Transcription
You can't shut off the AI revolution, right? It has to happen. Countries have to have it otherwise they're going to fall apart in national defense. So listen, the money has to go there. This capbacks that everyone talking about has to be done. So it's a hard thing to fade.
Where were you in 2000? Do you remember? >> I sure as hell do. >> You remember if the current sentiment right now around AI stocks broadly reflects the pets.com era? >> I had a better read. Quite frankly, I had a better read on sentiment back then than I do now.
>> Jason Shapiro is back. He's a founder of the Crowd of Market Report. Where to get his outlook on markets and his trading strategies. Is it still time to be fearful of the Iran trade? We'll find out with Jason. He's a veteran trader. Also featured in Jack Schwagger's book, Unknown Market Wizards. And he's been on several times before. Check out his last interview with me. Link down below in the description. Welcome back, Jason. Good to see you again. >> Always pleasure, David. Always pleasure. >> Always a pleasure to have you.
The CNN fear and greed index was at extreme fear a couple of uh days, couple weeks ago. Now swapped back to neutral last time I checked yesterday. Uh what is the current market sentiment according to your reading? We had of course as you know the S&P down about 10% from uh the beginning of uh middle of February down to late March and now we had a dramatic V-shaped recovery in the last two weeks. And so all over um not just markets but the um but the social media landscape that you're seeing people are very bullish right now with their with their with their outlook. What do you see?
>> Yeah, there's clearly been a uh an extreme swing in both uh price and sentiment. clearly um I'm being pummeled with with data today um from all over the place it seems um showing like how how much all these things have have moved uh put call ratios and how crazy what a crazy move they have. I'll just read you this text that somebody just sent me. US call option volume served to 47 million contracts per day. Second highest reading this year. Um, call volume has surged 75% since the beginning of the month. At the same time, put volume has declined 15%. So clearly um, and just two weeks ago, we had data that was indicating the exact opposite where people were loading up on puts. So clearly the positioning, the sentiment and all that has uh had a massive massive switch. Um in my view which quite frankly has not been very right to this point. Um I was worried that people were not scared enough um during the move down. Um I like people to get super scared and super short so then we can have nice rebounds like we did um in the tariff thing. When the tariff thing came out, we had a lot of fear and a lot of people quoting, you know, the depression of the 30s based on tariffs and all that and the macro was so bad and people got very, very bearish and very, very short, which then led to a nice, very sustainable bull run. I personally, my read based on the things I look at were telling me that was not the case this time. Um, that people were not getting as scared as I would like to have seen. that people were in fact this time buying the dip rather than selling the dip like they did during tariffs. Um, and I thought that that was not going to be a good thing. Now, to this point, that analysis has been completely wrong because we not only rebounded right back to new highs, but we actually rebounded faster to new highs than we did during uh than we did dur during the tariff thing. So, um, take it with a grain of salt because it ain't been right.
Uh, on the back of that, I would say, um, we did have what I thought was an important trading day. I don't consider every day to be so important from a signal point of view, but on April 2nd, um, we was Thursday going into a long weekend. Um, this was before we had any ceasefire talks on the war. So, we were still very, everyone was still very scared about what could happen over the weekend, over the war. A long weekend heading in the war you would think would be uh people wouldn't want to be bullish. We had oil up over 12% that day. Um the oil up has clearly been driving the market, driving the stock market down, oil up, inflation expectations, you know, um up, chances of a rate cut down, stocks down. That was sort of the war trade. And that day we had all those things happen except stocks closed up. So when stocks close up on the back of oil being up 12%. Um when oil is the big fear uh that's a sign you know that that that phase of the narrative is over. Um I did talk about that then I again will say that as much as I said that then and I said now if you are short based on all this and that's probably not the trade now given the the tape that day but I certainly wasn't pounding the table saying we are going to rip to new highs within two weeks. I did not see that one coming, but the market did. You know, this is the point. No matter, and I was bearish down there, but no matter what the market, what I think or whoever thinks, the market is the ultimate uh judge and and the market on that day said, you know, that that this is uh this is not working anymore. The bear side's not working anymore. So, um that was interesting. So, now we're looking for the reverse of that. you know, let's find something bullish to come out and then let's see the market not rally on that and then maybe we can get bearish again. But until then, you know, the the the trend uh looks up to me.
>> Do you think as a trader you're moving on from geopolitics as movers for now? Movers and triggers of market action either way.
>> I mean, I think the market moved on um certainly on that on that day that I was talking about, which is what's important. we're still going to pay attention to it. And and look, a super oversold market like we had then versus where we're at now is different. You know, I wouldn't expect >> Bor to be sh What's super oversold for you? Let's say the S&P goes down another 10% from here. Would that be considered oversold in today's environment?
>> No, that's a good That's a good question. And I hate to use words like that because truthfully, I don't have a measure for that. Okay. Sure. >> You know what it really is? In retrospect, it was oversold because if you look at That's right. >> You know, >> yeah. >> So, you're you're absolutely right to point that out, you know. Um, but markets that have gone down a lot, let's say, or gone down quite a bit. Um, >> well, I know you don't look >> are not where we're at right now. Now, we're back on highs. So, you know, the reaction, I would expect if there were some some bad war news, I would expect the reaction to be more negative than than it was down there.
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I know you don't just look at levels and for people that may be new to your work or haven't seen our prior interviews before, maybe just walk us through one more time how you make a trading decision. Something goes down 10% or 15%, whatever that thing may be. Could be the S&P, right? Could be Bitcoin. Um, how do you determine if something is, you know, let's not use the word oversold or overbought, but >> yeah, >> extended, let's say, in one direction over another.
So I I am going with the theory that the market is a discounting mechanism. Okay? And I'm going with the theory that the discounting measure is not price but participation. So for me it's not a question of hey this thing's gone down a lot therefore all the bad news is discounted in. I look at it more like hey I'm looking at positioning data and everybody is short this thing. Therefore, the bad news is already discounted in. So, for me, it's about positioning, not price. So, I look at positioning data to determine where I think things are, let's call it, oversold or overbought. Um, and then once that happens, that doesn't guarantee the market is going to go the other way. But at that point, I'm then looking for the market to confirm that it is going the other way. And then I will get in, which I always say is important. No matter how you trade, no matter what you think, no matter what you want to do, you want to be long this, you want to be short this, that's fine. I don't really care what your reason is. But let the market agree with you first. Don't fight the tape. And you have to define what the agree with you is. You know, you want to be long. Okay. Well, then wait till it's above the 50-day moving average, you know, and then the market's agreeing with you or something. You know, anything.
>> All right. Let's go over some some assets and get your take on whether or not it's over uh if it's if it's crowded in one direction or another. So, this was brought to my attention this morning. I brought up to I brought this up to you offline right before we started rolling the tape. Uh this is rather amusing to me. Allirds makes shoes and they announced that they're pivoting to AI. I'm not exactly sure what that means. I have to look into the news a little more little little more clearly. But anyway, after this announcement, their stock surged 200%. Let me just look this up. Allirds, it's all over the news. Struggling shoe retailer Allirds makes bizarre pivot from shoes to AI. Stock explodes more than 700%. In one day, pivoting from shoes to AI, valued at $21 million, more than 700%. The the shares were under $3, jumped to over $17. as the company announced that it's pivoting its business to AI compute infrastructure. Interesting.
>> Hey, who better to get who better to get into compute infrastructure than a shoe retailer? I mean, let's let's be real here. Um, look, this is where we're at. You know what I mean? Uh, we've been here before. You know, we had plenty of companies in the late 90s that pivoted from being a whatever to a dot company, you know. Um, we we've been here before. We know that this is what happens when things are frothy uh and bubbly. Um, but that doesn't mean that that is today. It doesn't mean it's not. But, you know, when it happened during the com thing, it wasn't the first company that did this. It was after the thousandth company did it. You know, this bubble lasted for a few years. Um, so I understand the message here. It's stupid. I get it. Um, the question is how long does the stupidity last, you know, and and I cannot say cuz I don't know. Like I always say, the market will tell us, okay, the market will start reacting poorly to positive news and that will will be our tell. Just on the same note, um just this past weekend I was looking at things since the S&P came back from lows and um went back and and was unchanged since the war. I always like to see like what's working relative and what's not. So I was looking at the assets that okay S&P flat for that time period from the start of the war till till Friday. which ones underperformed and which ones overperformed. And what kept coming at me was the AI assets were were out outperforming. So, I went and I I built this spreadsheet um that I'm going to read a little bit off of. I I I have always broken the AI stuff and and this might be right or wrong. I'm no genius, but um I broke the AI sectors into five subsectors. I'm going to read these to you. power supply cooling infrastructure um sorry I can't see very well compute compute which is what these guys want to do uh network connectivity and then your uh materials and rare earth stuff okay I went and asked chat GPT to give me a list of stocks in those sectors not a list of stocks that have gone up not the best performing stock just a random list of stocks and it gave me 22 stocks um in the power supply. Of those 20 are up on the year and the average return not just of the up one the average return of all 20 of them is 34%. Okay. Um cooling infrastructure 11 stocks 11 up on the year average 36%. Compute hardware. We know these names. These include Nvidia and all that, right? 14 stocks, 14 positive, average 39%. Network connectivity, eight stocks, seven up, 34% average. Materials rare earth 10 stocks, niner up, 22% average. So clearly this is where the bull market is. Okay? No matter what, even if there's some bias to what chat GPT gave me, there are some stocks here that are down, you know, there's a few that are down 20 30%. So, it didn't just give me all up stocks, but clearly this is where the bull market is, right? Um, and you could even argue if you want to be a contrarian, by the time Jason Shapiro, who doesn't really trade individual stocks, figures that out, it might be over. Maybe that may be true. But there's really hard to question, and we've talked about this before, I know, but it's hard to question where the leadership is. And it's leadership not just in terms of stock price. It's clearly leadership in terms of of the fundamental story. You can't shut off the AI revolution, right? It has to happen because not only do companies believe it's what the future is and they want to be a part of the future, it's also important for national defense. Countries have to have it otherwise they're going to fall apart in national defense. So listen, the money has to go there. This capbacks that everyone talking about has to be done. Um so it's a hard thing to fade. Now can it get overbought? And and look, they're high beta stocks. So these stocks can get overbought. They could drop 20% in a week. We just saw MU, you know, Micron, which was a month.
>> We just saw it drop what, 30% in two weeks or something, right? But look how quickly it went right back to alltime highs and threw it, you know? So yes, you have to deal with the volatility of this. But to me, if you're trying to trade the bull side of the market and you're an individual stock person, um, this is the area you want to be concentrating on because it has so many it has the wind at its back. It's got the fundamental wind at its back and it also has the price trend wind at its back. You know, yes, you're going to have to be ready for some volatility. Yes, you're going to have to take the risk that Jason Shapiro is not high ticking it right here, which is always a possibility. Okay. Um, but even if I am highticking it right here, it should start to give you the signs that that's the case. It'll start underperforming. It will start acting poorly. And look, is it frothy? You just pointed out how frothy it is. Okay? So, yes, there's going to be volatility and you're going to have to be careful. But I would still argue if you are looking to play bullish and you are looking at individual stocks to play bullish, I would argue this is still the place to be.
>> Is it a stock pickers game in the AI space? uh where do you just kind of spread your eggs across multiple baskets? You brought up Micron and the difficulty with this space according to what I think is that um you know you kind of have to be forwardlooking with technology here. Micro stock went down in the day Google announced that their turbo quant model uses less RAM. It needs less memory per compute and so RAM chips just dropped um in price and demand overnight. That's one of the reasons Micron dropped. And you have a bunch of other software companies that are making legacy models that now AI could kind of replicate. And so you kind of have to look at these companies and say to yourself which one will be obsolete in 6 months and you know the answer is difficult to tell. How do you approach?
>> Impossible. It's impossible. I I would tell you I believe it's impossible. Okay. I know nothing about AI. I am not the person to tell you but I know people and there are people on my discord who speak to us about it who are very involved in AI. We have people that are in the not only in the AI consultancy type of businesses but also people in the chip businesses and engineers and they speak very often about this stuff. Um and I don't you know me I I always say nobody can predict the future. Nobody ever has been able to predict the future. Okay. But I think now it's even harder because things are moving so fast, right? Uh from all different corners of the world. There there is so much innovation going on. There's so much speed going on and there's so much incentive to find the new thing. They just pop out of nowhere. I mean 3 months a we're in a completely different world AI world from what I can tell them we were three months ago and three months before that we were in a totally different world then too. So, how you're going to be able to pick that is beyond me. It's it's beyond me. But I always say the market will tell you. Okay? The market will tell you. If all the AI stocks are going up and and your AI stock is failing, then the market is telling you that ain't the one to be in. You know, um the market know it's the wisdom of crowds theory, right? The market knows. subconsciously what we as individuals do not know. So you just have to pay attention to the tape, pay attention to the price action, ride the momentum and when they start to fail then and fail doesn't necessarily mean it has a down day. Things always have down days. Okay, fail meaning the market's strong as hell. All the stocks that this thing is correlated to are strong as hell and this stock can't go up. Okay, now I would start saying I would look to be in something else. You can also be in like the ETS which is going to give you less juice but uh obviously more uh less volatility.
>> Where were you in 2000? Do you remember? And where I'm going with this >> where where I'm going with this is do you remember if the current sentiment right now around AI stocks broadly reflects the pets.com era? Do you do do you recall if you know >> I had a better read quite frankly I had a better read on sentiment back then than I do now.
>> Okay. >> Um I was running a a hedge fund. I was living in Hawaii running a hedge fund and I can specifically remember going out to lunch and everybody in the world talking about AOL and you know all these stocks that they making tons of money on. I mean it was out of control to the point that this was before I was a databased contrarian trader and I was just a wise ass contrarian trader. I would come back from lunch every day and short the NASDAQ and I would wake up the next morning and be 2% out of the money. Um because I was too early because the data that I now know wasn't wasn't ready yet. Um so it was look in the last 6 months of that the NASDAQ was up like 40 or 50% just in the last 6 months. So you know Soros says when I see a bubble I get in. Um because the momentum and the ridiculousness of it can exceed anything you've ever seen. All right. So the sentiment now in AI, I'm not going to say that it equals the sentiment of um of the.com bubble. And I believe I've done interviews with you in the past where I pounded the table and said that there's no way that it were even close to the sentiment back then.
>> Yeah. I think now we're probably closer. The price action that I'm speaking of is an indication. The fact that me as a non-stock trader and a nonI person is pointing out how great these things are doing is maybe an indication that the sentiment is getting a little nuts. We're starting to see a lot of stuff where people are are starting to talk the crap about how much money they're making in these stocks. Um, but I still think that maybe there's a little bit too much pessimism in terms of AI. People still think that AI is is is hype and AI is bull crap. And you know, nobody really thought that the internet was bull crap. They all knew that it was real and that it was going to be real. Um, you never heard that story here. I I still hear whispers of that, although less than we did a year and a half ago, a year to a year and a half ago, where there was a lot of cynicism towards the whole thing. There's a hell of a lot less now, for sure. I'm not going to say we're at the euphoric state we're at in in late 99, but uh I'm not going to say that that necessarily has to be the ultimate judge either, you know. Um I think that trying to short the stuff is is dangerous. There's other stuff I would rather short, you know, I mean, if I short.
>> Okay, let's get to some of this other stuff. Uh, is oil one of this other stuff? Let's just pull up a chart of oil. I don't have the commitment of traders data in front of me. Um, perhaps you do, but maybe comment on whether or not it's crowded at $88 a barrel.
>> It's not. It's not. Um, and let's not mistake it. That doesn't mean that it can't go down. It just means that it's not super crowded. That's all. Okay. Um the most crowded market that I have right now is uh soybean oil which is I would argue correlated to oil and diesel >> because people use soybean oil um you know for bofuels which is a replacement for high cost diesel um and soybean oil is the most crowded market in the world right now from what I can see. Um, you know, we had a lot of people jump on the not only the bean oil because of the replacement for fuel, but the whole food stuff and the agricultural thing because of the war where you know what we needed to to grow our stuff came out of the Gulf. A lot of it came out of the the Gulf as I mean the the straight of Hormuz as well. And everybody kind of jumped on the the A thing too. So we had that double thing with soybean oil. Um, so it's now super crowded long. I think the most it's ever been. So that that's the most crowded trade to me. I I know most people aren't going to trade soybean oil, but um that to me is is the most crowded trade. Another thing that's getting super crowded here as it uh test highs again is the Australian dollar. Um which again makes sense. Uh the Aussie central bank has been interested in raising rates and talking about raising rates. So people believe that the Aussie dollar is going to be stronger. Um so I'm looking for some form of market confirmation before I short the Aussie dollar um to get short there. You know, let it run. I'm not going to get in the way. I don't get in the way of the market. Um, but should some bullish news start to come out and they raise rates and in particular if they raise rates sooner than people thought or more than people thought and the market and the Aussie can't rally on that um then I would be looking to short that Aussie however you know it's kind of it's like a risk asset the Aussie as well right so this is like another way and I would say a more crowded way and therefore a better riskreward way over time to get short risk assets instead of shorting the S&P or shorting the NASDAQ or you know however you want to get short shorting oil or whatever. Um Aussie is and has acted like a risk asset as well. So um that might be a better way to do it.
>> What would need to happen to have you reshift your focus back to Iran and uh the oil trade? You mentioned it was over uh for now the markets moved on. What would make the markets and yourself move back?
>> I mean it's not like I'm not watching it and I'm watching it every day. um it seems to have quieted down a little bit, but you know, it's going to it's going to get loud again. So, um I don't trade off the fundamental. Like, if they come out and say, "We're going to bomb Iran back to the stone age, you know, I'm not going to start shorting S&Ps, right?" Um that's not an edge. I pay attention to the news flow and the narrative, and then I pay attention to how the market reacts to that. That's what's important to me, right? Um, so I am still paying attention to that and and I and I will pay attention to it when when the news starts to get loud again. It's about how the market reacts to the news flow, not necessarily the news flow as a trader.
>> Okay. Uh, let's turn our page to gold. Now, when something like gold, which everybody expected, by everybody I mean the people in the gold market expected to move up as soon as there's a huge war or conflict that broke out and it actually went the opposite direction. It went down.
>> Yeah. >> Is that a bullish signal to you?
>> Why would that be a bullish signal? >> I'd say it well it just did the opposite of whatever everybody expected. I don't know. >> Yeah. Which was go down. >> Yeah. >> I mean, I like to do the opposite of what everybody expects, right?
>> In particular. in particular when the market agrees with that. Um, but you know, I think that anybody that was expecting that um wasn't really paying attention because gold was working as a risk asset for a long time here, right? Um, it wasn't acting as a safe haven asset. Stocks are going up, right? Um, and gold was going up with it. uh in fact more than than that. So when that ended the war came and stocks going down and gold went down. I mean that's what the correlation was and and that correlation worked all throughout the war and has in fact worked till now. It bothers me a little bit. I'm more bullish silver than gold but I could be bullish both of them. Um it bothers me a little bit that both silver and gold have rebounded as the stock market has rebounded here. Um silver actually bottomed maybe I'm going to call it a week before the stock market which was a great signal. Silver I also believe has the benefits of being an AI trade. So given that the world is more short silver relative to the stock market um in my data and that on a fundamental basis silver should benefit from the AI trade um it should be doing better than the stock market and it's not. Um stock market is back to highs. Silver is far far from highs. It's not even back to the pre-war highs. So that makes me a little bit concerned. You know, the market is not agreeing with my analysis, right? My analysis is silver should outperform the stock market and the market is saying you're wrong because it's underperforming the market. So therefore, I'm hesitant. You know, I the market is my is my master. You know, I'm not the market's master. It doesn't have to listen to me. I have to listen to it. Um so I like both gold and silver, but um they are not acting very well in my view. Okay. Are you so you're you're not currently in the markets for gold and silver right now?
Okay. Let's turn to Bitcoin. Bitco the the polarization of Bitcoin hasn't really changed since the Iran war. You still got the $50 million camp, the Michael Sailor camp, and you got still got the Z camp. Uh Steve King, economist Steve King's just been making waves in the internet saying Bitcoin's going to zero. Uh but no, that's he's not the first person to say that. He won't be the last. So, uh it's hard to gauge what people are feeling right now. What's your read?
>> Uh I think that you're exactly right. There's two camps. It's either going to a million or it's going to zero.
>> By the way, you made a video about this. Let me just put this on the screen. I'll let you talk.
>> I did. I did. I did. Um, and that's a bad headline. I don't know who the hell makes the headlines for my videos, but I got to talk to these people because that's that's not what I said. I didn't say it's not going to a million. What I say is that that's all we hear. It's either going to a million or it's going to zero. Okay? And um my bet is it's not not going to either one of those anytime soon. It's probably just going to in my view it's probably just going to be another asset just like everything else is is another asset. Gold is another asset. You know you've had gold bugs forever. They were wrong for 20 years. From ' 80s and '9s gold went no way went down like 40% over 20 years from 82 to 2000. And the gold bugs were wrong. And from 2000 until now, gold has been phenomenal. It's outperformed, I believe, the S&P in that time period, right? And the gold bugs have been right. Okay? They were gold bugs that when it went down 40% and they're gold bugs now, right? Same gold bugs. They're wrong then, they're right now. I I think that Bitcoin is going to be the same thing. It's going to go up sometimes. It's going to go down sometimes. My personal problem with Bitcoin, and this is a bias, so take it with a grain of salt, but my personal bias with Bitcoin is it strikes me, and I'm sorry to the people that this is going to offend, but I'm not trying to offend. I'm trying to maybe help you to think. A lot of the people I know who have become Bitcoin permables are people that have not been very successful in the markets over time. So therefore, it makes it hard for me to think that we're going to do what they and and they are so biased. I I just am so against bias. You know, if every time Bitcoin goes down, their view is, "Oh, it's just that much cheaper to buy more." And every time it goes up, it's like, "Oh, see, I told you that Bitcoin's great." You know, they sit here and they talk about how when the stock market was making new lows a few weeks ago, Bitcoin was holding its low. So, Bitcoin was outperforming the stock market during the war thing. That's all they focused on. Okay. But what about the fact that Bitcoin dropped 50% before the war? You know, and what about the fact that now that the stock market has rebounded to pre-war highs, Bitcoin has been underperforming. They don't bring that up anymore, right? I haven't heard that in the last two weeks. So, I have a problem. You know, a lot of times when I make investments, private investments, I always look at it like I look at the person. It's like you're betting on the horse, right? You're betting on the jockey, not the horse. I look at the jockey and I say, "Do I think that this person is going to be an extremely successful person? And if I do, then maybe I'll invest with him. And if I don't, then I'm not going to invest with him." And that's how I see. Not all. There are certainly some smart people in Bitcoin, but a large portion of the people that I see and read are inexperienced people. And the experienced people are ones who I have seen in the past not be successful. Okay, so that makes me a little bit nervous about Bitcoin, quite frankly. And I hope I'm wrong and I hope they all get rich, but when was the last time a whole bunch of people who had never been successful before and really don't understand much, let's say the other group, but they're new and they're, you know, this is like their lottery ticket. You know, when's the last time that they all got rich together? I I don't really know of a time, right? They have made money before. That was what the dot bubble was. We had a bunch of inexperienced people make a bunch of money during the do bubble, but they gave it all back. So that's what makes me nervous about Bitcoin from a strictly from a psychological point of view. It just it just makes me a little bit nervous. Do I own some?
>> Yes.
>> What if I told you that from my observation at least in the last two cycles, right? this one and the previous one. Um, media focus and I guess viewership attention on the asset class of Bitcoin and cryptos overall >> tends to correlate with market bottoms and tops. Um, meaning if people stop caring >> and you know you get you get viewership just disappear, >> right? >> Right. That's >> kind of what happening right now.
>> Yeah. No, I think that that's right and and I think that's why Bitcoin is doing well here. um or it's doing okay anyway. Um certainly the interest has dropped off. No question. Um and look that that that goes right into my whole theory about positioning and participation, right? When nobody wants to own it, that's when you want to own it. When everybody wants to own it, that's when you want to sell it. Right? It's the same thing. What you're saying is the same thing that I'm saying about markets. So I agree. I'm just talking from a is it going to a million perspective? Um it may eventually just like gold, you know, eventually after 20 years of being down, eventually gold did very well over 20 years. I think Bitcoin could do that. I don't think that it's going straight to a million from here. Um that's just my view.
>> Uh let's finish off on macro. We we haven't talked about the economy much. Um but this is this is something that goes back to trading on sentiment. This is the this is literally the sentiment of consumers is published by the University of Michigan and um it's at an all-time low at least going back 10 years but if you actually if you go back to the 60s or you know early 80s it's it's still near alltime low. So, um, what what do you look at this, you can either do two things. You can ignore it or you could say to yourself, well, it's time to it's time to buckle down on consumer staples because consumer discretionary stocks aren't going to do well. Right.
>> Yeah, it's uh it's a tough one with this one. I I've looked at it. I I've read a bunch of stuff about what people think. I've I've tried to build my own theories about it. Um, I think the one that I believe in the most is that it's a function of social media.
>> Okay. All right.
>> Well, you know, we never had social media before. Uh, and now everybody's on social media and social media is such a depressing place. You know, it's all so full of negativity and and and people believe this stuff. And and also then we get on top of that media coverage. We know that a lot of the media coverage is negative. the current administration in the United States government. And so if you're watching media coverage and hearing all these stories about how the current administration is, you know, the end of the world and you're on social media and you're seeing all these negative, depressing stories, um you're probably going to be negative. And I and I think that may be what's showing up as negative consumer sentiment. Um, and if people are too negative, then yeah, it's the time to be positive. Um, and you know, I think that they're scared of of the whole AI thing as well because uncertainty is what breeds sort of fear and the uncertainty of the future seems large here. Can you tell me what this world's going to look like in 5 years, David? Cuz I sure as hell can't. You know, I have a a niece that worked her ass off all through school, high school, college, got herself at the Harvard medical school. She's in her second year.
>> She's in her second year Harvard medical school. And she's called me up in like she's called me up asking me if she's going to have a job when she gets out of medical school.
>> What do you mean if she's going to have a job? She's in medical school. Of course she's going to have a job. Oh, well, are doctors going to be necessary? I just sent my blood test in to my friend who's all into AI and he put it in there and and the AI gave me a better analysis, I think, than my doctor did. I tried to compare it just for the fun of it, right?
>> Yeah. >> So, what she's saying is like, are doctors even going to be relevant in 5 to 10 years? And my answer to her, of course, I have no freaking idea, honey. Just keep your head down and keep working. That's not You should have just reassured her and said, "Yes, of course you're going to of course keep your head down and keep working and and and something will happen. They're not going to completely get rid of doctors one way or the other." I don't think. But I mean, at the end of the day, can I take my blood test, send it to AI and let them diagnose it, and when they tell me I have something, then, you know, send it to a robot and the robot does it cuts me up and probably does a better job than a human being doing it. Could that be the case? I I suppose it could, but like I say, the uncertainty is is so extreme here because things are changing so quickly. People don't adapt to change. Well, they never have, right? I still don't adapt to change. My work habits are still the same as they were 25 years ago. You know what I mean?
>> This is a this is a fascinating post. Just on that note, researchers proved um AI layoffs could break the economy according to a paper by Boston University. Uh I have to read the paper itself, but this is just summary of the post. Basically, um, according to game theory, it doesn't make sense for you not to automate a lot of your workforce. And so, if you have to lay people off, well, that's good for your bottom line in the short run. But if everybody lays everybody off at the same time or a big portion of, you know, workforce off at the same time, we're going to get demand destruction. And so, the demand for the products that you sell, ironically, will actually go down. Uh but then it becomes okay so you you actually gain short term from the profits of laying people off but then everybody collectively uh have to share in the burden of having a demand destruction face the economy. It's very
>> this has been the question for for a while now. if you fire everybody who buys the products like you know and then these other people makes oh well you get universal basic income and we all get to just sit there and that doesn't make sense to me you know Elon Musk talking about oh no one's going to have to work anymore and everyone's just going to live in this euphoria you know and money is not going to matter that doesn't make sense to me because if if money doesn't matter then how do we decide who gets to live in the mansion and and who lives in in the trailer park I'm going on a trip this week who gets to sit in first class and who has to sit in economy class? It has to be the person with more money that gets to sit in first class. It has to be the person with more money that gets to buy the mansion or whatever. So, how does that how do things get distributed if everybody's just not working and collecting universal basic? That to me does not make sense economically.
>> So, I don't know. But this is what I'm saying. The the the uncertainty of the future is huge. And I think that's what lays into consumer confidence.
>> That that's a great point. I think we have to also make a bet on which professions will be, you know, safer relative to others. And perhaps that becomes a trading signal. Perhaps healthcare will be the last to get replaced by AI. I think your niece is going to be fine for the next 20 years. I don't think a Harvard med school student is going to get replaced by a robot anytime soon. Maybe I'm wrong.
>> Um, but uh Jason, I appreciate your thoughts. Uh, thank you for coming on. Where do we find your work? You've been pretty active on YouTube as well. So, let's plug that.
>> Yep. Crowdedmarketreport.com or YouTube crowdedmarket report. We do videos all the time on there for free.
>> Okay, good. We'll put the links down below. So, uh make sure to follow Jason there. Well, good to see you again, Jason. Thanks for coming on and we'll see you again next time. Take care.
>> Great talking to you, David. As always, >> thank you for uh watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, follow Jason. Links down below.