저자: Kevin · 외국인
요약 보기
연준 회의 전 고용지표가 핵심이며, 9월 금리인하 가능성이 높으나 대규모 인하는 고용 악화 시에만 가능하다고 봄. 현재 시장은 1~2회 인하 정도로 반영 중. 발언자는 AI로 인한 구조적 실업 장기화 위험(약 30% 가능성)을 경고하며 포지셔닝을 bull/bear 척도 약 3.9로 보수적으로 둠. 팔란티어 보유 및 AMD·테슬라 차트 기반 강세 언급 있음.
다듬은 글
Here's everything you need to know before the Fed's decision tomorrow. This week is all going to be about data and the Fed setting us up to react appropriately to the data that we're going to get this Friday and then of course four weeks from now. And that has to do with the jobs report because my expectation along with Nick theos t going to cut, but they're going to set up their signal for a September rate cut.
Now, tomorrow we will be covering the Federal Reserve meeting. The meeting actually starts today and it ends tomorrow and we'll have the rate cut decision at 11:00 a.m. The market is only pricing in a 3.1 percentage point that we are going to get a rate cut tomorrow. Now, I don't think the market is going to be disappointed that we don't get a rate cut tomorrow.
In fact, the bond market is already falling with a 6.2 uh point drop on the 10-year today despite the fact that we're not really expecting a rate cut tomorrow. Part of that is probably because, well, we're setting up for that September rate cut. Now, the question is going to be, what is JPAL going to tell us tomorrow about rate cuts?
Are we going to get a one and done or is this going to be the start of a series of cuts? Well, that's what we're looking to set up the conditions for tomorrow. And what he's likely to tell us is that it's all going to come down to the next jobs reports. Hey, if we have jobs reports that have been strong as they have been in the last few months where our average job gains are plus or minus 150,000, then maybe we need an adjustment in September, maybe one more in December and that's it.
So, in other words, complete alignment with the market that we get about, you know, one to two rate cuts this year and that's it. We just wait and see and we enjoy the soft landing that we're so blessed to have so far in this economy. Now, the worst case scenario obviously is something that the market just is not discounting for at all right now, which we're okay with because, you know, stocks we've been pitching in the alpha report, for example, like AMD, uh, keep absolutely breaking through every single one of our lines and riding support to all-time new highs.
Make sure you're part of the Alpha Report. If you haven't yet signed up, go to meet.com, use that coupon code before it expires on Friday, and the price goes up. It's the end of the month, so the price is going up. That's it. Uh JPAL is going to set us up to say, "Hey, you know, if for whatever reason the jobs market does start rolling over, then we'd be prepared for maybe even a larger cut in September, which could be a 50 basis point cut because remember, the Fed does not meet in August.
So you've got a whole month of no Fed ahead of us. So, in other words, whatever JPAL sets up tomorrow, we've got to just hold our breath with for the next 6 weeks without any meeting from the Fed in August. Sure, we might get commentary from the Fed, but no actual Fed meetings until that September 17th meeting.
So, usually what JPAL likes to do is give everybody an expectation. Hey, if for some reason there's a weakening in what we get in the underlying data, obviously we might go with a double cut or a larger series of rate cuts. Now, here's what to know. The data that we got this morning was broadly in line with expectations.
Really no stress in the Jolts report coming in at 7.437 million versus the 75 expected. No big deal there at all. It's actually consistent with a strong stable economy. There's just no bad data there. That's very good. Job openings rate 4.4% slightly lower than the previous 46. No big deterioration.
Quits rate 2% versus 21 prior. Little smaller number there on quits. Usually signals a little bit of sort of nervousness about uh do I really want to transition a job in this job market? No is the answer. Uh but this is not a surprise. Layoff level came in a little bit higher than expected, but nothing super scary on the Jolts report.
and the consumer confidence survey came in broadly in line with expectations. Uh you could even call it a marginal beat. Uh when you look at some of the components, you get some things like, hey, it feels like the job market is the weakest since we've seen since March of 20 21, which is odd because I always thought of the jobs market as being like, you know, all of a sudden really strong in 2021.
So I have a hard time reconciling this right here. uh but uh they said that job availability weakened for the seventh consecutive month reaching the lowest level since March of 2021. And that's job availability, so potentially fewer hiring. You know, maybe we didn't get that hiring boom until really later in 2021.
Maybe as some of that PPP money started showing up, which everybody knows in the business world showed up pretty freaking late. But anyway, uh expectations still for the sixth month in a row below the recessionary threshold. uh which is not good uh because once you fall below that it's a recessionary signal.
But we've been sitting below that for a while and really you know we sat below the recessionary signal for like 3 or 4 years uh when everybody was expecting a double dip recession after the 2008 financial crisis and it didn't end up meaning we went into another recession until frankly co. So I don't know that this is really meaningful.
We did see some intentions for spending on services decline. Mixed big ticket services expend, you know, and and like cars and homes and other big ticket items like appliances and intentions for that sort of spending declining a bit. It's possible this is just part of the normal sort of seasonal slowdown where people start saving as we go into the holidays.
It's also possible that people just don't save at all and we end up using more BNPL. But then again, there's literally no central database that tells us how much total BNPL data is out there. So, you know, good luck, I guess. Uh but uh but anyway, I mean, broadly, economic data is strong right now. We will get an ADP jobs report uh along with uh Q2 GDP data, which uh is your, you know, second read on this Q2 GDP data.
I don't see that as a catalyst at all. I see ADP not really as a catalyst at all either given it's so volatile. 75,000 is the expectation this time compared to the negative 33 prior. We'll get challenger job cuts on Thursday morning. Not really a catalyst. PCE is not really a catalyst. The components of PCE are already known and people extract them from CPI and PPI and figure what PCE is going to be.
Core PC expected to be.3 big deal. The bigger thing is non-farm payrolls. That's Friday 107,000. And the issue here really comes down to what we actually think the final jobs read will be. So this is where we generally don't like breaking the 100,000 jobs number. If we come in under a 100,000 jobs, B, .
If we come in under a 100,000 jobs, people are going to start getting a little bit more nervous about discounting for a recession. Now, the reason for that is because when we fall under a 100,000 jobs in the actual jobs report, the market starts assuming, oh my gosh, well, we need to assume we're going to lose 100,000 jobs for adjustments because remember how they always come in with like high jobs reports and then they revise them down later.
Well, the market knows that. Okay, we all know that the initial number is fugazi and so we kind of like adjust our expectations for that. We're like, "All right, if it comes in at 99, that really means we're negative 1. If it comes in at 144, like it was last time, we're really at positive 44. Hey, the party's still going." But remember, the problem with last uh month's jobs report was that we only generated about 15,000 jobs outside of healthcare and outside of government.
So what happens if we get a real slowdown in government and healthcare? We've got no legs left to stand on in sort of the chair of the labor market. Now people ask me always ask me Kevin like you know what's what's your bull bear scale or whatever you know like where where's your positioning in case you're not familiar with it.
I'll give you a quick breakdown of it in case you're not familiar with it. Uh when I'm on one it means sell everything. I'm like rarely at one. uh when you're at 10 it's get as much margin as you can go all in and then somewhere in between is you know well somewhere in between so right now I I feel I we're sort of at like a 39 and the reason I do that is because I see valuations high sell everything but I see it as like a cautious place where you're like hey ride the wave you know I've got Palanteer stock you know like ride the Palanteer wave stock I've had that for a very long time I've got a bunch of old accounts and and volunteers stock in there.
It's done very well, but it's like ride the wave, but set that trailing stop, right? Uh so that way if if you know the tides change, hey, you take your attendees and and you pay off other debts or you preserve yourself in the event of a job loss or whatever, right? uh mostly because the reason I sit sort of below even a five because I I understand momentum in markets has been very enthusiastic but I think we face a small chance of a very very big poopy dupy.
That's not to be bearish. It's just saying that you know I think we face maybe a 30% chance of something that's going to be just devastating to the economy for a decade. Uh so I kind of wrote this out this morning in the live stream a little bit. I I said that uh it's it's not that we face a a you know small risk.
It's that we face a small chance of a big risk, right? A big risk happening. Uh and the big risk is basically a 2 to 3xing of the uh the unemployment rate. And so now all of a sudden the Fed starts printing the money printer. You know, people are like, "Oh, the Fed's going to cut rates." Oh, wow. That doesn't do anything because historically it never does anything.
Historically, it's running the money printer that bails out the markets. But what if you start you cut rates to zero and you start running the money printer and it's not working and then you're in a hole for a decade because the unemployment rate is just permanently higher. And and the reason I think the unemployment rate will be permanently higher is because of AI, right?
Like poor people are getting screwed in the BNPL cycle. The BNPL cycle is really interesting because it's new this cycle, right? We didn't have BNPL in prior cycles. So, we don't know how bad those defaults could hurt consumers, especially like they're literally now wanting to add uh this to FICO scores potentially right before poop hits the fan.
It's like worst time to add it to FICO scores. It's like, yeah, right before a potential, you know, recession. If we have a recession, you know, add add BNPL to FICO scores, then people default and they're screwed for seven years, right? AI is obviously new this cycle. And then sort of the mainstream it's supposed to say mainstream crypto this cycle right so crypto treasuries right so corporate crypto treasuries that's more new this cycle compared to like a 2008 not considering co although even in co we didn't have that many uh crypto treasuries so we have some real new elements here I'd say the big one is AI and I'll just give you a quick bottom line but to me uh you know with AI and we've done this a lot at house hack with AI we find that fewer people with AI get way more done than many people delegated, communicating with them, training them, all this crap.
We get much more done with fewer people in AI than we do with many people in no AI, you know, before the AI days. This is different obviously from House Hacks AI SAS that we're developing. I'm talking, you know, hopefully we can launch that in Q4. I'm more talking about like you know just using chat bots to help you draft documents or whatever right or or you know just sort of daily office style work.
So, uh, the question that people then have is, okay, well, if money, and this is what's so unique about the cycle. If money from labor goes into AI, that's great, right? Because like if you take someone's salary and put it into buying chips, cool, you're still buying something and it creates a velocity of money.
But the question is, what happens if the money goes from somebody's salary into an investment? And this all comes down to the velocity of money. You see, so we gave this example here. We said, imagine somebody has $150,000 salary. Well, once you factor in workers comp, benefits, time off, etc., they cost about $200,000 to a company.
That's expensive. If they work 240 days per year, which is a typical work year, that means they need to generate an ROI of $833 per workday to justify their existence. If a company can generate this with AI for $200 a month, uh, you know, uh, then then why not just use an AI bot, right? So like you have to exceed your cost per day to be valuable to a company.
Now, an AI is really, you know, challenging this equation. So like if a company generates $1,000 per day, great. You get a stable job, you get benefits, you win, the company wins, everybody wins. If the company's only generating a couple hundred and you're costing $833 per day, then the ROI is negative, right?
And so this is when people just like they lay off employees over time or or they get attritioned away. So the difference though between a person receiving a salary is when a person receives a salary they spend money. You know they buy food, they buy clothing, they consume, they buy entertainment, they buy stuff for their house, you know, whatever.
That creates about a four to five times velocity of money cycle. Think about the velocity of money as every time you spend money, you know, I go buy this this very happy coffee mug here. Okay, I spent 20 bucks on this coffee mug. The person who sold it to me gets some money. The manufacturer gets some money.
Those people pay uh their children. Their children go spend money on toys at Toys R Us or whatever, right? That's your consumer, your consumption, four to 5x velocity of money. That's why the government incentivizes as much as possible you to go spend money. All right. Now when a company or a person saves money on a on on another human being now that other human being isn't spending that four to 5x on the velocity of money.
Now instead the company is maybe investing into stocks or real estate at only a 1.8 to 2x multiple. There's still a multiple of their investment but it's a lot lower than the consumption uh form of spend. Keep in mind 70% of our economy is consumption. Well, then you you land in a situation where you have a very very big risk that could take, you know, a decade to resolve with high unemployment because of these these structural changes.
We just don't know how they'll play out. And I think the market thinks basically a big fat zero about all of that right now. That's why I sit, you know, on that lower end. Uh it's not because I'm not like I don't want people to make money. I love it. I mean, I I'm making money off Palanteer stock, too.
You know, like the some of these things that we're calling out in the alpha report are absolutely killing it, too. I mean, AMD, we've been following for a while. We called the top on Open Door. You know, we we we call these lines on Tesla all the freaking time. Even this morning, like I don't feel like Tesla had a good run yesterday.
It's probably going to circle around 318 today. Wow, it goes straight to 318 and bounces off the line. Like, this is just these are just consistent patterns at this point. Uh but point being uh why I sit where I do on sort of this bare bull scale uh is is simply this larger concern of does the market care about any of this and right now the answer is no.
Uh and so hopefully these next jobs reports which the Fed is setting up are fine and we don't have anything under 100,000. There's no red flag that the Fed needs to cut rapidly and none of it is really a a big deal. That's that's a goal. uh and and a hope that way everybody can just keep making money and no problem.
Uh but you know, watch those layoffs. Uh it doesn't have to happen rapidly overnight, but the the scale has been tilted in favor of fewer employees. I mean, look at just the what the Wall Street Journal is saying now. You go to the Wall Street Journal, uh where was it? Right here. Look at this. CEOs are now talking openly about AI's immense capabilities likely leading to deep job cuts.
Yes. Like again, we see this at House Hack as well. Uh and it's so great because it means House hack makes more money. House hack can invest in more homes, but it's just bad for the people who don't have salaries who previously did have salaries because now they have to go compete for a salary somewhere else.
Well, what if they can't get as high of a salary somewhere else? You know, what if now they have to take a salary cut? Well, it's bad. And this is why it's so important to insulate yourself. Now, look at this. Amazon and JP Morgan said in recent weeks that they expected their workforces to shrink considerably.
Yeah, I mean, we we already know that. In fact, there was a um I thought this was interesting. There was Oh, where was it? Uh there was a video clip of Here it is. HVAC technician explains how AI is even coming for his job. Let's take a listen to this really quick and just see how we can loop this into what we're yapping about here.
So, you know me, I love yapping. You should see me yapping the alpha reports in the mornings. It's some of the best yapping there is. Make sure to get in before the coupon expires on Friday. We are raising the price a big chunk uh because it's the end of the month and it's Fed week. So, uh, yeah. Meet Kevin.com.
. AI isn't coming for my job. I'm an HVAC technician. No, it is. It is. Nah. You're all screwed. You better get rich quick because I literally was working on a unit. I had not a damn clue. It better It was better off speaking Chinese to me. I had no idea what was going on with it. Zero zip. I couldn't understand it.
See these? I took a picture, took a video, explained what was happening. Uh, you know, I gave the symptom within 35 seconds. It told me exactly what was wrong with the unit and how to fix it. AI is coming for your job, buddy. Yes. This is actually really interesting because I remember, you know, replacing back in the day.
Uh, so I would repair uh appliances that would break at either rental properties or or at home. Uh, and I actually really enjoyed it. So, I remember taking apart a washing machine and I'm like, "All right, why is this happening? It's sudsing up. It's overflowing. What's going on?" And you'd spend hours trying to diagnose like, "What's going on here?" And uh, I remember I felt so satisfied because I'm like, "Okay, I think uh, one of my I can't remember exactly what it was.
It was like a pressure switch or something. I think this chip is the problem." And it's, you know, it's like a $3 chip, but now you have to order it and you have to wait for it to show up. And you better be right. Otherwise, you're out without that laundry machine for even longer. Replace the switch.
Perfect. Freaking washing machine crank for another 10 years, baby. Bought that washing machine in 2011, got rid of it in 2021, and that was only a one-year-old washing machine at the time. So, it lasted us 11 years before it like fully pooped out. But that little $3 chip got me another 10 years in the product.
But the point is, none of that really has to do with what this person just said with AI. The point is, I think of the labor and the time that went into that machine is probably worth about, you know, 4 hours of labor. Okay? 4 hours of labor as an HVAC tech, you're probably the company's probably billing out like 400 bucks, honestly.
So if AI can cut that that labor time in half, it means every HVAC technician can do twice as many jobs, which means you potentially need fewer HVAC technicians looking and going, well, I think this is what's wrong. You know, so it's kind of impressive. So, uh, like I don't think you necessarily need to have the Meta Ray-B bands to do that.
Uh, I'll let you know what I think of them, by the way. Uh, I I bought them because for well, I'm going to use them for for when I fly because I think it's going to be really cool for landing and takeoff and stuff. Uh, the setup experience was absolutely horrible. Uh, big fail for Meta. But honestly, that always gets me excited because when a big company like Meta has a horrible setup process, it just makes me go like, really?
This is a trillion dollar business and they can't even like make a setup process for a new device simple and and intuitive for people. This is pathetic. Um, who knows, maybe I got a defective unit or or case or whatever. But, you know, that seems like a problem as well. But anyway, um, is interesting.
Something to think about. So, uh, you know, this this is coming. Uh, a lot of AC techs don't know how to properly diagnose a problem. Well, I mean, think about just the amount of different issues that you could have with either appliances or, uh, you know, mini splits or, you know, condensers or furnaces or whatever.
You know, I remember I've replaced the um, you know, I mean, these aren't a big deal. The little uh, 12vt um, what are they called? just the little 12volt transformer, the 24volt transformers uh for the furnace units and you got to wire it all up and replace them because they burn out. Pain in the butt.
But you know, if AI can help you diagnose a problem like that quicker, you don't have to go sit there with your voltage meter and try to figure it all out without shorting something and causing more problems. All right, so it's great. uh it's it's a it's a wonderful revolution and it will lead to a reduction in the number of hours of work that are available for people and ultimately it'll lead to longerterm unemployment.
So I do think that's a that's a potential decade to two decade problem that we face of longerterm unemployment because you kind of when you go through these innovation cycles, you go through a cycle. So I'll show you really quickly what I mean by that. uh you go through a period like this, the innovation comes out, the innovation causes the damage.
Let this be the line of jobs and then it takes a very long time for you to get that ups slope of net more jobs. Like in the long term, we will have more jobs from AI innovation, but this could be our future for the next, you know, 10 years. And uh it's unclear that markets are really pricing this in.
You know, markets right now are pricing in post tariff euphoria and momentum. Uh and it'll be really interesting to see how much longer the party can continue. But uh you know, in the short term, the Federal Reserve does usually lead to some softening in stock prices because people get nervous for the data.
Uh it's like, oh, is this going to be the week the data finally turns? Probably not based on unemployment claims, but obviously we'll be watching and we'll be covering .
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