Trump Facebook Ban Upheld for Now

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. So US COVID nineteen cases could see a sharp decline by July if nationwide vaccination efforts continued to be successful. This was according to the CDC President Biden, talking about children being vaccinated. Tim and I covered that yesterday. Uh, and not only getting the vaccine out to underserved communities here in the US, but

also around the world. Yeah, and we're also seeing companies and businesses organizations start to do different things when it comes to people who are vaccinated and not vaccinated. As we mentioned just a few minutes ago, baseball stadiums here in New York City are going to segregate those who have and have not been vaccinated? Right? Or figure it out? All right? So and kind of in a world that

maybe there's gonna be a couple of different tracks. Let's get to it though, with our daily check on COVID coming to us a few days earlier this week, Dr Ian LUs Bader, clinical Professor of Medicine at n y U Land, going on the phone in New York City. Ian, good to have you back with us. How are you good? Always your pleasure, Carol and Tim hope you guys are well. We're doing okay, We're feeling I think optimistic, it's safe

to say, right, Tim, Yeah, we are. You know, it's funny we just had this conversation before we came to Dr LUs Bader about comfort and doing things that we did before the pandemic. And you know, I have been driving into work, but I want to start taking the subway again, and I'm wondering how we should feel about those types of things. Wearing a mask, of course, and being two weeks out from that second shot. Sure, I

think you should feel more confident. I've been on the subway and watched it go from literally deserted, maybe a few homeless people to really quite crowded. So you do need to be a little prepared for possible having people sitting next to you a little under six ft, So do not expect ideal circumstances, whether it's at the ballfield or at the restaurant. But I do think if people have had their two vaccines, uh, and they've waited two weeks,

based on what we're seeing, it's much more reassuring. And I think America, unlike other parts of the world, should really buy the summer, really be able to return to a much more normal lifestyle. Again, barring any new changes such as appearance of variants that are resistant and so forth. We've really done a pretty good job at getting towards We're not quite at herd immunity, but we're certainly getting very close to it, and I think that it's all

really according to plan and going fairly well. How do you getting kids vaccinated? We heard the President talk about that, waiting for FDA approval on that, But how do you getting kids vaccinated? Dr les Bader get us towards that hurt immunity. Well, I think getting kids vaccinated still a lot of sense, you know, certainly initially, Uh, we want to wait for safety data. But kids get many vaccines momps, measles, rebella, appatitis B long before they're going to be exposed to it.

And even though kids generally do very well, in other words, if they do get COVID, they bounce back very well, we are seeing some evidence that maybe early COVID exposure may predisposed to diabetes or other longer term problems that we are not you know, that are just beginning to appear. So I think not only um, does vaccinating children make sense to reduce transmission to older adults, but it may protect the kids from further complications from COVID nineteen that

we're just beginning to see on the horizon. Do you expect that a vaccine will be approved for children ages two and up by the end of this year. I think by the end of this year that's that's quite likely. I think that is reasonable. Uh. You know, again, it's not an absolute rush, because it's not like kids are the most vulnerable. But I think we want to wait

for the studies and safety data. But I do think by the end of the year that should be out and I think it will become at least for the next two years, part of a routine um vaccination schedule, you know, until we really have eliminated worldwide the pandemic, which may take more than a year or two to

work its way through. Unfortunately. So new US guidance for children at summer camps is quote stringent, and we heard that from Anthony Faucci, of course, the top White House medical adviser, saying today suggesting rules maybe loosened as new data comes in. Would you send kids to summer camp? Would you send your kids to summer camp or if they were of that age today, you know, I would

feel happier if they were vaccinated. UM. I think there's a certain benefit to exercise, fresh air, outdoor activities, and I think that can be done in a safe way. And I think the benefits of school and camp uh in a safe environment far outweigh the potential low risk of a significant complication from COVID. So I think I'm balanced.

Everything's a risk, but I think getting kids out and socially interacting and learning and all of those benefits I think far outweigh the very small risk of actually getting COVID over the summer one are the biggest questions that you're getting from patients right now about what they can and can do in the rest of the year for

the summer. You know. Unfortunately, there's been a lot of conflicting data, and I think people really are confused about, uh, you know, do they have to wear masks, do they not wear masks? Um And so when I tell my patients, may not do what everyone tells their patients. I certainly feel that outdoors there's really a minimal risk. Have you've been vaccinated, There is no reason to wear a mask outside.

I mean, we do see that influenza and other respiratory diseases are much lower this year, so there is some rational and if you want to wear a mask, that's fine, but there's really no evidence that you're going to get COVID if you're socializing, you know, not too close you know, outdoors. I think indoors, if it's your group and your pot and people have been vaccinated, I also think that's a

relatively safe environment. And I think of corporations, for example, say you know, if you can prove you've been vaccinated, come back to the office. Many people miss the office socially, but also from a productivity point of view. I also understand people reluctant to go back, and really what I tell them is, you may be reluctant, but if you've been vaccinated, there's no scientific evidence what you cannot go

back to the office. Let's get right back to it with Dr Ian LUs Beta, clinical professor of medicine at and Yu Lango in a medical center. He joins us on the phone from New York City. Dr LUs better to the point of what Charlie was talking about the relationship that companies have with their workers, to what extent

they play in the inoculation process. And a survey from April by Arizona State University and the Rockefeller Foundation found that six companies in North America planned offer vaccine incentives to workers, would inoculate workers at company facilities, but also that of these companies would require vaccinations for workers. UM a third of the companies that should not plan to encourage vaccines but wouldn't require them. From your perspective, which

is the right move here? Is it making it mandatory? Is it offering incentives? What do you think? I like the incentive approach, you know, I think making anything mandatory, UM, that is really certainly that's not FDA approved, would would be uh challenging. But I think we need to educate and incentivize people. The more things you make mandatory, h, I think there's always a potential risk of pushback. We do a number of things that don't always make complete sense.

For example, in many communities, children before in kindergarten or first grade have to take hepatitis B vaccine. That's a potential std the actual incident, so that is fairly low. Um. Yet in many communities that's required and they're not even going to need that for twelve years so or or more you know when when people become sexually active, or you know, it's possibly even longer. So I think it's we have to really think carefully before we make something mandatory.

I think educating people, incentivizing people, reassuring people makes a lot of sense. Um. Certainly in the healthcare community, we do have to have flu shots really unless we have a whole variety of effort to get an excuse when we're seeing patients. I think the COVID vaccines that we have makes sense. I think they're effective, I think they're low risk. Uh. Making them mandatory, that's that's more of

a challenge, and I would definitely try and incentivize people. First. Hey, so I gotta ask you, Dr Les Paider, a loyal listener and someone on the Bloomberg saying to me, okay, so what is low risk? Can you quantify it when you say something is low risk or taking this vaccine is low Ask whether it's for adults, whether it's for kids. What is low risk in the medical world? Is it temporary?

Give me an idea. No, I think that's great. And you know, we often sort of hedge when we talk about this, and they sound like a loyal listener and and probably have called in before, which is great. It's great to get, you know, audience feedback on and they like you. They like you. They just want to know

what is low risking. So in any individual, it's hard to state your specific risk right because we don't know your underlying immune system, your underlying disease, your underlying clotting issues.

But we know when we look at really now hundreds of millions of vaccines, we know the the number of cases of same mortality very very we're talking you know, perhaps you know a hundred people out of you know, a couple of hundred million vaccines, and part of the other problem with that is there's some more cality that happens, and it's sometimes hard to tie someone who dies of a heart attack two days after a shot, what's the would they have died from that anyway, So really getting

some of this data down is very challenging. We also know the effectiveness. Again, out of a few hundred million vaccines in the United States, only about five or six thousand people get COVID, so we know it's, you know, quite effective. So when I say low risk, we're talking certainly in in single percentages of complications. If you're that one percent or two percent who develops fever or dion beret,

which is a paralytic condition. But we see that with a flu shot, we see that with other vaccines, and sometimes we see it even unrelated to a vaccine. So I think all we can say is we are not seeing a real predominance or worrisome numbers that would say, hey, this this is a dangerous shot that unfortunately for an individual. It's very hard to say what one person specific risk is.

All right, but you gave us some guidelines, which is good to know that it's under ten percent like it's a low single you know percentage right, Um, did you have another Christ? Well no, I just think you know, from my own experience, it's just changed a lot about how I feel about what's safe and what's not. Yeah. Oh absolutely, And I think the more specific week can be we can kind of understand exactly what we're dealing with. Dr ian Los Beader, have a good rest of the week.

I really appreciate it, Clinical professor of Medicine and why you lend Go Medical Center on the phone in New York. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. So Bloomberg's Bradstone is no doubt about the go to voice when it comes to Amazon. Wrote a book about the company, you might recall the Everything Store. Lucky for us, he went back to do more, resulting in his new book, Uh just coming out Amazon on Bound, Jeff Bezos and the

Invention of a Global Empire. Been looking forward to this chat for all week, or actually for weeks. Let's get more from Bradstone, Senior Executive Editor up Global Technology here at Bloomberg News. He is with us from Bureau in San Francisco, along with Bloomberg business Week, get it or Joel Weber, And I gotta tell you you guys, I think we're just gonna do this for ten hours because I just want to talk about everything Jeff Bezos and

everything Brad's book. I'm just gonna put that out there. Job. I don't know if we can have Brad. I don't know if we can have Brad for ten hours, but but we'll take them for what we get. Isn't isn't this a family program. I don't know if we're if we're really able to talk about the ex for ten hours. Yeah,

it might be a little moro. So this story, um, Brad, that that you know, we excerpted from your book is one that kind of broke the internet when it happened, but we we only really knew, Um the part that came out at the moment, and what you brought to the book and into the pages of Business Week is a lot of color behind the scenes and and the great untold story of how Jeff Bezos basically took probably what was a low moment in his life and used

it to turn the tables. And we're talking about the National enquired National Choir story that um was basically about his affair. Um, so, so how did you approach a writing this this story? And then like how did you how does that tie into the book itself? Right? Yeah,

thanks Joel. Well, first of all, just to put it into a little bit of context, I was about a year into writing this book, as Carol said, a sequel to The Everything Store, which I thought was gonna be a nice, boring business book about the last ten years and the rise of the continued rise and domination of Amazon, with a little you know, ominous antitrust specter hanging over it, and you know, and then Jeff tweets his divorce from Mackenzie and the medium post and the National Enchoir package

and what was left from you know, that moment, Joel, where you which you described as kind of breaking the internet was a little bit of a sense of ambiguity. It was like, well, wait, did the brother do it? Did MBS do it? Who? How did the inquiry get the story? Was Trump involved? And Bezos and his his advocates were very clever, I think, in in casting sort of political aspersions, wrapping themselves up in the mantle of

the Washington Post and the journalistic mission. And so my goal as I got into it was, you know, to try to avoid I guess some of the sensationalism and and but but described you know what happened? How did Bezos really come out on top? As the cover says, Jeff wins he always seems to win. Um, and what

does it say about his kind of tactics? And so, you know, I just tried to talk to everyone, get close to the investigation into the whole thing by the FBI and the Southern District of New York and figure out, Okay, you know what what happened and and um, you know, as as Jeff maneuvered through it, what can we learn from that? So what did happen? Did it it didn't actually have anything to do with Saudi Arabia or or

or President Trump? Right, that is the question. And what I say in the book is, and it's represented in the in the Business Week story this week, is that based on the evidence that we have at the current moment, and based on the conclusions of federal prosecutors in New York, that it seems like Akham's razor applies here. The simplest solution was was the was the right one? Which is that um, you know, the brother Michael Sanchez gave the

story to the National Enquirer. UM. And there's really no evidence, um to suggest that there were any political motives involved, UM or that any any international conspiracy was involved. There there is I wouldn't say there's evidence. I would say there's circumstantial evidence that MBS hacked bezos phone. UM. But there are a lot of questions about the f T I UH, the the the agency that did that investigation,

that Bezos is camp hired to do that investigation. UM. You know, the spy where that was involved is very very hard to detect. So really they were looking at the increase in data that came from his phone and at the time, and and there's and there's no evidence, and there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. There. They're sworn statements that were filed in part of these cases, and there was evidence email evidence that shows the inquiry getting the story from from Michael Sanchez and FIG trying

to piece together the mystery. Who was he even talking about discovering it was Jeff Bezos and so you know where I net it out again, may maybe something comes out and this story so bizarre. Who knows what could happen, but from the evidence we have, it really doesn't seem like, you know, there were there were political winds blowing around this thing at all, other than the fear that a m I had that because of its, uh, you know, the resolution of the Michael Cohen case and it's a

peace treaty with the Southern District of New York. They worried about being accused of having political motives, and that did play a role because it forced him into into trying to negotiate a settlement, which Bezos the accused them of of extorting him. But other than that, I think

all that stuff was just noise. I think it's remarkable is that I can just imagine the PR team behind it say no, Jeff, don't anything or whatever, denied it, and like he just comes out, you know, fighting really hard, and as the cover says, he wins like it's just from workaball Brad. And the question Carol is is like, was it And I don't know the answer to this, but was he deliberately manipulating kind of the world, wrapping himself up? As I said in the Mantle of Them

Washington Post imputing political motives to the Inquirer. Was that a deliberate and somewhat disingenuous defensive shield or did they really think, uh, you know that that there could have been these political this political or international conspiracy. I tend to think that they genuinely thought, um that maybe you know that maybe his enemies and he does have enemies on the Washington Post, particularly during the age of Trump made a lot of enemies. Um. I think they genuinely

thought that there might be more to it. Um. But you have to look back and not your head. You know, it was super effective, right we all when you think about sort of what he did and the personal sort of trajectory there, people ended up sympathizing with him. He took a stand, and he brought down the editor Dylan Howard of the National Enquirer. So it was it was

super effective. Brad, what is this episode? What do you feel like it illuminates about Jeff Bezos as a as a business person and Jeff just got about forty seconds or so left, right, Yeah, yeah, feel free to confuse, you know, Joel, I just quickly go back to when the Everything store came out, and do you remember they didn't like the book, and they gave me a bunch of one star reviews and and and mackenzie left one

at the time. And what struck me there is, Wow, he found a totally unique way thinking outside the box to try to throw an asterix next to next to that work. And I, you know, frankly, I don't think it was effective. But that's also what he did in this case. He thought outside the box, outmaneuvered everyone. Um you know, came up with this, this direct medium post um one, the sympathist, came out on top. He's retiring

now as an icon of business. He The thing that you learned from this is he always does things a little it differently, and often it is ingenious. All right, Well, our thanks to brad Stone, a k. Jeff Bezo. Sorry you got me so immersed in it, so just like lost myself. It's incredible, wishy great look luck with it and it's the cover of the magazine this week. Brad Stone, Senior Executive Veditor Global Tech. Check out his book, The

Untold Story of How Jeff Bezos Beat the Tabloids. It's incredible and of course our thanks to Joe Webber Bloomberg Business Week editor also Amazon on Bound It's coming out. This is Bloomberg Radio. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. All right, you are listening to Bloomberg Business Week and just about sixty minutes to go until the

close of trading. Top story at this hour news hit this morning Donald Trump remaining banned from posting on Facebook for now, the company's independent Content oversight board ruling that Tim leaving really the former US present with that is most powerful tools for fundraising and you know, really kind of leaves them out of the kind of political conversation

in a big way. It does. The Facebook Oversight Board announcing that this morning, right at nine o'clock Wall Street time, Kurt Wagner, who's based in San Francisco, was up early and he was following every move from the company. He's technology reporter for Bloomberg News and he joins us on the phone from San Francisco. Kurt I sent out a tweet this morning with a pull on it. It said, is Trump going to be banned or not? You know what? What?

What is Facebook? Due to Trump, does it ban him or or does it allow him back on the platform. Now I realized I should have had a third option, because this is kind of like punting it back to Facebook. Yeah, you should have, and I guess I should have too, because I I was definitely a little surprised by this decision as well. I mean, I guess. The very short summary is the board basically said Facebook made the right choice on January six when it suspended Trump in the

moment with you know, this riot going on. But they said that Facebook's decision to make that suspension in definite without any end in sight, without any kind of guidance to him on when that would come to a close, was not the right choice because that's not something that Facebook actually has and it's rules or its terms of service right now. So they're now kicking that decision back to Facebook to say, Okay, we agree with your decision to suspend them, but you can't just do it indefinitely.

You gotta put a timetable on this. And now it's up to Facebook to decide whether that's a permanent ban or if they're going to bring him back at some point. And the former president coming out and calling them move a total disgrace and embarrassment to our country. He says free speech has been taken away from the president of United States because the radical left lunatics are afraid of

the truth. He said this in a statement. What's interesting what he didn't say it on Twitter because he couldn't exactly well, and you know, what are your colleagues. Sarah Fryar here at Bloomberg News put out a column and she said, you know, we've got to maybe Facebook has to expand its options on trumpet. You know, this is

not a black and white issue. And there I guess many would argue that there needs to be If we believe in free speech, that means everyone has a voice, and so do we need to just a s book to other social media platforms have to figure out a way to allow these voices to be held to herd rather hear. Yeah. I think Sarah had a good point

in her column, and and I actually agreed. I think her conclusion at the end was basically, hey, you know, let Facebook, excuse me, let Donald Trump back on Facebook, but don't give him the kind of way to go viral that a lot of people have. Don't let people like his stuff. Don't let people share his stuff, like let him post there. If you want to go seek it out, you can find it, But we're not going to use Facebook technology to promote that necessarily to people.

I thought that could be potentially be a good common ground, but really, I mean this, this is the same battle Facebook faces in every country they operate, Right, How do you write one set of rules that applies to everyone in the world, including world leaders like you know, former President Trump. So I think this is a really really challenging issue, and we didn't really get the answer this morning that maybe we had all hoped would kind of clear things up. Ker what are the repercussions of this?

And I mean in Washington, d C. What are the political repercussions of this? Because if there is something that unites Democrats and Republicans right now, it is a disdain for you know, quote unquote big tech. Well, Facebook is obviously facing some real threats of regulation at the moment, and I think the issue here is that had the board simply said, hey, you know, Trump should his account should come down or stay up, they could kind of

say listen, we're just following the advice of this outside group. Now, suddenly Facebook has to make this decision again, right, and so when they do, they're going to be held accountable for that decision in the same way that they are for all their content. And so I think if you're a Republican and they choose to leave Trump's countdown, you're gonna say, hey, this is you know, censorship, this is overstepping.

And if you're a liberal and they do the opposite, you know you're gonna have issues with that as well. So I really just think just put them right smack in the middle of their content issues and forgive me just who is on that oversight board. This is a collection of lawyers, former journalists, form or politicians. Um, it's it's kind of an impressive group of academics and and folks who I guess think about this stuff in some ways for a living. But they are not Facebook employees.

They're meant to be independent on Facebook, even though the company did set up this board and does actually pay them through a different funds that they have. Well, and it's interesting too because we know that political, uh, social media content, I mean this has become fairly lucrative right for social media platforms. Yes, and no, I mean I think political content brings a lot of people to them

to these platforms to discuss this kind of stuff. But in terms of you know, political advertising money for example, it's a very very small part of the overall revenue that these companies make. I do think though, if you simply said, hey, you can't talk politics on on these social networks. I mean, that's just a huge part of any cultural conversation. So I feel like that is where they would be hurt more than the actual you know, ad revenue for example. So okay, so what's the next

date we're waiting? Mean, is the clock ticking once again on a decision by Facebook about whether or not he's banned forever or he gets to come back? There is, Yes, the board basically challenge Facebook to make this decision in the next six months. Doesn't mean that it will be six months from now. It just means it has to happen sometime in that next six months. It could happen in theory next week. My guesses that will take a

little bit longer than that. But yes, sometime within the next six months, we should have a second answer to whether this account should stay up, go back up, or stay down. So Kurt what's the message to everybody else who's out there thinking Twitter, I'm taking other social media? I mean, are they just kind of watching to see how Facebook ultimately handles it and that they will determine their policies, or like I just do wonder, is everybody

going to act kind of as a group to group here? Well, both Twitter and Snapchat had said that their bands as President Trump are permanent no matter what happens is Facebook, so we can set them aside. They taking the ground and said we're not going to change. I think, you know, YouTube and others are probably looking closely here because you're right.

I think a lot of these companies oftentimes we see with you know, Q and on or with other troublemaker users, they often kind of work in unison um and there's a lot of public opinion. I think that weighs into that. So I think whatever Facebook ultimately decides will probably set a standard of sorts for a lot of others. But again, Twitter's Twitter has already banned the president no matter what, so you know they've already made their decision. It's funny

because smile. It's it's funny because we all thought the story would be over you know, either yes or no, and then here we are. Clock is taking six months another decisions. Yeah right, I mean what we've learned President Trump's presidency is never over, apparently, and it will just continue to linger. So in the world of social media, he's just got a huge he's got a huge tale here. Yeah, absolutely all right. Hey, good stuf. Kurt Wagner Technology put

up Bloomberg News on the phone in San Francisco, the Journal. Yeah, but you let me drive. Oh no, no, no no, no, home, honey, please, I'll do the right rivel. I want to drive the question. This is the drive to the globe COMMUNI thanks. We'll try us down on Bloomberg Radio just about not in a half minutes left today's trading session. Let's get to it with Michael Sheldon, executive director and chief investment Officer at High Tower r d M Financial Group based in Westport, Connecticut,

and that's where he joins us once again. Michael, good to have you back with us. How's it going very much? Yeah, how's it going? No, thanks very much. So talk to us a little bit about because it's been an interesting two days. Yesterday we saw pressure on the tech community and I think once again, everybody's like, oh my gosh, what's happening with technologies? Talks? And today it seems like

everything is fine. So if you slept through yesterday, you would have never even known the problems that everybody was talking about yesterday. How do you see kind of what is truly guiding the trades? Is it earnings? Is it economic data? Is it inflation concerns? Is it uh, the economic recovery? How do you see it? Well? I think what's right. I think the important thing is that we're in the early stages of a new economic expansion that

started after the downturn in early two thousand twenty. And the markets have certainly staged a fairly strong advanced over the past year or though, and that's certainly clear. There certainly maybe some sectors or companies that are a little bit ahead of themselves. But I think if you look at some of the economic data, if you look at things like retail sales, jobless claims are finally starting to improve, some of the housing data, the I S M indices, you can see they all point to a surge in

economic activity. I looked at today, for example, the Atlanta said forecast, what GDP will be each quarter, and their early read for second quarter g d P is a whopping thirteen points in So I think we all sort of knew that GDP was going to really jump after last seeing some of the recent data. But that's certainly an eye popping number, right, But it also dropped off a cliff, you know, in the shutdown. So I always think we have to be smart in terms of the

perspective here. Now, Yeah, I know that's important. So you know, I was looking at some of the GDP data, and the question is we all know that we're going to see a pretty strong surgeon economic activity this summer and probably into the fall. Uh. The one thing we were looking at when GDP came out last quarter, just a couple of weeks ago. I think it was six point

four for the first quarter. One of the things that we always look at as inventory levels, and the thing that caught our eyes inventories were actually drawn down, So inventories decreased by two points six percent. And what that means, or the way to interpret that is the economy is expanding, but inventories were drawn down, drawn down, so that basically leads us to think that there's sort of growing pent

up demand. Manufacturers are going to have to continue to inc priests increased production in order to meet demand, and that should keep the economy humming. That along with the fact that consumer savings rates are over right now and and you see many states starting to open up, so we have a significant amount of strong growth over the

next few quarters. But then from there, the crystal ball gets a little cloudy, Mike, Michael McKee mentioned that about the inventory rates being drawn inventory levels being drawn down, and that means that you're going to have to see people hire and ramp up activity. And Michael, it's not just you, um, I think that a lot of CFOs right now are thinking that that crystal ball is a

little foggy. We do see companies in the midst of earning season not necessarily giving guidance much the disdain of investors because they don't know exactly what is going to happen when we think about and when when you think about this recovery and this growth in GDP, to what extent is the recovery priced into US equities right now and where are the opportunities because there there has been sort of a shrug, collective shrug with some pretty good

earnings numbers. Right, You're absolutely right. Fortunately we're not allowed to to mention individual stocks, but I you know which these companies are. So I was looking at some of the large cap technology stocks and the leaders the top four names, for example, produced some very strong growth of in year over year sales last quarter, which are some

pretty strong numbers. And you know, we have a certain amount of growth and technology in our portfolios because we think you want to have that in order to meet your long term investment goals since we're investment advisors. But I think even though a lot of these technology companies had very strong results, they were kind of met with a little bit of a shrug from the markets. And I think what you're seeing as investors are sort of rotating into some of the areas of the market that

haven't really participated over the last several years. Um one of the differences in this market versus the last several years, it's not just technology this year. There are other parts of the market participating. So, for example, we were not giving up on technology, but we also have some exposure in healthcare for example, which is a growth at a

reasonable price, and industrials as well. You want to be a little more diversified this year as opposed to the past several years, I think, well, and you kind of can be right in an economic recovery, but that's correct. There are more areas where you're seeing a rebound in in sales and profits over the past compared with the

past several years. And the other thing I would just point out is one of the differences we see in this environment also is unlike the past several years where you really wanted to be massively overweight the US versus foreign markets, we think this is ultimately going to turn into a global recovery. So if you've been missing out on foreign that's that's sort of a not a bad thing, but you may want to take a look at your foreign exposure and maybe start to think about adding to

that a little bit. Hey, what did you think of everything that happened yesterday with with Janet Yellen? She later clarified that she wasn't forecasting interest rate rises, but it seemed to send some sort of message to the markets, to the equity markets. Yeah, I mean that was certainly on the surface, that's certainly looked like a misstep um interest rate policy. And she should know better than everyone else and she used to leave the FED. I wonder I was kind of joking around. I was kind of

joking around yesterday, Michael. I was saying to Carol in the studio, do you think she has fomo? Like, you know, she's kind of like really misses. As soon as I saw that headline, sort of, I think it was late in morning. I really thought the markets were going to sell off in the afternoon. But when you think about it, it almost nothing. Nothing is by chance, and so that was probably a trial balloon, just the sort of you know,

the FED and the Treasury are working together. The FED has been pumping out a hundred and twenty or hundred forty billion dollars in debt and the treasures. The Treasury has been buying some of that, so the two are working together closely. But I think the interpretation is that was probably maybe an early trial balloon, even though we're not likely to see any change in FED policy anytime soon, not quite a temper or our taper tantrum um. But nonetheless,

that's interesting and that's an interesting take on it. Where don't you want to be in this market environment right now? Michael, Well, keep in mind the economy is still expanding once that.

I was just looking at his earnings per share growth at the beginning of this quarter that were forecasting about twenty four percent growth, and now with about more than two thirds of companies having reported earnings estimates for the first quarter up at fort so you're going to continue to see probably better than expected growth and better than

expected economic data for a while. And in that environment, you probably you probably want to underweight some of the more defensive parts of the market, like utilities and consumer staples. Those are the areas you want to favor more once the economy hits its peak and then starts to gradually slow down, which is somewhere down the road. Yeah, which

is what the market is doing today. You're seeing some of those interest rate sensitive those are some of your drags on the market today, real estate, utilities there down, consumer discretionary UH as well. Um, it's very interesting your focal point right now at this point, is it just the job's report come Friday. Yeah. I think Friday's jobs report is certainly important. We're gonna get a big number. The question is doesn't live up the expectations. We could

get a pullback or a correction. I think at any time, but the direction of the economies towards stronger growth, and we're still constructive looking ahead, although there maybe some bumps in the road as we look ahead. Friday, Job's Day. How are you reading into it? Very briefly, just about thinking about, like what happens if if you miss it?

I think you want to look at a few things. Well, if we missed the number it, even if it comes in around eight hundred thousand, nine d thousand, I think you want to look at the which is very crazy to say that it's a miss, but you know the context rough right, it could be a It could We could be in a period of time looking ahead where earnings and economic growth is very strong, but maybe a meet expectations or misses expectations just a little bit, and

that will be interesting to see what the market's reaction to that is. But I think I think we do have we will have some continued strong economic growth fork probably for several months ahead. Got it? Michael Sheldon over at High Tower r D and Financial Thank you so much.

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