저자: PatrickDhan—주출연자중투자예측발언대상이아님;본영상은유가/오픈AI/F1등다수인터뷰구성 · 외국인
요약 보기
Memorial Day 주간 미국 휘발유 평균가 약 3.19달러로 2021년 이후 최저 수준, 전년 대비 약 44센트 하락. 허리케인 시즌과 관세 불확실성이 여름 유가 변수. 샘 올트먼의 OpenAI는 Johnny Ive 기기 스타트업 인수와 UAE 데이터센터 추진으로 하드웨어·인프라 확장 중이며, LLM 시장은 점차 상품화되어 제품 차별화가 중요해지는 추세. 모나코 GP, WNBA 시청률 상승 등 스포츠 소식도 포함.
다듬은 글
Hello and welcome to Ask Me for a Trend. I'm Josh Lipton. For the next half hour, we are breaking down the trends of today that will move stocks tomorrow. There is a lot to keep track of. So, we're focusing on what you need to know to get ahead of the curve. And here are some of the trends we're going to be diving into.
It's a mixed day on Wall Street. Stocks did tick up, shaking off some fears of rising rates, the worries about a ballooning US deficit, but the Dow and the S&P 500 ended down. The Nasdaq ended the day up. and start your engines. Americans hitting the road for the Memorial Day holiday weekend. The unofficial start to summer, but will prices at the pump be wallet friendly?
Going to take a look at where gas prices are and what to expect going forward. And OpenAI headlines have been front and center in recent weeks. We're exploring the twists and turns inside the organization that invented Chat GPT. It is leading the way for large language models and AI's function in business and society.
We're talking with the author of Empire of AI. Well, we're approaching Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start to the summer driving season. Naturally, gas prices top of mind for consumers as they face inflation pressures. For more now, we're bringing in Patrick Dhan, head of petroleum analysis at Gas Buddy.
Patrick, always great to see you on the show. So, listen, it's Memorial Day weekend, Patrick. That means millions of Americans are going to get ready to hit the highway. Let's start high level, Patrick. the national average. Where are we, Patrick, right now? And where do you see us headed kind of near intermediate term?
Yeah, Josh, there's a lot of headlines flying around about where prices are, where they've been. So, to set the context right, it's the lowest Memorial Day holiday weekend since 2021. Gas prices have come down from their peak of 2022. Every year, we've seen a decline since then. Where we stand today, the national average at this moment about 319 a gallon.
It's inching down slightly. Prices still up in the last few weeks though. So, a lot of Americans hearing these headlines, well, gas prices have gone up. Yes, they have a little bit. But compared to last year, we are over 44 cents a gallon lower than a year ago. And that's going to collectively save Americans over $170 million every day of this kickoff to summer.
Wow. And so, Patrick, here's my question. If you're around 319, you take out your crystal ball. Where do you think that's headed? Well, traditionally, uh, Memorial Day is actually the highest of summer holidays when it comes to gas prices, and that's because maintenance season has just started wrapping up.
The transition to summer gasoline is fresh over. As we progress through the summer, supply typically slowly builds up over time, and that typically puts downward pressure on gas prices through the summer. Now, there are some caveats, especially this year. Hurricane season, uh, Noah just today coming out with an above average forecast.
some of the nation's largest refiners down in Texas and Louisiana. We'll have to keep an eye on that. The other uncertainty really has to do with trade and tariffs. A lot of those are paused right now, but as goes the economy, as go gas prices, if there are any surprise developments or policy shifts, those could impact gas prices this summer as well.
So, we can talk about what's happening nationally, Patrick. I'm also always curious to get your take, your insight as to what h what is happening regionally. Where across the country, Patrick, right now, where do we see the highest prices? Where where where are some of the lowest? Well, you can see that map over my shoulder.
The West Coast almost always the winner when it comes to the highest gas prices. California is starting to see some relief. Refinery issues have really dogged the West Coast. If you're going to California, you're going to be setting a lot more of your paycheck aside. 487 a gallon. But the good news for the West Coast, we're starting to see resupplies flow in.
That'll cut cost. California will start to decline. The lowest prices in the Gulf Coast, low taxes and proximity to major refineries. Gas prices all under $3 a gallon through the Gulf Coast. In the Great Lakes, a new refinery problem just a few days ago is causing a bit of a spike here going into Memorial Day weekend.
Really the surprise. New England, the Northeast seeing prices 60 to 70 cents a gallon lower than last year. I'm always curious, Patrick. Let's say um as a guy who thinks so much about this, let's say you're taking a road trip, Patrick, you know, it's time to fill up the tank. H any tips and tricks, Patrick?
Do you just go, "Hey, listen, whatever the wherever I'm where I'm closest, do you shop around a little?" Any any tips and tricks from from Patrick Dhan on that? Well, I'm a bit of an analyst, so I'm a little bit of a nerd when it comes to filling my tank up for less. So, I always pull out an app, whether that's a a Gas Buddy app or Google Maps or even some of the sea store apps I pull out just to make sure that the gas prices are right.
But the map behind me, again, it's a little tricky. When you cross a state boundary, that's a danger zone for gas prices. There's a lot of these tricks. California and Arizona, that boundary on I 10, a dollar a gallon difference. Illinois and Missouri, 50 cent a gallon difference. A lot of these borders exist.
you cross into another state, everyone loves to take photos of welcome to whatever state. Gas prices may go up or down by 30 to 50 cents a gallon. Like I said, extreme instances of a dollar a gallon. So, no matter where you're going this summer, make sure you pack an app that can show you where gas prices are.
There's not really golden rule to how gas prices work. So, the one thing I would do, always shop around and then how you drive, Josh. We're all in a rush this summer, but use cruise control. Slow down out there just a little bit. That'll help you get five to 15% more miles on every tank. Great insight as always, Patrick.
Thank you so much, sir. Thanks, Josh. Well, stick around. Much more Ashford trend that's still to come. Well, OpenAI is eyeing global expansion, partnering with UAE's G42 to build an AI data center in Abu Dhabi. This is coming as the company also making a move to buy Johnny Ies AI device startup company making a push into hardware.
For more on the chat GPT makers strategic moves, we have investigative journalist Karen How, who began covering OpenAI back in 2019 and recently came out with a new book. It's called Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Olman's Open AAI. Karen, great to have you here on set. I don't think Karen, you could have picked a better week to come out with a new book on OpenAI.
The news flow has been constant. I want to get your take on some of that news, but first just broadly, you got this new book. Why did you write the book, Karen? The point and purpose, what was the message you were trying to get across to readers? Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think everyone, a lot of people in the public, their introduction into AI was really a chatgbt moment and there was sort of a lot of contextlessness around the discourse of AI where it sort of felt like this technology just landed from the sky and it wasn't really clear where it came from, who it came from, what it was going to do to society.
And because I've been covering the company since 2019 and AI since 2018, I really wanted to put some context behind this moment and really show that technology is not actually inevitable and that the way that it's being developed right now, we should actually have serious concerns about, but we have a role to shape the way AI will continue to be developed in the future.
And I want to get to some of those those concerns you outlined. But first, I do want to get your take because I'm I'm just curious the news flow this week and there's been a lot of it. We had, as we mentioned, OpenAI, they decided to buy one of Johnny Ives startups for a impressive price tag. Then this morning, they announced Stargate UAE.
You add it up, as someone who's thought a lot about Altman and the company, what is Altman trying to achieve here? When you see that news, what does it tell you about where the company is, where he wants to take it? Alman said recently in an interview that his strategy is to cover the field. He's trying to do as much as possible.
And with the Johnny IV thing, I mean, he's been a Steve Jobs fanboy for a really long time. He'd been talking with Johnny IV because he's the icon that worked with Steve Jobs. Um, and he'd been trying to close the deal. So, that's kind of the the culmination of those two intersecting forces. Alman really trying to put his tentacles in all of these different spaces and trying to really get closer to that job stream.
Um, but with the uh the UAE stuff, I mean, this really goes back to some of the things that I highlight in my book about the cost of the technology where there is so much computational resources, data center, supercomputers that need to be built to serve Silicon Valley's particular conception of what AI should be, which is very much a model of scale at all costs.
And that's why they are starting to move all around the world to build these huge pieces of infrastructure such as in the UAE. By the way, that's a very interesting take you had on Johnny Ives because the the take that's out there as well, he wants to move into hardware. So he of course he goes with Sir Johnny IV, Silicon Valley Titan, a legend, but also to your point maybe to get closer to the legend that is Steve Jobs as well.
That's interesting. Let me ask you this. Um when you think about um OpenI's role and kind of place in that broader LLM market, large language market, is is it still is he is Altman still in number one? He has the gold and everybody else is still trying to fight for number two or is the market evolving?
It's a great question because if you think about OpenAI's lead in terms of household name recognition, it's number one. You know, everyone knows chat GBT, but from a research capabilities perspective, I talk with application developers now who use these technologies all the time and they're trying to build their applications to be model vendor agnostic because they don't actually think any company has a lead anymore and they want to be able to plug into OpenAI one day, plug into Enthropic the next day, and plug into Google the third day.
And what does that mean Karen? Then ultimately for that market, it becomes all commoditized. it's going to be completely commoditized. But all of these companies are now moving towards a strategy where instead of differentiating themselves from the research and the capabilities, they're trying to differentiate themselves from products.
And that is again kind of leads us back to why he's trying to strike up this partnership with Johnny IV. He's really trying to move into even more um intuitive user interfaces that hook people into his company. And I have to ask you after researching this book, reporting this book, writing it all out, do you use chat GBT?
I don't use chat GBT, which is in that is interesting. Why, Karen? Why don't you use that? First of all, I investigate the company. So, I'm not going to willingly give a lot of my data to this company. But secondly, I really focus on how this particular um vision of AI development has a supply chain that contains a lot of environmental, social, and labor harms.
It's sort of What do you mean by that? The environmental, social, labor harms, Karen, spell that out. So, because they're trying to pursue models that are really, really large and have to train on an internet's worth of data and have to train on these huge supercomputers that are now hundreds of football fields in size.
There are huge energy um draws that these data centers use. They have to use a lot of water. They are now being powered by a lot of fossil fuel resources. Um, and ultimately many of these technologies are labor automating technologies. OpenAI's definition of artificial general intelligence is highly autonomous systems that outperform humans in most economically valuable work.
And so they're trying to create something that will erode away job opportunities for people. Given those concerns then Karen is how do you address some of that? Is the smart way to address it? Is it regulators, policy makers, lawmakers? I think it's all of that. And I like to draw an analogy to the fashion industry, which also for a very long time had huge environmental, social, and labor harms in their supply chain.
And not only was it top-down regulation, legislation, international human rights organizations drawing a limelight to this issue, but also consumers choosing to actually change their behaviors, not buy clothes from um brands that might not care about these things and thereby creating entire markets for ethical and sustainable fashion.
Final question, as you were reporting this out, did did open AAI did they cooperate with you, Karen, on this? Did they participate in this project? They did not. They did not. Did they give a reason why not? They We've had a long history. I was the first journalist to ever profile the company. They did not like the profile because I drew my own conclusions.
And since then, it's they haven't really given access, but I've continued to report and I've continued to talk to insiders and insiders continued to talk to me because they said that my profile was actually really accurate. Well, listen Karen, congrats on the book. We appreciate your time today. That was great.
Thank you so much for having me. Stick around. Much more Ask for Trends still to come. Well, what do scuba divers, million-dollar yachts, and a floating Ritz Carlton hotel have in common? They're all part of Formula 1's most extravagant and secretive weekend. And joining me now for more is Joe Pompiano, host of the Yahoo Finance Sports Report.
Joe, always great to see you. So, let's start there with Formula 1's most iconic race, that is the Monaco Grand Prix. You write about that in your Substack, Joe, for the uninitiated. explain why it is so iconic, Joe. Walk us through it. Yeah, the Formula 1 uh Monaco Grand Prix is the most iconic race on the Formula 1 calendar each year, and it really has to do with the history and the prestige of the event.
But it's also the most expensive and luxurious event on the calendar. If you think about where it takes place, I mean, Monaco is two square miles large. It's about the size of New York City Central Park, actually even smaller. So, it's the second smallest country in the world. They turn the streets into a racetrack for the weekend.
The cars are big, heavy, and fast. So, the race is really exciting and interesting, especially during qualifying, but also there's just so much money and entertainment in the area. I mean, if you think about the yachts, I talked about it in the Substack, but there's $200 million super yachts there paying $100 to $150,000 just in docking fees, not including fuel, maintenance, food and beverage, crew, etc.
You have the Ritz Carlton Floating Hotel, which is a new cruise ship that they launched. the Mercedes Formula One team actually rented out the entire cruise ship last year. And this is worth about $und00 million in income to the city or the state of Monaco uh in in an annual expense report. And it's one of those events that just holds its spot on the calendar.
It's competing with the Indianapolis 500 obviously in the United States this weekend. Both events are massive for their individual sports, but Monaco sort of seems to be an elevated event compared to what we'll see with 350,000 or 400,000 people in Indianapolis. And one fact I learned, Joe, from your Substack, which I thought was really interesting.
Roughly half of all Formula 1 drivers now call Monaco home. Why is that? Yeah. And only one of those drivers was actually born there, and that's Charles. But all the others moved there after becoming Formula One drivers primarily for a few benefits. Number one is privacy because one-third of all the citizens living in Monaco are millionaires.
You also need written permission from the government to do professional photography, so there's less paparazzi. The weather's obviously incredible. You're really close to the Nice airport. It's only a 7-minute helicopter ride or about a 20-minute drive. So, that's great for them because they travel a lot.
But most importantly, it's all about taxes. Monaco doesn't have any income tax. They don't have any property tax, no local taxes, no capital gains tax, no estate taxes. It's essentially tax-free. They fund the country through casino taxes and all the tourism that comes through there every year. So, a lot of these drivers will move there to save money on taxes, but also because it's so nice and easy to get everywhere else logistically.
Joe, switching gears on X, I saw you post about how the recent WNBA Fever Sky game average more viewers than a Yankees Mets game. Now, that's an interesting data point. Walk me through that and what you make of it. Yeah, the one caveat here is that the WNBA game was on ABC versus ESPN for the baseball game, but also that baseball game was the best ratings for Sunday Night Baseball in several years.
So, it wasn't just some throwaway game. Juan Sto was returning to Yankee Stadium for the first time since switching teams. But really, what we're seeing here is that the WNBA continues to be on the rise. Most of this is of course driven by Caitlyn Clark. It was her game that drove that big number. But a lot of the other games are seeing big viewership numbers, too.
Now, some of these games are averaging over a million viewers, which would have been non-existent a few years ago. So, this is one of the things that the WNBA is keying into and tapping into this upcoming season, obviously with Caitlyn Clark, but they're trying to get some of their other franchises in there, too.
If you think about the Las Vegas Aces, the Liberty in New York, and now you have a new franchise in Golden State with the Valkyries, which is a fascinating case study because Golden State, uh, the NBA team, the same ownership group, paid $50 million for that expansion team. team. And Josh, you might say, why would you pay $50 million for an expansion team in a league that lost $40 million last year?
But what they're really doing is they're leveraging the infrastructure that turned the Warriors into the NBA's most expensive franchise to do the exact same thing in the WNBA. And the numbers are there. I mean, they've sold sponsorships to the same partners that they're doing on the NBA side. They set a Gate record uh with just under $3 million in GATE for the first game that they had there, and it was completely sold out.
So, it should be a big year for the WNBA's newest expansion team, too. Joe, always great to see and to have you on the show. Thank you, my friend. And be sure to scan the QR code below so you can stay up to date with the latest episodes of the Yahoo Finance Sports Report that drops every Thursday at 5:00 p.
p.m. Eastern. Well, let's take a look now at what's trending after hours. We're diving into shares of Deckers Outdoors Raw Stores and into it. First up, shares of Deckers Outdoors sinking despite reporting net sales for the fourth quarter that beat the average analyst estimate. The company announcing that given the macroeconomic uncertainty related to evolving global trade policies, Deckers will not be providing fullyear guidance for fiscal year 2026 at this time.
Another name saken after withdrawing fullyear outlook that would be Ross Stores. The earnings release CEO Jim Conroy said, "We are only providing outlook for the second quarter at this time and are withdrawing our previously provided annual sales and earnings guidance." company did top expectations for first quarter but earnings per share guidance for Q2 did come in well below estimates and lastly into it shares they are jumping in extended trading after the tax preparation software company reported third quarter results that did beat expectations on the top and bottom lines into it also reported stronger than expected guidance for the fourth quarter and raised its fullear revenue forecast that is a wrap on the disaster trend be sure to come back tomorrow at 4:30 p.m.
Eastern for all of the latest market moving stories affecting your wall. Have a great night.
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