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We're a little over 90 minutes into the start of trading here on the day. Stocks are slipping today, failing to keep up with the momentum from Friday's rally on the heels of a strong jobs report. Investors watching for the next big catalyst from the markets and that is earnings to discuss what themes you should be watching. We've got Keith Buchanan, who is the Global Investments Senior portfolio manager. Great to have you here with us, Keith, as always. You know, as you think about some of the themes that could prevail over the course of this earning season as investors are looking to what catalyst will be next. I mean, it seems like that the flame on AI is is starting to peter out a little bit. So where else does that kind of shift some of the attention to in this broadening out we've been talking about.

Absolutely, and thank you for having me. We've done a lot of work in this regard and what we've noticed is the expectations for earnings have started to accelerate from mid single digits to next year mid double digits. And this fourth quarter coming into this fourth quarter is a real transition quarter from that uh lower healthy growth to robust growth. A lot of that comes from not only being core healthy growth from artificial intelligence and all those industries and companies that benefit from that trend, but also widening of earnings growth and revenue growth that you can see beyond the traditional growth sectors like technology, consumer services, that's actually moving out some to industrials, energy. Um that's a lot more more breadth to the earnings growth, which gives it a lot more stability over the near and long term. So we're really excited about what earnings prospects there are. We've sort of broadened some of our risk to get more access and frankly a lot more exposure or in relative sense to those sectors that have been forgotten and valuations reflect that.

You know, it's interesting over the course of this morning especially if we've been teeing up the the outlook for this the final quarter and then what themes could prevail even going into 2025. We've heard everything from utilities to industrials and manufacturing. What what are your your top picks or your top sectors that you are kind of positioning around and and placing a little bit more strategy around going into and as we've kicked off this fourth quarter and then have the outlook into 2025.

And that's and that's different from what we've seen over the past year where a lot more focus has been on AI and the videos of the world that seem to benefit from this trend. We're looking towards the traditional call it even I hate to say the V word but the value spaces that offer a little more bang for the buck when it comes to potential for return and earnings growth for the valuation that you have to pay for it. So we're looking at financials has been one of those that has already started to benefit from that trend as far as the investor interest is concerned. We also see space in industrials, consumer discretionary. Those spaces that have been left behind frankly from a return standpoint and those valuations are miles away from where they traditionally trade on a relative to the broader S&P 500. So we're looking spaces outside of what's kind of been talked about as the best names and best ideas over the past couple of years and those have started to lose some relative steam. Uh we want to be make sure we our clients are exposed to a broad array of names, not just focused on those names that have done well over the past couple of years.

Keith, you know, as we continue to evaluate, you know, a multitude of events that seem like they're taking place, you know, I I was kind of thinking back to a friend of the show's tweet that I saw this morning, Ryan Dietrich, and and he had mentioned the S&P 500 being up 34.4% over the past 12 months, ending in September of this year. And you think back to how many times we've been told that something bad is happening right now, whether it be elections or these the events over the course of this year as we've had more than half of the world's population expected to participate in elections or you've got wars, you've got uh of course just seven stocks that people have been focused on. All these things considered, are any of these events having or continue to have a more outsized impact on the trading strategy that you are recommending to clients right now?

Absolutely, we take all that into consideration when we make our changes and have our position for our clients. When you look back to where we were in 2021, a perfect example of kind of how we are viewing the world right now. We right had a tinderbox of port issues. We we also were had Russia on the border of Ukraine, that invasion kind of made inflation which was widely thought to be transitory, no longer transitory. Right now we are having issues, of course, you know, a brief resolution last week. We're having issues as far as port availability and also the some backlogs associated with that. We have a sprawling conflict in the Middle East, very resource resource rich part of the world just like Ukraine and Russia. Um so we're we're taking note of just how similar those time periods were, as well as the geopolitical conflicts that could really light a match to what seems to be a tinder box of risk that could be more widespread than we assume right now, which was the same case in 2021. So all those are taken into consideration, we don't necessarily make election trades per se. We want to bring, take all of the incoming information that we have that could affect the the consensus of where we're going economically, monetarily over the next two years, and take that into consideration when we think about the long-term approach of our client assets.

Keith Buchanan who's the Global Investments Senior portfolio manager. Keith, always a pleasure to grab some time with you. Thanks so much for hopping on with us.