Let's bring in our good friend Ted Thatcher, founder and president of Bright Lake Wealth Management.
My man, thank you for being here as always.
Always good to see you.
So I want your take so far on what we've seen for earnings season because better than expected, I feel like that oftentimes happens, right?
I mean they set the bar down here and then they, and then they, they clear it, but muted reactions.
GE, UNH, Micron, so they beat, but the market is saying maybe you didn't beat enough.
What are you seeing so far?
You know, it's really interesting.
To your point, you know, set expectations, beat expectations, and then sell-offs.
We're seeing this sort of consistently, you know, when it comes to the big names though, I want to see what Google does on Wednesday as a leader, you know, so much has been made of the CPE spend.
Are we going to get the ROI on all this CapEx?
I want to see them come in with a greater than 60% year over year growth in the cloud business and uh, of course on the AI infrastructure business.
22 billion plus we expect.
I think that that's going to be an indicator.
For whether or not they're able to turn all that compute demand of course into real revenue.
What else are you going to be looking for out of these tech earnings because we talked so much about the so-called Mag7, although we're having a new conversation as to whether or not we actually need a new acronym, a new basket of tech stocks, but we got a few of them.
It's not just alphabet this week, but it's going to be Tesla as well.
Sure, you know, so much of Tesla specifically, it feels like they're placing the burden on the.
Optimists build out everything that has to do with the robotics.
They're not going to produce, I think, yet the revenue in that sector, JD.
They have a really good run rate, 480,000 delivered vehicles, really nice year over year number, but I want to see the takeup that they've gotten on FSD and autopilot and of course the robotaxi business there.
Uh, I want your take on the second half outlook because we are at this point, we're a couple of trading weeks into.
Q3, we have some sense of what the month of July is going to look like for the major market indexes, but I think a lot of people are surprised at just how strong the first half of 2026 was.
What's on your bingo card for the second half?
You know, it's interesting the way the first half of this year has played out.
I think a lot of people were saying, hey, we're going to get good earnings, you know, coming into the first half of the year, and we have seen that.
But what has also driven, of course, the market up is the semis, the memory of the chip names.
In a huge, I would say bifurcation to what has led the market since 2022, which is the MG 7 names.
So I think that there's actually an opportunity here for the sort of baton to get picked back up by some of those big tech names in the second half of the year.
I do think it's going to come down to how they handle the overspend narrative that they've been fighting year to date, but fundamentally from a cost standpoint coming into this year, the S&P was trading.
We were expecting about a 19.4 times earnings multiple.
The earnings per share expectation changes.
We're actually trading below that number, 18.4%.
And so that's why fundamentally I'm constructive about the second half of the year.
I want your take on oil as well because we've been reminded in recent weeks we are not out of the woods as it pertains to the conflict in the Middle East.
The White House says one thing, the White House then kind of says something else.
Power brokers involved in the situation say a third thing.
For the most part, kind of a muted reaction from oil, but it has moved up steadily in the last couple of weeks.
It's interesting how tired.
Markets have kind of gotten with the war in Iran, but the truth is, as long as this conflict is kinetic, the markets have to pay attention.
We're seeing that reflected in the price of oil, you know, Brent at 88, I think it spiked above 90 when it opened yesterday.
And so I don't think we're going to stay here for very long.
This war is not popular with Americans at all, but until we see some more light at the end of the tunnel, the markets have to pay attention.
The great Ted Thatcher, founder, president of Bright Lake Wealth Management, my man, come back to the show anytime.
Good to see you.
Thanks.
