Ben, it's great to see you. I want to get right into your view on why markets have pretty much shrugged

off everything geopolitical, all the headlines, the oil shock. What's going on here? It's funny because a lot of times the short-term answer is like, I don't know. Like, sometimes it's like it's a mystery. And then you learn later, like what actually was going on, right? The stock market was looking past this because this thing was going to happen in the future and the stock market is forward looking. Right now, it's actually pretty simple and it's just earnings.

And if you look The stock market was looking past this because this thing was going to happen in the future and the stock market is forward looking.

Right now, it's actually pretty simple and it's just earnings.

And if you look at the earnings numbers, they're coming in.

I think FACSET said six quarters in a row of double-digit earnings growth.

And this one is the biggest thing we've had since 2021.

And that year was coming off of a low base year of 2020.

So it's like 27% earnings growth right now year over year. So it's a fundamentally driven story. I know a lot of people don't, like, they want to think like this is like detached from reality, right? The markets aren't making sense. Why aren't we paying more attention to geopolitics? But in reality, it is attached to fundamentals. And that's the thing.

I think that it actually does make a lot of sense that the market is shrugging off

this geopolitical stuff for now because it's just following earnings.

I think that makes total sense.

And I definitely agree with you whenever people ask me,

hey, why are markets going up?

I say, well, because earnings are going up.

One, actual earnings, but also earnings expectations, keep going up. I say, well, because earnings are going up, one, actual earnings, but also

earnings expectations keep going up. But the one thing that I don't really have a good answer for

yet, which I think you would, is it possible that because things are going so well in the markets,

is the whole market just a momentum trade? I mean, there's certainly areas of them. There's big pockets of momentum right now. And it's interesting because it's not just the mag seven anymore, right? It seems to be whiting out these other areas. And obviously, it's AI. And the AI momentum is working in both directions, right? The software stocks are negative momentum. They're getting crushed. Seems like all the time. And these other like semiconductors are going nuts and they're going to the

moon seemingly. And so that does seem like the momentum stuff. But yeah, it's, it seems like anytime

there's a flare up in anything, AI kind of comes in and trumps it. And that's the thing that

matters over everything else. Yeah, the thing I keep hearing is that AI is the macro.

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