저자: RyanKelly · 외국인
요약 보기
AI·데이터센터 수익화 단계 진입을 전제로 주식에 건설적. 소프트웨어주(CRM, MSFT, SAP) 반등 관심. 엔비디아·TSMC·마이크론은 여전히 유망, 마이크론은 펀더멘털 대비 저평가로 봄. 닷컴버블과 다르다고 주장하나 시장이 급등해 단기 조정 가능성 언급. 관세·이란 전쟁이 연말까지 지속되면 시장이 현재보다 낮을 수 있다고 우려. 인플레이션·일자리 감소 우려도 제기.
다듬은 글
Welcome back to Opening Bell. We've had 9 days of gains for the S&P 500, 9 weeks of gains, and we've been hitting some records. Today, looking slightly lower. Ryan Kelly, Chief Investment Officer of Legato Financial, is with me now. As you take a look, you said you're constructive on equities, and the earnings growth has been part of the story that you really like.
Tell me about that, how you're feeling about the second half of this year. Yeah, well, absolutely. Uh, earnings, uh, and being able to post positive cash flows improvements, um, on the AI and data center trade is is still going to be what drives stock, I think, over the rest of the year. Uh, the really interesting thing is is we just keep hitting these different segments, these new legs of the AI trade.
Obviously, you had Dell last week, and then HP, um, uh, earlier this week with some really nice run-ups. Uh, so we're kind of on that server leg now. It's going to be really interesting to see what the next, uh, leg of that is. I'm hoping at some point we start to see some monetization on actual output from, uh, data centers, rather than just the inputs going into them.
Yeah, you did mention that. You said for at first phase of AI was about building infrastructure, chips, servers, power, cooling, data set. And the next phase is about monetization. So, which kind of companies do you think, when you look at the AI, meaningful revenue going forward, earnings growth going forward?
Is it hard to say at this point, or do you have a vision how it works? I really think it is hard to say. Uh, we're taking a really close look at a lot of software companies. I think the software companies kind of had an early run, um, several months ago, and in in many ways they've completely fallen off.
Um, some of them have actually absolutely crashed, to Salesforce, for instance. So, we got a little bit of a return, um, back in some of those names over the past, uh, week or so, but I think the software companies are probably the best ones that are, uh, positioned to be able to actually make money off of what AI is producing.
That's interesting. So, as you see the the bounce back after the SAS apocalypse, um you you're looking at some of those names. Are there some names that you highlight that could be opportunities? Well, SAP was a holding of ours uh several months ago. It's another one that has just absolutely fallen off.
Uh we'd really like to see if if they can kind of find a way to take advantage of uh of AI rather than get replaced by AI. Uh as I mentioned, we're looking at Salesforce. But, even Microsoft's uh kind of historical core offerings uh again, are they going to be replaced by what we're doing with AI or are they going to work alongside of AI?
Yeah, we've got news on Microsoft, too, and more about agentic AI. Um you said you're still bullish on select AI names including Nvidia, Taiwan Semi, and Micron. Why is that? Well, uh I think that uh we have to look at at individual companies. At at some point here, there's going to be some stratification.
You're going to have some companies that continue to do very well, and you're going to have some that simply aren't going to execute. Uh Taiwan Semiconductor is an absolute essential part of the supply chain. They're making the chips that uh Nvidia and Broadcom uh are producing that are powering this whole revolution.
So, I think they're unavoidable. Uh Micron uh despite the incredible run, I still think it's pretty cheap from the kind of fundamental historical perspective. You said this is not the dot-com bubble. That's right. Well, and as I said, I think the big difference is the earnings uh and the fact that all these companies are being so successful in and posting their earnings improvements.
But, again, uh when are we going to see someone come out and say we're actually making money on AI without being an input uh to a giant data center? Is there a software company? Is there even a fiscal company that's going to come out with some sort of consumer product uh or an industrial product that AI has made better, more efficient, uh and really makes a difference in the economy.
You talked about expansion expanding out of AI, and you said Nucor Steel, Rolls-Royce, and I those are some strong stories outside of tech that can benefit from AI. Explain that some of these three names. Yeah, so for instance, Nucor Steel is a company that I think is going to benefit from tariffs, which we just had some news on this morning.
Low-cost US steel producer. They use electric arc furnaces, so they need a lot less kind of fossil fuel input, and they can produce steel with recycled materials a lot cheaper than their competitors. And then they also have a turnkey data center really solution where they're they're offering packages that can be used to build these gigantic data centers.
So, both an AI story and an outside of AI story. What about FOMO and investor enthusiasm? Where does that fit into the story? Well, I think we're up about 20% from from March 30th. The the market has simply gone straight up. So, we see a lot of people making very impressive returns, and a lot of people that maybe haven't done the research, but just had a good guess on on something that they thought might be connected to AI.
So, I think there's just a tremendous amount of enthusiasm right now. Whenever you see a market that's this hot, I think that you can have just a single earnings miss or a single headline in the world that kind of takes that away suddenly. So, I could definitely see us having a pullback from that. Broadening out beyond technology, some of your thoughts.
Yeah, so Rolls-Royce, as you mentioned, is is one I think that is going to be taking advantage of kind of the defense necessary defense build-up that you're going to be having in Europe. But again, they they also have a story with what they're doing with small modular reactors. So, there's a very good energy story there when you're talking about increased energy prices, oil issues.
It also comes back to to AI in a certain degree. Mentioned any which is an Italian oil company. Their piping in the majority of their oil directly from the north of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan and they're doing a lot of things in in Africa with new projects. So, they're kind of outside of the hot spots I guess I would say for energy a little bit more insulated from from what's going on in Venezuela and Iran.
I think about market breadth in the S&P 500. You have the mag seven and the 493. What are you thinking about the 493 other names? It's it's really tough and again that that very sharp earnings growth in the AI space makes it really hard to ignore those stocks and you know, something like Nvidia that's nearly 8% of the S&P.
It's it's very difficult in a lot of ways to justify over waiting a name that's already that large of a part of a portfolio. So, you know, there's some areas that we're able to say that we don't really like. We're we're kind of not that much into health care. Not really messing with real estate. So, we still like utilities.
We still like energy. Um but we're we're being very selective in that space and trying to find some really good executing companies. You mentioned some of the tariffs. In fact, the US administration has proposed possibly 10% tariffs or maybe more on imports from 60 countries. That was something for this morning.
It's sort of reminiscent of 2025. That's one of part of the story. Inflation and jobs is the other what the Fed may or may not do. Some of your thoughts on those news headlines. Yeah, so I think the Fed is going to be a very fascinating story. I I think Trump made it very clear that he wanted rates to come down and he got his guy put in there.
The the seems to be betting against that, so I think that's going to be absolutely very interesting to see what happens there. Um as far as inflation, um you know, we saw what happened in 2022, there was really nowhere to hide. Stocks and bonds both performed poorly. Um we're certainly not back to that point, uh but energy is so uh pervasive and not not just energy, but all of the other chemicals kind of coming out of the ground.
If If the situation in Iran continues, we could we could see some additional inflation. The concern was the OECD warning of a global slowdown and that it GDP could slip to 1.8% due to the Iran war. It revised its inflation outlook actually, right, revised that higher. Um you know, if the Iran war continues, are you worried about the market?
You think the S&P's higher at the end of the year sort of despite what's going on? Final thoughts. I if the Iran war is still going on at the end of the end of the year, I'm going to be very worried and I think that at some point, um those you know, the assumption has been, uh I think at least the message has been anyway that this is a shorter-term issue.
Uh I don't see a really quick end in sight, but if we're still uh actively involved at the end of the year, I could see the market being lower than it is now, for sure. I'm also concerned about, you know, if we do start seeing some additional AI gains, are we going to have layoffs? I mean, you've already seen Meta, seen JP Morgan come out and say they're not going to do as many hirings uh and focus more on AI.
So, you start getting higher inflation and lost jobs, it's very worrisome. Brian Kelly, thank you so much of Legato Financial. Thank you so much. It's great to see you. Really appreciate it.
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