Stocks are back in session following the 3rd day after the 4th of July weekend.
Now the Dow keeps hitting fresh records, but not everyone is celebrating.
The S&P and the Nasdaq have been choppy, and the AI trade starts losing its grip.
Macron had a brutal week, dropping nearly 20%, and Sandusk, even worse, down about 25%.
And at the same time, the June job reports came in as a disappointment.
Unemployment did ticker lower.
But not for the right reasons.
The participation rate just hit its lowest level in over 5 years.
And meanwhile, oil prices have given back all their wartime gains as the traffic through the Strait of Hormuz starts flowing again.
Separately, GE Aerospace is having a strong year, up more than 20%, and trading just below all-time highs.
Now the company is seeing momentum from its strong performing.
Engines which support Boeing airliners.
Now joining me to discuss this and more, kind of give us a better beat of the whole market itself.
We have Big Beat Steven Orr, CEO and founder of Kazar Markets.zar Markets Markets.
All right, how are you, Johnny?
Doing well.
How are you?
I'm good, man.
All right, we have a lot to talk about, a lot to discuss, so let's go ahead and start off with GE Aerospace that Stock, you know, is hovering right below all-time highs, and I understand that you spoke with the CEO a few days ago.
So tell us about the innovation and where you see the company.
Yes, I was at the Washington Mall over the 4th of July, and they had the big new GE 9X, the big engines coming out very soon, and Larry Coolp Jr.
CEO of GE Aerospace, he's the one that broke the company up, well, done that.
He's a former CEO of Dana.
Corporation and took that corporation through the sky.
He's doing the same thing right now.
We're already up, as you just said, 20% up for the year and near the highs because of things that he's doing there and one of those leadership himself.
So let's talk about what specifically do you like about GE and when it comes to the defense sector specifically, how crucial are their engines for this business model?
Well, when you have engines, you've got to have two things got to be faster and you've got to be better, right?
And so they've done that.
They have Less fans on the machine and they've also, it's a much more powerful machine.
It's like 10% efficient and it's way bigger, so big that the new 777X is actually going to only have two engines, not four, so there's a whole lot of savings on it and it's huge.
It's the biggest engine in the world and we need that, right?
We need power, energy, and of course the machine to make that happen.
It's one of Trump's big things.
He wanted manufacturing and GE is doing that.
So let's talk about the AI trade.
The AI trade has been the Talk of the market, talk of the town for quite some time.
We're just seeing a lot of movement there.
So with semiconductors slumping recently, what do you make of the cooldown that we've seen and do supply constraints factor in here?
Yes, that's a good question, John.
You know what's very interesting is 15 years ago when I was talking about AI, people thought I was crazy.
Today we talk about it 2 or 3 years ago when I was talking about it.
It was the beginning of this turn up right.
Hey, hey, what's AI all about and how we Going to get there.
Well, there are two things that need to happen.
The first one with the big one was energy, and the second one is data or data centers.
Those two things have been constraint right now because of data centers.
We need more data centers now than ever, but there's some pushback in some areas that don't want to have data centers.
But the new one in Kentucky tells a lot of promise right now.
So America just celebrated the big 250 huge celebration this weekend.
So tell us where you stand on American exceptionalism.
You know, I have seen the whole planet, and American exceptionalism is something that we have this weird thing about.
We are the greatest country in the world, but there are other great countries too.
I don't necessarily believe in American exceptionalism.
I believe in American greatness.
I believe that we have made great by immigration and some of the policies that we've had over the years, and some of those policies are actually costing us a little bit.
One of them is a brain drain, especially in the AI system.
So you know what, for me, I think we need to relax a little bit on the immigration and it doesn't need to be this strong on it.
So let's talk about the big macro backdrop and after the June jobs report we saw that the report missed forecast.
So let's talk a little bit about that.
It will get worse.
Unfortunately jobs are a problem right now.
It's going to get a lot worse.
I think AI is taking people's jobs, but what's happening is it's not just jobs from people that are in their positions, it's jobs of college students coming out trying to find jobs.
They're trying to find jobs in say accounting or in the HR area.
It's going to be tough.
Why?
Because right now AI is replacing a lot of those lower level jobs.
What's being done well, is people that are older are staying longer because they need management of those machines.
Think about prompting or better prompting for the machine itself.
So let's talk now about the big conversation again in the last couple of weeks.
Oil.
We do know that oil prices have come down.
We know that the situation in the Middle East, it's also been ongoing.
So where do the markets go from here, specifically with the US-Iran situation?
Is that still the driving factor?
You know, I called for oil to drop.
We should go back to about $55 a barrel, $60.
You know, it's interesting.
Oil companies do not like $100 a barrel.
I know that's shocking to some people when it's that high, people complain about their gas prices when it's too low, the companies have complained.
But the problem in this country is one thing the country needs more refineries or better refineries and cleaning those refineries up.
Manufacturing becomes the biggest problem.
So yes, for me it's all about the refineries.
So last question is, what do you make of the strength that we've seen of the US dollar this year it's been very strong, especially against some very great countries trading partners, including Japan and India.
India, the rupee is now the lowest level, and 101 in the Dixie here puts it, what's the yen now 116.
So it's very, very high.
So for me, the dollar needs to come back in order for a more strengthening of our economy in regards to trade with other countries.
Awesome.
Well Steve, thanks so much for joining us.
Definitely appreciate your time and you being here.
Thanks, Johnny.
Appreciate it, man.
Likewise.