Markets Watch AI Growth, Crypto Legislation and Rates

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. How did our financials do this week? How are they going to do next week? With us? Today is Gian Trott, and he knows this stuff. He’s got his ear to the ground. Give us an update.

0:14 Speaker 2 John Well, The thing about last week, of course, was it was all about CPI, PPI and retail sales. So CPI on Wednesday came in subdued, it was up just a fraction. In July PPI younger brother pretty much the same story flat and then on Friday a real shocker retail sales a fourteen month low, a decline of zero

0:33 point six percent. What’s going on? Well, I wouldn’t read too much into it, frankly, because it’s not because of a faltering economy. What happened in July. If you think back, gas prices went down sharply in the first two weeks of the month before the war got going again, and so what happened was people just spent less on gas

0:50 and that’s reflected in the retail sales figures. And then apparently we’re told they pulled in their horns after spending a lot of money on Amazon Prime Day Online, which was the fourth and sixth of July. Fourth fifth, and sixth. Now, last week you shouted at me, and so we want to know about SpaceX. So I went out of my

1:05 way this week to find out about SpaceX. And you know what, they managed to hold above their offer price of one hundred and thirty five for at least a couple of days. Thursday they closed at a one hundred and forty one dollars one hundred and forty two something like that. And when I checked last on Friday, they

1:19 were around one hundred and thirty seven. So I guess that’s good. Bob Eiger is the former CEO of Disney. He’s teaming up with Josh Kushner, who is Gerard’s younger brother. They’re going to pay twelve point five billion dollars to buy the LA Lakers basketball team.

1:32 Speaker 1 I’m sure that’s the last time I look at twelve point five billion dollars. Was a lot of money.

1:38 Speaker 2 Well, you would know, you would know. I mean, I think the thing is, you know it’s you. I mean, if you really want to own a team like the LA Lakers, it doesn’t really matter how much money you’re spending.

1:49 If you’re happy, if you like it, if it makes you proud, that’s the most important thing. And I’m sure after a glittering career as one of America’s top executives, Bob Iger is very very happy with his choice here. Now, the cryptocurrency story of the week was the Clarity Act.

2:03 John Thune has assigned a date for it. It’s September fifteenth, on the floor of the Senate. This is really important, and what’s important about it is the President Trump agreed to the democrats demands that he would think about rowing back some of his gains on cryptocurrency, which we saw, of course in twenty twenty five at a huge amount,

2:20 more than one hundred billion dollars. And so too the week ahead, well, this is your realm coming up this week. Now, we get retail earnings, okay, target among them. They last week appointed the first ever AI officer to the C suite, so I think that tells you a lot about their thinking.

2:35 And of course we get Walmart as well, which I like to think of as the world’s biggest shop. And it all plays into the inflation story. And as you know, the FED is off this month. They’ll be back with a rate decision in September. John, Well, thank you so much.

2:48 Speaker 1 Sean Tarritt and the Sala’s head has shined for the rest of the century. And the other day the SMP hit an all time high end. Yes, hopefully America goes on forever.

3:03 Speaker 2 Yep, well, I mean the S ANDP certainly did. On Thursday, it was almost at It was like seventy seven ninety eight.

3:12 Speaker 1 So I call it almost eight thousand.

3:15 Speaker 2 Exactly, exactly. Thank you so much, see you next week. Thanks John