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Welcome to Catalyst. I'm Madison Mills. 30 minutes into the US trading day. Let's get you the three catalysts we're watching this hour. First up, we break down the market outlook following a better than expected inflation print. Plus, we'll look at how tariffs and the EU's retaliation could drive up inflation and consumer prices, and we'll check in on the ship trade and the pressure on the semiconductor sector. All those details ahead.Half an hour into the start of the US trading day, let's get a check on the markets brought to you by Tasty Trade. First, taking a look at the major averages, something we haven't seen in a few days here, green on your screen. You got your S&P 500 up about 0.1%, about 0.5% there. The tech heavy Nasdaq taking up the majority of the gains up about 1.3%. You got your Dow under a little bit of pressure, down about 100 points this morning here. But let's flip the board over to the bond market because we're also seeing something a little bit new taking place there, yields moving to the up.Just a touch of a sell off when it comes to your treasuries here, perhaps we're seeing a little bit more of that risk on sentiment movement into stocks off the back of that CPI print this morning, telling investors perhaps that the worst of inflation may be behind us. Investors certainly taking that as a positive when you look at the market action. But let's get our favorite risk on risk off indicator in here, Bitcoin, and as you can see, it's up nearly 2%, again, another symbol of perhaps a risk on sentiment cementing in the market this morning.President Trump downplaying recession risks despite the volatility that's rocked markets the last three weeks as parts of the economy begin to show cracks. Trump saying yesterday, quote, I think the country is going to boom, and markets don't concern me. However, our next guest says ultimately the net impact of Trump's policies on inflation will depend on whether weaker services spending outweighs higher goods prices. And in February, it's clear the disinflationary effect from softening services outweigh the uptick in goods inflation. Joining me now is Anna Wamberg.Economics chief US economist and former chief international economist for the Council of Economic Advisors. Anna, you know I always love speaking with you, so thank you for making time with us this morning. I want to start on how you are thinking about the next inflation print we may be getting, which could indicate a little bit more of the inflationary impact of Trump's tariff policies.

Right, so in the next inflation, we'll get half of March where the steel and aluminum tariffs will be in place.As they came into full force today without much exemptions. Um, and we are gonna also get um all these retaliation from um EU and other um in Canada on a whole bunch of other goods. So I think, um, today's report kind of already give us a flavor of what, uh, tariffs will, how tariffs will appear in in CPI we have seen a little bit of uh uptick in the prices of apparels and furnishings andUh, things that are, uh, subjected to, um, uh, highly exposed to China so far. But in the next month, I think we're gonna see perhaps more pressure on car prices as well, and the seasonal factors for cars are are not looking favorable.For disinflation. So I think the story for March CPI would be that goods disinflation stalled while services at discretionary prices continue to come down as consumers pull back on spending.

Anna, what does that mean for the Fed?

Well, I think the, the Fed is not going to move uh as long as inflation expectations remain elevated, and we have seen in the inflation expectations data, there's a strong partisan divide, uh, in terms of this uptick. So,I think what this means is that the Fed is going to cut only belatedly, and as a result, this tightening of financial conditions and the hurt on the real sector and the labor market will have to be far in advance before the Fed will begin to cut, this is risking a deeper downturn.

And Anna, I do just want to quickly break some news here for our audience. We have headlines coming in here that Canada's new reciprocal tariffs are going to begin at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday. Again, this continuation of the tit for tat between the US and Canada. You're looking at a live shot there of a Canadian official speaking about Canada's retaliatory efforts off the.Of those increased steel and aluminum tariffs. Anna going back to you on this, I think this is indicative of part of what the market is struggling with right now that this tit for tat for tariffs, it's unclear where and if it ends. How do you think that that impacts the economy? Do you think that that continues to lead to any slowness that could result in a recession?

Oh, so, so yeah, definitely retaliation by our foreign trade partner will show up as weaker economic activity in the US. For example, um, you know, Canada's retaliation will disproportionately hurt, uh, US, um, manufacturers, and later in the month, the EU also is about toA reinstate a very large tariffs on US bourbon, which will disproportionately hit Kentucky and the district under Mitch McConnell. So I think that all that will mean softer economic activities, and this is why I expect more pullback in discretionary services spending, which ultimately will be just inflationary. So in terms of recession, that's our word, one importantpreconditions for recession is we have to see a widening of credit spreads of around 200 basis points and so far we are maybe a quarter. We've seen maybe less than 25% of that. And in order for credit spreads to really widen, you need to see more panic in the stock market, a bigger selloff in the stock market, and I think we are not there yet. So a lot of this recession talk is based onIs and in terms of hard data, it's it's not reallythere yet.

Well, Anna, it's a great breakdown, but to your point, we have seen a little bit of that widening in credit spreads, not to the degree that you're mentioning, of course. I wonder how you're thinking about the impact of the labor market here. It seems like in the headline numbers things continue to be OK, but there are cracks under the surface. What do you think could potentially be the breaking point for the labor market that could then hurt the broader economic picture?

Definitely I think that a good trigger would be a government shutdown this Friday. So the House has passed the bill for for a funding gap bill, and it's now in the hands of the Senate, and they're playing the game of chicken where it's all up to Democrats now andWhether they want to sign off on, on, on the, on the bill, and I think uh the risks for shutdown remains to be very, very elevated. And if there would be a shutdown, then that would last for another month, then we, we could possibly see April's unemployment rate spike to above 4.6%.

All right, and also I lastly want to end with you just on how you're thinking about the market volatility and the selling that we are seeing as an indicator of the economy. At what point would the dip be significant enough for you to be concerned that asset prices could weigh on consumer wallets, consumer spending, and therefore the economy.

Yeah, so Kaello will have to spread to a sustained period of elevated VIX, as well as a widening credit spreads of around 200 basis point, as I was saying, and we are not there yet, and the elevation of VIX has to be also be sustained. And until that happens, then I think thistemporarily confidence, uh, uh, decline will, um, you know, uh, will bounce back after they see better hard data,

right? All right, Anna, thank you so much for breaking it down for us and reacting to that breaking news as well coming out of Canada. We really appreciate it.Well, stocks are mixed this morning following that better than expected inflation rate for the month of February, but is one inflation print enough to ease market concerns about economic data and policy uncertainty? Our very own Josh Schafer joining me now to discuss. Josh, it seems like investors think the Fed is back with a dovish vibe.Into the next meeting, is that actually going to be the case? What are you thinking?

Yeah, so I mean economists reacting to this report that I've been reading the research this morning sort of think this doesn't really change much for the Fed at this point, largely because you still need PPI to come tomorrow, right? So normally consumer prices and producer prices sort of equal a proper estimate for PCE, which is the Fed's preferred inflation gauge that we get at the end of the month. So you don't quite have that read through yet.But there have been some strategists, some bulls out there like von Strats Tom Lee that have said the Fed put is still in, and you need positive inflation data in order to have that. So the concept of the Fed put would be if we really are concerned about the economy and we see a weakening economy, the Fed would step in and cut rates, right? And the Fed would cut rates and that would help your swelling economy. The issue with that take has been, well, inflation is still well above the Fed's target. We're not seeing a lot of progress on inflation. Tariffs could be inflationary, so you can bind all of.That and it sort of eliminates the Fed's ability to maybe help out the economy in that sense. So if you have positive inflation readings like this, it does bring it back into the picture and it's definitely something that bulls are mentioning right now and bringing up as a potential case for what could help us rebound, but you just mentioned stock future or sorry stocks now where the market is open, the actual the actual indexes are mixed right after we just got some headlines about Canada reciprocal tariffs and I think that speaks to perhaps.The market's larger issue right now. Yeah,

it's interesting seeing that the tech names continue to kind of give us this lift this morning, but as we get these tariff headlines throughout the day, as we have started to learn, this has started to become a pattern that could start to weigh on equities. I wonder, Josh, how you're thinking about the number of price target decreases that we've started to see the calls to go outside of the US to European equities. Does the tariff picture start to matter more than the economic data points that were.in or does the economic data still matter?

Yeah, so the strategist that I was speaking with yesterday in a story that's on our website right now from this morning all sort of argued it's the tariff picture, right? So there was a chart that Michael Kantrowitz from Piper Sandler had showing fiscal policy uncertainty soaring, right? So you're looking at this chart here, fiscal policy uncertainty is in green, soaring. What came right as fiscal policy uncertainty soared, your major drawdown in the S&P 500, right? So in order for that S&P 500 to come back substantial.Actually you'd probably need the green line to move lower. What actually moves the green line lower some level of understanding of what these tariffs are actually gonna be, right? Something where we're not doing this every 2 hours talking about reciprocal tariffs. Maybe we'll double these tariffs on Canada. I was just kidding about doubling the tariffs on Canada, but the market is really struggling with that, right? And I thought one thing that Jack Manley from JPMorgan Asset Management pointed out to me yesterday is it's about figuring out how to price this.In right? and it's very hard to price in US tariffs just blanket, right? If we had just talked about 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, that's a challenging thing to price in for equity strategists. But the problem is you then have to price in how are these countries gonna respond. Then how would the US respond to these countries? You can see how confusing this is getting and it basically becomes a area of price discovery for the stock market that is just very challenged, and I think that's what you've been seeing with.This up and down nature of the market on a daily basis is right now we do not have enough answers until we have enough answers a lot of strategists are saying maybe nibble at this dip, but they're not that confident in full on buying the dip until we have clarity on what the rest of the year could actually look like. Yeah,

whatwe've heard from a lot of our interviews this morning has been just wait for the dip to go down even more because there's no sign of certainty coming anytime soon, so why not just get it at even more? It's

a tough area to be.Confident right now, right? I think it's overall what the take has been. Yeah, hard

to have conviction with so much uncertainty. Josh, thank you so much as always. Really appreciate it. As we had to break, I do want to take a look at some nuclear power stocks on the move as Amazon and other big tech companies vow to triple their capacity here. You can see Olo up about 2.5%, but Vistra, the biggest winner here, up about 6%. Constellation Energy also up about 3.8%. It's really interesting to see these moves off the back of some of the.Pressure that we have seen in utilities more broadly here. You've got Amazon, Meta and Occidental among the initial members of the large energy group users here, which is backing a global effort that was announced in 2023 again to triple the world's nuclear capacity by 2050. All of these stocks on the rise. You've also got Talent Energy, by the way, up over 8%. Morgan Stanley initiating talent with an overweight rating this morning. Wellva Mar action ahead right here on Catalyst. Stick around.It's now time for some of today's trending tickets, and for that, I am joined by Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sai on set for our viewers. Scan the QR code on your screen to track the best and worst performing stocks of the session with Yahoo Finance's trending tickers page. First up, Apple getting a price target cut of Morgan Stanley down to 252 a share from 275. The analysts citing series AI delays as well as tariffs as headwinds for the tech giant and saws. I don't know about you, but I've even wondered when can I get my AI iPhone.It is feeling like it's a little bit slower than consumers mayhave wanted.

What does an AI iPhone even do? Do we even know? Can we, but that's a big problem because if we can't figure out what Apple intelligence does and why we need to upgrade these phones. I mean, I think it says a lot about what Apple could be producing financially over the next couple quarters. But shout out to this analyst because I think this was something we were all looking at Apple. We've seen the stock weakness over the past month and a half. What is the impact to tariffs on Apple that makes 70%.Of their iPhones over in China. Shout out to analysts estimating it could be a $2 billion impact. What is unclear is how Apple will mitigate that. Do they move things out of China, whatever it is. I finally like a Wall Street analyst putting a number behind the tariff impact. Shout out Morgan Stanley. You get some award from me today,

finally putting a number because it's hard to do that, right? It's hard to suss out the impact of these tariff policies.

encourage Madison to put this in your spreadsheet.

and it's changing at the minute, you know, we've we've been looking at tariff headlines all morning, so.Something to continue to monitor across our slew of investments, but we're going to get you another ticker here. Palantirer hosting its 6th AIPcon tomorrow. Investors expecting something big. Palantirer shares jumping after the company's X account posted a 15 2nd tease for the event. The company has already announced a batch of new customers for its AI products, including Walgreens, AT&T, and Delta Airlines. Palantirer is one of those names that has defied the broader market sell off the last few weeks, up over 10% year to date.Saws continuing those gains after this clip that you are seeing on your screen right now, which led to a huge pop.

I guess that clip is supposed to make me want to buy some Palantir software. The only thing I care about with Palantirer, kind of like the only thing I care about with Apple on tariffs, is I want to hear from Alex Karp or anybody in his sphere sphere. Why is he continuing to dump stock? Alex Karp, co-founder, CEO, dumped $2 billion of Palantirer stock last year. I wrote a story on Yahoo Finance about a week and a half ago when I wrote that.Story, Madison, he at the time dumped another $45 million. Now I don't expect Alex Karp or his sphere to come out and say, Here's why we're dumping stock, because I'm concerned about the long-term future. This will probably be another ra event for Palantirer. Maybe the stock will get a pop. Maybe it won't, not sure. But anytime I see a top leader like KApdump stocks, dump his stock after a big run like we've seen in Pallanter last year in the early part of this year, there's a red flag. I just don't wantto see it.

Yeah, yeah, because the question.What do they know that we don't know? They're an insider. They always do.

They always know something.

He's the CEO and you've done a great job, Sai, of utilizing the Yahoo Finance tools where you can also monitor these insiders. Yahoo Finance tools. You're an expert, Adam. You're an expert. You're one of the, you are the best at the Yahoo Finance tools. Say, you teach me a lot. Another stock though we got to get to here, Adobe shares taken higher ahead of results coming out after the close today. The stocks suffering after the company's last two reports on AI monetization efforts seeming further away than investors.hoped for the company can see shares up a bit heading into that print. Adobe holding a digital digital summit next week where they're expected to showcase their AI development saws. I think it'll be really interesting to see if there is any weakness in this print. Do they try to stay away from it being an AI depression narrative and make it about the economic uncertainty that we're seeing more broadly? What are they going to blame it on if they do see it?

Well, I think this Adobe Earnings report may be a little bit of a snoozer in terms of what information is going to come from.Company historically speaking, anytime, at least based on my long veteran experience of doing this, Madison, when a company has an earnings day and then a week later they want to hold a summit or or an analyst day, usually on earnings day that news is not so great and that would just continue, I would say a year plus drumbeat of just not good news for Adobe, missed earnings expectations, sales estimates are coming down, and I, and the vibe on the street, Madison is this What in the world does Adobe stand for in AI? What are their biggest bets and.That company has not done a good job the past year articulating what it stands for an AI, why isn't an AI stock? How is it going to better compete with an upstart like Canvail it answers those questions, maybe they'll put it out there in their digital summit analyst Day thing, but until they do that, it's going to be hard to warm up to a stock

like Adobe. And not only Canva, but all of these AI powered editing tools. When I talked to content creators, they're using CapCut. They're not paying $40 a month for Adobe products, and I think that's another competitive

still can't figure out how to use CapCut. Is it just because I'm old? I mean you.Tell me it's fine. Idon't love,

you know, it's, it's the fat fingers for me make it a little bit difficult, you know what I mean? It's a little bit hard to edit it

confusing. I just want to edit a video and get it out there on the internet, but just Cap cut doesn't let

me do that. That's why you need AI. That's why you need the AI. You need it now to help you make the editing easier. Say, you're gonna stick with us for a really important conversation that you're bringing to our show. Coming up, we've got the CEO of Charles Schwab. He's joining us here at the desk to discuss the market volatility and the rise of the retail investor. That's next on Catalyst.Market volatility appears to be the only certainty as investors weigh confusion about trade policy coming from the Trump administration, and concerns mount over a looming economic slowdown. Joining us now, we've got Rick Worster, Charles Schwab, president and CEO, and Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sai is still with us, bringing us the conversation. Rick, thank you for making time for us. We really appreciate you coming in. Thanks

so much for having me on. It's my pleasure. So I

know that you have seen a lot of activity from the brokerage.And that that activity has increased this year, but talk to me about what you're seeing in terms of investor positioning amid the market volatility.

Well, I think investors are doing taking a range of activity based on what their financial plan is, what they're trying to accomplish in general we see a range of emotions among our clients from nervousness to a focus on the long term. If we look specifically at what our clients are doing, we look at things like margin activity is a good pulse for what are more active traders are doing.And our margin, uh, our level of margin has stayed roughly the same over the last month, and our margin clients have actually bought equities in the last week. So I think clients are generally hanging in there at the moment and you know the benefit of being a part of Charles Schwab is that we have the opportunity to talk with them and and help them understand where they are with their plan, what they're trying to accomplish.

What are some oftheir biggest concerns at this moment?

I think there's a variety of concerns. I think you've seen the market turn or worry about growth. You see it in bond yields, you see it in break evens, you see it in the sectors that are outperforming. So when you look at investors broadly, I think the biggest concern on their mind is just softer growth picture.And uh I think that's that's part of what's weighing on uh weighing on investors. You just

took over did you pass the 100 day mark? You just took over as CEO.

I don'tthink I'm out of 1000. I still have a little ways to go,

right? OK likeit. Is it, is it hard to, here's obviously CEO, is it hard to plan your business in this environment where one moment we have tariffs, next we don't, uh, then they're back on, then they're back off, and then something else is coming like what is this meantfor your job?

It's not.Hard at all to plan our business because we focus on the long run we focus on our clients' outcomes and making sure we can get them to where they need to be in their financial life. We've been in business for 50 years and for 50 years we have relentlessly stood by our clients and helped them get to where they need to be and over that time we've seen up markets, we've seen down markets, we've seen good economic times and bad economic times, but through it all we stand there with the client and and work with them in a variety of ways and that's what we're doing today and.This year I, I call it a lift off year for us because we're coming out of the integration we do with Ameritrade and it's all all systems go for us and, and we're growing faster than we were last year and and off to a really strong start.

Have you stemmed it to, I guess, you know, last time we, we talked to you, you know, those customers were a little upset on that integration process with, with Ameritrade. Ha that stopped Are you keeping customers on the platform now that's all we're done

with our Ameritrade clients are as happy with us.They've ever been, every quarter that goes by their satisfaction scores go up. The net flows that they're bringing us in terms of new money that they're bringing us keep rising every month. So we're on a really good, a really good path with our legacy of Meritrade clients, and we're so delighted to be able to serve them and.I was in 5 branches yesterday in North Carolina, and what I keep hearing from those clients and and our professionals that serve them is how much they value the breadth of what we can bring to the former Ameritrade client. We still have the same think or swim platform that we think is the best platform in the industry.

I bought astock. That's full disclosure. Great. No, that'sno BS and

hopefully the last place you it's a

true thing. No, it is very

true. And, uh, but in addition to that, at Schwab they get.Access to all of our wealth management capabilities, all of our research, a lot more capabilities to help them get to where they need to be in their life.

It sounds like a pretty picture given the uncertainty that is obviously taking place in the market, but also so many CEOs have talked with us about just in terms of the policy backdrop. I know that you have spoken with, worked with the president specifically on the launch of their DJT Fintech brand.Truth. Have you had any conversations with him about getting policy clarity from the White House movingforward?

You know, we for 50 years have tried to work with administrators, with regulators to help them get to a place that's the best possible environment for retail investors and advisors that serve them. So we're always in active discussions with regulators and politicians, and that won't change.

We've gotten a big, uh, you know, I was actually talking to one of your competitors this morning on my, on my podcast and I asked them their view on crypto currency and that particular CEO said we, we don't view it as an asset and they may not be getting bigger into the crypto space. What is your crypto operations look like? And we've got ETF.We've clearly passed a moment with the Bitcoin reserve. It's been validated. Like how are you going to play in thatspace?

Well, we're, we're active in the cryptocurrency space today. We had a 400% increase in the number of visits to our cryptocurrency site in the 4th quarter of 2024, and 70% of those visits were from prospects. So what that says to us is that.Investors that are interested in investing in crypto, they want to do it in a place that they trust, a place where they feel like their assets are gonna be safe, so they're coming to Schwab and they're investing in ETFs and getting access. At some point we'll be in the spot cryptocurrencies and we'll make that available today. We're not. We have ETFs and that's where we're seeing the most of the volume.But we, we are in cryptocurrencies and, and our clients are interested in it.

Is the SpockBitcoin ETF, is that, is that a this year thing for your company?

We hope it to be a this year thing. The the regulatory environment has shifted as it relates to banks being able to offer crypto directly to clients and, and because of the changing regulations we do think it's possible that this year we would be able to offer that directly to clients and

more broadly, where do you see the most growth moving forward? Obviously you've got the Sazis of the world getting ready to get into the brokerage.You know, at 2 years old, but beyond those initial initial investments, right, right, of course, where, where is the most growth going to come for the business moving forward? First time investors, retail, futures traders, options traders, crypto bros, like who is the growth story?

Why'd you point to me for crypto bro? What's up with that's

the growth that's. Well, we do like to start young, by the way, and we are winning with young clients. We had roughly 3 of our clients, new clients last year were under the age of 30.60% were under the age of 40, which still seems young to me, uh, so we are doing well with young investors, but we're really winning across the board and, and the reason we're winning at all age levels at all wealth levels is because we put the client first and we bring everything that we have whether it's our trading platform, our wealth management capabilities, the way we support our 16,000 advisors that are on our platform and in communities across our country.The way we serve all of them puts them first and, and when you put clients first, I think you're gonna have a successful business, and that's been the case for us for 50 years,

Rick, I've gotten to know, um, Vlad and and the Robin Hood team really well and you know, over the past few years, they just seem increasingly aggressive to get into wealth management, launching new products, their pace has picked up. Are they a nuisance to you? Are they a real competitor to what Charles Schwab has done in the past 50 years?

We, we, we, we don't, we don't see it that way. We, we're, we're focused on our clients. We've got 44 million client accounts today that that.Have never been more satisfied than they are today with Schwab. We're focused on delivering wealth management capabilities to them and, and we don't see those clients interested in in other what others can do and.And the reason we see that is because we can do so much for our clients. Clients can call us the last week, but followed a week with 600,000 clients call or chat us in the last week, and we pick up the phone in less than 30 seconds. You still have humans picking up the phone. We have humans picking up the phone. I was in 5 branches yesterday in North Carolina. We've got all kinds of clients walking in the door.It's hard for most companies to be able to match the breadth of what we can do for a client, so we worry less about competitors. I'm, I'm sure they're doing a great job for their clients. We're more focused on our clients and making sure we nail it for them every singleday.

What's the single biggest obstacle you want to tackle in your next 100 days?

Next 100 days, I, you know, it's about growing accelerating the growth of our business, deepening the relationships we have with clients, nailing the basics every day when we pick up the phones quickly when we.Help remind clients why they're invested those basics when our technology works uh incredibly well those matter a lot to clients, uh, and then scaling our business, the more efficient we can be with our clients' time, the more they're gonna enjoy their experience and also the more efficient we can be so that we can free up money to invest in our growth initiatives. So those are the things we're focused on the next 100 days and.Maybe we'll get a little more peaceful markets the next 100 days. We'll see

wecan hope for. We can hope for that.

You'll have to come back and talk to us when markets and markets do finally recover. Rick, thank you so much for making thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Brian. Thank you for bringing us the conversation. Really appreciate it. Low volume records action ahead right here on Yahoo Finance, so stick around for more.Chip stocks climbing today as the overall market looks to rebound from the recent sell-off. Still, the S&P semiconductor ETF down more than 15% this year amid investor concerns about AI demand and the impact of potential chip export controls. Joining me now with more, we've got Jonathan Krinsky, BTIG's chief market technician. Jonathan, great to speak with you here. Let's just start on the context for our audience. What changed in the semiconductor sector to lead to some of the pressure that we have been seeing?

Well, um, good to be here. If you look at the semis, you know, really on a, on both an equal weight and a cap weighted basis, they really were in a pretty wide trading range for most of last year despite, you know, the AI hyper narrative. And so as that was happening, the relative strength versus the S&P, you know, is beginning to deteriorate and, um, you know, relative strength often precedes absolute performance, and that'sYou know, clearly what happens. So, um, you just didn't have any momentum or relative strength, and that led to, you know, a bit of a breakdown, um, you know, with the broad market in the last fewmonths.

Yeah, and I know that you look at the technicals as a CMT. What might be a level or an indicator of a bottom being hit that could lead to some more movement to the upside in

chips? Yes, so, so we've been looking.You know, both in semis and across the broad market, um, some downside exhaustion levels. Um, obviously, there was a lot of eyes on the 200 day moving average for the S&P. Um, you know, we felt there was maybe too many eyes on that, but then the second break, um, we think probably is more, uh, a better buying opportunity, which is where we're at right now. Um, you know, you're starting to see some elevated, um,Capitulatory signals on the volume side, on the call uh ratio, you know, it's, it's certainly not something, not levels that we've, um, can't go higher or can't get more oversold, but I think, you know, we're down 9 or 10% from the highs. If you're looking for an opportunity for a, for a trade, I think this is the entry point. Um, bigger picture, there's probably more concerns, but I think the next, um, you know, 34, 5% should be higher, not lower than here.

And just to stick to chips specifically, what do you think leads to more of the action that we're seeing today? Obviously today is a little bit of a move to the upside and a lot of these chips' names, but what technically are you seeing that indicates that that rally is going to have legs?

Um, I mean, same thing, it's just, you know, you get, you get to a point where, um, uh.You know, momentum kind of and sellers kind of exhaust themselves to the downside, um, you know, and even in bear markets, if, and we're not saying this is a bear market, but if, if it does turn out to be one or even, you know, more of a deeper correction, you do get some pretty vicious rallies. So, um, you know, you want to be mindful of those oversold conditions and, you know, if nothing else, maybe, um, you know, wait for.Balance before, um, you know, looking to sell again.

And I wonder too if you can talk to me about what you're looking at when it comes to Nvidia specifically. Obviously the chip giant in the room, a lot of selling pressure that we've seen on that stock year to date, those high earnings expectations being a challenge for them as well. What are the technicals telling you about how long a possible bounce back on Nvidia could last?

Yeah, um, I mean, similar idea. It, it kind of traded sideways for much of last year in a trading range, and it's kind of broken below that a bit. So there's a lot of, you know, buyers that, um, you know, probably would like to be made whole. And so I think that's the issue if you do get that bounce, um, you know, they're back into the, into the 2024 trading range, that's going to.And um, decent resistance. So, um, you know, I, I, I think we'll get a bounce, but again, you got to watch the magnitude and how, how the bounce responds into that resistance zone. You know, if that fails again, that's indicative of probably a more substantial, uh, larger top.

All right, Jonathan, we got to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.Energy is at the center of the US and Canada trade war, Ontario Premier Doug Ford suspending the 25% tariffs on electricity exports as President Trump also declared a national energy emergency. The latest data showing the US imports $2.9 billion of electricity from Canada per year and over 4 million barrels of crude oil a day. That's according.The Canada Energy Regulator and the EIA. Joining me now, we've got Bennett Gagnon. He is the CEO of Bit Farms, a crypto miner based in Canada with facilities in the US and like many, many crypto miners, you have transitioned into more of an AI play amid that broader transition to high performance computing. Talk to me about the runway that you see in that transition in thebusiness.

Yeah, I mean this is something that a lot of the industry is doing right now because the areas where we've been investing over the last 4 or 5 years is on.The hard energy infrastructure that used to power American manufacturing and when American manufacturing was outsourced abroad, you know, all the infrastructure was still in place and nobody really wanted it, so it provided cheap access to energy. Now as the pendulum is swinging back towards a focus on America and on shoring these assets that we've accumulated, you know, are what's in high demand and so we have what everyone wants right now. We've got a lot of megawatts we've got them in short order.Um, and now it's about how do you actually convert the infrastructure over from a Bitcoin mine to, you know, more of a traditional data center, and that's something that is gonna take for most companies maybe 1218 or 24 months, and you got to work with the, the right strategic partners and engineers because these facilities are a lot more sophisticated and a lot different in terms of their actual opera.

And where are you at in that process?

So we're at a point where we've engaged multiple different strategic advisors and engineering firms. Um, we're working with uh a variety of strategic financial partners to help finance the the projects, um, and we're just about to close on an acquisition of two different power plants in Pennsylvania which we expect to be.A big opportunity for us in the HBCspace

and I wonder too how you are thinking about the impact of tariffs as a company that obviously has ties to Canada but also other countries more globally. You mentioned the plants in Pennsylvania. Do you anticipate moving more.Towards the US, more towards domestic production in reaction to those tariff policies at all.

So we are moving absolutely towards the US, but it won't be in reaction to the tariffs, in particular. I mean when we started out last year we were only 6% in the United States. At the end of this year we're gonna be 66% in the United States. So it's a big shift for us as a company redirecting our efforts from, uh, really an international footprint to one that's really focused on the United States.And that's because there's the most opportunity here right now, uh, when we're looking at where's the best place for us to invest our dollars, where we get the best return on invested capital, it's right here in

the US and what are, what are the factors that lead to that opportunity that make the US more attractive?

I think there's a few things. One is the the proximity to the markets that everyone wants to tap into on HPC. Um, the physical infrastructure is super important, you know, it takes a very, very long time to build out new physical infrastructure in the United States. So if you can have it already in place, you don't need to go through the backlog of going to get permits and and all the approval processes, it'll shave years off your timeline.And it's really the timeline to energization here, which is what's so valuable, um, you know, a lot of people have ability to grow things in 4 or 5 years. What people want to know is what can you grow in the next 12 to 24

months, and I know AI infrastructure is such a key part of that.And obviously part of your desire to transition to this HPC model. Talk to me about the demand that you are seeing because there's been obviously a lot of questions about whether or not the AI demand is really as lasting and as strong as the market initially thought it was. What what are you seeing?

You know, it's kind of an interesting situation with compute right because Compute is growing at such an exponential pace, but as the availability of compute supply increases exponentially, so does the demand, and what we see is that over the last, you know, really 1020, 30 years you've seen the exact same trend playing out as computers have progressed with efficiency and technology and so as the cost of computing goes down, the demand and the applications only go up.Um, this is what we're seeing here on the HBC side, and because there's been such a lack of investment into these hard energy infrastructure assets, that's the bottleneck to growth, right? It's not really, I think there's a lot of focus on Nvidia and getting access to chips.Um, but that's not really the bottleneck for growth. The bottleneck is, do you have the power to operate those Nvidia GPUs? Do you have the hard infrastructure to actually enable that? And that is, um, that's where the real bottleneckis.

That makes a lot of sense. Something that we haven't talked about much is the crypto landscape under the current administration.Curious, do you have Bitcoin on the balance sheet? Yes, we do. And, and what are you thinking about the runway for Bitcoin movingforward?

Well, we're very bullish on Bitcoin. I've been in Bitcoin since 2010. I'm a long term, thank you. Um, I'm a long term believer in in Bitcoin, uh, and we remain a long term believer in Bitcoin as a company, you know, I, I think it's funny when people see Bitcoin price pulling back. I think they get a lot, you know, pretty panicked. Somebody who's been here since 2010. This is just par for the course, um.You know, I think it gets a bad rap for being volatile because of the, the daily price, but when you actually look at, uh, what Bitcoin is, it's actually the most stable asset on the planet.You know, there's anyone can go out there and verify exactly how many bitcoins exist today, how many bitcoins are being produced, how many bitcoins are gonna be produced, you know, 10 years down the road, 30 years down the road. Anyone can verify that. Nobody can tell you how many dollars exist today or how many are being produced, how many barrels of oil, how many tons of gold, how many, you know, tons of steel or aluminum. Nobody can tell you those things. And as the economics for those underlying commodities change, so will the supplies, right? So.Production rates, but with Bitcoin we have an actual even greater degree of precision. The further out we look, this is exactly how many is going to exist at any point in time in the future, and I think that's what's really exciting about Bitcoin because it gives us a new unit of account to measure other things against. So long term incredibly

bullish. Final 30 seconds. What would make you sell?

What would make me sell my Bitcoin? There's no selling your Bitcoin,

so you'rejust gonna.

You don't sell your Bitcoin. We as a we as a business, we sell Bitcoin to cover operating expenses as we need to. We sell Bitcoin to invest in, uh, you know, growth projects and offset some of the capex, uh, but personally, no, I'll never sell my

Bitcoin. Hold forever. All right, thank you so much, Ben. I really appreciate you joining us. Really great overview of the business as well. Coming up, what shifts in the ETL ETF market are telling us about investor sentiment from increased interest in Europe to outflows from tech and semis. Those details ahead.Investors are shifting billions of dollars into European ETFs amid market uncertainty in the US with the underperformance of tech and President Trump's potential policy shifts. My next guest says ETF flows giving a few signs about where the market could be heading. I want to bring in Todd Songs, strategists, securities, strategic securities, ETF, and technical strategists joining me in studio for this week's ETF report brought to you by Invesco QQQ. Todd, great to have you.with us. Thank you so much excitement about the flows into Europe right now, and I wonder what you can tell us about how that's playing out in the market.

Yes, so we felt strongly that Europe was being ignored by investors. Flows had largely been agnostic. issuers had stopped launching new Europe. There's only been two over the last 6 years, one focused on luxury goods and one focused on airspace and defense.And so we found the apathy an interesting idea for a contrarian trade that's worked out and now you're finally starting to see some performance chasing going on towards Europe, which, OK, that can make for a little setback very overbought, but we think we're a long way from consensus thinking given the decade plus of underperformance from Europe. Yeah,

so there's still room to run in the Europe.

Yeah, yeah, we would use any sort of corrections like we are in kind of right now for Europe as an opportunity to add more exposure.I don't know if I want to go super overweight in an assileation model, but definitely raise it from perhaps where you've been given the last 10 years of underperformance.

You mentioned that European defense ETF, we've obviously seen a lot of optimism around European defense stocks amid Russia-Ukraine talks, whether or not the US is going to continue funding Ukraine in that effort. Is there still room to run in that ETF as well?

We like to believe so. Uh, it's very hot in the near term, right? It's interesting when there's an ETF, very thematic niche ETF launch. There's no interest at the start, and all of a sudden the stocks start acting well and you see inflows really pick up. So that ETF has grown to about 250 million very quickly. Uh, do I think some of those names are a bit stretched in the near term? Absolutely, but they're clearly here because of a thematic play. European countries are spending more on defense, so.Again, we would like that, um, we would use any sort of tactical corrections, deeper corrections to continue to add exposure there. Plus European industrials are growing in terms of their influence in Europe. That's important for cyclicality,

right? It it seems like that stimulus as well that's happening both in Europe and in China is leading to a lot of interest and lift in these names

exactly the way you invest in Europe is different now because there's more industrials, there's a little bit more tech too.Than 1520 years ago when it was a lot of staples in energy and financials, so I think that's really interesting, something for investors toconsider.

When you look at the flows data, I'm just curious what it tells you about where demand is coming from right now. If we're seeing, you know, foreign buyers getting out of the US, if we're seeing US investors getting out of the US,

Ithink a lot of the excess that was has gone into tech is starting to move away. tech peaked on a relative basis to the S&P in July.And now it's taken some time and a correction here to finally start to see money move out of technology, ETS perhaps to Europe, perhaps the financials, or even just cash like vehicles too. So I think the excess amount of flows that went to tech is finally ebbing that's helpful to get.Through this correctiveenvironment

and that's also been a lift to any asset classes that are seen as risk averse. I know something you're looking at a short term bonds as well where you've seen, yeah,

so the great part about ETFs is I can see on a daily basis where money is going and when you start to see flows to cash like products like BIL SGOV stuff that has no duration risk, you can liquidate it whenever you need to. When that perks up, that tells me that there's anxiety and nerves in the market.And so I like to add that to the overall sentiment composite, right, anecdotal observations of folks getting more negative survey data saying people are bearish, and when that spikes, it tells us, OK, maybe we're getting a little bit too stretched on the downside and look for a bounce. So the cash like products, uh, I think you've done about 16 billion in the last month. That's very high for that category, um, an interesting sentiment bread crumb

to consider. Yeah, it certainly is an interesting sentiment. I know another area of the market that at least when you look at.The S&P 500 sectors year to date has been significantly outperforming is healthcare. Are you also still seeing room to run in healthcare

ETFs? We love healthcare. Um, healthcare's performance over the last 5 years was in its bottom decile, so awful, so bad it's good. You've had an exodus of outflows from healthcare sector ETFs, so investors gave up on the space. And now because we're transitioning to a little bit more defensive environment, healthcare is a great plug and play for that type of sector. You can get large cap bio.Pharma medical equipment works very well so we think there's a lot of room to run for health care and it's a long ways away again from very consensus thinking based on our flow data.

That's, yeah, that's a really good kind of framework for it is how far away are we from consensus. But one thing I'm curious about, and we had, we had a call this morning calling the mag 7 the Maleficent 7, so some bearishness when it comes to those seven tech stocks are is is the outflow from uh Mag 7 large cap ETFs here to stay?

I think for now I think a lot of investors got over their skis in terms of exposure to large cap tech and the Mag 7. There's still 30% of the S&P 500.You're gonna want to dial that back and at least go neutral or perhaps a little bit underweight fornow.

All right, Todd, we got to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us and breaking all of that down. We appreciate it as always. We're gonna get to check in on the markets as we head to break here. Interesting to see that we are still to the upside this morning, but far less than what we were seeing off the back of that inflation print coming in a little bit lighter than anticipated, better than anticipated when it comes to the inflation picture. You got your S&P just.the flat line barely, but you've got your tech heavy Nasdaq up about 0.7%. The Dow still moving to the downside, down about 300 points this morning as the Dow and the Nasdaq continue their inverse relationship. It's still seeing a little bit more risk on than we have been in the past few weeks with those tech-heavy names to be upside. Coming up, we've got wealth dedicated to all of your personal finance needs. Our Mar Brad Smith, he's going to have you for the next hour, so stay tuned for more.