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Joining us now is Michael Sayerins, Rockland Trust Vice President and Portfolio Manager. Michael, thank you for being here. You say Michael there are, there's a combination of three things that need to happen if we're going to avoid a recession. What are they Michael? Walk us through them.

Sure, absolutely, Josh, and thanks for having me. Um, well, you know, even though the economy, I think, has some decent momentum, you know, coming into the second quarter here, you know, we know there is going to be, you know, a lagged effect, uh, a slowdown here from the lack of trade, uh, that's been happening with China and our other trading partners. Um, so I think what we need to see over the next couple of months is, you know, certainly some trade deals. Uh, the market got excited yesterday when we saw the agreement with it with the UK. Personally, I was a little bit underwhelmed by the result there. Um, but of course the big one is going to be China tomorrow, whether we can make some progress on the tariffs there, uh, you know, bring those down from that 145%. Um, so we're going to need deals with a lot of the big trading partners over the next couple of months. Uh, lower interest rates will help. Uh, obviously the Fed did not lower rates this week. We'll have another chance in June to see if they they do that. And finally, we need to see progress on the the tax bill which is currently working its way through Congress.

What do you think is the likelihood, Michael, of those each of those three items?

Well, I I don't know if we, uh, we need to get all three, um, uh, but I think we're certainly going to see deals. Uh, I think, uh, the question is, is the market or the deal is going to be good enough, uh, for the market. So, so getting back to what I said earlier about the deal with the UK, you know, the UK was in the best position to negotiate tariffs lower than 10% out of any of our trading partners, and even they got stuck at 10%. So that concerns me a little bit that, you know, all our other trading partners are going to be, uh, above 10% and maybe significantly, um, above. So, uh, you know, we're going to need to see better deals than the one that we got with, uh, with the UK. I think, um, lower rates is probably the least likely. I think, um, you know, given the Fed's concern around the tariff impact on driving up, you know, prices and inflation, you know, they they could easily, um, hold again in June. And then, uh, the tax bill, you know, that's a wild card. I don't have a great read on that. We'll have to see what comes out over the next few weeks.

Michael, let's get to some picks here. I'm interested what where you see opportunity. One is ticker ECL. Walk us through why that's a buy, Michael.

Sure, so that is Ecolab. Uh, so it's, uh, the leader in essentially cleaning and, uh, sanitizing products and services. Uh, they also are doing a lot more in pest control. Uh, so they've got a very, uh, diverse, uh, end markets in terms of the types of businesses that they that they sell into. So that makes for a very stable revenue profile. They've got strong pricing power. They actually announced a 5%, uh, surcharge, trade surcharge to offset the, uh, negative impact from tariffs that they expect to see. And there's likely to unlikely to be any effect on volumes, um, for that because the switching costs are so high for customers. They've also got some cost efficiency and productivity, uh, programs, uh, so we expect to see, you know, more margin, uh, increases there. And ultimately, we think this is a company that can do double digit, uh, earnings growth over the long run.

Michael, how about Nextera Energy, right? We we'd seen, um, sort of last year a lot of the various, um, utility type companies, power generators do well on the back of the AI data center trade, but then a lot of them, including Nextera have sort of come back down quite a bit.

Sure, so Nextera, it's a little bit of a contrarian, uh, call for us here. So one of the biggest utilities in the US. We think they have an advantage relative to their peers in terms of the supply chain. They actually just, uh, signed a new contract with a domestic battery supplier, so that will help them offset some tariffs, uh, in the in the near term. You know, ultimately, we're we're cautiously optimistic, um, that there won't be a full repeal of the renewables tax credits in the inflation reduction Act that, you know, Congress is is currently, um, looking at. So despite the some potential headwinds, um, that that might be out there, you know, we think this is a company that can grow earnings 68% over the long term. That's about as good as it gets, uh, for utilities.

Final pick here, Schwab. Uh, walk us through that one, Michael. Why why do you see opportunity in that name?

Charles Schwab, you know, giant broker, about 10 trillion of assets under management. Uh, we think they benefit in the near term actually because of the volatility in the markets. Uh, when when this happens, investors tend to trade a little bit more, you know, and or seek professional advice, uh, from advisors at at Schwab and that certainly showed up in their first quarter results, which were stronger than expected. And then longer term, uh, we think they've gotten to the point where they're past most of the customer attrition issues from the TD Ameritrade acquisition a few years ago. And now they're in a better position to return to, uh, mid-single digit net new assets growth, uh, and that's going to help, you know, them do mid-teens earnings growth over the next few years.

Michael, thanks for bringing us some picks. Appreciate it.

Welcome. Thanks for having me.