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Industrials show resilience despite shifting economic narratives
โTicker XLI is the State Street Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF... Even if the economy is starting to turn, you're not really seeing signs of a breakdown in industrials and certainly not seeing a sign of a breakdown in this ETF. A lot of what has happened in the market this week has been centered around the narrative of AI, AI spending, and really the lack of monetization across the board and hasn't really spilled over into other sectors. Unless you're overweight a ridiculous amount relative to what the market weight is of industrials, I don't see any reason why you would want to fully exit this industrials ETF.โ
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AI data centers trigger a utility super cycle
โWe've all seen how tech earnings calls have really highlighted a new risk. There isn't enough electricity to power the new data centers. We'll talk about the utility super cycle as power companies raise rates to build this new capacity. We'll also touch on a story I saw today about KPMG pressing its auditors to cut costs, or rather to cut the price they charge KPMG due to AI cost savings. What does that mean for the audit industry and really industry as a whole?โ
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Software volatility stems from AI monetization concerns
โWhat really drove the market today? Well, it was the feeling that there was a bit of a bottoming in software. It was a focus as groups attempted to break seven straight declines. Bit of a pick up in commentary. We saw a lot of discussion about very oversold conditions and some pushback against some of the more dire predictions revolving around that AI competition that was part and parcel for why the market was doing what it was doing. In addition, you had elevated hyperscaler capex, still a positive for the broader AI trade.โ
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Preferred stocks serve as supplemental income tools
โTypically, people want to invest in preferred stocks because they have a bit of an income focus. They typically pay higher fixed dividends than common stocks and often have some pretty attractive yields, anywhere from 5% to 8%, and so that makes them pretty attractive for these steady cash flow seekers. But that also changes where they are as well with respect to their position in the capital stack. They sit above common equity, meaning if a company goes bankrupt, you would get some claim on assets before common stock shareholders do, but they are below bonds as well.โ
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High bandwidth memory demand drives Micron growth
โMicron Technology has had quite, quite a positive performance recently. It is a leading semiconductor memory and storage company, so they make DRAM, NAND, Flash, and high bandwidth memory. It's one of the few major global suppliers in an industry that has a lot of high barriers to entry, not just because of input costs, but also because of the required technological understanding and ability to develop these very complex and small products. This HBM, it's high bandwidth memory, right? This is really what's been driving it here.โ
