Yeah.

So, um, so that, that's clearly off the charts.

But one of the thing- things that I did, oh, maybe six months ago, well, I guess this was, uh, February 28th, was when the Iranian war started.

So we started getting the, the, the big spikes up in the oil price.

We were taking a look at fuel, fuel economy on sedans in, in 1979 with the Iranian revolution.

'Cause you couldn't get the '73 situation because the EPA, the, the fuel economy standards, they don't even have the data back to pre, like, '76.

But if you're thinking about the car that someone was driving back then, and you can compare it to any wage data, whether it's household income or the minimum wage or something like that, you're filling that thing up all the time.

No.

So I guess from a dividend perspective, how would you describe the U.S. economic and market environment? And what are some of the big risks to look out for right now?

Yeah, and I think that we can take this from some of the very, very near-term concepts that are really driving the market, stuff that we've been putting out on social, the big macro charts, which I think is what I position myself for and what I'm known for is the macro concepts.

And look, there's a guy out here named Kevin Warsh, right? And whether Kevin decides may be the single biggest determining factor for what happens in terms of dividend plays outperforming or underperforming.

or stocks in general and the implications of all of that with respect to, let's say, the 10-year or the 30-year as well.

And I have a little bit of a different view on some of this, and maybe people can laugh at me if they so choose, that there is a concept that you could maybe entertain whereby the bond market stops puking, I mean, that's a very technical term, puking, by the way, Jeremy.

Look, why would you be a bear on stocks right now? I mean, there's...

Well, you might have a question mark on broad S&P 500 earnings.

how can we position ourselves or what is the current state of the oil and what should we be looking out for when it comes to the energy space and oil space when it comes to dividend investing? Oil

was the.

Something like that.

Yeah.

So those people have a good argument.

But what I've been pointing out in a lot of the macro imagery, I mean, look, if you think about what we're doing at Corgi.

Yeah.

Right.

And I thought that speaks to what we've just spent the last five minutes, five, 10 minutes talking about, which is that instead of looking at rising yields as some kind of fundamental problem, how about looking at it as a great entry point? We're starting to be an entry point.

It's a global story, isn't it? What are your thoughts on what's going on in the world of bonds? You're saying it's not necessarily the doom and gloom moment.

Subject that is the key one.

It's dominating the social media fin twit type space.

Everyone's talking about it.

The three handle in Japan is one of the big, big ones right now.

But look.

When we take a look at least in recent memory, and by recent memory I mean 2024, 2025, 2026, if you're thinking about the US long bond, picture a chart of that.

I mean, how long can we tolerate a higher yield environment?

Since you're bringing out beta funds, which means things that are tied to the broad market, As you bring out those new funds, what's your expectation? Have we got more room to run here? Or are we getting to the time of year when things are going to get scary until we at least have the certainty of the midterms done?

All right.

Now the fun stuff, the macro stuff.

Look, Chuck, I have a thesis on in the next several quarters, upside economic surprise on U.S. GDP.

We have had in the last, let's go with seven days or so, last week or so, some pretty nice prints on the economic side in the United States.

And the thesis is a little funky in that it's upside economic surprise, and yet the bond market behaves.

How about that one, Chuck? We have had...

And oh, by the way, they're playing with our money, not their money necessarily.

Why is something like that good for folks? How so?

Yeah, I mean, well, the buffer series at Corgi would be something that you would go after if you weren't necessarily wildly bullish.

It is one of the reasons I came to the firm, Nicole.

I just, after 10 years at another firm, I came to Corgi a week ago, and we are basically undercutting all the competitors on buffers on expense ratio by an order of half, half or more.

And look, I think there's just a lot of people retirees or people who got burned in the global financial crisis or what have you that say look i'm willing to cap how much i can make in my stock market investments over the next year or so if it means that you will buffer me on the downside and that's what these these products are designed to do they cut the first 10 of the downside out if you're willing to cap yourself in the case of augc at 18 gains over the next year and i think a lot of people say look the s p goes up 30 or 40 percent and I make 18, I'll live with it just so long as it doesn't go down 30, and I feel the full 30, that type of thing.

You continue to do that, right?

Yeah, I mean, look, when I came across Corgi, it was basically about a month ago, right? And I'm like, look at this.

What the heck is going on? These guys are out here at five basis points on treasuries.

So what really is giving you confidence that earnings growth can remain strong enough to support, I mean, the relatively high valuations from equities from here?

Right.

I think you're probably using the right vernacular, relatively high.

You have a bull market.

It's a raging bull market that really started in October of 22.

It's been ruthless.

The extent you get these drawdowns, they last six weeks and then you're right back.

And so how different is this Fed likely to be from the Powell era? And what does that really mean for that investors trying to position around rates and of course, future economic expectations?

Isn't that sign of excessive speculation? Or is maybe that margin debt maybe just a little bit overblown?

Well, and then this oftentimes depends on who you're talking to, what you're seeing.

I think about an availability bias, Joel.

i have a twitter feed well i guess we call it x these days i got an x feed and what comes across in my feed with a lot of likes and a lot of retweets would be that which is histrionic or bold you know somebody who levered up a portfolio and turned a 10 000 into a million on speculative nfts or something like that you don't really see what i'm catching on a day-to-day which is you know you're talking to advisor in a merrill lynch office and they're skeptical um about the bull market right that is a general concept a lack of or a questioning of the bull market classic wall of worry stuff so look the margin debt there had been a lot of that got um blown up in the last what three or four days the wall street journal article that got it that ended up in my inbox a lot of different people talking about it because look the print it's 1.4 trillion and i've tracked margin debt it's it's reported by finra i've been doing this for years looking at it but you need a numerator and a denominator at one point what the heck does 1.4 trillion even mean it needs to be put in context of the size of the investable asset base just like if you have a hundred thousand in margin debt but you're only worth 300k you're delivered up but if you're worth 10 million dollars what do i care about your 100k right so look the argument is yeah sure wenninger you've got the denominator is a big overpriced stock market maybe that's a counterpoint right a lot of people say stock market is overpriced but the 1.4 trillion in context is not anywhere nearly as high as it was in prior cycles speculative excess cycles And then also people say, well, you got to tack in levered ETFs, the two times and three times stuff.

And that figure is only a couple hundred billion.

Believe it or not.

I had to double and triple check that because I'm in the ETF business.

Just talk about, I mean, are we going to have to, you know, is there going to be a floor in the oil market? We've got to fill up those reserves again, correct?

Right.

Um, if you think that we are going to have, um, the, the positive effects o- of the, the rate cuts that commenced 19 months ago, I would theorize, and I have theorized, and I've got the charts out there on X-That you could see the rate of growth on S&P 500 profits peak out in the out years of this decade, which is really, really bold to hypothesize because street consensus on S&P 500 earnings growth for calendar '26 is 22%, Jeremy.

22.

So i- imagine continuing double-digit earnings growth.

So you don't know whether or not you wanna take it from, from stocks.

The, the area you might wanna take it from is fixed income.

A- and the, the, I, I think, I mean, Jeremy, I think so.

Mm-hmm.

Really what's going to drive it.

Well how about the fact that a couple of sectors that were some of the worst performers are doing well now.

I mean the wrap on the market if we were to go back Heck, like 20 or 30 days ago, the rap on the market was, hey, do you really want to be long a market that has financials rolling over and dying, which was the case past tense, and tech rolling over and dying, a market that was specifically energy.

Industrials was okay and materials.

That was basically the only thing that was working in the first quarter.

Now you have everything generally mounting up.

Your weak spots, utilities, that's okay to be weak in a bull run.

But your thoughts on, you know, what the Fed needs to do in order to keep this rally going, if at all, are people focusing too much on the Fed, maybe?

You know, as far as the sectors, do you have sectors that you like more than others?

Sure.

I mean, look, sometimes you don't want to fight the tape.

And I do think that there's some staying power on some of the trades that have been really on of late.

So you mentioned Apple, thinking Mag7.

Mag7's been ice cold for about four or five months just as a collective, chopping sideways-ish.

The NASDAQ, for example, peaked on October 29th and has been dead money to slightly down ever since.

look at you know there are people who say that for sure um how about we talk about also what happened with iran yesterday it was the second round of the nuclear talks but iran has some very tough talk yeah i mean they're they're certainly not bowing down to the united states of america we're not seeing that china's always on your radar too what are your thoughts i mean i know it's the lunar new year now but your thoughts on china where it fits into the market strategy

It's just when it's the timing of when they want to do the cut.

And look, well, having groupthink on any committee is not a good thing.

And so you want to have the Austin Goolsbees and the Stephen Mirons going in opposite directions.

I hope they're sitting around and arguing with each other.

That's the way a good committee should function.

And, you know, Kevin brings up a very good point.

The data right now, because the government shut down, you make any heads or tails out of that CPI print? There's been a lot of skepticism with regard to that.

Just, you know, what is the outlook when you tell them about 2026, Jeff?

What happened?

And look, I mean, WisdomTree's getting into it too.

We just made an acquisition of a big farm play as well.

All the asset managers have been moving towards privates, but there is this issue of the Yale model, which was always to, for the last 30, 40 years, put assets into private equity.

Some of these institutions have been looking to get away from that asset.

And then, well, where we're going to put it, maybe we'll put it in 401ks.

Some people who are jaundiced may say that that is a way of shifting the asset class onto an unsuspecting public.

Are you waiting to see some of those? What do you advise folks now?