a crap... now what...

Well, we're back at the straight of Hormuz getting blockaded again. Now we have 10ear treasuries getting on that ceiling again, knocking on the door once again of 46, which isn't great. Our ceiling is usually 457. We almost never stay above that level. But it's a pretty important level if we break through it because we keep getting reason after reason to expect inflationary impetuses, if that's even a word, from well, frankly, Donald Trump's activity. I hate to say it, but first it's tariffs, now it's protection fees. Yes. Now Donald Trump is announcing a 20% protection fee, which almost certainly goes against a WTO article 5 conventions, which say, "Hey, international waters like this are supposed to operate without any kind of tolling." In fairness, that's what Iran was trying to do. And so Trump is trying to now fight fire with fire here. And uh the reality is the United States has the might in the region and might is right. It's sort of like in real estate we like to say possession is 9/10en of the law. You know when people uh face an eviction it's whoever's got possession. You know they're the ones with the gold. So anyway uh what practically is very interesting right now is the NASDAQ is selling down. Obviously NASDAQ tech hardware sky. I expect that one to bleed down. Although surprisingly it's barely green right now. Uh, but I expect that one to bleed down. It's also a very lowflat uh uh ADR in this case, much like SpaceX, and it's making it a little harder for hardware to run, which is obviously very concentrated in the NASDAQ 100. But what's fascinating is even though the NASDAQ 100 is down a percent, and so marketwide, it feels like everything is red. Look at ticker symbol IGV. IGB is something that we regularly talk about uh on the channel pretty much everywhere mostly because we have such a heavy concentration in cyber security and software and we're looking for a bottom in the third and fourth quarter in software and we are in the third quarter after all. So maybe that's finally starting although it's been fits and starts over the last three or four weeks. So we'll see. Worth keeping an eye on that. I personally think for the NASDAQ 100 to get to 750 or 800, we really need a stabilization in hardware. SKH Highix, the great suckening softening, let's get some stability in hardware. Let's keep Nvidia above 200, AMD above 500. Then hopefully we get a broadening in software. We get that broadening in software. What happens? Great. Now we can hit all-time new highs. So, it's a good thing that we don't have a broad sell-off today. But unfortunately, these inflationary pressures are going to come up in the Kevin Worsh testimony in Congress starting tomorrow. Remember, Kevin Walsh is purposefully being relatively silent. His communication vacuum on his inflation thesis, which is, hey, we're only going to pay attention to the two. We won't pay attention to the decimal. Beyond that, we'll have forward guidance when the task forces are ready to avail. That isn't really comforting to the markets because that leads markets to continue to price in. Here we go. Yet another inflationary impetus. We will have to expect that the Federal Reserve will be forced to raise rates which creates the risk of an Allen Greenspan peak. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But because I'm in London and I'm getting on another flight over to Amsterdam to visit family, we added a very short vacation coupon over at meetke.com. So check that out. mekevin.com vacation couponing and join the alpha membership. We're still doing the alpha report every single day. Uh and so you'll still uh get that in your feed every day even while I'm gone. And of course we'll be back to course member live stream soon. But getting back to Donald Trump and this blockade remember that a lot of oil has found a different route and then we'll talk about a lot of oil has actually found a different route out of Hormuz uh despite the Hormuz blockades. We've got maybe about 34% of oil. So, a lot of the Saudi oil and Omani oil that have been able to use their pipelines to get out of the Red Sea. And remember, we've not had the straight at the bottom of the Red Sea blockaded yet by the Houthies in Yemen, which is fantastic because we keep that international oil flowing. But again, only about a third, about 34ish% is expected to really have found a different route. So that's one of the reasons why we are stuck with still elevated oil prices over what we had at the beginning of January. Beginning of January around $59, around 60 bucks, right around there. Now we're about to break through an 80 again on Brent. So we're still a third higher than where we were at the beginning of the year. Partly because this ceasefire, as Iran tells us, is now in quote unquote crisis mode. So, I did a little bit of digging just to see and I know a lot of, you know, this isn't a video on talking about the JCPOA and the pros and cons of this that or whatever, weapons inspections regarding nuclear weapons, whatever. But what I did is I looked at how long did it actually take to negotiate the JCPOA and who was involved. And what was remarkable was that China, Russia, the United States, Germany, there was one other country, actually I think there were two other countries because it was the P5+1. Anyway, UN P5 plus one were involved in negotiating the JCPOA with the Obama administration for 20 months. That's almost two years. And you literally had China, Russia, and the United States on the same side. Right now, you've got no involvement from China. China's kind of like hands off. All right, whatever, man. It's so sort of like they're, in my opinion, kind of snooping and seeing really, this is all you got? US, Taiwan's looking juicier by the day. So, you got China not involved. Obviously, you got Russia not involved. And I I mean, you know, some people say Russia is involved. I mean, isn't it a little weird that we just had a senator visit Kiev who was on video totally fine one day and then two days later dead from cardiac arrest? But we're not here to provide conspiracies. Leave that to the autopsies and what comes after that. Um, but anyway, this is this is a very different situation. You only have the United States negotiating with Irwan. You do have some supporting members. Obviously, Pakistan's trying to help. You've got uh um the Omanis and Qatar trying to help, but so far we haven't had a sticking breakthrough. I maintain, which we've regularly talked about, that there is a rush to enrich as much uranium as possible deep inside of Pickax Mountain. I believe that every vehicle that goes in and out of Pickax Mountain, right outside of Fordo, uh actually it's outside of Natans, not outside of Foro. Uh is getting satellite documented and recorded. We were watching that like a hawk. And I wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons pressure is actually accelerating on hey this deal isn't working the way we want rather than having that sort of longerd drawn process or patience that we saw during the Obama administration we are resorting back to strikes very rapidly mostly because Donald Trump's got to get it done and a lot of people are calling on him to quote unquote finish the job. I think on one side you got folks saying finish the job. On the other side you have people well on a similar boat. You have people saying they're enriching faster. This is probably intelligence that the United States is getting. Uh and and then on the other side of course you have people just bagging on Donald Trump saying hey this was a failure. This was a big mistake. Realize nobody was trying to toll or tariff the straight of four moves before this incursion. Part of the incursion the operation could have originally been to due to Donald Trump's impatience. remember that uh Israel has reported that Donald Trump uh has assassination plots by Iran against him and back in February Israel was telling us that hey Iran is two weeks away from a bomb apparently now Belgium is as well given what happened with uh with the soccer match can't believe they're also two weeks away from a bomb I'm just kidding but anyway let's let's think about this practically for the market so practically here's what I'm looking at I'm looking at this as an opportunity for IGV. I think hardware is pretty topheavy and even though I think there are still opportunities to expect another leg up in hardware. I really wouldn't be surprised uh to see memory all have already hit peak. We made a video a couple week actually it's been about four weeks ago now about the memory hardware top. I still think stocks like Nvidia have legs to run uh even even with the size that they are in other downstream hardware companies whether they're Vertive or even Dell. Dell has been fantastic. Very low margin server rack business but high high high high high volume maybe it can keep going. Uh but but to me that's hardware's got a medium trade left in it. And unless you've got some kind of crazy 10-year thesis, which I actually think that a company like Marll has, to me, it's it's, you know, it's time to rotate to something else. And that's something else in my opinion. Software, software, software. Obviously, there's a lot of concern around artificial intelligence disruption. And so, that's where the companies with platform modes win. one company that I should have shouted out last week when I was talking about Meta on the channel and when I was also talking about uh Salesforce to a to a lesser extent uh you know two two bucks in pound here for every buck at Salesforce Salesforce might end up being a value trap but let's just say uh there there's more research on Salesforce than than just its valuation. There's some cool things going on there. Uh but that said another company that actually has platform buildouts that is worth considering and this is what a lot of people are doing now is they're saying where is the actual platform integration where we can incorporate LLMs and the platform technology we have both UiPath UiPath would be number three to consider there why because they were originally the builders of uh RBA uh robotic path RP robotic path automation Make sure I got that right. I don't have any notes. This is all going off the top of my head right now. So, basically, how do we incorporate system processes that are repeated on a regular basis into companies? And how do we get inside of companies to where companies use us and rely on our platform on a regular basis and then pay us a licensing fee for what we've built? Now, is there a risk that somebody could just build their own platform like that and customize it? Absolutely. And that's why the stock fell to 10 bucks, which seems to be a floor. No, no guarantees on that. Seems to be a floor for it. Very, very cheap company on a forward PE basis. High cash flow, profitable. You like revenues are you turning up with enterprise customers, which is where you want to see it. The customers you're losing are the same kind of customers you're seeing at all the other software companies. The lower dollar value companies are bailing. very common. They either maybe make their own thing or whatever, but but larger enterprises especially very common healthcare and banking, they don't get into making their own software. They utilize existing platforms like a UiPath uh or a Salesforce for sales enterprises or Palunteer and they let those teams help them build what they need and then they pay to use it. Maybe that won't go on forever and there will definitely be some disruption, but watch earnings for those three companies. And you know, people always say, "But Kevin, you know, you you you can't only tell the course members all the secrets. You got to give us something as well." And it's true because that's why we make these videos and we kind of break this all down. This is what I'm paying attention to. Obviously, no guarantees. Now, as we do more fundamental analysis, which I'll be posting more this week for course members, my goal is to post four or five fundamental analysis analyses on new stocks uh this week for course members. You'll be able to see that in the stock tab and I'll send notifications out when those are done. Uh remember, you can join at meet.com. Use that uh vacation red coupon code. We think it's timely placed. Uh but uh what we're going to do is we're going to pick four more companies likely in the software space although part of me is also thinking about real estate uh and then either energy or utilities. Generally I'm not a big fan of utilities. So I'll probably go an energy pick, a real estate pick and two software picks. Those will probably be the four that I'm looking for this week. uh mostly because real estate got hit real estate stocks after the Donald Trump institutional investor ban which has a million exemptions and is totally worthless in terms of actually banning anything. So invitation homes American homes for rent like which one of those is better for example we'll do the same with energy not you know I got some things to say about a but you know other opportunities as well and then we'll get into some other software names. Uh, a lot of folks have been asking about Service Now. We've already got a deep analysis on Service Now, so we'll do some more analysis, but these are some of the things we'll be looking for. Uh, with that said, thanks so much for being here and we'll see you in the next video. Goodbye and good luck.