Well, we are looking at a rally on Wall Street this morning, and American companies are turning in one of their strongest earnings seasons in years, but Wall Street has shrugged it off.
Meanwhile, of the 446 S&P 500 companies that reported earning results, more than 80% have beaten analysts estimates.
Now strong tech earnings from giants like Amazon have helped push the Nasdaq to a seven month winning streak, its longest run since 2018.
The explosion of AI investment has.
Optimistic.
Still some warn that valuations are stretching one popular metric the cyclically adjusted PE ratio climbed to levels last seen during the dot-com boom.
Well joining me on this Monday morning is Stephen Orr, CEO and founder of Quasar Markets.
Stephen, good morning.
Happy Monday to you.
Good morning.
What a day to be here, right?
Absolutely.
We are looking at a rally on Wall Street.
We're looking at the Dow as well as the Nasdaq up triple digits.
The Nasdaq is currently up about 1.8%.
So give us your take when it comes to the AI.
You know, it's very interesting.
Over the last month or two, even on your show, I talked about how this market had run way too fast on the AI trade, and I actually sold about a couple months back and I sat on the sidelines a little bit.
And for the first time in the last I'd say two decades, I actually went on margin and went long because I knew that the government was eventually going to close the shutdown, get back to work and start that process, and I think they're doing it now.
I know there's a little bit of wrangling still going on in the House and Senate side, but they're going to have one and we're going to move forward and I think. our highs at the end of the year.
Yeah, and even with that pullback we saw across the equity markets, we're still looking at double digit percentage gains for the Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500.
So when we're looking at the AI names, we've heard from some of the mag 7.
We're still waiting for Nvidia, of course, before the end of the month.
But what do you make of the different sectors within artificial intelligence?
I think there's one major sector and one of the things that I think people ask if I look back at the gold rush, you know.
Biggest winners was of those who sold the pickaxes and the shovels, right?
And I think today when you look at AI, there's a lot of AI companies.
And if you think back to the dot-com bubble, there are a lot of companies we don't even recognize today because they weren't around after the dot-com bubble, right?
So there's going to be some consolidation in the AI sector, but I think it's going to be the ones who have the pickaxe and shovels, and that's like MongoDB and Amazon and the ones who invested heavily like Meta.
They're the ones who are going to be the winners at the end of the game.
So for me, I've invested.
Quite heavily in MongoDB and Amazon.
So I do want to get your take on MongoDB, especially as a new CEO is going to be stepping in today.
They have earnings coming out at the beginning of next month, but in terms of competition for their Atlas platform, where do they stand?
And as more cheaper alternatives come to market, are you concerned about that?
No, not at all.
I mean, one of the things about MongoDB, especially with Sphere and Atlas, it's a great ecosystem, especially for the fintech world, right?
They have the easy.
When you go to market, you've got to find a company that makes it easy for you, and they are a great company to do that for you.
They already have the API integrations.
They already have the ability to do all that, so it makes it easier for newer companies that we don't even know about today to get to market.
So I like that part of MongoDB.
Yeah, and you mentioned Amazon as well.
We saw them rally on the heels of their earnings reports, but with opportunities also come challenges.
So what is your outlook for that company?
Well, you know what's interesting.
We got a good glimpse of Amazon when they when they faltered the other day, right, and it went down and we got to realize how many companies are actually connected to AI, how many connected when that went down, a lot of the world went down, right?
And so because of that we got a good glimpse of that.
Google is also in the company is trying to keep But, but they haven't done that yet.
But Amazon with AWS has done a very good job with the integration and of databases because they already have a database.
They already know everything about us, right?
And so that integration makes it very easy for them.
And the compilation of MongoDB and Amazon, they're not really competitors.
They're actually, they actually complement each other in a lot of ways.
Some have better integration through APIs and some have integrations with the cloud.
I know that Atlas makes it look good, but to be honest with you, I like the AWS.
A MongoDB connection and you know if you have a backup if you are an AI company, you don't want to have just one cloud company in case one goes down.
You want to have backup.
So obviously Google is there to protect you.
So I like that whole ecosystem and Steve, while I have you here, when we're talking about artificial intelligence, we have to address infrastructure.
So of course we know about the big tech names here, but what are other names that you're paying attention to and what sectors within infrastructure are key?
You know, infrastructure in general is a big, a big sector, right?
And I think in a lot of ways we have to see what exactly it is that they actually do, what do they actually accomplish.
For me, the infrastructure has to be very big and scalable, and that scalability can only be handled by very, very large companies.
Look, I like Core weave in a lot of ways.
I think Core has their things together.
Let's be honest.
Palantirer is still hot, hot, hot.
They have all the contracts for the government and those kind of those kind of companies will do very well as they continue to have their contracts as those contracts come off, maybe not so much, but Alex Carp is right.
I know that he was very agitated the other day on his interview, but the truth is he's right.
I mean, when you have those kind of, you have those kind of moments.
You know you are the leader.
Palantirer is not going to stop.
I mean, I remember buying Pallanttier at 35 when a lot of the world didn't understand who Palantirer was and what they did.
And today, as you get to understand them, they're going to move outside of the defense sector.
They're going to go into all kinds of things like healthcare and international, and I love that about Palanttier.
So look out for that company.
It's not a $183 stock, it's a $500 stock.
OK, well, you addressed Palantirer and you mentioned core weave, so we'll be getting earnings after the closing bell today.
What are your expectations?
I expect core weave to beat, but will they beat the question is on guidance.
What are they going to say to me and say, Hey, here's what we're looking at in the future.
We already know because earnings of the past.
I want to know about the future.
And so for me, core weave, I want to see what the CEO has to say.
And I also want to see in their 10K and their 10Qs what their R&D budget is, how much are they actually spend. to the next version of what weave is doing.
If they tell me, hey, we are, we're really planning for the future like Mehta did, like Mark Zuckerberg did, then I'm excited about Quorweave.
If they don't, then I'll reevaluate.
But right now I'm pretty bullish on coreweave.
Well, we'll see what comes out of the company after the closing bell today fororweave.
But while we're talking about companies earnings as well as shareholders, we want to get your take on Tesla.
So it wasn't their earnings report, but the shareholder meeting that every But he focused on last week.
So what did you make of the pivot that Tesla is making?
Well, there were two things that came out of that one.
Number one is we now have 1 trillionaire sitting on the planet.
So that's well done, Elon, if you're watching.
The second thing I think is important with Tesla is it's no longer a car company.
It's no longer just a software company.
It is now going into the robotics company.
So listen, that new robot is hot, hot, hot.
I think, you know, when people ask me what's A key to a happy marriage, it's find a housekeeper, right?
So everybody wants a robot in the house, right?
So I expect that.
I expect robotics to be very hot in the future.
I think not 10 years.
I think maybe 3 years, I think people will start to buy them and start to do menial tasks, so we don't like doing like the dishes.
I don't know about you.
I know, yeah, even with a dishwasher, right, likes taking care of the household when it comes to mundane menial tasks, but The price point will be compared to Tesla vehicles versus say the Optimus humanoid robots, you know, I think that's the key, right?
It has to be affordable to everybody.
I think it's one thing a Tesla did well.
They realized that they had their higher end vehicles and then they started making lower end vehicles for people who want a Tesla, they'll do the same thing, right?
There's not everybody's going to want the pro version of the robot.
They may just want the regular version that just does the.
Dishes and vacuuming cleaning, right, but I do think that as we grow within, let's say quantum computing and it handles more and more tasks, gets to know us, we're going to expect that because a lot of people aren't expecting out of Chad GPT and perplexity or giving us health advice or giving us advice on relationships with people, and that's going to be part of the robotics.
So in that situation, I think we're going to be For a much bigger database within those robotics.
Yeah, it was interesting because Elon Musk mentioned combining Neuralink in a humanoid robot.
But when it comes to the daily utility for most people who may eventually want one of these robots, we'll have to wait and see what that turns out to be.
And of course the price tag.
Stephen, great having you here at the New York Stock Exchange.
Thank you so much for joining me.
My pleasure.
