somewhere around here.
He said, you know, last year.
They had even expected a downturn in twenty twenty three, but this year it was worse than or this month they realized it was even worse than expected.
Let me get the direct quote.
We planned the year assuming that the economic health of the consumer would be challenged. But starting in late March, demand trends weakened further in our discretionary categories.
So it's even worse than they thought.
Yes, it was even worse than they thought.
So it was more Remember it was more dramatic at the Macy's banner, less so at Bloomingdale's, right, because the Macy's banner was down like seven point eight percent something like that on a comp sales basis, whereas the Bloomingdale's banner was down four point three. And then their beauty, their high end beauty banner, which is called Blue Mercury,
was actually at four point three in the quarter. But I think there's another key point here, and that is they definitely saw an effect with weather and really where they saw the weakness in the categories was around sort of spring and summer merchandise, and what happened is is they've had to take a hit on that discount that and move it out, and they're very good at doing that. So Q two is really going to have the negative
effect of that markdown Act activity. But when I walked through the stores, I was just there on Tuesday, walking through the stores, and they look very clean, meaning a lot of fresh merchandise in there.
They're beautiful.
They're continuing to upgrade their flagship stores. So when you start to walk into a Macy's now, it's starting to look more and more elevated, almost like especially the beauty department, almost like walking into a Bloomingdale's or a Nordstrum type environment.
That's where they missing an idea of what are you doing?
That's where they're making money. I feel like perfumes and makeup right in terms of margins, what I'm just the one.
I try and get through and out of that floor as quickly as I can. Everybody's spraying you. They all want to talk. It's like a stop and chat thing. Get away from me.
It really is, So let's talk.
Go ahead.
It's an important category.
You mentioned, it's thirty percent of their sales you know around this time of year, but come in the holidays it's forty percent. So it is it is big.
All right?
Dollar General. Oh, their spectrum stocks down about nineteen percent, so it's pretty much hovering near its lows the session. It's down a lot this year. I'm just looking at what it is. It's down almost thirty four percent here in twenty twenty three. So, Mary, how do you see that. Is it a case that people are trading up so they're not shopping there, or is it something more substantial and not a good sign, certainly for shoppers at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
Okay, well, not to talk over our expert on Dollar General, which is Jen Bartashus, but just knowing what's going on with the lower end consumer, you know, they're having to cut back on discretionary and that's really what you're seeing there on the Dollar General channel.
Yeah.
I just was looking at a chart from Torsten Slock also who's the chief economist at Apollo Global Management, and it shows that credit card delinquency rates are moving higher. This has got to be a concern, especially at the lower end, if they don't have money packed away like you know, wealthier consumers.
That's exactly right.
One interesting point and that is that employment still remain strong, so I think there is going to be some resilience there. It's just that there's not a lot left with inflation and food and energy and so you know, that's where they have to be very careful in their spend. So I think we're going to continue to see some choppiness, you know, across the board with retail, which is what we'll see where we might have a strong weak month here or there, and then all of a sudden, you know,
after that, we'll see some weakness. So yeah, I think there's going to continue to be some choppiness, but there is to a certain extent some resilience. But also remember that in the first quarter we're going against some very you know, strong figures last year, so the comparisons are are really tough right now. They get so much easier in the second half, and that's where things could look a little bit better.
All right, we got to run Hey, Mary, thank you so much. Mary Ross Gilbert, Senior Retail Alice at Bloomberg Intelligence on Zoom from LA you know, Victoria's secret.
How did we miss that?
With you in the studio, Carol.
There used to be a Victoria Secret right across the street. I remember I went over there and got you some stuff at one point.
It's a little it's a little Santa hat. I remember, it's a Santa Claus hat. Stockstown nine percent was down about fifteen percent, some disappointment over their results. So how did we miss this one?
I don't know. I kind of ignore that kind of stuff.
Ever since Cant canceled Culture Pop, I've stayed away from Victoria's Secrets.
I never go to the fashion show anymore.
He's a little nervous. I do remember that piece as well.
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You remember, well, maybe you don't, but we know. We talk about the cost of healthcare a lot. We talked about inflation generally. Healthcare certainly plays into it. What I know, I'll tell you yesterday.
Was hit by a truck one time in New York and I had to go to the hospital for like a month and had five surgeries, and I was messed up the whole time, and I had to deal with these bills. I had no idea you know what, I had to pay, and I didn't have to pay. I had to deal with the insurance company. They didn't really like voluntarily help me.
So it's like, did you don't have did it just pay for everything?
No, it ended up costing me a ton, I mean tens of thousands of dollars. And by the way, what insurance paid for like was over a quarter of a million bucks for that, it is so expensive in this country.
Having lived in Germany for the past.
Few years, very different stories, it's.
A very different story.
Well, what's interesting we hear a lot of stories we want to bring in our guests because we talk a lot about the spending that we do here in the United States on medical care healthcare, and yet sometimes the outcomes are not on par in a positive way when you compare the spending and other developed countries. So let's
get to it with Gbi. She is Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, supported by Michael Ura Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropy. She's on Zoom in Washington, DZ. Gee, it is nice to have you here with us. Matt's not wrong. I mean sometimes I look at a bill and I'm like, oh my god, it was emergency visit, you know, and didn't have any other choice but to go there because it was midnight.
It's outrageously expensive. Why is outrageous?
Why is it so expensive in the United States?
Yes, thank you.
My reason for the high price is that there's no price information available to patient consumers, so they're plandfolded and can now do comparison shopping. The providers have no price competition and no incentive to lower their price.
But how do you do price competition in medical care? Like is there is there like a travelocity or something.
Yeah, because I have to say, Gee, as I said, I lived in Germany for the past six years. There no one, No one showed me a price before I had any kind of treatment. There was no price comparison there, but prices were significantly lower for care that was, if not as good, better than in the US.
Unfortunately, you know, we have a very different system in Germany's more public funded healthcare system. Here is more private funded. So if we don't have price competent competition, probably we're going to pay even much higher price.
Well wait, so so what kind of price competition we do we have here? We don't right we right now?
Yeah?
Go ahead.
Think about the direct pay like classic surgery or over the counterdrugs. We have price competition, that's why those services are very cheap. But for other services, you know, covered by insurance, non elective, yet we don't have price competition because we don't know the price.
So is there anything that can be done to change this? Or have Americans just decided that we want to have the most expensive and not the highest quality healthcare in the world.
You love that common demand, you know now the all Americans are putting the bill right through high out of pocket costs and the high premiums. The press. Competition always bring the best value for consumers, so house care is no exception. So I think the first step is price transparency.
How do you do that? How do you do that?
So right now we have so what is it?
Yeah? Go ahead? How would it work?
We have true regulations right now asking hospitals to post the price for all their services, and insurance companies do the same.
So it's just a start.
But once the systems start running, hopefully patients be easily they'll get the information they need before they seek care.
When we're looking at reasons for runaway prices here, how much of it is our towards system. I mean, you can sue a doctor for malpractice for millions of dollars, and that's why the doctor has to get incredibly expensive malpractice insurance that must drive it up a lot. And the other thing is on the on the drug side of it. I mean, don't we all know that drug
makers are just in bed with politicians. I mean they charge for the pills that we have to buy exponentially higher prices than they charge in other parts of the world. So I feel like those two drivers are important to mention as well.
Absolutely, the compliance costs and legal hosts imposed on providers, but the adventually go to us, go to our patients and to our company. You are right in fact that the Washington DC is controlled the buy industry. So if we depend on Washtern DC to do things through radios costs, probably we're not going to be successful. Eventually has to come from the market, from consumers, from the collective wisdom.
That's why competition that will be important.
You know what I find tricky. I almost feel like big hospital. You know, it's interesting. My family, a member of my family just went through surgery and an incredible hospital in New York City and it was just impeccable the care from start to finish, and luckily, you know, covered by this incredible insurance we have at Bloomberg. To
be fair, but it was incredible the process. But at the same time, I look at these hospitals and they're building wings, and there's gorgeous cafes and there's place today, and I almost feel like it's like academia. It's such a competition to build out and be the best facilities, and I feel like how much gets away from it really just has to be about good care and how do we kind of get back to that focus.
Love that carell I think we have the best people, all the providers and households. They are well intentioned, but the problem incentive. Our system has a lot of bad incentives. That's why we're looking at bad outcomes and ineffresieness spending. Once we get the incentives right, I believe we have really the best people best to bring to bring the best value for our patients and for everybody involved in the system.
So gee, are you.
At Johns Hopkins working to change the system. Are you trying to do something about it? Have you got a plan?
Yeah, we're becoming to improve the system. Last week, two days ago, I testified with the House Means House with the Means Committee, and also with the Senate Help Committee. So all about how Congress can help the market to remove the frictions and uh, let's all achieve the better outcome. But I do believe right now this is a hot button issue at the Capitol Hill. Now both parties if they really want to win an election, they must bring by the American people.
And we're looking forward to your.
New initentiontips between you know, Capitol and also all the stakeholders.
All I would say is I think this is a big nut to crack. It's one of the things in our economy that costs so much. Is such a big part of it. And right now you do have you know, heads of companies, whether it's drug companies, whether it's healthcare companies. They certainly have the ear of Washington when it comes to policy. And I don't know how you get those changes through when that's happening exactly.
So that's why I think popped out won't work, because all the policy eventually have to have support by those big industry interest right, so it has to be removed the company, remove the friction that prevent competition from happening. Then from grassroots bottom up, have the competition run down the price as is happening, and the other industry.
All right, we're gonna leave it. On that note, certainly a lot to think about, and certainly, like I said, tough nut to crack, but certainly some possibilities of change based on or g had to say, Gibai, thank you so much, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, supported by Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg ELP and Bloomberg Philanthropies on zoom in Washington. I had no idea that you had to pay so much.
Yeah, yeah, that was Uh, don't ride motorcycles maybe if you're not, if you're not fully insured or you have prepared to deal with the consequences.
There's a lot of injuries you're at for a while.
I think this is one of those issues when you were talking about the cost of healthcare. Uh that, I'm just not optimistic we're ever gonna solve it until you know, the society is in flames. It's the same with social security or entitlement space.
But what's the flames? What ultimately happens? I mean, we already have gaps in healthcare.
Zombie apocalypse.
Maybe I can't see anything short of zombie apocalypse changing this.
Is that a global pandemic?
No, that didn't do anything, I know.
That's my point, Like, there's there's your apocalypse if you will.
Uh well, no, I'm not calling for something worse than that. But I'm saying I'm just not optimistic that we can really change this, and I hope I'm wrong.
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Small firms are the bedrock of the US economy. We say it a lot, counting for about half of all employment. And so Matt I love talking about the small cap space or small business because it's such a great indicator on the economic Yeah.
Absolutely, and I wonder about how worried they should be as credit titans, small businesses are probably going to get hit harder than the big ones.
You're absolutely right. So let's get into it with Sharon Miller. She's managing director and head a small business over at Bank of America out with her latest update on small business owners. She joins us on Zoom from San Antonio, Texas. Sharon, how are you.
I'm doing great, Carol, Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here with you.
Well, nice to have you with Matt and me. How's small business doing well?
I mean, despite all of the headlines that we are hearing in the news, and and certainly there are struggles and there are certainly business owners that are concerned about inflation and the economy and the environment that we're in today.
I will tell you, on the on the bright side that as we survey our clients and understand how they're feeling, you know, over half tell us that they believe that their revenues are going to increase in the year ahead, and that they are optimistic about you know, their own business. So there are there are headwinds, no doubt about it, and there are struggles and there are issues, but small business owners in general remain very resilient and ready for what may lie ahead.
So it makes sense to me. Right now, unemployment is what three point four percent, and even though earnings have come down, it's only I think three percent year over year for the you know, for the big guys that we track, the S and P. Are these small business businesses prepared for a recession if it comes?
I mean, do they have cash dashed away?
Do they have credit lines already lined up?
Of those that we surveyed, and certainly the conversations that I'm having with clients, we found that about seventy five percent of businesses are prepared for a recession, and so they have those emergency funds on the sidelines, they have lines of credit available, and they are prepared. And I think that is what came out of the pandemic. Now people are really understanding we've got to prepare for the unexpected. And what we are seeing and finding with our clients is that they.
Are How has this changed? How often do you do The survey is it once a year or every quarter.
We do it.
We do we survey our clients two times per year and we release the main report once per year. So this is our eleventh year of the Small Business Owner Report.
So we do monitor trends.
We do want to understand how they're feeling about their revenue expectations, the economy, their own businesses.
So we want to just get our finger on the pulse because we do.
You know, we bank over three million small business owners and we are the number one lender to small businesses in the US, and so we're here for our clients. We want to understand how they are feeling and what their needs are, and so we do that by having conversations across the desk every day, but also we survey just to understand in different parts of the country how people are feeling, what's happening.
Well, and I guess and what I can. What I care sharing is like always, I care about trends too, and how things change either from year to year. So give me an idea because I'm assuming in the pandemic, I don't know if you did the survey that it was probably some pretty miserable numbers. But give me some perspective of coming off the pandemic. How these numbers change or is seventy six percent in terms of confident that their businesses could we stand a downturn? Is that pretty typical?
No, it's not.
I mean this was this is something that I think that came out of the pandemic. When we've heard that, You're right, seventy six percent said yes, we do believe we can withstand a downturn.
That has changed.
I think many people going into the pandemic were not as prepared, and.
So today we're finding that they are.
And by the way, you know, they're looking at their business plans, they're making sure that they are reviewing those not just once a year, but you know, twice a year, quarterly, daily. What's happening, what is happening in their industry, how are they doing, and how can they pivot? And I do think that you know, the topics like artificial intelligence, You've got topics like sustainability, you know, and how to make sure that your business is capable in this new digital era.
What kind of loan demand are you seeing right now?
Has it taper off off?
Hiss rates have climbed our businesses, you know, worried about borrowing in this environment.
Well, we still see strong demand for lending within.
Our space, and I can't speak for all institutions, but again, we are the number one lender to small businesses in the US, and we are continuing to extend credit and to support in the communities We serve not just within our own four walls at Bank of America, but we also partner with Community Development Financial Institutions so CDFIs. We
also hear from clients, especially new business formations. So we know in twenty twenty one there were five point four million new businesses started, which was a record.
In twenty twenty two, five point.
One million new businesses, so we've seen a lot of innovation.
These are record numbers of new businesses.
Starting, and we want to be there for those business owners to establish their business and you have access to capital in the marketplace.
Hey, Sharon, you mentioned day I and how small business owners I guess are thinking about that or it certainly on their mind. Matt you shared with me a Tracy Alloway story about the latest Challenger jobs report and it highlights job cuts from artificial intelligence just beginning.
It was thirty nine. It's the last month alone, which.
Is pretty significant. And I do wonder share and how are small business owners looking at something like AI. Is it's something that they think, oh great, I can use it to cut costs and cut workers or how what's the conversation. I'm curious if you could glean anything from the results of the survey.
Yeah, the conversation has been mainly around how do I improve efficiencies, whether it be marketing, whether it be understanding behaviors of clients and targeting clients to get more business for their for their company. The conversations also around payroll providers and how do I get smarter about.
My tools that I I'm using for business.
So AI is around, you know what, I'm hearing a lot around marketing, getting to the to the people that that they want to understand their product, as well as payroll services and and just managing their business day to day. So yes, I mean I think in the long term we may see uh, some of that helping to improve efficiencies where you may not need as many employees, right, So I can see that going through as well, But today I think we're very early on.
Sharon Miller, thank you so much. Managing director, had a small business at b of A on Zoom from San Antonio, TeX's first time challenger and Christmas included that that's really fascinating. Check it out at bloemberg dot.
Com, a broad mark.
A journal.
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Honey, please, I'll do the riding gravels.
I want to drive to Question time.
This is the drive to the globe? Do com to me?
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Jagadan on Bloomberg Radio.
All right, everybody, we've got just under eighteen minutes left in today's trading session on this Thursday, June first, it is time for the drive to the clothes and back. With us is Randy Watts. He's chief investment strategist at O'Neil Global Advisors, joining us once again on Zoom in Miami. Randy, nice to have you here with Matt and me. And I have to say you and the team at O'Neil have definitely been on our minds with the passing this week of Bill O'Neill, just, you know, top of mind
for you and your thoughts on him. This is a legend, you know, when it comes to the investment world, and certainly well known.
Yeah, I mean I think Bill really personified the American dream. He was born in Oklahoma in nineteen thirty three during the Depression and the dust Bowl era, and he came from humble beginnings to be incredibly successful in the stock market. He was the first person to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange at the age of thirty or younger. He was very much self made. He obviously founded Investors Business Daily, which was a national investment publication.
In nineteen eighty four, he wrote a famous book called How to Make Money in Stocks that sold over two million copies. And interestingly, he was one of the first people to use a mainframe computer to analyze stocks using different data rankings that reflected the characteristics of the individual stocks. So an innovator from the start and really a great example of the American dream.
Well, and it's interesting too write if you think about kind of where markets are today in the use of data and how influential it is. I mean, I love talking to you because you're a technician and you do look at the trends and certainly on a data basis. But it is interesting kind of you know, his interest and the importance of data on the street today.
It is funny a lot of the things that he started using back in the sea sixties and seventies we now take for granted, but back then it was very cutting edge, and you can just see how it seeped into the overall investment climate and how important quantitative and technical analysis is to investing in not only inequities but in a variety of instruments.
Well, like we said, you guys in your whole team, there have certainly been on our mind.
And Randy on that note, what do you make of the AI craze right now, not in terms of, you know, as an investment, but in terms of investing, what do you make of that as a.
Tool using AI to invest in stocks? Yes, I think we're very, very early in the process. I think it will be additive over time. I think some of the enthusiasm is ahead of itself. You know, it doesn't really AI doesn't really make judgment calls, right, So if you're trying to figure out in the beginning of the nineties if Starbucks is going to be a very popular trend, I really think that's a little more qualitative than the quant kind of quantitative feedback AI is going to give.
I think the main thing that is going to help with AIS, is going to help increase productivity, and it's going to make a lot of businesses more profitable over time. But I do think we're maybe a little ahead of ourselves in terms of what it can do today.
I mean, it's apparently able to at least on some level, decipher FED speak, you know, sentence by sentence and judge whether or not it's hawkish or dubbish.
True.
But you know, as we found out this year, really the FED is kind of a moving It's a moving target with the FED. Right, so if you look at where we are today on FED futures, the market's predicting over ay over a fifty percent chance that by the July meeting they're going to raise either twenty five to fifty BIPs.
And that was a very low number a week ago.
So you know, it changes so quickly that if you're just using the stale data of a transcript or a quote that can.
Get out, I can get out of phase very quickly.
So so I wouldn't really put all my investment eggs in the AI basket yet. I think we're early on in it, and I think initially what it's going to do is help productivity, but I wouldn't use it to pick my stocks right now.
So when you look at a stock like Nvidia, best performing stock in the S and P five hundred, you know, just blowout performance mega rally this year, and I look at something like RSI Relative Strength Index easily overbought. I mean, this isn't a name you would touch.
That's a name which has either got to go sideways which is kind of the best best outcome, or or pull back. But normally when as a stock, a stock has that kind of a run, it usually has to do one of those two things. Right, it's had such a big move, it's now extended technically, and I think that really goes to the market if I can shift a little bit, which is the market's been extremely narrow. So if you look at the qqqs right, they're up, you know, I think what thirty two percent year.
To date, which is a tech heavy for those.
Which is Technicombia, it's one hundred largest stocks in the NASTEK Maybe I should have said that for listeners.
You compare that to the S and P weh's just about ten percent.
And then you compare that, you know, to the Russell which is flat and obviously the Russell has two thousand stocks in it, so it's been a very very narrow group of stocks it's been driving this market, and that's going to resolve itself, you know, probably, you know, one of two ways. Either either the leaders sort of slow down and the rest of the market catches up, or
the leaders are going to have to come down. I'm hopeful, And what we're really trying to focus on at O'Neil is are we going to see a broadening of the market. We're very hopeful that's going to happen. But to really have a bull market from here, the market's got to broaden. Remember that the Russell is still trading below both it's fifty day and it's two hundred day moving average. The Nasdaq and the S and P are above it, but again, if you disaggregate those numbers, they're being driven by a
very small number of stocks. The average stock in the Nasdaq is below both it's fifty day and it's two hundred day. So while the average is up because of a small group of stocks that are being driven by megacap tech, the average stock is actually isn't doing that great this year.
Hey help us out with something Matt and I have been having some fun because we've worked together for a long long time and we talk. We think about all the different market cycles we've gone through, and everybody's like all the cash on the sidelines waiting to come back in.
We've been together for a few decades.
It's a few decades we started in the sandbox. But having said that, Randy, is that an important thing you watched as an indicator about the potential to kind of fuel more equity momentum.
I think there is cash that can come into equities. I think what is going to influence that is you know where we are in the rate cycle and what the economic outlook is. Remember, earnings in the first quarter were down year to year. They're down about one percent and I'm sorry about three percent, about three percent, and earnings estimates for the full year have been coming down. Obviously the last couple of days we've gotten some very
negative prints from consumer related companies. So I think for the market to do well from here, we really need kind of two things. The first is to get a sense that we're getting close to the end of the rate cycle. Recently, it looks like maybe the Fed still has a little bit more to do. I could easily see FED funds going to six percent. Okay, I mean remember you know PCE was four point seven percent last month on a year to year basis. That's still obviously
way way above what the Fed is looking for. And then the second thing is what's the outlook for earnings. It does appear maybe initially people were a little too bearish on earnings going into Q one. We hope that's going to continue to be the case. I'm not sure it is, given the slowdown we're singing consumer spending. But if we can get through the rate tightening cycle and earnings can stabilize, then I think a lot of money can come into stocks and the.
Rest of the market can catch up to where a big tech is right now.
All right, Well, always appreciate the time that we get with you.
Randy, take care.
Talky to and Randy Watts, chief investment strategist at are Neo Global Advisors, joining us on Zoo Miami.
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