The Rewiring of the Stock Market

on the express this week. It's a block party blockade in the straight of horror moves and oil prices are spiking. Stocks spinning out to start the week. Consumers feel terrible. Investors though, we're taking it in stride. The latest results from the Investopedia sentiment survey coming your way as well. And how to invest when the entire global markets are being rewired as we speak. Matt Bartellini of State Street Investment Management drops in with some perspective right in time for earnings season. And expectations are high. We got ghost ride kick flips, nollie front side shvets. It's the Investopedia Express and we ride for this. Welcome back and welcome aboard to all the Investipediacs out there worldwide. We know you're watching. We know you're listening. I think it's the Investipedia Express live and direct every Monday at 10:00 a. m. And what a Monday it is. Lot going on just in the last I don't know 24 hours, 12 hours. News is moving pretty quickly these days. Let's catch up real quick. The United States announcing a blockade of the Straight of Hormuz beginning right now 10 a. m. Eastern time trying to control the flow of tankers through the Straight of Hormuz. There hasn't been much activity there. The president warning that the United States would block uh the entire straight of Hormuz with five or so US destroyers that are in the region and not allow any oil in or out and not allow Iran to benefit from any oil sales or oil transports trying to choke them off economically as well. No ceasefire. The talks break breaking down over the weekend, long talks over the weekend with the vice president uh over there trying to make a deal happen. Did not happen. So, you got oil prices spiking up north of $100 a barrel again after that those prices came down a little bit last week when there might have been hopes for a ceasefire. Well, not anymore. Oil prices above $100 a barrel when you're looking at West Texas Intermediate. Whether you're looking at crude, we got stock markets around the world under pressure. US stock markets up off of their lows, certainly off of those pre-market lows. We saw the Dow uh pointing to a 500 point drop at the open. That's mellowed out a little bit as investors take things in stride. Uh, and consumers feel pretty terrible. We got the latest consumer sentiment readings out last week right after the inflation reports that showed inflation, the consumer price index spiking to 3. 3% because of those rising oil prices. Hey, we haven't even felt nothing yet. That was about a half month's worth of data. So, expect higher prices to come in the near future. Consumer sentiment at an all-time low. I'm talking lower than COVID. the great financial crisis. All-time lows for consumers. But investors, we're kind of feeling all right. According to the latest Investopedia sentiment survey, we're about to dig into those results. We got earning season coming our way. Massively, massively important companies starting to report results as of today, beginning with Goldman Sachs. We'll get in to what to watch later in the program, but right now, let's dig into how we're feeling. How are the feels? How are the vibes out there? Investopedia. Uh, we survey our

readers, the smartest investors and readers on the planet every quarter now to see how you're feeling, what you're doing with your money. And guess what? You're okay. Cautiously optimistic. Yeah, you're a little bit more worried. The geopolitical concerns are on everybody's mind. And that's definitely number one in terms of our list of worries and our list of woes. Geopolitical unrest, the war in Iran, higher inflation. But look at the vibe check we put out there. Most folks 50% or so cautiously optimistic or optimistic. And then you got some folks that are hesitant and skeptical and that just sounds like us. Uh, human beings invested in the stock market, unsure of what's going to happen because there's a ton of uncertainty out there. When we ask you what your wall of worry is, top of that list, of course, the war in Iran, then geopolitical unrest, higher inflation, of course, uh, higher oil prices due to the unrest, everything that everybody's worried about right now. We're all feeling the same things. And then we ask you if you're making any changes to what you're doing with your money. But most of us don't make changes to what we do with our money. We just keep investing every couple weeks, once a week, once a month, once a quarter. Keep allocating. And what are we allocating towards? Individual stocks and ETFs as usual. We do not stop. Takes a lot for us to change our pattern of behavior, especially when it comes to regularly invested. We've been trained well and it has paid off for us. But what have we been buying and selling lately? We like to look at the Schwab stacks index for that. See what folks have been buying inside and outside of their defined contribution plans uh to see where the appetite is and the stocks that investors were buying throughout that month of Mar month of March. Really turbulent month there. Apple back on the list back in the apple of everyone's eye again. Nvidia, Microsoft, Tesla, Micron, one of the best performing stocks pretty much of this year. It's got like a $400 billion m uh market cap. and Amazon. And what stocks have individual investors been selling? Uh, Broadcom, Netflix, AMD, Circle, which was such a hot IPO about a year ago or so, and Accidental Petroleum. One of the first times I've seen an energy company on that list in a while, one of Warren Buffett's and Berkshire Hathaway's top holdings there. And when you look at the stocks that we've been buying and the stocks that we own, we keep buying and selling these stock. adding positions to these stocks even though a lot of us think that they're overvalued. We like to ask our readers what stocks or what sectors are in a bubble. Leading that list as it has been for the past year or so, AI related stocks. Even with the selloff in some of the big names, a lot of us still feel like that uh is bubble territory there. Cryptocurrency, even after a massive selloff, Investopedia readers saying, "Hey, still overvalued. " There never were true believers, although there's some of us out there still believe in it to some extent. Gold they believe is overvalued even after the drop, but not too much in bubble territory here. Again, we ask what stocks do you hold? What are your top holdings? And the top holdings look like the top of the S& P 500. Nvidia, the top of that list, the most widely held stock probably in the world next to Microsoft uh and Apple. They alternate sometimes, but there you have Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon on that list. Berkshire Hathaway makes that list as well. And so does Tesla. Pretty volatile stock. This is the inside of a lot of our readers portfolios and it matches up with the inside of a lot of portfolios for a lot of US investors because that's what the S& P 500 looks like. That's what the NASDAQ looks like. Then we ask you, what stock would you buy and hold today and hold it for the next 10 years? Guess what? Looks just like that. Almost exactly the same. Nvidia, Apple, Google, right? We believe in the stocks that brought us to the dance. We have a hard time letting go of these stocks that have helped make so much money for us in our portfolios, in our retirement portfolios. A lot of people have become millionaires, multi-millionaires, whole buying and holding and keeping and continuing to add to positions in these stocks over the years. So, it's very hard to let go and that makes things really hard uh when things get turbulent. All of these stocks I showed you over the last few weeks, they're in correction territory. Now, they might be making a comeback in some cases, but we got stocks like Microsoft down 37 38%. And it's going to take a lot to bring Microsoft back to where it was. Remember, stock falls 35%, takes a 50% recovery to bring it back to par. We ask you the ultimate discretionary question. What would you do with an extra 10 grand if you had it to invest? Guess what? You'd buy stocks. You risk pirates. You're out there on the plank buying stocks. You'd buy more stocks if you had an extra 10 grand to invest. Because we also asked you if you were buying the dip during all the turbulence in March. And half of our readers in this survey said, "Yeah, we were buying the dip. dip in our favorite stocks, the same stocks we just showed you, the ones that have had corrections, continuing to buy what brought them to the dance. And sometimes that can be dangerous territory. We're going to find out because there is a big rotation going on, not only this just this year. This is a broader change in the stock market. And from last fall, really from last October, the S& P 500 pretty much flat, if not down a few percentage points. and

the leaders are no longer leading. I know energy stocks and defense stocks have popped to the front for obvious reasons, but there's a whole other leadership change happening within that we need to pay attention to. We're going to get into that in a minute with Matt Bartellini of State Street Investment Management. How do we compare Investopedia readers and uh Investopedia, those that took our survey to the broader category of individual investors out there? I like to look at the AI investor sentiment survey. They put that out every week. And we're a little bit more bullish if you look at that. Eight weeks in a row, more bears than bulls in the AI sentiment survey. And maybe they stayed out of the market and maybe they're fine for it, but we're always a little bit more bullish over here at Investopedia. More bulls than a rodeo here among the Investopedia readers, the smartest investors in the planet. But we've got to pay attention to these shifting trends and this uncertainty. Yeah, you betcha. Get used to it. Because even though we may feel like things are going to change and go back to the way they were, maybe there is a ceasefire, maybe the straits open and maybe we go back to the way things were when it was the magnificent 7 riding off the fantastic gains and bringing our portfolios with it. But that's not going to happen. I don't believe that's happening. We have a broader change undergo happening here within the capital markets. And as our next guest puts it, the entire capital market system is being rewired. And that means we as investors need to put new systems in place. Matt Bartellini of State Street Investment Management joins us now on the dropin. To have you are the global head of research strategist for State Street Investment Management. You and I had a great conversation at Future Proof Citywide just a few weeks ago where we got into some themes that really stuck in my brain. So I want to uh I want to go deeper with you on those. Thanks for being here. — Yeah, thanks for having me. — Well, you've been talking and we talked at that panel, but in your research notes as well, which are terrific, folks. Portfolios have been heavily concentrated in US assets for the past 15 years, but the political economics don't support that anymore, and everyone is positioning for the current incumbents to come out on top. That's not usually what happens in history. That brought a chill to my bones. What do you really mean by that? go deeper. — So I think when we're looking at this is that you know US equities have gone on one of the winningest records for quite some time over the last 15 years. You know up until basically 2025 you had this really strong period of US equity exceptionalism. And in 2025 given the rapid retransformation of the macro backdrop you saw a shift towards non- US equities outperforming US equity markets. So roughly I think it was like 76% of non- US equity markets outperform the US in 2025. Fast forward to 2026 where we sit now through, you know, midway through April. That number is around 78%. And that's the largest hit rate since 2009. And a lot of that has to do with just the change in the macroeconomic backdrop where you've had a shift away from more globalization to, you know, something that's more insular and where different nations are protecting their own self-interests. So less global cooperation in that vein. And we've seen is there a shift in capital formation in equity market returns and in cross asset returns as well as part of the bond markets where you have uh really steepening yield curves here in the US as well as around the world due to rising deficits. So it's really changed a lot of the mathematics and economic backdrop that we saw maybe over the last 15 years where you had say more global cooperation and more stability uh from a macro perspective. — Yeah. And that's been great for us investors. We've enjoyed fantastic returns, above average returns really over the past 5 to 10 years. A lot has gone into that and you've seen the results of our latest sentiment survey and you know it from your own clients at State Street. We are overloaded with those incumbents and we intend to keep buying. That seems pretty terrifying. — Well, I mean that also just goes back to a little bit of a home bias from, you know, behavioral uh investment uh economics. But uh one of the things it's hard to sort of you know not think your current situation will not continue to play out in the future but it is actually quite um you know regular that the future often looks very different than your current present situation and but a lot of investors sort of don't really think about it from that perspective. They sort of let those you winners keep winning or think they're going to do that from that perspective. I think it would be hard hardressed to um ask anyone to expect the returns we've seen so far in from the MAG 7. They're down this year. You know, I think if you were to say, you know, take a poll in 2025 and say, what would be the best performing stocks? You know, AI is, you know, revolutionizing the world and tech companies are expected to have 45% earnings growth this quarter, but they're down and, you know, there's

more cyclical segments of the market that are up. And actually, you see non- US equity markets that are up more than the MAG 7. So, the future often looks very different than your current situation. And a lot of investors don't position it that way. We think there sort of three sort of central truths. One is that you know no one asset stays on top forever. You know commodities can be the best performing asset, bonds can be um don't ch don't chase recent winners because leadership changes over time. But generally assets outperform cash. So it makes sense to be invested and own those assets uh to earn a premium over cash. — Well, meanwhile as you know record inflows into ETFs again last year again, right? And this industry is expected to double over the next what 5 to 10 years. So investors keep pouring into these vehicles as well. A lot of them are concentrated in the same incumbents in the same assets that got us here. The heaviest part of the market and to your point best performing stocks so far this year. None of them are on that list in terms of the most widely held stocks by individual and institutional investors. But you do have the chipmakers obviously oil stocks for c for obvious reasons, fertilizer stocks in some cases as well. um and outside the US and it's really hard for us to change our portfolios or even change our investment strategy. It's a it's terrifying, b what do we do and how do we reposition for the rewiring as you call it of the capital markets. — Yeah. So I think a lot of it has to do with you know I'm not saying don't own US equities. I hopefully that's not the through line that's coming out to your listeners here. It's more about just improving upon your diversification and thinking about it from a lens of geographical diversification, asset diversification, and then economic diversification. So, if you were to look at the standard 60/40, you know, stock bond portfolio, that's sort of a Goldilocksish type portfolio, rising growth and falling inflation. You know, stocks like to have stronger growth uh expectations and bonds like to have falling inflation. That's sort of their reaction function to those macroeconomic variables. Now, if you were to look at your geographical footprint, if you're heavily geared towards the US equity market, you're not really picking up the benefits of diversification across different economies, which may have different trends in their own economic uh information and data in overall sort of labor growth in inflation. So we think having more geographical diversification, having more asset class diversification, so owning say commodities or inflation length bonds or things like gold that actually react differently to growth and inflation dynamics that can then lend itself to improved economic diversification because right now what we have is a real risk of a stagflation type scenario as a result of the events in the Middle East and the ramification has from a macro perspective where you have seen growth expectations reduced and you've seen inflation expectations increased. And what have you seen from a stock market and bond market reaction? Stocks are down, bonds are down, but commodities are up. And so having that diversification, I think, is really helpful. And you can sort of take it in little bits. You don't have to make these full scale changes. 2% 5% starting to, you know, when you're adding new assets, don't just add the same ones. Try to add ones that will diversify. — We're really going into earning season. in the teeth of it this week. Um, and it's going to be strong as usual, Matt. It's always strong. It's always stronger than expected. That's the little game companies like to play uh with analysts. But it's just going to reinforce the notion that, hey, profits keep growing and profit margins keep growing, especially in these tech companies, especially in these AI companies that are really, you know, squeezing out or trying to squeeze out the economic benefits of it. And that's just might reinforce our notion that hey things are actually going to keep continuing a pace here uh in the United States with these big companies. What we what are we going to be missing in that picture? — Well, I think one of the interesting things is that you know the fundamental picture is completely at odds with the macro picture. So with all the increase in macroeconomic volatility, cross asset volatility as a result of the war in the Middle East, uh you've seen markets react and fall. But we what was different is you've seen earnings expectations for the S& P 500 companies actually increase throughout the quarter which is atypical. Typically over the last you know 15 years the average uh estimates for earnings have actually fallen during the first quarter for full year for the full calendar year there on after but actually this year they've increased and we've had all this volatility. So a lot of it has to do with those more structural forces impacting the broader economy and cash flows from companies mainly the big tech companies as it relates to AI investment monetization of it and also just their really strong moes across different elements of our sort of economy right service based economy semiconductor semiconductors are used everywhere and so we see is that tech companies are expected in Q1 2026 they have 45%

earnings growth the rest of the America is expected to only have 3%. So they're likely once again to do the heavy lifting for US equity growth. And that's why again going back to that original part of this conversation, don't get rid of your US equities. Just try to improve that diversification because they do particularly those really topheavy mag 7 hyperscalers. those at the forefront of AI. Those are the ones where their cash flows have become quite durable and somewhat insulated, somewhat insulated from the effects of geopolitical risk in the Middle East. — Yep. Uh let's dig a little bit deeper into this notion of the flow of capital being rewired. You said that uh at Citywide and it really stuck in my head and you call it modern mercantalism. Great investipedia term right there. get uh take us a little bit deeper into that because it really is the direction and the broader picture from 100,000 feet up that this Trump administration 2. 0 is taking uh the United States in and it's having these geopolitical and economic ramifications around the world. Take us a little bit higher up and tell us what's really going on. — Yeah, and I definitely cannot lay claim to that term. I borrowed that uh kindly from our partners at Bridgewater who have been using that term quite uh quite widely to describe what we're seeing from a global macro perspective and it really just means that the state governments are taking more primacy of the flow of capital dictating which areas of the market maybe get funding uh perhaps are treated in a way that helps improve self-sufficiency. uh and you see this take on more shape now than say over the last you know 10 to 15 years where you have more global cooperation. So it's the rewiring of trade dynamics to support national interests. So you know dictating who Nvidia can sell chips to um uh taking in strategic interests into public companies like the investment into Intel. um actually utilizing your scale um as a global superpower from an economics perspective to sort of I don't say inflict but sort of help progress different trade dynamics and supply chains and have more of an impact on that flow of capital than say a free market global you know capitalism cooperation that we've seen uh over the last 10 to 15 years prior to now. So that's really what it means is you having more of that mercantalist view of the world where using your large largest asset which is your trade imbalance because we are a large buyer of things if we all of a sudden say well we're going to buy less and that's going to have an impact on your economy foreign country because you needed us to buy those things and that's some of it where you know we're no longer going to be exporting as many dollars because we're not buying as many things so there's less dollars in the system. So it has so many different ramifications in the big picture for everyone. What it means is that the last 10 to 15 years we had global cooperation, you had low interest rates, you had you know seemingly stable macro geopolitic risks. You know there was different flash points not what we've seen now. um those time periods have basically faded to you know we have higher interest rates we have more geopolitical instability and you know there is uh upward pressure on inflation due to the rewiring of supply chains. Yeah, this is the new normal. Higher inflation, more insular economies, right? Less geopolitical cooperation, more uncertainty on the geopolitical front, probably higher commodity prices as well, and semiconductors rule the world. That's a really interesting time to be an investor. Uh so again, if you're thinking about how to reposition sort of looking out the next 10 years, I know that's a big broad question, but it's going to look a little bit different than what the last 10 years look like for an investor, right? — Yeah, I would definitely say so. I mean I think you know going back to it you that idea of just a stock bond mix that was kind of a Goldilocks portfolio where you had falling you know falling inflation and rising growth and particularly for the you know the better part of you know post GFC you had really benign inflation you know again outside of the postcoid era where you had that really high pop of inflation but really leading up to that you had basically average of like 1. 2% 2% of CPI. Now we're, you know, we're having a hard time bending below 3% given some of the dynamics of the postco supply chain impacts, but also what we're seeing now from a global um macro perspective where there's more upside bias to inflation. And so in the next 10 to 15 years, I think that the one of the more sound pieces of investment, you know, guidance would be to prepare, not so much to predict and to be prepared across many different avenues of asset allocation uh and macroeconomic impacts. So own assets that have a positive reaction function to falling growth dynamics like

gold or like inflation linked bonds but also have give you that uplift to rising inflation. So I think that's one of those interesting things is just trying to be prepared from a diversification perspective and not trying to pick tomorrow's winners or the next winners because you know perhaps you can but not on a reliable consistent and repeatable basis. — Yeah. You say it's not like the college blue book test where you just want to just fill in the blanks. You really got to do your homework. All right. Aside from oil, let's go out on this. Aside from oil, which is basically what everyone's focused on right now and oil prices, what's one key indicator that you're kind of looking at that doesn't get a lot of attention? So I think when we're looking and examining o the overall markets one of the ones that I sort of like to look at which is very beneath the surface and it can be picked apart ad nauseium but it's an idea of complacency and complacency risk and it's just very simple um some simple person uh it's price to earnings ratio over the next 12 months for the S& P 500 divided by the VIX and in looking at this basically looking at what is the price that investors are willing to pay for the next 12 months cash flows divided by the volatility of the current price or the expected implied and you know leading up into the events of the Middle East the complacency was it was actually trending lower and I think that's just a good barometer of maybe piecing all together investment behavior investor insights but that's just one thing to try to get a sense of how concerned or how complacent are investors right now and that's one thing I just like to look at to then augment all the other buying behavior and flow trends and other things that we're looking at. — Yeah. And how's the vibe right now? — Not great. Um but it's mixed, right? So the VIX has gone up, PE's gone down. So it's not super complacent and it's not really um uh risk averse either. So I think that's really help a good uh estimate of where we might be from an earnings perspective where the price has fallen and the expected cash flows on a fundamental basis have risen and that sort of speaks to this more fundamental durability of some of the US equity markets particularly the behemoths that are really tied to those big broad secular trends that to some degree are insulated from that macro risk that is impacting the VIX and so that really helps paint the picture and tie it all together where it's not this really high volatility super concerning type period from a fundamentals perspective because that shoe is yet to drop and that's something to really keep an eye on. — Yeah. Well, absolutely keep an eye on that and we will follow you and your research folks. Uh you can subscribe and check out uh Matt's chart pack and ETF flows. Matt Bartellini, the global head of research strategists for State Street Investment Management. Thanks so much for joining the Express. — Yeah, thank you. — Thanks so much again to Matt and his team putting out some great stuff. I'd like to check in and tap into the State Street investment management research, especially that chart pack uh helps put things in great perspective for me. We'll link to it in the show notes. All right, it is time, my friends, for a little money in motion. keeping our eyes on open interest, especially in the derivatives and options world, because open interest can be a key indicator of investor sentiment as well. Actually, a much more direct indicator because it shows how many open positions there are in the options world and an increase or decrease can give you a real telltale sign of the next direction for the market. So, as the greatest website for investors in the world describes it, open interest is the total number of active contracts in the market that haven't been closed. These contracts are outstanding derivatives, specifically unsettled futures and options. They show how many people still have buy and sell positions and haven't exited their trades. It's a conviction sentiment is what that is. Knowing the number of open positions in a particular contract tells traders whether the amount of money flowing into the contract increases or decreases. This means that open interest gives an accurate picture of a contract's liquidity and the current level of interest in it. And an increase in open interest indicates that new or more money is flowing into the market. While decreasing open interest indicates that money is flowing out of the market. What's happening right now in the open interest market my friends? it has dropped to an extreme low. These readings show and we have a chart that shows it that these positions are heavily one-sided historically when we have similar extremes just like when we have it in the stock market overbought oversold. You options market through OEEX open interest. It shows that there's a lot of pessimism in the market. Guess what? That's been

pretty obvious lately, but especially in the options market. But this can also be like so many things in investing and trading especially in the options market. This can be a contrarian indicator. So this kind of is what you see when sentiment gets to an extreme. Oftent times we see a bounce back after that. We'll see if we have follow through this time or not because there's a lot of complicated things happening in the market right now especially in the straight of horror moves. Let's get set up my friends for a very busy week ahead. Let's see what's coming on down the tracks. It is earning season as we know and it's about to take off super fast. We already had earnings out this morning from Goldman Sachs among other companies beating expectations like so many companies are expected to do. But actually the stock selling off in early trading this morning. We'll see if that is the pattern for the rest of the market. But key metrics to watch according to our friends at Faxet. uh earnings growth for the first quarter of 2026. The estimated year-over-year growth rate for the S& P 500 12. 6%. If 12. 6% is the actual growth rate for the quarter, it will mark the sixth straight quarter of doubledigit year-over-year earnings growth reported by the S& P 500. Yeah, that's what we're here for, investors, profit growth. And we keep getting it. Even though there's a lot of pessimism and companies do a little bit of warning here and there, they usually deliver on the earnings. And that's kind of what we've been rewarded for investing in over all these years. According to factset again, earnings revisions on December 31st, the year-over-year estimated earnings growth rate for the S& P was 12. 8%. But 9. 9 of the 11 sectors are expected to report lower earnings compared to back then. Why? Higher oil prices. We're going to start to hear a lot of that in this quarter's earnings reports. Looking back at last quarter, what we care about is what companies tell us about the future. All right, let's get set up for the week. Monday, today, April 13th, we're going to get a report on existing home sales for the month of March. They were pretty slow as usual. Home sales, home buying market, very slow right now. Earnings again, Goldman Sachs kicking things off for the big banks this week. Tomorrow, Tuesday, the producer price index is out for the month of March. If we learned anything from the CPI last week, we know prices are going up because of higher commodity prices, namely crude oil and gasoline and natural gas. We'll get that. will get durable goods orders for the month of March as well and earnings brigade tomorrow. JP Morgan, J& J, Wells Fargo, and Cityroup among others. And then Wednesday, the Fed's beige book is out. It is the sort of compilation of reports from the Fed's banks around the country. And guess what? It's not beige. It's red. I've seen it. It's actually red, but it used to be beige. We'll also get a report on EIA oil inventories. Normally, we don't care too much. Right now we care a lot about oil inventories because oil is driving the entire global capital markets uh just by these price shifts day in day out. Remember oil trades 23 hours a day, six days a week, doesn't take a lot of breaks and it's traded around the world. So we're going to keep a close eye on inventories and then earnings from uh ASML, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Uh coming out on Wednesday, Thursday, the Philly Fed Manufacturing Index, earnings from Taiwan Semiconductor, one of the biggest, most important chip makers in the world. Netflix and PepsiCo. Remember, PepsiCo through Fritole lowered the price of its snacks across the boards 15% due to the higher prices of just about everything. That was like six weeks ago. Things done changed since then. We'll see if there's more price cuts in store for the biggest snack maker in the world. And then on Friday, uh, not a ton of earnings, uh, coming out, but the Fed speakers are on tour, heavy duty Fed speak going on this week. We got a Fed meeting at the end of the month. Probably no change to interest rates, but we're going to hear a lot of those speakers on tour as we come to the last days of Fed Chair Pal's term, assuming we do have a new Fed chair confirmed. All right, let's get to our indicator of the week. And hey, big spender, your government's been spending some money in this country. We get the monthly cumulative receipts, outlays, and surplus deficits from the federal government. That comes out every month. And if you're a geek like me, you're checking it out. The monthly Treasury statement data set provides information on the flow of money in and out of the US Department of Treasury. Yeah, like our quaffers, our bank accounts here. It includes how deficits are funded, such as borrowing from the public or reducing operating cash, and how surpluses are distributed. No surpluses here, just a ton of spending. I'm just looking at that. Comes right from the Treasury. They put that out every month thanks to them. And guess what? Total outlays for the month $3. 65 trillion. Total receipts $1. 17. Call it generously trillion dollar. We are spending a lot more than we're taking in. And I thought that was the point of all these tariffs. But right now, we're spending a lot more as a government than we're taking in. And not to worry too much about it, but the total national debt now exceeding $39

trillion. that's going to hit 40 sometime real soon and there's no real difference between 39 and 40 just the amount of interest it takes to support it. But it is going to be a psychological blow. Uh we are spending a lot of money over here and more money will be spent. If you looked at the president's budget uh what his ass are an increase in military spending that's almost 50%. And a big cut to social services spending. So expect more spending from the government. We know what that does to inflation and to the price of other assets. All right, let's go out on something fun because you know I love to ride. I'm always rolling and I had the great pleasure of treating myself to a new longboard this weekend. Went all the way up to Montreal. Took my wife up there. We went to Zenit skateboards. Thanks to them for opening up the shop for me. Saw how these boards are made. They got all kinds of different wood that they use. They got popppler. They got maple. They got oak wood. Uh all kinds of beautiful uh things happening inside that shop. I got to try out a few boards. K tried out one of the prototypes there. The Hannah board for longboard dancing. There's Phipe, one of the key designers and the guys behind Zenit longboards getting my board ready. And yeah, I came home with one. a little a nice little longboard that I'm going to be working on uh this spring and summer. And I couldn't have been more excited. But just to make sure you know, it's not just about me and what I like to do. I want to talk to you about the skateboard market real quick. Right. Skateboard market size. The estimated total global market size of skateboards $3. 56 billion back in 2024. It's projected to reach 4. 63 billion by 2033 growing at a com compound annual growth rate of 2. 6%. Not huge, but hey, it's rolling up and to the right. Uh, so the market is being driven by rising youth participants, they say, and action sports and the growing influence of street culture and social media. Well, what about 55 year olds like me? I got like seven or eight skateboards right now. A bunch of longboards collecting skateboards and longboards like people collect guitars. Uh, North America dominates the global skateboard market with the largest revenue share, 41%. But it is growing big time out in Asia Pacific. And if you look at any of the skateboard videos and the binge the the stuff on Instagram and YouTube, the skateboarding and the tricks that are happening, the skill level that is happening uh in Asia is incredible. We got 11 10 year olds doing incredible tricks and these are some of the best skateboarders in the world. But for those of us that just like to cruise and do a little longboard dancing, there is a market for us as well. The big market is street skating, but we like to ride on the longboard here and do a little longboard dancing. So, shout out to Zenit and to Phipe up there in Montreal. We had a great time up there this weekend. If you haven't been to Montreal, folks, special city, special place, and uh it was really nice to visit there and to bring home a beautiful Zenit Hannah board. Thanks again to uh Phipe up there. And thanks to Matt Bartellini from State Street Investment Management for dropping in on the show. Real fan of his research and all the work they do over at State Street. And thanks to you, Investipedia readers, listeners, watchers, viewers, and followers. We appreciate you hanging there. It's going to be a busy week. And we'll talk again a little further on down the line. hey.