Podcast appearances and mentions of chris versace

Chris Versace says the CPI print is a "big relief" to the market, and adds his only concern is if investors "overreact" to this report. On U.S. and China trade talks, he cautions investors to wait for final details instead of headlines from social media posts. In terms of stock picks, Chris speaks about Amazon (AMZN) and its growth in advertising. Other picks from Chris include: Universal Display (OLED), Marvell (MRVL), Nvidia (NVDA), Apple (AAPL) and Qualcomm (QCOM).======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – / schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – / schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - / schwab-network About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Chris Versace joins Diane King Hall at the NYSE to chew through the macro headlines weighing on equities. From the Moody's credit downgrade to Fed speakers, Chris says the U.S. central bank "still has things to digest" as investors look for rate cut guidance. Chris looks at the tariff impact showing up in earnings reports, particularly retailers like Walmart (WMT), Target (TGT) and more. He does favor Costco (COST) believing it to be a great place for consumer value, but as an investor he appreciates its subscription-based revenue value. Later, Chris examines Marvell (MRVL) and its role in the A.I. trade.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Chris Versace joins Diane King Hall at the NYSE set to discuss earnings season. He adds the significance of tariff talks weighing on company guidance, saying "until we see more trade deals" that management teams will err on the conservative side. Chris looks at results from Shopify (SHOP) & Dutch Bros (BROS). For BROS, he said the reiterated guidance could be "the new beat and raise" in the current environment. On the macro side, he doesn't think the Fed is behind the curve and believes the June meeting will be more important as May economic data will reveal tariff impacts.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – / schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – / schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - / schwab-network About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

When asked if he's expecting more conservative guidance in company's upcoming earnings, Chris Versace simply answered: "100%." Chris joins Diane King Hall at the NYSE to discuss the significance of earnings growth estimates, guidance and outlook from some of the biggest earnings reports still to come. Base case for the Mag 7 stocks, he sees "good earnings growth" but believes more prudent spending and capex targets may set the tone.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – / schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – / schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - / schwab-network About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

"The Fed will remain data dependent," says Chris Versace while quoting Jerome Powell's expected mantra amid the Fed's fight against inflation. Chris discusses rate cut expectations for this year, and believes 2-3 cuts are priced into the markets right now. He does point to the potential for another "bout of uncertainty" in the March/April earnings season as company's adjust guidance to account for tariffs. In terms of stocks, Chris is watching Alphabet (GOOGL) following the $32B acquisition for cloud security company Wiz.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – / schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – / schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - / schwab-network About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

"In today's interview with Daniela Cambone, Chris Versace, Chief Investment Officer and thematic strategist at Tematica Research, breaks down why inflation is still “sticky” and what that means for the market. He explains that Powell and the Fed are not in a rush to cut rates, waiting for more economic data. Plus, he shares what investors should watch next—essential information to navigate the evolving economic landscape."Questions on Protecting Your Wealth with Gold & Silver? Schedule a Strategy Call Here ➡️https://calendly.com/itmtrading/podcastor Call 866-349-3310

Chris Versace gives his takeaways from Qualcomm (QCOM) earnings. He's looking for more adoption of A.I. in PCs and cars and wants less reliance on Apple (AAPL). He also looks at Alphabet (GOOGL) sinking after earnings. “From a pick and shovel perspective,” Nvidia (NVDA) and Marvell (MRVL) will be the winners in this A.I. space, he says. ======== Schwab Network ======== Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribe Download the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185 Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7 Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watch Watch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-explore Watch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/ Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Chris Versace says the discount retailers are caught in “No-Man's Land” as Walmart (WMT), Costco (COST), and Amazon (AMZN) rack up wins while Dollar Tree (DLTR) and its ilk are left behind. He says consumers are leaning into online shopping to maximize deals, which doesn't favor dollar stores. Sticky inflation remains a headwind for these discounters. ======== Schwab Network ======== Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribe Download the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185 Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7 Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watch Watch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-explore Watch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/ Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetwork Follow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetwork Follow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

  In this episode of the Market Call show, I sit down with Jason Meshnick, a market maker turned fintech pioneer whose intriguing career journey has taken him from the bustling trading floors of the early 2000s to the cutting edge of AI in finance. Jason recounts his winding path from a philosophy major in small-town Poughkeepsie, New York, to becoming a Wall Street trader and, later, a leader in tech for trading. We explore his transition to automated trading as floors shifted online trader jobs contracted and his move into roles in finance education and media. Jason offers a captivating look into the evolution of markets and trading strategies, from the dynamics of floor versus electronic exchanges to analyzing sentiment shifts through media platforms and tools like CNN's iconic Fear and Greed Index, which he helped develop. Across various sectors of finance, Jason's experiences highlight the human element alongside technical progress.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jason Meshnick talks about his transition from being a market maker on Wall Street to becoming a fintech expert. We discuss the changes in trading desks from the early 2000s to the present, emphasizing the shift towards automation and a reduced number of traders. Jason describes his unconventional career path, moving from a philosophy major to a Wall Street trader, and his eventual move into fintech. Jason shares insights into the development of CNN's Fear and Greed Index, including the collaborative efforts and practical constraints faced during its creation. We explore the shift from floor trading to electronic markets and how enduring principles of market trading continue to influence career paths in finance. Jason recounts his personal and professional journey, including his move to Boulder, Colorado, and his involvement with the CFA Society. We dive into the intricacies of building decision trees for financial data analysis, comparing their transparency and reliability to large language models. Jason reflects on his editorial role at TheStreet.com and the importance of market sentiment analysis in shaping financial media platforms. We discuss the role of experience and a deep understanding of market nuances in successful investment strategies. Jason explains the seven indicators used in CNN's Fear and Greed Index and how this tool helps both sophisticated and retail investors make informed decisions.   PLUS: Whenever you're ready... here are three ways I can help you prepare for retirement:  1.  Listen to the Market Call Show Podcast or Watch on Youtube One of my favorite things to do is to talk with smart people about investing, financial planning, and how to live a full life.  I share this on my podcast the Market Call Show.  To watch on Youtube  – Click here   2.  Read the Financial Freedom Blueprint:  7 Steps to Accelerate Your Path to Prosperity If you're ready to accelerate your path to prosperity, the Financial Freedom Blueprint lays out a proven system for planning and investing to secure your financial independence. You can get a personalized signed hardcover copy – Click here 3.  Work with me one-on-one If you would like to talk with me about planning and investing for your future. – Click here TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)   Louis: Jason Meshnick how are you? Jason: I'm doing great, Lewis. It's so great to see you. Louis: I know I'm so glad to finally have you on the podcast. You know, just knowing you for so many years and you know, knowing that you have so much knowledge out there with regard to investing and just your overall creativity, I had to have you on and I'm so glad that you came on. Jason: Well, and one thing as you know from from our relationship, I've always gotten so much out of talking to you and I always learn something just through our conversations, and I feel like by the time this podcast is over, I will have five new ideas to to go after and try to figure out what to do, how to make them all reality oh god, I hope so, I hope so. Louis: it's all about the ideas you know exactly. It was funny. I asked you to send me a send me your bio and I've known you for a long time and we met years and years ago at a CFA meeting I think we were both on a board for the CFA Colorado or Denver chapter and and since then we've worked together in many capacities. But I didn't know a lot of things about you that I should have known just reading your bio. I knew that you spent 20 years in the fintech world and I didn't know that you were also working on some AI investment analysis, which I'd like to learn more about, and that you really have a lot of passion for educating. And I guess your coworkers asked you to write a newsletter. I had no idea about that and you know now what is this about. Vampires are rich. Why are vampires so rich? Jason: That was one of my favorite things that I wrote. Yeah, if you want to cover that now, we can, or we can talk later. Louis: I think we'll circle back to that, but I was a little what's that about. But yeah, and now you're doing some teaching at CU Boulder, teaching finance. We've done a little bit of lecturing together at the university level DU and things like that and I've always enjoyed watching you teach because you seem to captivate the kids. Well, they're not kids, they're young adults with your style. So I'd like to learn a little bit more about what you're doing there. And you are a Wall Street trader and market maker and there's a lot of things that you know about microstructure and investor psychology that I want to kind of touch on too. So, but the big thing is understanding that you were involved with the CNN, that popular feed and fear and greed index back in 2012, I guess that was put together. So I don't know. Maybe what we could do is talk a little bit about your background. I mean, I kind of covered it a little bit, but just maybe you can tell me a little bit about you know, share with the audience, your you know how you got in this business and kind of what's been your progression in this business. Jason: Yeah, so my guess is that everybody says this, but I came to it from a slightly different path, not that not that, you know, I didn't get out of college and immediately go to Wall Street, that's. That's a pretty normal path, right? But I was a philosophy major and I'm far from a philosopher. But I think what I took away from my undergrad as a philosophy major was just sort of a way of thinking, right, as opposed to being sort of a business person thinking only about money, it's more about thinking about other kinds of things and things that drive people and being able to draw from communication and trying to understand what people think and how they think and why they think, and I think it was one of the things that really fascinated me. Also, being a child of the 80s, you know Wall Street was so important. There's so many movies about it, right from from the Wall Street movie to I don't know. It seemed like every other movie that came out was about how to make millions of dollars on Wall Street, and so, of course, I wanted to be part of that. Having grown up in sort of a backwater, poughkeepsie, new York, I always wanted to go live in the big city, yeah, so that was sort of my start, was coming at it from kind of a weird direction and I ended up immediately going to work for well, a firm that no longer exists for a couple of reasons, but it was the trading arm of a New York specialist firm. So the specialists were downstairs on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and my boss was one of their customers and he just worked upstairs in their clearing division and he was trading his own money. He had been a floor broker for 20 years, owned two seats, sold his seats, did pretty well on them, and then decided that he was just going to live the rest of his life as a trader. He brought his son in and then eventually I was working as a runner so you know fourteen thousand dollars a year and just wanted exposure, just wanted to be part of the action. Right, I love the action. I was so excited about just being there, the history I love the history of things. Um, I probably should have been a history major and so, just being in that environment, I ended up getting picked up because I was. I was pretty cheap, right, so they didn't have to pay me much and I ended up working and really falling in love with being a trader and learning about how the market worked and how floor brokers could help make these trades. We had a network of 20 floor brokers across the New York Stock Exchange and what was then called the Amex, and some of the regional exchanges too, so that we could trade and we'd strategize every morning and then make our buy and sell decisions and then, throughout the day, update them as needed. I'd like to say that we were the high frequency traders of the time, even though our frequency wasn't that fast, but we were sitting on both sides of the bid and the offer. Louis: Boy. Jason: times have changed, huh offer Boy times have changed huh yeah, I mean that's yeah, I like to say. When I, when I started in the business, there were people there who'd been on the floor in 1929. And so much of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange looked the same as it did in 19,. You know, if you, if you were to go, take Jesse Livermore and drop him, you know from 1929 and just drop him on the floor in 1992 when I started, he'd have been like I don't know what these TV things are that are all around. He wouldn't have even had that word, but otherwise he'd have been able to run into a crowd and know exactly what to do. And by the time I left in 2002, well, there wasn't even a crowd, right? I mean, everything was different about the floor of the exchange. I was a market maker on a fully electronic stock exchange, so the principles were all the same, but everything else had changed. It was so different. Louis: Oh, that's a big part of what I wanted to talk to you about that the principles are all the same. So, because I was just listening back to some of our, or looking back at some of our conversations just to prepare for this, and we've had a lot of conversations in the past where you were really outlining like I want to capture what I saw, those principles that I saw on the floor, and I want to capture them today and that's kind of driven a lot of things that you've done. So maybe maybe you can tell me like just a handful of what those principles are that you've noticed are like still the same now that probably will never change. Jason: Well, so I'll caveat this by saying I've been out of the markets for a number of years, right, so I left, I left trading in 2002. And then I was still, you know, still kind of a pretty active trader, investor for the next 10 years or so. But then life gets in the way and I'm just very busy, and so I've sort of shifted my focus in a number of ways and I'm honestly really interested in analysis now and thinking about market sentiment and what investors are doing and how investors think about the market. And I now, when I trade, it's opportunistically right, I'm not in there every day, I'm not trying to make eighths or even pennies. Louis: I guess we should probably. Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt you there. Jason: Go ahead. Louis: I was just gonna say I guess we should probably back up a little bit and talk a little bit about, like more about your career progression, because you moved into from trading into fintech and, and from fintech now to working at the streetcom for and as an editor, so, and which to me makes a hundred percent sense. Um, just from what I know from your talent, your talent stack, so maybe you can kind of finish that progression a little bit. So, to where you are now, yeah, sorry, yeah, totally. Jason: So my progression is really. I mean, there's there's a couple things that run through the entire thing and I think a big part of it is analysis and being excited about, about thinking about the markets right, about being being in some ways just part of the culture of it right. So that's been the big thing that's run through my entire career. But in 2002, my wife and I we weren't married at the time we were thinking about you know where will we end up, and we decided that we either end up in New Jersey or we could move somewhere that we wanted to live. So we did a search all around the country and decided we just sort of threw a dart at the at the wall and said Colorado seems pretty nice. So we ended up here in Colorado and it's been the best move. Louis: Man, that was a lucky dart throw. If you ask me, it's a lucky dart throw, I think. Jason: I think it was guided by my wife's hand. She may have said I'll take that dart and I'm going to place it right here just at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. So she'd been out here and visited and said Boulder is going to be the place where Jason will be happy and we'll make this happen. And so we moved out here without jobs. I quit my job as a market maker in June of 2002. And the market was changing so much at that time it was definitely becoming harder to make money, and so I was ready for a change. I was ready to do something different. You know, when I left, there were 10 traders on my desk and probably another 30, 20, 30 on our over-the-counter desk. And when I went back, seven or eight years later and I'll get to this, but when, when I was working in FinTech and I went back, visited my old trading desk, there were three people and a really large computer and, rather than taking directional bets on the market, they were doing arbitrage. And they were. They were, they were working the order flow and they were figuring out, based on the order flow, how long or short they were going to be. You know, sort of using quantitative methods to understand. If they felt the market was going up and they were going to end up being more short and more short, they would have to think about the Delta to the market and try to get long ahead of those people so they could be selling to them. So it became in some ways probably a much more intellectually engaging thing than just sitting saying, oh someone just sold me 1,000 shares, I have to get out of it now. You were thinking ahead of the market. In many ways it was really cool. I probably would have liked it a lot, but it just became a really different animal. It was much more arbitrage as opposed to directional trading, which is really what I knew. So we moved to Colorado without jobs and in doing that that's when I met you, lewis is. I was pretty engaged with the CFA Society despite not having a CFA I'll throw that out there. I'd also just finished my MBA at NYU. That counts. So, I think they let me in, but that was about it, and they let me even onto the board. Louis: Yeah, yeah, you're a very likable guy, so it was a pretty easy decision. They're like he doesn't have a CFA, but he's a pretty cool guy. We'll let him in anyway. Jason: I think he also said this is a guy that we can make do all the all the programming. We can make him call all the all the people that we don't want to call and try to organize meetings. And they thought I was an event planner, which it turns out I'm not. I'm just not a good event planner. My wife can tell you that Actually, lois, you did kind of the same. We were organizing all the CMT meetings. Louis: Oh yeah. Jason: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's, let's go call some people, um, yeah, but so so it took a while and I ended up finding this job here in boulder, uh, for a company called wall street on demand and for those who are not familiar with wall street on demand, it has a new name um, it became market, uh, no, became wall street on. It was wall street on demand. Then it became market on demand once I, once market bought us and then eventually it became market on demand once market bought us, and then eventually it became market digital, when they decided that it was really time to think more broadly than just web and think broadly across all digital formats video, et cetera, and advertising. And I stayed there for 19 years. Where, louis, you touched on the AI side of what I did and so this is one of my big jokes is that I like to say that I was the world's most widely read analyst, if not the best, and the reason why I say that is because over the 19 years that I was at that company, I built something like I don't know 200 different. I call them only because of today's terminology and the way that people talk about markets now, about technology now. I call these AI related, and they really are simple. They're very much rules-based AI, so sort of traditional AI, not these large language models that we have now that are in some ways more sophisticated but really not as good. So what I was building were these big decision trees, and these decision trees were things where you would, using your financial knowledge, you would say, okay, I'm looking at some financial data around a company. What do we need to know? Well, let's start with the valuation. Is the stock what's the PE ratio? Is it a high PE ratio or a low PE ratio? How do you define a high PE ratio? Is a high PE compared to its average for the last five years, or is it the highest in its industry? Right, you can look at things cross-sectionally or historically, right, but both ways time-based or versus peers, and so we would do things like that and we would chop up the market and try to understand. You know which stocks were good or bad, but it wasn't necessarily for an investment perspective, right? This was because what we were doing was for the Schwab's and TD Ameritrade's and all those companies. We were building the news and research portions of their website, and so I and my team were providing that research, and so a lot of the texts that you would see on that site was completely dynamically generated. So, very simple, rules-based AI. And I say it's better than large language models for AI, because large language models you never really know what you're going to get. It's a bit of a black box, right. So what we could do is I would create text that was locked down. I knew exactly what it was going to say. I didn't know what the data was that was going into it, right, I didn't know if Apple had a high PE ratio or a low PE ratio, but I had rules around defining what was high and low. And so when I would go to the compliance departments at Schwab or TD Ameritrade or Fidelity, et cetera we worked with all the US brokers, many of the Canadian brokers, australia, others I would go to the compliance departments and they would say, well, how do I know that you're not going to say something silly or that's incorrect? And I said, well, I'm going to give you the entire decision tree and you're going to be able to look at the decision tree and understand what it says. So the only way that my model can be wrong is if I have a bug and there are bugs all over the internet, so I'm as fallible as anybody else, but we're going to do our best not to have those. And then, secondly, if the data is wrong and if the data is wrong, well it's wrong all over the website too, and we're going to fix that. But generally, 99.9% of the time, for 99.9% of the stocks, what we say is going to be accurate. It's going to be correct, it is going to be as unbiased as possible, because I'm not trying to tell you, as a value investor or growth investor or whatever, what you should do. I'm just trying to describe the various aspects of the stock. I wasn't there to give you a buy, sell hold recommendation. I was purely there to help you, as a self-directed investor, understand more about the stock, about the company. You know you brought up something that's really interesting about that. Louis: I mean, I have to. You know you're talking about large language models and it's a little bit of a black box. We don't really quite know, and you're dealing with these big decision trees, or you were at that time and it was traceable, like you could trace the logic which made me think, okay, we have data and the data can be right or wrong, and then you have the logic, and the logic can be right or wrong. And I think that's one of the things that I always have a little. I'm having a little bit of an issue with with some of the AI is the logic element of it, because you like how much of it is curve, fitting what is real behind it, so we could use it. I had a tech executive tell me one time that the big thing with AI is it can help us with speed and it can help us with accuracy if we use it correctly. But it's not necessarily like you still need human thought. You still need that ultimate human element to it. That's my personal opinion on that. But the fact that you were using decision trees early on, you know that and just to get information, that way you were speeding the process for the investor, basically. Jason: Right. Louis: Like they would spend a lot of time looking for all those things. But you systematically sped it up, which is a a big thing for and we and we all have that now that's and it's, there's just like different flavors of it, um, so, uh, it's, it's that whole. It's a whole. Nother topic we can get into a little bit later. But I, I, uh, I remember you talking about that when you were doing working on those projects, um, wondering where it would go next. Um, you know, as far as that goes, but getting back to your, getting back to your, your story, let's get back to your story. Yeah, sorry, keep getting off track. Yeah, that's okay, yeah. Jason: So while I was at that job I did, I did a number of things. I mean it was really, it was really an exciting job in so many ways. But the two big things that I did were really this you know, running the natural language generation product right. This thing we called it smart text, um, and so that's that ai thing. But then the other thing that I was so excited about was doing education right and and our. So this started back in 2006 or 7, um, I started doing brown bag lunches where I would just put together a presentation and teach our developers and designers and engineers all about everything they needed to know about investing, not so they could go out and make a million dollars, but rather so that when they were building the tools that we were all using, they understood their subject matter right, that they could be engaged with the topic and identify with the end user and really understand why a PE ratio mattered or why a chart mattered. Simple thing, like in design, you'll notice that there's a lot of white space on many pages and they talk about that as being good design. It's actually a really bad design for investors and the reason is well, depending on the type of investors, but for slightly more active investors, engaged investors, what they want is information dense things, and so I would help steer our design team to create things that were a little bit more information dense, an example being a chart, a price chart. You don't want to have to scroll up and down too much to be able to read your price chart on your Schwab account. You want to be able to type in NVIDIA and load up a couple of indicators that you want to see. Put your MACD on and then MACD is a lower indicator, maybe an RSI, maybe whatever Put those things on there and be able to, in one view, understand the trend, momentum, volume and volatility from that stock right. That was another thing that we did when we rebuilt Schwab's charts. I'm kind of proud to say that Yahoo actually stole this, but we broke the indicators out. Previous big charts started this. They said indicators are either separated out as upper indicators or lower indicators, and that doesn't tell you anything, and I'll credit John Bollinger. I learned all this from him is really you know, people should understand what goes into the indicators. They should understand as much of the calculation as possible, right, what the inputs are and what it's giving, what information it's giving you, right, and then separate those out into different sort of you know I'm using the term factors very loosely but into the different factors of technical analysis. So, is it trend, is it momentum-based, is it volume, volatility you can come up with others as well but, right, where does it fit? And if you're looking, if you put a bunch of indicators on a chart and it turns out that they're all trend indicators, well, you really have one indicator and so you're not getting a full picture. So go put some momentum indicators on there to understand the speed and whether the trend is about to be exhausted or not. So it's things like that that I really wanted to help both the end user of our products as well as the the, the person who was building the products, understand so. So I ended up writing for about three or four years. So we started that in 2007, but it was. They asked me to put it on hold after a while cause it was taking away from a lot of my work. And then, in 2018, our CEO came to me and she said you know, you used to do this, these brown bag lunches. I would really like it if you would just write. Just write a newsletter for the whole company. The question of the week, so Fridays. I'd ask the question, and it might be how many? How many stocks are there in the S&P 500? And I haven't looked at the number recently, but I think the number is still 501, right, it might even be higher, but there's only 500 companies in the S&P 500. And so that's the distinction. There's 500 companies, but some companies have multiple classes of stock that may be in the S&P. It might be 505 now I can't remember. I have not looked in a long time, but that was effectively the answer, and so it became just a really fun thing to write the answer, and so it became just a really fun thing to write. Yeah, so teaching people about vampires right, became a way of telling them. Why are vampires so rich? It's simple They've been investing for hundreds of years and so they've had time to let their money compound. Assuming that Vlad the Impaler, the first vampire, he was a prince. Let's just put a number on that $10,000 in today's money. What does $10,000 grow to over 500 years? It grows to trillions of dollars. And then, if you spend 1% of that every year, how much money are vampires spending? Today, vampires are spending billions of dollars. Vampires are probably supporting our economy. Louis: They've got to be the richest people in the world. It's like puts vampires, yeah yeah, it puts elon musk to shame, I mean really so maybe elon's a vampire yeah, you never know, maybe a little similar, I don't know. That's that's wild. Well, um, so you have this creative side to you. That's that's driven that. And then how did you get um, like, was it just a natural progression for you to do what you're doing now? Jason: or maybe you should tell us a little bit about what you're doing now yeah, so so let's get to what I'm doing now, because that's important and I know that, um, they'll be watching this and they'll they'll kill me if I don't talk about what I'm doing now, because they also really like it. Um, I'm having a lot of fun. So, you know, you go through ups and downs in your career and I definitely there were times when I absolutely loved trading and absolutely hated, and that might be the same day. I might love and hate trading. Louis: In. Jason: FinTech it was. I might love a year and hate the next year and, you know, love the next year for that. It was project to project and here you know right now what we're doing. So I work for I'm currently the managing editor of the street pro and so so you are probably familiar with the street. Jim Cramer founded it back in I don't know 1997 or 1998. It was really the first, the first and best of its type where you could come and get financial news and information. And then, not long after they started the street, they brought, they created something called real money where they brought in people like Helene Meisler and and Doug Cass and they would create something that was more of a subscription product but more of a newsletter, newsletter product where Helene would write top stocks is what it became and Helene would write her brand of you know market sentiment analysis and it was really great. And Jim Cramer left about two years ago and I've never met Cramer. I've heard him speak before but I don't know Cramer, don't know a lot about him. But I'll say this is a business that was 25 years old or is 25 years old now, and it's going through a lot of change. So we're trying to figure out what will it look like in the future. And one of the big things I love this I quote it all the time but Barry Ritholtz was one of our. I believe he was a street contributor at one point. Barry Ritholtz has gone on to become a Bloomberg contributor and have his own money management firm, but earlier in his career, I'd say, he made his name at the street, as did a lot of people, and so he calls the street the Motown of Finance and he says that the Jim Cramer was sort of this I think the name is Barry Gordy character who you know sort of larger than life in many ways, and he brought people in, brought people in and he made them stars right, and so we did the same thing, or he did that at the street, and so we're in the process now of trying to do that again. We have great contributors. They're all wonderful and they provide really great perspectives on the market, and sometimes they disagree and sometimes they agree. I asked a few of them to write about GameStop recently and it was really great to see the kinds of things that I got. But we want to get back and we want to make these people, we want to make our contributors, who are such great analysts, stars again, right. So we're trying to change a lot of things that we do in the business. In the past it was really Jim Cramer. The last five years, I'd say, jim Cramer became our number one star. I want Helene and Doug and Sarge and Rev Shark and I could go through the whole list Chris Versace I want them all to be stars too, and they want to be stars and they are because they're so good. So we're working at how we can do that, how we can elevate the content, not just to make the contributor stars, but really to showcase how good they are as we go and help more investors to be self-directed investors, be more successful in their trading and investing. And I say we have two different types of products, really Our value add. If you are a trader, a self-directed trader, you might spend your time on Doug Cass's community, right? So Doug has his daily diary. Doug's a hedge fund manager. He's out there from three o'clock in the morning. He's sending us stuff. It's crazy. The editors have to be there editing and putting it up from. They start at 5.30. So the editors are in there at 5.30 in the morning putting Doug's ideas up all the way through the end of the trading day, and then in the lower half of that page is a community where we have many, many people from the community, some of which I won't say any of their names, but some of which are fairly big names in finance and investing. We know who they are. On the site they really the community ends up feeding on itself and providing great ideas just among each other. There's one guy who talks a lot about cryptocurrencies. We don't have a lot of cryptocurrency content on the site. We're working, we're going to be adding some, but this one person alone actually provides some of the best crypto content I've ever written, and he's paying us right now, at least for now us right now, at least for now. And so the other products that we have. We have where you can get trading ideas or investing ideas. We have some people who are a little bit more technical focused, some who are more fundamental focused. We have one person who does really well providing dividend ideas. Another person is really great at more fundamental, value-based ideas, but then we have a whole portfolio. You can come to us and we have Chris Versace runs our pro portfolio, where we help investors understand not only how to put together a portfolio and they can just copy this entire portfolio but, the thing I love about it most, every week Chris writes a weekly update talking about what he sees in the market, what's coming up, economic things that are happening. But then he goes through all 30 holdings. He tells you the investment thesis you know I'm big on the investment thesis, lewis right, you should have a thesis, you should know why you're investing something and you should update it frequently. Right, chris updates the investment thesis every week. And then he tells you what his target price is and his panic point, his stop right, where he's going to realize that his thesis is incorrect and he's going to re-evaluate, probably sell the position. And then he just goes through and gives you sort of a weekly update and says, yeah, here's what happened in NVIDIA. Jensen Wan was out doing whatever he did. He spoke to these people. So that's what we're doing and the product is great and we're, you know, really excited. Now we have a lot of energy around what we're doing and how we're, how we're rebuilding, um, building I keep saying rebuilding like really we're taking what we had, which was a solid product, and we're just building off of it. We have, uh, later this month this will be the first time I've kind of mentioned this Um month this will be the first time I've kind of mentioned this Our marketing team doesn't even know but later this month we're doing a roundup, or we're actually calling it the quarterly call. So this will be the end of every quarter. Now we're going to have four of our contributors come on and really just talk about what they see in the market and have kind of a little panel discussion, and so that'll be really exciting, but it's things like that that we want to do. Louis: Yeah, it's good to hear the actual real time discussion, you know, because you get more color about it. But I love what you said about the Motown or the. Who is it? Who said a Barry Ritholtz? Jason: Barry Ritholtz. Louis: Yeah, I said that. I mean I thought I had so many like visions in my head because, you know, I'm a musician too and I I'm thinking about motown. I fell in love with motown as a young kid. My parents listened to it and the first thing that I thought about was that these, a lot of these people that were, uh, involved in motown, they were, they were completely isolated from the music industry. So so you know, you can find a lot of talent outside of, people that are like right in the mainstream of the music and of the Wall Street, kind of normative Wall Street. I mean you have to do something different really to be unique like that. And sometimes I think groupthink hurts Wall Street. In fact, I was just telling my wife this morning. I got out of the shower and I said you know what, in a way, wall Street is kind of like not even a thing anymore. Like you know, it's like I don't even think of Wall Street anymore as Wall Street. I mean last time I was there it didn't even seem like Wall Street to me. I mean it's still, it's still a thing mentally, but it's not. It's like I really think it's time for Motown. Jason: I think you guys are right in the thick of what we should be doing, because there's so many great thinkers that I run into who are not anywhere near the center of Wall Street, quote, unquote. So that's, yeah, one of the things I really want to steal comes from Chicago. So Morningstar in their quant reports. So if you have a Schwab account or any of these, they pretty much all have Morningstar's reports. These aren't the quant reports, I'm sorry, it's actually the ones that are handwritten by analysts, but on page I don't know two or three they have a module that says bulls say and bears say and they go through the bullish case of a stock and the bearish case of a stock, and that's something that I want to institute everywhere. Everybody should be with everything right. You talk politics, you should have a. You know what are the positives, what are the negatives. Whoever your candidate is doesn't matter. They have positive, they have negatives, that's right. You know your friends have positive, negatives. Like everything has a positive and a negative, and you have to look at both sides of the story, especially they say you shouldn't marry your investments Right. Know what the downsides are, Know what the risks are with everything you do. Louis: Wow, there's a lot there we could go into. Jason: I know yeah, as far as the no, no, not politics. Believe me, I mean we're staying away from politics. Louis: Yeah, we're staying away from that. You know, it's more like the I keep thinking of the narrative versus the numbers debate. I always say that I'm more interested in the numbers than the narrative. Like I start with the numbers and then go for the narrative and I think the older I get and the more I've seen, the more I realize that it's not the narrative necessarily, it's just understanding as much as you possibly can about what is true. It's hard to do and so much of investing is qualitative. You know, I mean you know my background. I do a lot of quant factor stuff and all that and that's really helpful in kind of keeping you honest. But at the end of the day, when I look at the stocks that have done really, really well for me, or macro trades like futures type oriented trades, it's been because I had some piece of knowledge and understanding about something that I just knew with a high conviction that was true and I stayed with it and it made a lot of money. So that is really hard. I don't think the quant sometimes leads you there, but it may not necessarily. It's not usually the end, like the end all be all, and a lot of times if you look at the best quantitative stuff it tends to turn over a ton. Right, it's like like momentum. Well, you know, you could say like, okay, I'm going to run momentum screens on stocks and the best parameter set is going to be me like turning over quite a bit. But then after tax and reality in the real world, you're really not making that as much as you would think, whereas you might find something that's gaining momentum that no one's talking about, like I bought not to talk about. I shouldn't talk about specific names right now, but there's a particular stock that I bought where I understood what was happening. It did come up in a momentum screen. It was a very small company at the time and then it just went ballistic. That now did I know it was going to ballistic? No, not to that degree. You know, I didn't think it was going to go up. You know 500% in, you know three months. But it's one of those things where you, if you know something, there's so much more to the narrative, so you go into the Motown aspect of things. There's value in that. We, we numbers are becoming a commodity, almost right. Everybody can get all these numbers and we can, we can move things around. Anybody can go on chat, gpt and, you know, pull, you know I get certain things. So I, you know, I don't know I'm becoming more of a qualitative guy the older I get. Is that that's weird? Jason: I have a theory on that. Let me know what you think. But I think that you are able to become a qualitative guy now because you have been a quantitative guy for so long and so because everything that you do there's, you know, there's a famous saying, it comes from consulting. I think you can't manage what you can't measure, and so everything that you've done as a quantitative person has been to measure, even when you run that quant screen and you get a list of stocks and you know that this list of stocks is going to turn over at the same time. You probably know well, this is going to turn over. But let's pick on NVIDIA. Nvidia is on the list right now and, because of these other things that I know through my experience, nvidia may come off in two weeks, but it's probably going to come back on in a month. I should just hold it Right, yeah, and so I think that you've spent so much time in the markets and it comes down to the word is experience. Right and that's why you hire a financial advisor. Or you hire, or you take a subscription to the Street Pro, or you want to get the experience of other people, especially as you're learning. Louis: Yeah, yeah. Jason: So now you can be. I was just going to say one thing. One thing is you can be sort of a core satellite where you can take your core investing, and maybe you want to be self-directed and buy a portfolio of ETFs, or you want to give that money to your financial advisor, give it to you, lewis, and then, with sort of the satellite funds, play money or whatever. You use your own experience Maybe it's in your own industry or whatever it is. You're trying to add that extra bit of alpha right and have fun maybe, but but keep yourself intellectually engaged. You have, you know, sort of the core of your portfolio over here and then kind of the rest of it where you can do things with as well. Louis: Yeah, I totally, I totally agree with that. So you know, this is just kind of getting me into this the fear and greed concept. You know you got involved with the fear and greed. I'm not, I'd like to hear the story about how you got involved in and what you, what you did in that. But when I think about the fear and greed index, I always think about that fish that's in the bowl and doesn't realize that he's in water and but you know, but if he steps outside and looks at he's like wow, I'm in water, right. That's kind of what sentiment is to me. It's like we're part of the sentiment, like we are, we're the observer. It's like the Heisenberg principle, like what we look at, we change, right, and that's sentiment, and fear and greed is kind of like a great overall, you know, easy to understand way of looking at that. But I guess I want to let's start off with your story, like how did you get into the fear and? Jason: greed project and what, what. What was your progression through that? So yeah, I mean, after coming from Wall Street, I'll tell a really quick story because I think this it's in it's in the article that I wrote too. But this story is a story from business school and I can't remember if the numbers are correct, but they're approximately correct and the timing is approximately correct. I was in business school, part-time, at night. I was working as a market maker during the day and then at night I was at NYU taking a class and this class was a valuation class and they asked us we had to come up with, we had to do a discounted cashflow analysis of a stock, and each group got to select whatever stock they wanted and I proposed to my group let's pick JDS Uniphase, because it was one of. It was the NVIDIA of its day. Oh yeah, hopefully NVIDIA will have a better future than JDSU did. But my group was all they said absolutely, let's do that one. And the stock was trading at I don't remember exactly, but probably about $165. Okay, and so we sit down and we do our analysis and we're doing discounted cashflow analysis and one of the big inputs to DCF is understanding the growth metrics right and forecasting growth. And forecasting growth means looking back historically, figuring out how fast the company has been growing and just saying you know, is it going to speed up or is it going to slow down? Eventually they all slow down. It will slow down, but you have to figure out how long that's going to take. So we did the analysis and we figured out it would slow down, I don't know, over 10 years or something. Something pretty reasonable, probably pretty generous as well, and we came up with a value Again. Remember the stock's trading at $165. We came up with a value of $2.25. And we looked at it and we said can't be, can't be. We learned in our last class the market's efficient, this is all wrong. I don't know. We did something wrong and so we went back and we now this time we went crazy. We're like this stock's going to speed up its growth. It's going to, instead of growing at 50% per year like it has been, it's going to grow at 100% forever. And we came up with a value of $225, right, and so the stock gets added to the S&P or maybe it was when they confirmed that it would be and the stock jumps to $225. It jumps to $235, I think was the high I sell my stock at like $225. Louis: And so we were right, that was a good trade. Jason: Good trade. And then we go and we present our research to our professor. And this is where it's really funny. The professor, who was so outrageously smart, could do any math problem in his head. But he's looking at us, he's laughing at us. He's like really, you think this thing is worth $2.20? We're like, yeah, here's the research, here's what we did. And he's just laughing at us. And then he says how could this company possibly be worth more than Apple? And Apple at the time was trading at $19, which, split adjusted, is probably something like negative 10 cents. And he said Apple has $16 in cash on its books and, whatever he's like, Apple is definitely worth more than JDS, Unipay. And, of course, this guy's probably retired on a private island somewhere. But what I took away from this whole story oh, and the other thing is we were right on both sides. We were right with $225 call because the stock traded to $235. And within two years the stock was trading at something like $2. So we were right on both ends. And so what I took from that was I'm not a great analyst and I'm not a great forecaster. I'm especially not a good forecaster. Okay, but what I can do is I can look at data and I can back into things and I can understand well, if I look at, if I calculate, if I back into, how do I get to $165 or $200 for JDS Uniphase? I look and I say, well, the market has really high expectations of this company and those expectations are nothing but sentiment. Nobody knows. Louis: I think that's all you need, though, jason, I actually don't think you need to be a great forecast Like that's really all you need. So, cause, if you know those extremes, you avoid mistakes, because the more I do this, the more I realize that's what it's about. You know, if you're going to put X number of units, and risk units if you will, in your portfolio, if you don't make a lot of mistakes and you compound reasonably, you're going to do great. It's just like reading. You know Warren Buffett always talks about read chapter eight and chapter 20 of the intelligent investor, which everyone should do, by the way. In fact, I'm set I send that book to clients and just say read this. You know that's what all it is about. I mean, that's basically what it's about what you just talked about right there. You don't really need to be a great forecaster. You just need to avoid a lot of mistakes and have a reasonable amount of diversification, not too much. And yeah, I mean you hear about people that have made like great calls consistently, and then the more you learn about them, the more you realize that there was something else part of the story. You know what I'm saying. There was another part of the story that you didn't really hear about, and a lot of it boils down to not avoiding mistakes, having discipline, risk management, things like that, but anyway, I got you off your topic. Jason: It's all risk. Yeah no, yeah, no, no, yeah, and it's. It's important to cut me off too, because I can. I can talk about certain things for too long, but I'll just. I'll just cut right to your question, which was fear and greed, yeah, yeah. And so how did I get to that? Literally, I, from that point in about 2000,. You know, I got much more interested in technical analysis and and, and I started thinking I'm not so much like a stock picker and I'm not so much into, you know, the MACD and the RSI. I'm much more quantitative. That's my interest in technicals. Technicals really helped me become more quantitative and more interested in looking at the big picture, understanding how to measure the big picture, and so I started looking at indicators and things that people like Ned Davis was doing. Right, I, I a big fan of Ned Davis, ned Davis's work. There's some other providers that were like that, sentiment traders Another one. I like all those, I like what they do and I started trying to replicate. You know, you don't know what their secret sauce is, although actually Ned Davis has a really good book. I'm looking at my bookshelf somewhere out there when Ned Davis's book is being right or making money. But then his chief strategist wrote another book where they actually go in and they tell you how to build a, build their, one of their sentiment indicators that has nine components to it. I was messing around with that, trying to figure out, trying to understand these indicators and understand the signals that they gave. And I hadn't around. That same time, cnn was one of our clients at what was then Wall Street On Demand and our CEO was out talking to them and he was talking to Lex Harris, who was their editor in chief, and Lex said you know, I don't know what this is, but I want to build something called the Fear and Greed Index. Can you help me? And Jim, our CEO, came back and he came to my team and he said so CNN has this kind of crazy idea. They want to build something called the Fear and Greed Index. What do you think has this kind of crazy idea? They want to build something called the fear and greed index? What do you think? And everyone on the team pushed away from the table. They're like what a bad idea. And I was left sitting there going they thought it was a bad idea. Yeah, they just you know they didn't get it. It wasn't what they do. I thought you were going to say mic drop. Louis: I literally thought you were going to say mic drop. Everybody said that's a great idea, let's jump on it. That surprises me. They looked at it. Jason: Yeah, they were like well, and they didn't know how to do it right. It wasn't what they were interested in. The team all had very different kinds of backgrounds, and I was the only one that had that more market-related background. The others were really more analysts Smart guys, great guys, but much more like. They could probably pick a stock better than I can, but they cannot tell you if we're in a bull market or a bear market. So I'm sitting there saying this is the greatest opportunity ever. And so they got me on the phone with CNN, with Lex, a day or two later, and we just started putting together ideas and Lex basically said look, I don't know what this thing is. You kind of know what I want to do. I just want something that really represents that quote that Warren Buffett says, which is you should be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. So what, what is that? What does that look like? And so I just went and built it. Luckily, they gave me Jim. Our CEO's son was also a statistics major at Yale, and so for his summer internship that year, he sat with me and we went through and took all the indicators that I had put together and we did a principal component analysis, which is really important because you want to make sure, just like we said earlier, when you're looking at a stock chart, you want to make sure that your indicators aren't all trend indicators or all momentum indicators. The same thing, we want to make sure that each of the indicators, within fear and greed, didn't step on one another right, that they weren't saying the same thing, or really just that they worked well together, that they were each complementary, right? There were a couple indicators that I wanted to include that just didn't make it for budget reasons. Cnn is a media company. Media companies don't have huge budgets these days, so I couldn't do things like market valuation, s&p 500 valuation, or we wanted to use the, because by this point, market had bought us, and so I wanted to use the credit default swap index and I could only get end of day CVS data, not intraday, and so it just didn't fit with what we were doing. Um, so there were, there were some indicators that we left out that really would have been perfect and, um, you know, later on I got I got to use for other purposes, but not for the fear and greed index. But I got to use for other purposes, but not for the fear and greed index. But yeah, right now you know the fear and greed index, the seven indicators that are there, we selected one that is purely just the S&P 500, right, normalized. So we understand if it's sort of fear, you know, fearful or greedy. But then we have two that are breadth indicators. So how broad is the advance or decline? And is that moving in concert with the market or against the market? Then we have two that are options related the put-call ratio and the VIX. And then we have two that are bond market related One that compares the spread and yields between low-quality junk bonds and high-quality investment-grade bonds, as that spread is tightening. You see that investors are, you know they're more, they're seeking out risk because they think that they can get better returns. And then the last one is where we compare the returns on stocks to the return on bonds over a 20-day rolling period, total return as well. So for all these underlying indicators we're using ETFs. So this is actually something that can be replicated by anybody, but there are a lot of mechanics and calculations that go into it on the back end which make it. You know, if you are going to calculate it yourself, you got to be pretty sophisticated and be and have a pretty decent data feed. Yeah. Louis: Well, I love that. You know that was put in a scale that made sense and a categorization that made sense. It almost kind of makes sense the way that you did. It is like extreme fear, fear, neutral greed, extreme greed. These are things that we can understand and this is, I think, one of your biggest talents, actually. I think one of your biggest talents actually. You know, like you had said, we were looking for, we did principal component analysis, but we were looking for things that worked well together and complementary. As a quant geek, I would have just said non-correlated, you know or not. I would have used like big, long names of there's some statistical names that are you know to describe, that are like really long and stupid, sounding like to make no sense. I love the fact that you like that, you, you that's the. That is a great skill and I think to be able to take something that is complicated and make it accessible was one of the biggest, I guess, wins from this and it also helps people understand themselves, in my opinion, like if somebody goes and they look at this and they say, okay, right now I'm looking at the website. It says I'm on cnncom markets, fear and greed. It says it's got a number 48 and it says we're neutral but kind of tilting towards fear. So tell me a little bit about, like, how you would interpret this. I'm an investor right now. Let's say I have a reasonably good sized portfolio. I want to grow my wealth, but I also want to manage my risk. How would I? What would I use this for? How would I think about this? For like, really, like practically, how would I use this? Jason: Okay. So what does neutral mean? And neutral is really that center zone of I don't know what it is right. So the first thing I'll ask you to do and I know users or people who are watching or listening can't see this, but in the upper right corner you can see where it says overview and timeline. So the first thing I want you to do is click on timeline, okay, and what you'll see is a chart of the fear and greed index for the last two years. And especially when we are in this neutral area and we don't really know what the overarching sentiment is, it's important to look back over historically, just like we said with the PE ratio. Right, you can look back and compare to peers, or you can say how is it versus history, and so what we see is this 48 is an increase over where it has been. But, more importantly, we're sort of in this weird consolidation period. Fear and greed is just kind of ticking up and down, up and down. It's not really doing much of anything. So, however, we have dropped from a level of greed right Back before April and I'm going to pat myself on the back. I don't write much about fear and greed. I'm going to start, but I don't write much about fear and greed on our site. I did post in one of our little communities. I said, look, hey, just so you guys know. You don't really know me, but I built the Fear and Greed Index and here's what I've been watching Fear and Greed. It has just broken down. I think the market's going to break down with it, and you know my timing was amazing and the next day the market broke down. So, yeah, good for me, blind squirrel. But so what I like to do is I like to look and see and look for patterns and try to understand what is it doing and how does it compare to the market. So a few things, all right. What really matters is fear tends to be good. What happens when the indicator goes into fear or extreme fear? What we see is that standard deviation of returns. So the volatility of the market increases, and I think we're talking about forward volatility too, not like a month out, but days out if you want to measure it each day and sort of see what's happening. Volatility is just high when we are in extreme fear and fear because investors are nervous. What happens when investors are nervous? Good time to buy, right. The other thing is greed happens a lot. Okay, and greed is not necessarily a bad thing. Extreme greed is oftentimes a good thing. Okay, extreme greed tends to have. There's two times that extreme greed happens and one time is a great time and the other time is a high risk time. Okay, the great time is when we have been at extreme fear. The market has fallen maybe the market fell by 10% or something and we're starting to see a rebound and what you'll see oftentimes is the components of the fear and greed index spike and everything spikes, everything jumps up and we get to extreme greed because we've gone from a low level and all of a sudden, investors are committing new capital to the money. Investors are getting excited and we see extreme greed. Extreme greed is almost always good, except when, if we were in some kind of an uptrend okay, we've been, we're in an established uptrend, something good happens, the market kind of spikes. We don't. It's rare that we really see extreme greed during an uptrend, but let's say it happens. Well, that tends to be a period where probably just don't want to commit new capital right now. I probably want to take a breather, wait, because risk is higher. You know it's extreme fear to extreme greed, but really it's low risk to high risk. Louis: But sometimes, as you know, sometimes that greed can be really good too. The other thing yeah, go ahead, sorry, no, no, I was just going to say that reminds me of like the traditional technical interpretation of momentum is after you've had a bear market, you always get to an overbought situation. That doesn't mean the trend's over, it just means the trend's beginning, and it's almost the same concept. It seems like to me to some degree like you're looking for the extremes, but sometimes you have to interpret it the opposite way after a certain condition, after a bear market or after you've had really a lot of fear, and then it pops back up to greed, well, that doesn't mean the trend's over, that means we're just starting to go up again. Exactly yeah, and you have a continuation of the trend. Jason: Right, yeah, yeah, completely. And so with anything, with any indicator, you have to look at it in context right. Everything from an economic indicator, cpi, et cetera. Everything has to be looked at within context. And with that, I think you have to look at the context within the fear and greed index, and that's why there are the seven components, and I actually feel that the seven components are more valuable than that headline number, than the speed dial, right. So we start with and CNN came up with these names and I love it that they did that, because they are so much better at explaining things than I am and they really they said well, you know, here's who our user base is. We want this to be something that is a sophisticated trader can use it. And, as you know, as we heard Katie Stockton tell us several years ago, lots of hedge funds use the fear and greed index, right, they use it as one of their marks to understand what investors are doing. But they want it to be understandable by retail investors, by my dad hundred versus 125 day moving average just to see how far like what is the momentum right. Use that word, it's completely accurate. What is the momentum Is it? Is it so high that it's potentially exhaustive right now? It's so high that it's potentially exhaustive right when we and we normalize it both over the last six months. But then we also go back and we normalize it again over two years to say is that six month number that higher, low that we have? How does that compare where we've really been over a longer period of time? And then we look at, as I mentioned, two measures of stock price strength and stock price breadth. So market breadth we're looking at both 52 week highs and lows on the New York Stock Exchange and then the McClellan Volume Summation Index. So really is money flowing into stocks going up or money flowing into stocks going down? Louis: And what we see is both of those numbers are sitting at extreme fear. Because, those are great indicators. They're such great indicators. Yeah, I mean, I remember back in the day doing a ton of backtesting and those were some of the most robust indicators, all three of them, especially on the new highs it's actually new lows is actually more valuable, in my opinion, based on the research years ago, than the new highs, but just because it showed that extreme capitulation. But those are great and they are complimentary. One is like the number of stocks hitting highs or lows, and then the other one is more. The McClellan summation is also very valuable and it can be manipulated in so many different ways. So and I love that you have three dimensions to that and while you were telling me about this, what struck me is I always try to put things in perspective for the individual investor and for the. You know how they can think about these things and make it useful for them. And I think one of the things that could be useful with this, or is useful for this, is understanding how you're feeling. Like you know, if you've just gone through a period of angst with your portfolio and then you notice that this thing is at fear, right, well, everybody's being fearful and like it's like what are you going to do in your portfolio during that period, right? Well, everybody's being fearful and like it's like what. What are you going to do in your portfolio during that period of time? Jason: Exactly. Louis: You know what how? are just you know how you're feeling, like if you can step away like that fish in the fishbowl with in the water, you know and say, yeah, I'm in the water and you know, and, and this is what's happening, and what am I going to do? And stay level headed. I always talk about like staying level headed is the most important thing as an investor. It's like if I'm overly optimistic, I need to bring myself down and if I'm overly pessimistic, I need to bring myself up. Tom Basso mentioned that to me years ago, who was one of the market wizards. Jason: Right. Louis: Talking about doing that, and I've really that's been probably one of the market wizards, right, talking about doing that, and I've really that's been probably one of the most helpful things for me personally and for advising clients as well and managing money. Just it's. It's it sounds so simple. It's like oh yeah, I know that, but yeah, but do you do it? Jason: Exactly, and that's where it's important to have something that's quantitative and unbiased, right, and I'll tell you a story about that that confirms what you just said. But when we first, a few years after we launched Fear and Greed, I was talking with a financial advisor and he said, oh, I use this thing all the time with my clients and I love it. He said how do you use it? And he said, well, I introduced them all to it. And then, when they call me, when the market is down, wanting to sell their positions, wanting to reduce risk the market's already fallen by 10% or 20% and now they want to reduce risk he says, ok, hang on a sec, go to CNN Markets, fear and Greed. What do you see? And they say extreme fear. And he says, ok, what does that mean? And the client always says, okay, what does that mean? And and the client always says, oh, yeah, everybody's afraid right now. Yes, and what does that mean? That means I shouldn't panic. And hey, let me write you a check because this is a good time to invest. Louis: There you go. So one thing I noticed that's not on here is valuation, which is so hard to time valuation. So this is, you know, valuation. So if you put this in context with valuation, then I think you have a powerhouse, really, because absolutely yeah. Yeah, because then you have that long-term

  On this episode of TheStreet Pro Podcast, Chris Versace sits down with Street Pro contributor Ed Ponsi, who is also the managing director of Barchetta Capital Management, and the president of FXEducator. The conversation starts with the beginning of Ed's investing career and his eventual move into equity trading. The two differentiate between investing and trading, using GameStop (GME) as an example. Ed also uses GameStop shares to explain his trading game plan for the shares, using it as an example of why risk management is imperative. The two also discuss expectations and potential outcomes for tomorrow's Fed meeting, and Ed shares the one thing that folks need to remember when examining charts. We close out the conversation with Ed sharing some of the famous rock musicians that he and his guitar have jammed with.

The US Federal Reserve has been closely watching wage growth out of concern that faster-than-normal pay gains may add to inflation pressures. Chris Versace, CIO of Tematica Research tells IG's Angeline Ong it's the average hourly earnings print that will feed into the Fed's thinking, surrounding the timing of its first interest rate cut.Any opinion, news, research, analysis, or other information does not constitute investment or trading advice. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube *Your capital is at risk. 71% of retail CFD accounts lose money*

Traders brace for earnings from Nvidia, a raft of Fed speakers, and flash manufacturing and services PMIs as Wall Street continues to grind upwards. Chris Versace, CIO of Tematica Research joins IG's Angeline Ong to discuss why he thinks the S&P 500 could breach 5,600 by the end of 2024.Any opinion, news, research, analysis, or other information does not constitute investment or trading advice. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube *Your capital is at risk. 71% of retail CFD accounts lose money*

  On this edition of TheStreet Pro Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by the person responsible for the technical look at the Portfolio and the market, Bob Lang. Their conversation starts with the April Retail Sales and Consumer Price Index reports but then morphs into a discussion of market breadth and why the S&P 500 could reach 5,500-5,600 in the coming weeks. Bob explains how he looks at market breadth as well as shares a few of the indicators, like the McClellan Oscillator, that he closely watches. The two tackle the Wall Street saying “Sell in May and Go Away”, discussing why that could be different this year. We also get Bob's answers to some member questions plucked from the Forum.

On this episode, Ed Kovalik, Chairman and CEO, of Prairie Operating Co (PROP) returns to TheStreet Pro Podcast. The conversation with Chris Versace kicks off with an update on Prairie over the last few months, including its pending acquisition of Nickel Road Operating (NRO) which will put the company on the path to having 30 wells in operation by the end of 2024 and another 45 exiting 2025. Ed also shares more on Prairie's medium to longer-term operating plan, including how the company intends to eventually reward shareholders, and why its lack of balance sheet leverage gives it an edge. Ed also discusses the long-term demand opportunity with fossil fuels because of growing power demands due to AI, data centers, EV and EV charging, and other factors.  

On this edition of TheStreet Pro Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by Lindsey Bell, Chief Strategist at 248 Ventures. The two start off reminiscing about Lindsey interviewing Chris several years ago when she was at TheStreet, and after sharing her journey to 248 Ventures, the conversation pivots to one about the economy and why Lindsey thinks a Goldilocks economy is emerging. The jobs market and its implications are discussed as well as the housing and manufacturing markets with Lindsey explaining why she is interested in the materials sector. The two agree the upcoming earnings market is likely to be volatile, but as investors periods like that bring opportunity with them.

On this week's TheStreet Pro Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by Cole Smead, CEO and portfolio manager at Smead Capital Management based in Phoenix, Arizona. Ahead of the March CPI report, the conversation starts with the two discussing their expectations for that report, what it means for Fed policy, and the Fed's role as a cheerleader for the economy. Cole raises the issue of structural changes in the economy, including the shift in fixed business investment, and why he thinks it means the economy can make do with a higher natural interest rate. The conversation shifts to AI and the CHIPs Act, with Cole sharing why he is wary of diminishing marginal returns for the tech industry. The two discuss how UniCredit (UNCFF) came to be one of the largest holdings at Smead Capital Management and why the team likes Western Alliance Bancorporation (WAL) and Credit Acceptance Corp. (CACC). Other sectors discussed include Energy and Financials, with Cole sharing he sees 30% fewer banks in the coming years. The two also touch on Cole's co-hosting duties for the “A Book With Legs” podcast. Note: There was a modest technical glitch at the 27-minute mark in the conversation.

On this edition of TheStreet Pro Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by Mr. Morning Recon himself, Stephen “Sarge” Guilfoyle. Out of the gate, the two talk about the current market setup, why Sarge is incrementally bullish on the economy, and the reason he watches Gross Disposable Income as much as GDP. We discuss what levels Sarge is keenly focused on with the Nasdaq Composite as it potentially breaks its lower channel support level. From there Chris and Sarge touch on a few Portfolio holdings and run through Sarge's thinking on GE Aerospace (GE), Boeing (BA), and Palantir (PLTR), and how to use a GTC scale order.

On this edition of TheStreet Pro Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by Helene Meisler for a technical look at the market. The two discuss the channel Helene sees in the S&P 500 and she explains why she is carefully watching the upward climb in that channel as well as the market's overbought nature. As she shares, uptrend lines are made to be broken, and while it may not be in the very near term, she explains why she is on high alert. The conversation morphs into one about the S&P 500's performance compared to the Nasdaq, why investors should be mindful of what Helene calls “spike highs” in stocks, and what to watch to determine if a stock may power ahead of it. Helene also runs through the sentiment indicators she is watching and discusses why one could be flashing yellow lights in the not-too-distant future. All that plus an interesting and unexpected story about the bond market and Good Friday.

Joining portfolio manager Chris Versace on this edition of TheStreet Pro Podcast is Peter Jackson, CFO of Builders FirstSource (BLDR). The conversation starts with some thoughts on the domestic housing market, one that accounts for more than 80% of Builder's mix of business and turns quickly to the single-family housing market. That economic engine drives roughly 70% of Builder's business and the company sees it rising mid-single digits. The conversation quickly turns to the expanding and higher margin Value Add business and how that ties into the company's digital strategy, one that aims to reduce pain points for homebuilders ranging from large public companies to smaller, regional players and growing dollar share for Builder. Folks looking for more information on Builders FirstSource may want to visit the company's Investor Relations website and its latest investor presentation.  

Carley Garner joins Chris Versace on the latest AAP Podcast and the conversation begins with a discussion of the equity markets. Both agree a pullback would be a positive for the market and investors, with Carley explaining why she watches the Nasdaq 100 futures and Relative Strength Indicator (RSI) levels. After a quick chat about Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOGL), Carley shares the Nasdaq 100 level she is watching closely and where we could see a healthy market correction put the S&P 500. The conversation shifts to key commodities including the trifecta that is ag commodities (corn, wheat, soybeans), cocoa, coffee, oil, and natural gas. In that discussion, Carley reminds us about the boom-and-bust cycle of commodities and shares an upbeat outlook for natural gas and oil but warns the euphoric prices for one of those commodities could be very different in the coming quarters. The podcast closes out with Carly sharing some of her favorite must-dos for folks visiting Las Vegas and shares a restaurant favored by locals that you probably won't hear about if you're only on the Vegas strip. More from Carley Garner can be found here, and be sure to follow her on X at @CarleyGarner   Other recent AAP Podcasts include Market Strength, Fed Predictions and the Savannah Bananas With Bob Lang Breaking Down the Pre-IPO and IPO Markets with EquityZen's Phil Haslett The Hubbub on AI With Zapata's Christopher Savoie

On this AAP Podcast episode, Chris Versace catches up with the man behind AAP's charts, Bob Lang discussing reasons behind the market's continued strength and why the Vix is “double bullish” for the market. The two discuss Barclays' boosting its S&P 500 target to 5,300 and what it could take to get there. Along the way, Bob and Chris discuss Fed policy and why the Fed's coming update for its Economic Projections could sour some investors. Bob goes on record for when he thinks the Fed will cut rates this year and shares how many rate cuts he sees in 2025. All that and much more including what stock we added to the Bullpen this week, why our Nvidia (NVDA) price target could be conservative, what Costco (COST) and the Savannah Bananas have in common, and how the stock market tends to perform on Leap.

While the AAP Portfolio traffics in publicly traded companies, there is a market for shares in pre-IPO companies. On this episode of the AAP Podcast, Chris Versace chats with Phil Haslett, Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of EquityZen, an online marketplace for trading pre-IPO employee shares from privately held companies. Phil provides an overview of the pre-IPO market and the conversation morphs to Chris and Phil discussing the current state of the IPO. Phil shares why he is cautiously optimistic about the IPO market but also shares why he thinks we could see a pickup in the M&A market as well. Greater activity in one would be positive for the shares of AAP Portfolio holdings Morgan Stanley (MS) and Bank of America (BAC), but a pickup in both would that much better. The conversation then shifts to talking about AI companies and how that could impact not only the IPO market but the stock market as well. And you'll want to hear an interesting statistic Phil shares at the end of the conversation.

‘The US Federal Reserve does not need to cut interest rates in March or even in early spring,' Chris Versace, Tematica CIO tells IG's @AngelineOng ‘because the economic data coming through indicates the US economy is still at risk of rising inflation'. Versace also explains why chip stocks, especially those related to AI and data centres, could have further to climb.

On this episode of the AAP Podcast, Chris Versace sits down with Christopher Savoie, the founder and CEO of Zapata AI. Zapata has been working with AI for industrial applications since 2017.  Savoie shares how his start in molecular biology and working with machine learnings for sequencing gave rise to the formation of Zapata and its use of rich analytics with real-time data and large language models to address customer-specific problems. The conversation turns to generative AI with Savoie explaining how it can drive productivity with diverse examples ranging from engineering and construction to financial products like annuities, and race car driving strategies. Versace and Savoie then discuss why generative AI is the latest in a line of tools like the Internet that will alter how we work, driving productivity along the way. Savoie also shares why GPT 4 may not be the product some are hoping it will be and why multiple, smaller language models working together, not one model “to rule them all”, will help companies address their specific problems and needs.   Recent AAP Podcasts The Fixed-Income Perspective with GenTrust's Jim Besaw Talking the Housing Market, Silver Tsunami and Stocks With Jack Truong

‘If we see the Republicans take the presidency back, it could be positive for the stock markets, says Chris Versace, CIO of Tematica. Versace explains what the potential stock market outcomes might be, given the strength seen in the recent US data, to IG's @Angeline Ong.

On this edition of the podcast, Chris Versace chats with Jim Besaw, co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at GenTrust, a firm that focuses on investment strategies for high-net-worth individuals, institutions, and family offices. Ahead of the Fed concluding its next policy meeting, we wanted to talk with Jim because of his role at GenTrust but also because of his background in fixed income. That history yields a very different take on the probability of Fed rate cuts than those captured in the CME FedWatch Tool. Jim also shares some of the risks he sees the Fed may look to avoid as they get ready to eventually dial back monetary policy. Chris and Jim discuss some of the signals Jim is watching when it comes to the economy and a potential recession as well as how GenTrust thinks about putting capital to work in the current market environment. That prompts a conversation about the Magnificent Seven, P/E multiples, and AI, with Jim sharing how his firm has used AI since 2015. We close out the conversation by asking Jim how equity investors should approach the fixed-income markets when investing and qualities investors should look for in investment candidates ahead of what looks to be a wave of debt refinancing in the next several quarters.  

On this episode of the AAP Podcast, Chris Versace reconnects with Jack Truong, former CEO of James Hardie and Electrolux North America. While the conversation starts off talking about expectations for Fed rate cuts this year, it quickly turns to the US housing market. Jack explains why he is bullish on the housing market long-term, but he sees several headwinds that could restrain it over the coming quarters. As the Silver Tsunami trades down and Airbnb (ABNB) speculators throw in the towel, he sees Millennials entering the housing market. The key isn't interest rate cuts, but in Jack's view lower housing prices. Chris and Jack also talk about factors investors should consider when identifying homebuilding stocks and what drives repair and remodel spending. Jack also shares why he isn't bullish on the shares of Home Depot (HD) or Lowe's (LOW) near-term, and which geopolitical risk he thinks isn't getting the attention it deserves.

There needs to be an acceptance that the US economy continues to be stronger-than-expected, says Tematica CIO, Chris Versace, and investors need to pare back their Fed rate cut timing expectations. IG financial analyst @AngelineOng also asks Versace how investors should position themselves amid rising tensions in the Middle East and an incoming US election.Any opinion, news, research, analysis, or other information does not constitute investment or trading advice. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube *Your capital is at risk. 69% of retail CFD accounts lose money*

As we approach the end of this short first trading week of 2024, we are back with a fresh AAP podcast episode with Chris Versace, who is joined by Bob Lang. The two discuss the fizzle that was the Santa Claus Rally and explain why it's not a major factor in their investment decision-making process. The conversation shifts to the market action this week and the factors both fundamental and technical driving it. Bob shares the technical support levels for the S&P 500 that he's watching, and notes we have a bevy of Fed heads coming that could throw some cold water on market rate cut expectations. Chris reviews this week's data, explaining why it supports the Fed not rushing to cut rates, and how one item adds another reason to be concerned about earnings guidance when the 4Q 2023 earning season gets underway. As the two discuss, that season begins with bank earnings late next week, with results from Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), JPMorgan (JPM), and Wells Fargo (WFC). We end the conversation talking about the change to the Fed's voting committee, and how that might influence monetary policy compared to last year.

In our last AAP podcast of 2023, Chris Versace is joined by his former Stocks Under $10 partner in crime and author of the Morning Recon at Real Money Pro, Stephen “Sarge” Guilfoyle. The conversation begins with why Sarge gets up at 3:30 AM ET every morning but quickly gets into the two discussing the market's meteoric rise since late October. Neither thinks the Fed will cut interest rates 6 to 7 times next year but both agree that if it's more than three rate cuts it could be a much bigger issue for investors. Both also express concern over market expectations for the basket of S&P 500 companies to grow their earnings by more than 11% in 2024 compared to 2023. Sarge and Chris also agree the current market melt-up is likely to continue into early 2024, but both are wary about the start of the December quarter earnings season. With that in mind, Sarge points out that the January-February time frame can be a tricky time for the market and a challenging one for investors. That's why we at AAP have used the market's strength and now overbought condition to selectively book some of the big moves in our positions, building our shopping list and continuing to own our market hedging, inverse ETF positions.

Bob Lang joins us on this week's edition of the AAP Podcast as he chats with Chris Versace about the current state of the stock market, sharing why he sees 2023 closing out on a high note with the upcoming Santa Claus Rally. Moving into 2024 the two talk about the upcoming re-jiggering of Fed voting members, what that could mean for Fed policy, and how upcoming data is viewed.  Chris gives a few reasons as to why we're likely to see further progress in the November inflation data, including next week's CPI report, while Bob shares why he saw this week's 3Q 2023 Productivity data as very important. The two discuss the market's expectation for four rate cuts next year and why the market could be getting ahead of itself with that thinking. The two touch on next week's Fed policy meeting and why they will be closely reviewing the Fed's updated economic projections. The conversation then pivots to the holiday shopping season, touching on their boots-on-the-ground observations for Williams Sonoma (WSM), Gap (GPS), Costco (COST), and several other retailers.

Sitting down with AAP's Chris Versace on this podcast episode is Jay Woods, Chief Global Strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, CMT Association Board Member, and former NYSE Executive Floor Governor. Chris and Jay have had many conversations about market dynamics and following the market's strong November move, we're sharing their latest back-and-forth. While Chris is a longer-term investor that blends fundamentals and thematics, Jay's time horizon spans two to three months and as he shares, his focus is on price action. Different approaches but that makes for good conversations about the market and stocks. During the conversation, Jay shares why the market rally has been a textbook example, why he sees the market strength continuing into 2024, and why he's watching small-cap stocks as we start the new year. He also shares how he starts his top-down approach to looking at the market, and his prediction for which company is likely to see its shares ejected from the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Podcast #XX: The Lowdown on AI with Toggle.AI   Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a big market driver, which is why Chris Versace sat down with RJ Assaly, Chief Product Officer at Toggle.AI, a Fintech platform that uses AI to analyze “billions of data points” to help institutional and individual investors with insights, not noise. Amid the AI hype and hopium that generated over the last several months, Assaly confirms we are only in the early innings of AI, where the technology primarily serves as a productivity driver. In the case of Toggle, that means helping investors cut through haystacks of data to find the needles they are looking for. The two discuss the significance of Generative AI and how that changed AI's use case as well as how the interlinking of systems can drive even greater productivity. Versace and Assaly also touch on potential cyber-related issues as well as why it's important to be aware of data permissions with each AI platform.

In this edition of the AAP Podcast, Chris Versace sits down with Yerbaé Beverage (YERBF) CEO Todd Gibson, who, having sold multiple beverage businesses to the likes of Coca-Cola (KO) and PepsiCo (PEP), is no stranger to the global beverage business. Todd explains why Yerbaé is focused on healthy and natural ingredients for its products resulting in a very different offering compared to those from Monster Beverage (MNSTR) and Celsius Fitness Drinks (CELH). Todd also discusses Yerbae's current distribution footprint and where it's going as well as why the company prunes its beverage portfolio every year to make room for new offerings. The two also talk about Yerbae's definition of clean products, the company's five pillars, and how it also develops its new flavors. Regarding our position in PepsiCo, Todd shares inflation pressure in the beverage industry continues to level off with notable improvement in prices for cans and other raw materials and freight costs. That suggests we could see some additional margin leverage at PepsiCo during the strongest quarter of the year for its beverage and snacking business.

Smarts editor Todd Campbell joins AAP's Chris Versace on this week's podcast and as you'll hear Todd is coming in rather feisty. Hot on the heels of Fed Chair Powell's appearance at the Economic Club of New York, Todd shares his view that there is simply too much negativity in the market and if you look carefully enough, some green shoots may be emerging. While Chris doesn't dismiss Todd's argument, he shares he will continue to position the AAP portfolio based on the evolving data landscape, particularly for Fed policy. As he points out, while many are focused on whether the Fed will stop hiking rates, when the Fed starts to signal it is ready to begin cutting rates is as important. To that Todd shared he doesn't see a rate cut coming until this time next year, which is four months later than the market now expects. In defending his rationale, he points out the market has consistently missed the market on calling the moves in Fed policy so far this year. The conversation continues with thoughts on the 2023 holiday shopping season, Google (GOOGL), and the current earnings season.

We are back with a new AAP Podcast with lead portfolio manager Chris Versace joined by Bob Lang. It's been a bit since our last podcast with Helene Meisler, and some is catching up to do, but as that is done the conversation quickly shifts gears to the market, the Fed, and the data driving it all. Bob comes out swinging, aiming the Fed's updated economic projections for being too conservative, especially given the economic data that led the Atlanta Fed's GDP Model to up its outlook for the September quarter. That gives way to discussing inflation and wage pressures, something the team is watching closely, as well as the hotter-than-expected September Producer Price Index. The two discuss their concern the market may be too complacent when it comes to the aggregate data of late. It may give rise to yet another market re-think on what the Fed needs to do, and this could come in two different forms. The conversation ends by discussing market seasonality, which Bob sees as being favorable between mid-October and the Thanksgiving holidays, and the September quarter earnings. While discussing recently revised guidance from airline stocks, Levi Strauss (LEVI), and disappointing quarterly results from LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton (LVMHF), we also explain why, as an investor, it's important to know what you own.

On this edition of the AAP Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by AAP team member and the brains behind TheStreet's Top Stocks newsletter, Helene Meisler.  The conversation spans how Helene got started on Wall Street and shifts to how she examines charts, including why she prefers to do so by hand. Helene also shares why she sees an extended period of “chop” ahead for the market, the oscillators she uses to gauge the markets, and how that factors into being a swing trader. Companies mentioned during the conversation include ChargePoint (CHPT), Caterpillar (CAT), Meta Platforms (META), Colgate (CL), Bank of American (BAC), Morgan Stanley (MS), Ford Motor (F), UPS (UPS), several retailers and utilities as well. Closing out the conversation, Helene shares a piece of whip-smart advice that both investors and traders will want to hear.

On this week's AAP Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by Todd Campbell, editor of TheStreet's Smarts. Out of the gate, the two talk about inflation and the August Consumer Price Index report, both agreeing September and October data will now be a focal point for the market and investors. Todd shares his thoughts on potential seasonality in oil, while Chris weighs in on wages following the Teamsters-UPS (UPS) contract and similar negotiations between the UAW and the Detroit Three as well as pilots and airlines. The conversation shifts to potential risks for consumer spending power as student debt repayments return in October. Todd shares concerns about the holiday shopping season, and Chris discusses his for travel and restaurant spending. The two wind up sharing their thoughts on Apple's (AAPL) iPhone event offering who they think will benefit the most. If you listen carefully, you'll learn who next week's guest will be on the podcast, and trust us, it's one you aren't going to want to miss.

AAP lead portfolio manager Chris Versace discusses the state of the oil market with Edward Kovalik Chairman and CEO of Prairie Operating Co. (CRKR). Formed in 2023, Prairie has a rather unique business model in that it combines a fast-follower strategy without any leverage on the balance sheet, offering bottom-line profit leverage as Prairie scales its drilling operations. Ed shares his longer-term outlook on the energy market, one that is underpinned by underinvestment in capacity and could lead to a domestic supply crunch in the coming quarters. Arguably, Prairie is a new, built-from-the-ground-up energy company that doesn't have the typical industry baggage and it benefits from Ed's time as a merchant banker focused on the energy market. Investors looking for small-cap energy companies may want to dig further into Prairie Operating Co., starting with its latest investor relations presentation. The company's strategy speaks to the AAP portfolio's position in the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE), and while we like the Prairie's flexible business model, the current market cap and trading volume will keep us on the sidelines. As the company moves from permitting to drilling later this year and into 2024, we'll look to revisit it.

On this week's AAP podcast, we delve into the quick-service restaurant business with Potbelly (PBPB) CEO Bob Wright. No stranger to the restaurant industry given his time at Wendy's (WEN), Charley's Philly Steaks, Checker's Drive-In Restaurants, and Domino's Pizza (DPZ), Wright entered Potbelly as President and CEO during a challenging time for the company in 2020. Flash forward to today and Potbelly is coming off reporting positive same-store comps for nine consecutive quarters, including +12.9% for its June quarter. During the conversation with AAP's Chris Versace, the two discuss why Wright came to Potbelly, steps taken to turn the company around, how, and why franchising provides an avenue for growth, food inflation, pricing, and much more. For those that have yet to sample the Potbelly menu, be sure to listen to several of Wright's callouts, including the cookies and what he keeps in his refrigerator at home. From an AAP portfolio perspective, Potbelly's franchising strategy follows in the footsteps of McDonald's (MCD) while its focus on fresh food is similar to Chipotle (CMG). We like the steps enacted by Wright and the team, especially the profitable and asset-lite model better known as franchising. The average daily trading volume and market cap for PBPB shares make them a tasty consideration for investors looking for small-cap stocks.

On this week's AAP Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by David Holeman, CEO of Whitestone REIT (WSR), which focuses on open-air retail centers, primarily in the US Sunbelt. The conversation is an excellent primer for listeners about the REIT sector. It includes how REIT management thinks about their portfolio and tenant composition over time, the data they examine when choosing a location, and how they stagger their rental agreements.   Our takeaway from the conversation is that while Whitestone REIT may be a smaller REIT by size, its monthly dividend and focus on meeting the needs of its surrounding communities makes it a standout. From an AAP portfolio perspective, while we like the Whitestone story, the market cap and average trading volume are simply too small for us to consider, but folks that like small-cap, income-generating plays may want to dig further.   During the conversation with Versace, Holeman shares that after a few economic cycles during his time at Whitestone, he and the management team look to remain nimble while focusing on evolving consumer needs in and around Whitestone's centers. This meant pivoting toward consumer services as e-commerce changed the landscape for traditional retailers. The conversation touches on two pillars of growth for Whitestone including continued expansion and the cycling of rental agreements that tend to include rate increases. Holeman shares the existing team could grow to more than 100 centers vs. the 56 it had exiting the recent June quarter. Given the interest rate environment, the expansion strategy is likely to favor buying and rehabbing existing centers in the near term.

On this week's AAP Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by AAP team member Bob Lang and the two tackle the Fitch downgrade this week for the US's credit rating that roiled stocks just as we enter a seasonally weak time for the market. Bob puts some context around Fitch's downgrade comparing it to the last rating downgrade in 2011. With the S&P 500 breaking its 20-day moving average, the next level of support to watch is the 50-day moving average, which comes in near 4,350 for the S&P 500. Bob also tells listeners to watch for the market becoming oversold, something that has him watching the market oscillators. The conversation between the two then pivots to the June quarter earnings season, which so far has gone pretty well. However, as yet we haven't seen any material upward revisions for S&P 500 EPS in the back half of 2023 or 2024. Chris shares why he thinks this is important to gauge how much steam is left in the market, and by the end of this week, ~80% of the S&P 500 basket will have reported. Chris and Bob round out the conversation by discussing the recent rise in the 10-year Treasury yield back above 4%, and if that turns out to be a sustained move how it could be a headwind for stocks.  The end discussing the Teamsters-UPS (UPS) contract and what it could mean for Ford (F), General Motors (GM), and Stellantis (STLA) just as the UAW shares it is looking for double-digit pay rises and defined-benefit pensions for all workers. 

On the abbreviated AAP podcast episode, lead AAP portfolio manager Chris Versace shares his reaction to the Fed's June policy statement that lifted the fed funds rate by another 25 basis points and comments on Fed Chair Powell's press conference. As he and the AAP team suspected, Powell and the Fed trotted out the “data dependent” line, calling out there are a number of data points in the coming eight weeks that will influence the next policy decision. We also share the view that while the market is currently focused on when the Fed may stop hiking rates, we expect it will eventually turn its focus to when the Fed may deliver the first rate cut. Per Powell's comment today, monetary policy will remain in restrictive territory for some time. In our view, it will be the data that tells us when the rate hiking cycle is over and when we could see that first rate cut. As we digest the data coming in the weeks and months ahead, we'll continue to update our view for monetary policy as well as the economy, earnings, and other relevant inputs that shape our thoughts for the AAP portfolio.

On this edition of the AAP Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by Dr. Jack Truong, former CEO of building products company James Hardie Industries (JHX), the North American CEO of appliance company Electrolux and a top C-Suite executive with 3M (MMM). We cover an array of topics with Jack sharing his insights on inflation, debt levels for the US and consumers, and why he sees a soft landing for the US economy.  The conversation continues with why he is bullish on infrastructure spending for nonresidential construction and the reshoring of chip capacity. Jack also explains why appliances in our kitchens could be fodder for cyber-attacks, something that prompted the Biden administration to introduce a cybersecurity labeling program. From there we dig deep into the housing market, one that Jack views the new construction segment as having considerable legs ahead of it. We close out the conversation with Jack sharing his view on what to look for in a management team and some questions investors should ask them.

On this week's episode of the AAP Podcast, AAP's Chris Versace and Smarts editor Todd Campbell review the better-than-expected June Consumer Price Index (CPI) report but share why the road to the Fed's 2% target may not be as immediate as some are hoping. Todd breaks down the upcoming special rebalance for the Nasdaq 100 (NDX), sharing the ins and outs as well as why investors shouldn't attempt to game the rebalancing action. The two then pivot to upcoming bank earnings from JPMorgan (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Citigroup (C), discussing the recent upward move in big bank EPS expectations and some of the reasons behind that. They also discuss what they will be focused on in those reports, and what signals they will be watching for both the economy and the consumer. Chris and Todd also share why they have some reservations about the consumer entering the December quarter, and why in the coming months they will both be watching real wage growth like a hawk.         

Immerse yourself in a captivating conversation as I, your trusty podcast host, team up with Chris Versace, Chief Investment Officer at Tematica Research and co-manager of TheStreet.com's Action Alerts Plus portfolio. Navigate the intricate world of thematic investing as Chris reveals his unique approach that hinges on structural changes in the economy, demographics, technology, and psychographics to handpick investment strategies. Unearth the secrets behind his roles, both at Tematica Research and TheStreet.com, where he offers invaluable insights to members daily.Ever imagined the disruptive potential of AI? Together, we will illuminate the path to identifying and differentiating investments in AI and thematic models. Gain insight into the criticality of understanding holdings and position sizing when investing, and the art of discerning between fads and lasting themes. Listen on as we probe the potential of AI to shake up industries and the telltale signs of companies desperately clinging to the AI lifeline. As we pivot to discuss commodity futures and thematic investment opportunities, Chris presents his analysis on commodities not responding to increasing demand and the implications of China's comments of a stronger second quarter.Step into the future of trading and investments, as we delve into technology's impact on investors and the surge of the DIY investor. Get ready to broaden your perspective with our discussion on emerging themes that warrant more attention, such as data privacy and digital identity. And no conversation is complete without diving into the shifting demographics of the US, the advent of the new middle class, and China's increasing disposable income. Trust us, you won't want to miss out on this mind-opening conversation. Last but not least, learn about the best places to follow Chris J. Versace across social media platforms and why it's crucial to keep tabs on his Tweets. Come join us in this enlightening journey through the realm of thematic investing strategies and the pulse of the current market.ANTICIPATE STOCK MARKET CRASHES, CORRECTIONS, AND BEAR MARKETS WITH AWARD WINNING RESEARCH. Sign up for The Lead-Lag Report at www.leadlagreport.com and use promo code PODCAST30 for 2 weeks free and 30% off.Nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax, or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions.See disclosures for The Lead-Lag Report here: https://www.leadlagreport.com/static/termsandconditionsFoodies unite…with HowUdish!It's social media with a secret sauce: FOOD! The world's first network for food enthusiasts. HowUdish connects foodies across the world!Share kitchen tips and recipe hacks. Discover hidden gem food joints and street food. Find foodies like you, connect, chat and organize meet-ups!HowUdish makes it simple to connect through food anywhere in the world.So, how do YOU dish? Download HowUdish on the Apple App Store today:

Episode 59:  On today's show I speak with Chris Versace, Founder & CIO of Tematica Investing & Tematica Pro - Leaders in Thematic Research and Investment Strategies! Chris is also co-author of Cocktail Investing and a frequent guest on TV. Today we speak about the ongoing structural, fundamental changes providing us signals to maximize future investing returns. Chris shows us how to separate the signals from the noise. • What is Thematic Investing? • Theme NOT Trend! • Structural, Fundamental Changes & Sustainable Market Shifts • Background into Thematic Investing • Macro & Thematic Signals • Economics, Demographics, Psychographics, Politics & Regulatory Mandates • Cyclical vs Structural Shifts • Geopolitical • The Future • TAILWINDS forcing companies to SHIFT their business models to adapt to new DEMAND drivers! • Signals from the Noise • Demand, Timing, Marketing • Risk Management - Thinking in Bets • Overall Thematic Investing Assessment Check out Chris Versace Tematica Investing Site: https://www.tematicaresearch.com/ Visit Chris Versace on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisJVersace   ✨SUBSCRIBE to The RO Show Podcast!✨ https://youtube.com/@theroshowpodcast   ➡️CONNECT with ROSANNA PRESTIA & The RO Show⬅️ ✨ONE SITE FOR ALL: https://sociatap.com/RosannaPrestia ✨YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@TheROShowPodcast ✨TWITTER: https://www.twitter.com/@rosannainvests ✨TWITTER: https://www.twitter.com/@theroshowpod ✨WEBSITE: https://www.rosannaprestia.com   THINK Different with Rosanna ©️ 2022-2023

On this post-Independence Day edition of the AAP Podcast, Chris Versace is joined by Bob Lang to discuss the Fed's latest policy meeting minutes, the consumer and the housing market, membership business models, and the year-end holiday shopping season. Bob shares that he agrees with AAP team member Carley Garner that we could see the S&P 500 reach 4,500-4,520 if not a tad higher, and that he sees strong technical support at 4,400 and again at 4,350 and 4,335. The two also discuss why Bob is closely watching the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) and why, at least for now, it suggests wide swings in the market are likely to be kept to a minimum. We also talk about signals in the VIX that would point to wider market swings ahead. Bob and Chris discuss Netflix (NFLX), Amazon (AMZN), and Costco (COST) as well as Coty (COTY) and Morgan Stanley (MS) during their time together as well as which economic data point each of them will be watching in the coming days.   Editor's note: Please be aware a short gap of silence occurs once during the conversation when the signal briefly cuts out.

On this edition of the AAP Podcast, Chris Versace sits down with AAP team member, author, and commodity broker/analyst Carley Garner. Carley has appeared in several Daily Rundowns, sharing her views on the market, but in this conversation, she shares the five items she focuses on when evaluating a position and explains why she dissects each week's Commitments of Traders report to assess the market mood. Chris and Carley also talk about the importance of seasonality when it comes to the market, with Carley pointing out it tends to be something that gets overlooked by many investors. Patience and conviction were also cited as key ingredients when it comes to investing and trading. The conversation touches on the economy, with both seeing a soft landing, and Carley shares where she sees copper and key ag commodities going in the near term as well as what she sees next for the S&P 500.  Listeners looking to learn more about commodities and futures should read Carley's columns at Real Money Pro and check out “A Trader's First Book on Commodities: Everything You Need to Know About Futures and Options Trading Before Placing a Trade.”

On this episode of the AAP Podcast, lead portfolio manager Chris Versace is joined by Alex Ryan, Chairman and CEO of luxury wine company, The Duckhorn Portfolio (NAPA). The conversation starts with Alex tracing back Duckhorn's wine roots in California, which quickly morphs into an overview of the company's labels, product offering, market position, and the luxury wine segment.  Describing The Duckhorn Portfolio as a manufacturing company, agricultural company, and a marketing company rolled into one, Alex explains why it's uniquely positioned vs. other public beverage companies. The conversation also broaches the wine manufacturing process, some helpful tips for wine drinkers, and why The Duckhorn Portfolio is confident it can deliver high single-digit organic top-line growth through 2025 even if a recession rears its head. For those interested in learning more about Duckhorn's business, here is a link to its latest Investor Relations presentation.