Wall Street Is Thriving on Chaos — Will It Last?

So how do you find a way to move forward?

“Being hopeful, acknowledges and embraces that things are difficult and asks, where can we”

go from here? Why our future depends on our ability to hope, that's this week on explaining it to me. Two episodes wherever you get your podcasts. What should we make of the Iran War ceasefire announcement and where do things go from here?

If anything has surprised me over the last 24 hours, it's that Iran agreed to a ceasefire, and particularly that Iran agreed to a ceasefire after that outrageous message that President Trump put out. I'm Jake Sullivan, and I'm John Finer, and we're the hosts of the long game. It's a weekly national security podcast.

This week we break down the latest news on Iran and share our net assessment of where things stand for the US. The episodes out now search for and follow the long game wherever you get your podcasts. Who gets to be in charge of technology? If you believe that crypto or AI or any other technology is going to fundamentally change

the way that we live our lives, who gets to be in charge turns out to matter a lot. And this week on the Vergecast, we're talking about stories about Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and even how the European government changed the way that your web browser looks every day. All that on the Vergecasts wherever you get podcasts.

Today's number five.

“That's how many cities profit markets will be visiting this spring when we go on tour.”

Yes, we are finally going live, starting May 27th.

We will be heading to San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Miami, and we will be ending in New York. We are so excited about this. If you want to come watch the show, go get your tickets starting today at 11 AM Eastern at proftumarchits.com, I'll see you in person. Welcome to Proftumarchits, I'm Adelson, it is April 16th.

Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The S&P 500 hit a fresh record high on hopes for peace talks to the Middle East. The US and Iran may extend the ceasefire another two weeks for more negotiation time. The Nasdaq also climbed while the Dow fell, for it proved was roughly flat on the day, hovering around $95 per barrel, and finally, live nation shares dropped six percent

after a jury found that live nation and take it master held a monopoly in the events industry. OK, what else is happening? America's biggest banks just had a strong quarter, and largely because of the war. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley all reported higher than expected earnings for the first quarter of 2016, and that was fueled

largely by an increase in trading volumes due to the volatility related to Iran.

Equities trading revenue alone jumped nearly 27 percent on average across the six firms.

Still, the US financial sector is up less than 3 percent over the past week. In the earnings calls several of the CEO's struck a notably cautious tone as geopolitical uncertainty lingers. Jamie Diamond warned of quote, "was energy price volatility trade uncertainty, large global fiscal deficits, and elevated asset prices, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon also pointed out

quote, "hightened uncertainty in parts of private credit and the conflict in the Middle East," and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser warned that quote, "one great first quarter does not a full year make." So here to break down Wall Street's latest earnings from these big banks, we're speaking with Sol Martinez, head of US financials research at HSBC, Sol, good to see you some solid

“earnings from the big banks this week, but I think the thing that really jumps out to”

me, and I think to investors too, is great quarter for trading, and it seems like that was largely a result of this volatility related to the war. What do you make of this first quarter for the big banks?" It was a good quarter, as you mentioned, and you've had very strong earnings for share growth.

The median EPS growth for the seven banks and investment banks that I cover was 23 percent.

Third line operating trends were good, but as you mentioned, key takeaway was that you

had exceptional results in capital markets businesses. And if you think about capital markets business, it is good to break them down into two broad buckets. There's the investment banking side where firms work with the clients or corporates and

That was very strong, also, 29 percent year on year growth.

You mentioned volatility, because it is interesting, because historically high volatility has not been good for investment banking, but it has been good for sales and trading. But right now we're hitting on all cylinders where trading results are really strong and benefiting from volatility, but it's not underlining dealmaking.

“I think a lot of forperits have now come to the conclusion that volatility may be a feature”

of the system as opposed to a bug and have to continue investing and raising capital and doing deals. Now on the trading side that you mentioned, yes, the war did help. I do think though that trading was already tracking. The markets businesses were already tracking to pretty good results even before the war.

On average, I think you had 17 percent year on year growth overall, and as you mentioned,

equities was a particular standout. I think the big question of the big questions, though, is we had to go forward is how durable these results are, especially in markets. We've done some research in the recent past where we showed that a lot of the upwards revisions and earnings per share estimates for these banks, especially for goldman and

morning Stanley, where consensus earnings per share estimates have gone up over the past 15 months or so by over 20 percent, the bulk of it has been driven by sales and trading results.

“And the extent to which they can continue to outperform is I think an important question.”

I think the results likely will be continuing to be good, but it's going to be hard to continue

to grow 20 percent off of what are now much more difficult comparatives.

Yeah, this seemed to me because we were in this situation last year, and I remember it lost yet quite well, where the volatility that we were seeing in the markets and the uncertainty that everyone was feeling was mostly a bad thing for most businesses, except for if you're on the other side of those trades, essentially, or if you're facilitating those trades. And so when tariffs happen, when liberation day happened, just total volatility markets going

all over the place, and yet it was a great quarter for many of these banks because they were making so much money off of the trading, and here we are in a similar situation. It seemed as though that was sort of a one-off, but now that it's happened twice, I'm starting to wonder if this is just the market we live in, and these are volatile times and sales

“and trading is now just caught to the business at this point. What would you make of that?”

I think it is quarter to the business, so go back a few years, early stages of the pandemic. You have huge increases in sales and trading, and I think a lot of us were saying, okay, well, it's going to go back to what it was pre-pandemic, and it didn't, and it's continued to grow. So obviously when you have outsized volatility that kickstart things even further, but the business has changed some, so it's not just intermediation, what you're talking about,

but there's a financing piece of it. Things like prime brokerage and where investment banks are providing loans to hedge funds, that has grown a lot. If you look at the segment disclosures, for example, and you look at the market's businesses and the size of the balance sheets of these businesses, they are growing quite a bit. And that tends to be a little bit more durable than the interminiation side, but that has been a significant driver. So these businesses are

going to be larger than they have been in the past. And the other thing is that corporates are being a more active and hedging rate risk. We have positive real rates across the curve. So there's more opportunities to trade rates, volatility, macro volatility, monetary policy changes. All of these changes have led to expansionary monetary policy. All of these have created more opportunities for intermediation even as the financing pieces has grown. I think the question

though from a stock perspective and from the perspective investing in these stocks is, it's going to remain much higher than it has been in the past, but can you continue to grow this business and can continue to surprise on the upside? And that's where a little bit more skeptical. Just slightly shifting to the economy here and what we can expect. I mean, one of the nice things about hearing these bank earnings is they have so much data, so many points of light, that they're

kind of a good source for understanding what's going to happen. The big question on everyone's minds right now is what is this war going to do to the economy? What is it going to do to gas prices?

is it going to get worse? Did we learn anything on that front from these banks,

perhaps did we learn anything from these executives on their expectations for how the next few

“months will play out on the economic front? I think there's a cautious optimism about the economy.”

And that it will continue to be resilient. I mean, the general takeaway from management teams is that sentiment is challenged, but the actual numbers are holding in pretty well. And unemployment's really important here, right? As long as people are employed and wages are going up, they're spending. We hear a lot about the two speed economy, the K-shaped economy. I think, you know, a better way to frame it is an e-shaped economy, where the high-end is growing more

spending more than the low end, but there's no delta. There's no inflection in terms of the trends

right now. There's not a worsening at the low end. It's kind of stable. In terms of spending, just so I understand that you're not seeing a waspening in terms of expenditure right now. Yes, okay, got it. So what I mean is like if you know, throwing these, making the numbers up a little bit, but generally speaking, so if the high-end is growing 10% and low-income consumers are growing 2% the 2% is not getting worse. It's staying at a low-reloaded. It's just that,

that it's not a worsening trend at the low end. It's kind of the baseline trend is the same. But, you know, credit is good at. Like the credit quality has been good across consumer, across commercial loan growth is picked up a little bit. As I mentioned, corporates are now thinking volatility is a feature, not a bug, so you're seeing some investments. But, yeah, I mean, the economy, you know, that we're in a low-fire, low-fire type of economy. But, you know, if the thing to watch

is unemployment, if unemployment goes up, then that things change. But up until now, we haven't seen that in the sort of, you know, the baseline economic trend, spend falling growth on debit cards, falling growth on credit cards, it hadn't really changed much. So there's a cautious, there's

“some caution, as you mentioned, you gave some of the quotes. But, you know, I think most”

management is saying, like, what we're seeing on the ground isn't really changing much. There's an interesting quote from the JP Morgan CFO who has asked about this question, like, what are we seeing with consumer spending, how is the war and how our gas prices affecting spending habits among consumers? And he said, quote, there's really, there really is not anything new or interesting to say this quarter. We've looked at it through every angle, and it all looks

consistent with prior trends and fundamentally healthy. And it seems like this is the big question

that we're all trying to tackle. You would think, if gas prices are rising, 2030 percent,

that that's going to be a real problem. But then what we're seeing is that consumer spending is kind of stable-ish. It's not really changing from where it was before. And I guess the big question that I'm asking is, like, why is that? Why aren't we seeing a pullback? Why aren't we seeing

“a deterioration? Sometimes I think, well, maybe it's just because the top 10 percent or the top”

earners are just buoying the entire thing. But it is very hard to tell it does seem important from an economic perspective, because if you do see a pullback in that spending, that could be a real problem for earnings. Well, I mean, one thing about JP Morgan is they're client-based, especially on the credit card side tends to be more affluent. So there is that. And the proportion of household, I'm not on the economist, but as a proportion of household income, gases, you know,

gasoline is less than what it was, you know, the 70s and 80s. So I think it is, we'll be interesting when you get some of the consumer finance companies reporting next week, especially those who focus more on who have bigger businesses at the lower end, what they're saying and what they're seeing will be an important, you know, important to consider. But the other thing is, like, we're still pretty early on. I think if if gas prices stay, you know, $4 or wherever they end up,

that for an extended period of time, doesn't start to put, you know, more strain on household finances, especially at the lower income level, that it has. The other thing, you know, which is mentioned, that it's interesting on this point is tax refunds are tracking ahead of what they were last year. So that, you know, is putting some more money in the pockets of lower income, especially the lower income, and the predisposition of bad income cohort to get to spend additional income,

tends to be a little bit higher. So, you know, eventually that effect may fade out. But, you know, tracking that and seeing how much it's being spent and how much it's being saved or used to pay

It's a great point. Okay. Soul Martinez, head of US financials research at HSBC, so always appreciate it.

Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. After the break, Amazon challenges Stole Lake. And if you're enjoying the show, please follow our new Profty markets YouTube channel. The link is in the description. This is advertiser content brought to you by Virgin Atlantic. Again, a couple weeks back. I got you a birthday gift not to pat my stuff on the back, but it was a pretty good one. It was indeed. You

surprised me with Virgin Atlantic upperclass tickets to London. So, uh, tell us all about it. It was pretty incredible. From the moment I entered that upperclass cabin, I have to tell you, I felt like a VIP. Anything I needed a drink, snack, assistance with the seat, flat seats, flat seats, exactly. Had the four-course meal, got my champagne very delicious and enjoyed the food. And a journey home. The journey home was great. I went to the Virgin Atlantic LHR Clubhouse.

That's the Heathrow Clubhouse. Heathrow Clubhouse was awesome. Got myself a coffee, headed over to the meditation pod that they called the somedome, kind of felt like a sort of spaceship where you relax and think nice thoughts. So, I did that for a little bit. Then we went over to the wing, which of these acoustically sealed boots, where you could do some work. You could even record a podcast. I didn't do that, but maybe I should have. It was a very enjoyable experience.

“So, Ed, they call it real question. Here is what do you plan to get me from my birthday?”

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ads been of all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them. It's been $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/scot. That's LinkedIn.com/scot. Terms and conditions apply. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man and as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for president

of the United States. It's going to be only America First America Conference. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol Building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from box. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump focus show can exist because he's not

“really driving any agenda items. It's really does feel so reactive. You know, I think this”

around thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far, it doesn't among like people who say their MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like, for the first time you see on a major issue open opposition from the start of this war. I'm a state-harrington. And welcome to America, actually. We're back with Prof. Markets. Amazon is making a big bet in the satellite race.

The company is acquiring telecom company global star for about $11.6 billion giving its

Leo network, formerly known as Project Kyper, access to satellites, spectrum, and direct to device technology. That is the technology that allows satellites to connect straight to phones beyond the reach of cell towers. This deal will help Amazon compete with SpaceX's Starlink, which still has a major lead in scale and service. Amazon also announced a major new customer in Apple. Amazon Leo will power emergency texting features on iPhones and Apple watches, extending global stars existing

partnership with Apple. Amazon gained about 3% on the news global star surged nearly 10%.

the satellite industry. We're speaking with Tim Farah, president of TMF Associates, Tim.

“Thank you for joining me. So, what do you make of this deal? And for those who aren't familiar”

with the telecom world and the world of starlink and global star in all these names, give us a little bit of a refresher on what this means for the industry. Yeah, I mean, so we went through this round of building out these satellite systems 30 years ago when global star first got started. It and I really wanted to sell everyone a satellite phone and they spent billions of dollars to do that and no one really wanted them back then.

So now, the last few years, global stars have been working with Apple to put messaging into every iPhone. This deal shows that other companies are interested as well. We've seen a lot of hype about starlink with their partnership with Timobile, AST is in partnership with AT&T and for ISN. And this is another entry to the market where they're trying to all catch up with starlink, frankly. What makes satellites better? You mentioned that people didn't really care about

satellites 30 years ago and they were building them. Now, suddenly, satellites are very exciting. All those names have been stolen. Obviously, everyone's very excited about it. AST, which has been one of the best stocks in the market for the past year. What makes satellites so exciting right now? Well, back then, the phones were big and expensive and people didn't really feel the need to buy an expensive phone for the few times they go outside cellular coverage.

Now, this is being put into regular smartphones. And so the idea is that people will use it a lot more because they don't have to buy a separate phone. But we still don't really know how much they will use it. I mean, cellular coverage is pretty good outside of a few national parks. And Timobile has seen probably a lot less usage than they might have expected on their service with starlink. Now, these new systems, the starting is going to upgrade its satellites. AST is going to build out

these big satellites. And we don't know what Amazon is going to do, but we assume it's going to be yet more bigger satellites as well. That's going to offer better services. But is that going to

“cause people to buy these services and pay for them every month? I don't know. I think it's a lot”

harder to call than it is for like the broadband services that's selling, providing today where,

you know, they've got about a 11 million users around the world. And it's very much proven as a

solution. Don't want it to devise. It's still an unfair market in my book. It sounds like the real differentiated is the reason that satellite might be better than regular broadband cell coverage is that you can use it in say a national park, and maybe you can use it on a plane. Basically, places where coverage doesn't already exist, is that understating the what is exciting about it, or is that really it? Is that really the differentiator? It really

is about places where people don't have coverage. Now, it's actually illegal to use your phone on the plane. Most people don't think about it and they use the Wi-Fi, but using it direct to either satellite or a cell tower is illegal at the moment. But in a national park, yeah, you don't and

SLI have coverage. The problem is that these services, instead of you communicating with a cell

tower that's a mile away, you're now communicating with satellites hundreds of miles up in space, that means that the service isn't so good. It doesn't work in buildings, and the data rates today, a few hundred kilobits to a few megabits for second, maybe a little bit better with next generation services, maybe as much as ten megabits for second, but still, I'm getting hundreds of megabits for second on my phone, you know, in any sort of urban area around the country,

and it worked in building perfectly fine. So, these limitations of the satellite services, you know, are going to offset some of the need for this service out in a national park. You seem quite skeptical and almost bearish on satellite as a network and as a service. Would I be mischaracterizing you there? Or do you think that, I mean, this has been one of the really hot sectors recently. A lot of people really excited about these companies. Do you think

“that there's too much hype? Well, I think that the broadband service, as I said earlier, is proven”

itself already. You know, we've got 11 million selling users. The good thing about that is, you know, you stick a dish on your roof, and it's got a lot of spectrum to use. It's got a lot of power, it can use to get to the satellite and there's 10,000 satellites up there. These directly to device satellites because it's using the same phone that you would be using to communicate with

the terrestrial tower. It's never going to have the performance that the terrestrial networks will

deliver. And so, yeah, I think that this market is perhaps a little bit overhiked at this point in

and I wonder if this is part of the reason why the hype is being bucketed together into the satellite

“systems, because when I think of Starlink, I think of rockets, I think of SpaceX, launching,”

incredible vehicles, rockets into space. I think the same thing when it comes to this acquisition, I mean, I associate it with Project Leo, which of course is the new name for Project Kaper, which again, I associate with space, launching stuff it up into the atmosphere, which gets me all excited. I mean, are these two separate industries that we need to sort of distinguish between a little bit more? Well, the telecos are definitely excited about the possibilities here.

I mean, they've struggled really with 5G to develop new services and increase the spend that

customers make. So, I think they're always interested in any new opportunity. And like you say,

the hype around space may get customers excited, but we still don't know if they're going to pay for it at the end of the day. And, you know, yeah, the limitations of their service, you know, I look back to the 1990s when F-1 thought that if it even global star were going to have tens of millions or hundreds of millions of customers around the world, you know, at the end of it with a few hundred thousand subscribers at the end of the day and went bankrupt. And, you know, although the broadband

world, Starlink is doing great and Amazon may well follow suit, in this direct-to-device world, we still don't know. And I think the lessons of iridium and global star from the 90s were that, you know, people didn't want to pay for a service that they didn't use very often and they had to use outside, you know, with a line of sight to the satellite, you know, people make their calls indoors and they don't want to go out in the vein or the cold or the heat to make a call

unless it's an emergency. And then are they going to pay for it every month? What would you say to the people who would look point to starlink and say, you know, this this case operation is not its own company really, but this this program has, you know, millions of users are it's really the bulk of SpaceX's business in a lot of ways and it's growing really rapidly. And what would you say to those people who say that this is, you know, this is a bulk

case, this is an industry that's growing in their succeeding. Oh, no question about that on the

broadband side, you know, Starlink has done an amazing job of ramping up that market and

it's generated, I think the reporting was 11 billion dollars of revenue last year, but, you know, the reporting on the deal between Starlink and Timo Bialis, that it's less than a hundred million dollars over the last two years and it's still very small and sort of a nascent market. So, yeah, we're going to have to see how it develops, you know, and it's still in a, it's still early days here. broadband, yeah, all great and lots of opportunity there, direct to device, say the

jury's still out and I am skeptical. Just for our listeners, I mean, what actually is the difference

“between those two things and how important is that distinction broadband versus direct to device?”

Right, so the broadband service, you know, you go and buy a selling terminal online or you go and buy it in Best Buy or Home Depot for a couple of hundred dollars. You know, Starlink will even send you one for free if you sign up for their service and you stick that dish outside somewhere on the roof out in your garden. You could take it with you when you go camping. You know, that service

is delivering hundreds of megabits per second at a cost of, you know, fifty to a hundred dollars a month

typically. And yeah, people really like it and it gives very comparable performance to terrestrial broadband solution from your cable company or from AT&T, or Verizon. Direct to device is just this sort of handheld service in your phone and it's much more limited at the moment. It's limited to a few apps, things like WhatsApp and X, and it's going to develop further, but it's really limited to those sort of low bandwidth applications. And most particularly,

“you have to take your phone outside to use it, generally speaking, and that's a barrier to use”

definitely. And so what is global stars business mostly focused on between those two? It sounds like mostly directed device. Yeah, global stars just doing the direct device. It's the service that enables, you know, your iPhone to work and send messages when you're out in a national part, you'll get a little prompt on your screen saying you want to connect to a satellite. That's the global star satellites and global stars building more satellites with help from Apple.

Now Amazon's going to take that on and build even more satellites, presumably, which we even more capable. And some of that will get through Apple's iPhones, global Amazon will presumably want to sell it in other ways as well, and we'll have to see what they deliver. But they're

broadband world with the Amazon Leo constellation. Just before we wrap up here, what do you think

was the rationale for Amazon? I mean, investors seems to like it, it was the stock gained about three percent, it could be other forces as well. But generally it seems that investors are quite

“excited about this acquisition. What do you think was the impetus in the rationale behind it?”

Well, I think that Amazon feels, you know, we're seeing a lot more bundling between fix and mobile. We're seeing it in the dressier world as well, whether the telcos are trying to sell you broadband at home and a mobile phone. The cable companies are doing the same thing. So I think it's now going to do that as well with both its broadband service and its direct to device service. And I think Amazon felt they needed to match them while they're just being

stuck with the broadband service alone. Do you think it was a good idea? I think it's a lot of money to pay for to get into this business. And it's going to take some time to see whether

the market shakes up. I mean, obviously SpaceX has spent the best part of $20 billion on buying

Spectrum too. But the Spectrum they bought, you know, if it doesn't work out, they can go and sell

“it back to AT&T or for the Eisner 2 mobile and get their money back. Amazon is not making the”

same back. Global star Spectrum is a lot less useful on torestrial towers than the Echo Star Spectrum that SpaceX bought. So Amazon's got to have this market work out for it. And as say, we don't know if that's going to be the case. All right. Tim Farrah, President of TMF Associates. Tim, fascinating stuff. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Big news in the world of footwear shares of all birds. The once popular shoe maker that sold

itself of parts the other week are soaring on news that the company is making a bold pivot from shoes to wait for it. AI. Yes. Yesterday morning, the company announced that it is changing its name from all birds to new bird AI. And they will seek to acquire, quote, high performance low latency AI compute hardware and provide access that hyperscale is unable to reliably service end quote. You literally cannot make this up. And what is perhaps more extraordinary is that the stock

rose wait for it 630% on the news. This is quite possibly the dumbest headline we will read all year. The shoe company is now an AI company and apparently everyone wants in. But in a funny way, it is very significant because it's so stupid. Because it tells you something about the market environment, which we now find ourselves in, to be blunt, we find ourselves in a bubble. I mean, expectations for AI have become so untethered from the reality of AI to the point where

investors are now actually pitching that a company that sells shoes could be credibly recarced as a company that sells compute and people are out there actually buying this nonsense. And to be clear, all birds isn't the only company making a ridiculous AI pitch like this. A few months ago, we talked about a company called Fermi. For example, this AI data center firm that recently went public. And we pointed out that the company actually had no business model, had no infrastructure.

All they really had was a PowerPoint deck and a sales pitch, which used the word data centers and AI and compute a bunch of times. And we predicted that the company would implode and indeed the stock has fallen more than 80% since the IPO. And they were also recently sued for securities fraud. In other words, they are well on their way to imploding. But the point being, this is now becoming a major trend in the financial markets now. If your business sucks, if you have no revenue,

if you're an old shoe company and you need a get out of jail free card, you can always just pivot

to AI. That is the playbook. But we should also be clear, this is not going to last. I mean, you cannot become something else by simply saying that you're something else, eventually the hype will have to run out. And my prediction here is that all birds stock is going to absolutely crater at some point. Will it be tomorrow or the next week? I don't know. At some point, it's going to have to come down. That doesn't mean that every AI company is in trouble. Far from it. The ones

that are actually innovating, the ones that are building real business models around real technology, those companies are going to succeed. And so the big question for investors in AI is

“fast becoming the following. And that is, can you distinguish between what's real and what's fake?”

Can you figure out what's true and what's bullshit? Newbird AI, the shoe company that also sells compute. There also sells AI hardware. Well, the headline speaks for itself. This is bullshit.

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