Say hello to Ryan Kelly.
He is the CIO at Legato Financial Group.
My man, nice to see you here today.
Nice to see you.
Thank you.
So as you and I are sitting here, it's another day of all-time highs.
What is your kind of consensus view as you look to the second half of 2026?
Are you bullish for this momentum to continue?
Well, I am, and you know we saw a really big pop today in HPE.
So we've got another server name, really kind of the next leg of the AI trade.
We saw Dell last week really do the same thing.
Now HPE has almost doubled in the past month, so we continue to see that if you can produce earnings through AI and through this whole data center trade, you're able to really move up very, very quickly.
So I still think that we've got some positive signs coming down in the market, but we're really not seeing earnings yet from people using AI.
Everything is.
On going into building our data centers, chips, infrastructure, whatever else, but where are the profits for people that are actually using AI to monetize themselves?
Yes, we're going to talk a little bit more about Hewlett Packard here on the show in just a bit.
I appreciate that teaser there for the audience because what a day it was a few days after that big session from Dell at the end of last week.
You said earnings, not necessarily the lofty valuations.
That's going to be what continues to drive this market forward.
How are you seeing?
The separation of both those parts of the conversation.
Yes, I think you're going to have to continue to see the earnings.
I mean, we're absolutely seeing some stocks that are rallying very hard without earnings just kind of on the hope of being that next leg of the AI trade, but I'm very encouraged by really seeing earnings being the driver again.
You've got the announcements of the earnings, the announcements of the positivity coming out before a lot of these names are popping, certainly.
There's some exceptions to that, but you know, even with a name like Micron, which has absolutely blown it out of the water, one of our favorite holdings, looking at that name from a more traditional valuation metrics kind of system, we're still seeing that as being fairly cheap.
So I think that there's still some good possibilities.
You see a lot of eagerness though, people jumping in.
I mean, shares of Marvel today, and you and I are taking a look here, up 32.57%.
That's really all because Jensen Wong says, hey, this.
Could be the next $1 trillion company.
It has nothing to do with fundamentals.
Nothing changed.
The story didn't change overnight, but that kind of shows you the ways that perception can drive reality.
Is that still what you're following for a lot of these high flying stocks?
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, I think the fear of missing out is huge right now.
I mean, your friends and neighbors may be telling you about the stock that they bought a couple of weeks ago that's up 4x, 5x, whatever it is.
Everybody wants to be in on those trades.
Obviously you don't have to hit every one, but if you hit a couple of them.
You can make a very nice return for yourself, so.
There are plenty of stocks that are rallying too much on the rumors, not saying that I disagree necessarily on Marvel, but certainly I think you're going to see some separation.
There are going to be some companies that have tremendous earnings going forward, and then there are going to be some that start to lag and just don't produce those earnings.
I've got about 30 seconds with you left.
Everyone knows Nvidia.
How about Newcore, a few of these other names I know you're tracking closely.
Yeah, New Corre is one that I especially like.
They're doing a lot on the AI data center side and providing steel to. those things, but we're also looking at stocks that although they have an AI connection, they have some other things going for them.
Newport, for instance, producing steel cheaply, at least relatively cheaply in the US, so that steel can be used in infrastructure projects.
So it's a great AI story potentially, but it's also a solid company that has some good earnings and some other things going on.
Speaking of solid, you're a solid guest, my man.
Come back anytime.
Way to kick off the broadcast, Ryan Kelly.
Good to see you.
All right.
