I think we have no choice but to see what they're saying, see what they're seeing in terms of consumer trends. with their credit cards. and also looking at kind of you know how they're able to kind of manage and navigate the the market conditions that we're in. you know banks provide a nice little hedge because when things are more volatile. You know, banks will do fine. And if things are actually fine, and the consumers doing well, then they'll make money that way. So that's kind of a great place to look at. They are the macro.

Well, I would say yes, you know, everyone's expecting growth to be really, really strong in terms of earnings. All right, but if you look at nominal GDP estimates, which is kind of think about thinking of them in terms of revenue. How much should a firm make? Well, if you're not doing anything differently in the economy, it's growing by 5%, you should grow at 5%. So what we're saying is the average firm is going to be able to outpace growth. by a factor of three. That seems a little optimistic, doesn't it? All right.

So we're in the investment phase for AI. And what we're not. in the phase of just yet is actually the, we're gonna save a ton of money and everyone's gonna become increasingly more productive. That comes later. And so I think that there's a disconnect in terms of timing. People are expecting that all the benefits of AI are going to show up tomorrow. You're going to wake up and AI will be knocking on your door telling you, you don't have to go to work today. I'll take care of it. Um... And the reality of it is that it takes firms a long time to adapt to new technologies, it takes a long time for firms to figure out how to use those new technologies most effectively. All right, right now it saves me time reading some things. You know, that's a time saver, but in terms of a massive productivity boost for me. not really. the real the real benefit will come when processes can change and AI can actually change the way firms think about doing things rather than how they're doing their current things better.

Well, with our gardener's specific company, you just have to be mindful of how people are making these deals, how people are signing deals. And that's true of any industry, right? You know, think about it if this was any other industry, how would people be responding to some of this news? And I think the answer is, it'd be a little more cautious. And I think... Whenever there's a build out of new technology, you have to be mindful of the fact that you might be building in the wrong direction. I think the example of the Chinese AI firm that came out and had a supposedly a different model and it was much less energy intensive and all of a sudden. Yeah, yeah, as you know, then the market, it went a completely different direction because they were like, oh, wow, maybe we got this wrong. and I think you know It always boos investors to think, you know, how might I be wrong? And if I am wrong, exactly how does that play out?

So I think there's two things. One is the whole China international relations, you know, let's see how that plays out. The other though is, is fed credibility. So gold is rallying pretty dramatically and outpacing gains and equities, right? Which is telling you that people prefer real assets to financial assets. Why would they do that? Because they're worried that the Fed's not going to maintain a credible stance on inflation and growth.