Josh Schaffer, newsletter editor at Baron's, my man, welcome to the show.
Nice to see you.
I've wanted to have you on the show for some time.
I ran into you down here on the floor last week.
I said, let's make it happen.
It's nice to see you.
Oh, great day to do it on some record highs too.
Markets market's buzzing.
Excited to be here.
So we talk about leadership, kind of the generals leading the pack, big technology stocks.
It's not just tech necessarily that's doing a lot of that heavy lifting, but if you take a step back from today's tape, we are having this all-time high conversation day after day.
What do you see that's really leading the markets to.
I mean, I would point to tech again.
I mean, you look at the technology sector, tech up over 2.5% today.
XLK, that's stocks index, semis up over 6%, and really just Micron sort of the leader of the day.
Micron up over 20% today, crossing a $1 trillion market cap.
And to me sort of just the story of the market right now.
Stock had already been up several hundred%.
A lot of people saying, and did I miss it?
Can it really go up more?
UBS comes out and says, we think the stock's going to $1600 a share.
Over 1600.
Dollars per share that is up from a prior price target of $535.
They basically tripled their target.
Investors say, Oh, I kind of want to get in on that.
That's interesting.
And that's really been a fundamental story for Micron too.
Earnings estimates continue to move higher for that stock, so maybe the dram sort of trade is a little bit more secular than rather than just a cyclical year trade.
It seems like people want to lean into it for a little bit longer than we might thought.
And when you talk of Micron, very closely connected to that conversation are some of these other names you and I are.
Western Digital Sanddisk, you know the story with these.
They've been absolutely parabolic.
Maybe some people saying, Hey, do I have, I have FOMO?
Did I miss it?
How are you and your colleagues at Barron's thinking about a lot of those very hot to trot stocks over these last few months?
So we've stayed away from the memory trade overall.
We've not picked a memory stock per se yet, but we have been in the semiconductor space.
So we picked Intel ahead of earnings a month ago.
That stock is up over 100% since we picked it.
We picked Nvidia a couple of weeks ago, Essentially the Nvidia pitch for us for.
Now fundamentals are clearly going to be there.
Let's go best in breed if we think demand is going to keep increasing for these chip names.
So we like Nvidia over the next 12 months.
Maybe it won't be as exciting as some of the names we just talked about going up several hundred%, but we think that they're staying power for the market.
Is there any other sector of stocks that you think we are not talking enough about, something on your radar that you think is deserving of maybe a little bit more attention from would-be retail investors out there?
I think one thing that's interesting is thinking about other versions of the.
Trade.
So one ETF that we had picked a couple of weeks ago was TAN.
That's Invesco's solar ETF.
So if energy demand is so big right now, where else does that, where else could that be a beneficiary?
Maybe it's solar.
There's so much demand for energy we're going to need different solutions.
So yes, maybe that's sort of the green trade of a few years ago or maybe a decade ago is out, but there's still energy demand that you can extract from some of those solar companies.
I think that's going to be an interesting one to watch.
Tan ETF up 4.5% today.
Perfect timing for that before.
Go, my man.
We've got the PCE inflation print.
We know what former Fed Chair Jerome Powell used to say.
He said of all the acronyms, that's our favorite core PCE in particular.
What are you looking for?
What does the Fed do with it?
You've got 5 millions left this year.
Yes, if you look at sort of consensus estimates, it looks like it's going to come in core PCE at 3.3%, slightly above the 3.2% you saw last month.
I think at this point the market expects higher inflation over the next couple of months.
Fed hikes are already starting to get priced in.
You've had this trouble in the bond market.
Market keeps moving higher.
To me, JD, the question at this.
Point, can anything stop AI investment?
Is inflation really going to stop AI investment?
The market's voting no.
I side with the market here.
I think AI is the biggest macro factor, and unless, whatever your headwind is, the Iran war didn't work, the oil spike didn't work, if it's not going to stop AI investment, I think you have to stay in the market.
And that's why I think the market's probably headed higher, dude, those bond vigilantes came back with a vengeance early in the market and the market didn't care, right?
And the market kept pushing higher for their concerns about government debt and maybe incoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, come back again.
It's nice to see you.
That's.
