What's up, everyone? On today's episode of Full Signal, I sit down with Sam Rowe. He is the founder and

author of the newsletter called Ticker, T-K-E-R. It's one of my favorite financial newsletters, and he's an

award-winning writer. We talk about consumers' pain in the economy, how stock market valuations are

getting frothy, but not yet dangerous, risks in the market,

and comparisons to the AI bubble. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Sam, the economy is not working for everyone, but it is working for stock market investors.

What are you seeing? And can you help us explain what you're observing here?

Yeah.

I think this is sort of the quote unquote, K-shaped economy narrative or one version of that.

The K-shaped economic narrative is this idea that some parts of the economy are doing better than other parts of the economy.

And just to be clear, you know, that's always been the case.

Whether it's boom times or bus times or unusual times as like what we're facing right now,

it has always been the case that individuals and households who have greater wealth and higher

income are going to do better than those with less wealth and lower income.

And it's the same thing with businesses.

Businesses with a lot of scale and a lot of financial resources will find ways to do better than those

with fewer resources and less scale. That's always been the case, but the current narrative,

this idea of the K-shaped economy and the K-shaped recovery, whatever you want to call it,

is one where that divide is actually increasing.

And just from an economy-wide level, I think what's happening is the economy itself as a whole is

cooling or slowing. Growth is slowing. Job creation is plateauing or maybe even going negative a little

bit. Personal consumption is barely growing. Real consumption is barely growing. Capital expenditures,

...