Welcome back to another episode of the Meet! Kevin Report: This is season Two episode one. we're trying something different. Let's get into it first: Qualcomm which is a massive maker of processors for smartphones, and even though Apple wants to give them the boot still producing a lot of chips gave well some disappointing Uh forecasts and disappointing sales numbers. And they're also signaling that demand for mobile phones will remain sluggish.

They're down seven percent in pre-market salsa, dragging Apple down a little bit. A lot of bears right now are pointing to the inversion of the yield curve. Some yield curves like the 10-2 treasuries the 10-year and the two-year treasury are re-steepening and have been since the banking crisis, but the Fed's favorite gauge, the 10-year three month is a complete disaster. the most inverted yet and negative 185 basis points.

That's 1.85 Some bears now alike Uh, Jeffrey Gunlock are predicting that the likelihood of a recession is essentially guaranteed that rate cuts are a joke, but the best thing that you could do right now is probably either go long gold or bonds. so your typical kind of barrel argument. The Bulls on the other hand, are saying that history shows buying stocks at the end of a hiking cycle has quote proven to be a winning strategy in low inflation environments like the 90s, but in the wake of the 70s, stocks could end up falling. However, when you look at the actual averages, they look pretty bullish.

Of eight prior tightening cycle ends like when we hit the peak of interest rates, stocks were up an average of 13 a year later when measuring the S P 500, and in just two of those eight cases, you had negative returns, one being two thousand and one being in 1974.. in 74, you had a negative 4.5 percent return over a year and a negative 12.3 percent return in 2000. And after a year. Aerospace Industry is still actually probably one of the few Industries in the entire world that still has massive supply chain issues.

So if you own a plane, want to buy a plane, or you invest in companies like Boeing or Embraer or Airbus, you're still dealing with inflation and supply chain issues. Which is pretty remarkable to think that we actually still have that going on. Unity Just announced that they are laying off about eight percent of their staff and at the same time a reported not so great forecast either. Oil Futures are also at the lowest level that we've seen them since March When we first started having fears that the banking crisis was going to drive us into a deep recession and in a tailspin today, oil is mostly flat.

after falling a good chunk yesterday. Brent's sitting at 72.50 and WTI at 68.50 A lot of anxiety, by the way, that this potential recession we keep talking talking about is what's driving oil Straight down. Speaking of oil, there's a lot of this click bait going on about this: Iranian A seizure of quote-unquote American Oil tankers. It's really important to know what's actually going on here in a very simplified manner.

The U.S state Department is uh, you know, calling for the release of these oil tankers, but the reason our military isn't involved is because these are not American oil tankers. These are just oil tankers that are destined for America which is very different. Uh, for example, one of them is a Marshall Islands a flagged oil tanker called Advantage suite and another one is a Panama flagged oil tanker. So these are not American oil tankers.

they're International uh and foreign oil tankers. However, Iran is becoming a little bit more aggressive, which is creating some Regional concerns once again. Uh, in the Middle East because what do you got? Well, you've got the Strait of Hormuz over there, which is this perfect choke point between Iran and Oman And guess what, one-fifth of the world's oil passes through that region and a lot of folks are using this to point at by the administration once again and lament that oh, here we go again. Biden Once again making us look like fools in the Middle East That's what the right side says.

This is why we're going to have countries trying to de-dollarize Other people on the left say, come on Iran always does shenanigans like this and this is why we've got to step up our inspections on the nuclear facilities to make sure they stop enriching uranium because we all know they do that. they just bury it deeper underground and hide every time Iaea weapons inspectors come by regarding artificial intelligence I Heard a phenomenal thing from a Sequoia and one of the lead investing analysts over at Sequoia Capital Venture Capital Fund. they talked about. The best thing that a people could do is realize that you've got to make artificial intelligence a part of your life.

They say that artificial intelligence won't take your job, but a human using AI will. And the best way to think about artificial intelligence is not artificial intelligence, but rather augmented intelligence. and it'll really amplify the productivity that we have and the abilities we have to make money. I Thought this was a great line from Sequoia Capital and it really reminds you of course to check out the new program on how to make more money and get sh9t done featuring AI The AI segment will be coming out on June 1st and we're in pre-sale right now for that program.

Linked down below it is the old Elite Hustlers course. So anybody who's already in that course on making money as an employee or an entrepreneur either business owner, employee doesn't matter. We're adding an entire AI segment to make sure you can be as productive as possible and we'll have our first price increase on that on May 1st. So it gives everybody that opportunity to lock in that price.

Ford indicates the best margins that they've had on electric vehicles over the last year was about negative 40 percent for ebit margins earnings before interest and taxes volume declines. Unfortunately though, in the fourth quarter for Ford brought those those margins to over negative 100. Their goal is negative 20 percent Tesla Mind you, is like for ebit margins positive 13 to 15. So massive difference here.

Uh, but then again, you know. Okay, so it's obviously a pure play EV for trying to play catch up. Ford thinks that they're going to be able to go break even on electric vehicles by 2025, and then they hope to get to eight percent margins by 2026.. And Phase laments that they are constrained by high interest rates that outside of California, it's hard to sell solar when people in Texas and Florida don't have that high utility costs.

and because of high interest rates, it's less desirable to sign up for solar. Although they are still seeing Revenue increases in Australia of around six percent quarter on quarter which is actually pretty good. It's about 24 annualized Revenue in Brazil more than doubled they indicated. Fantastic! Uh, some of these, uh, some of these developing countries uh Brazil India Uh, really.

really taking off Indonesia Otherwise Shopify announced it's cutting 20 of it's a Workforce This is their second round of layoffs. Remember this is the uh, this is a Canadian company so uh, you know this. Uh, I don't know why that matters I just threw it out there Anyway, despite the job Cuts uh, they did end up beating estimates for Q1 on both top and bottom lines and revenue 1.51 billion dollars in Q1. not bad for a you know software platform essentially shares to jump in pre-market trading and uh, do keep in mind they're trying to also get away I suppose from uh, solely being considered software and that they're also trying to do fulfillment by Amazon or by Amazon Fulfillment by Shopify which is pretty, um, pretty, uh, impressive Endeavor and very expensive.

So the fact that they're beating uh despite uh, expanding their Uh Automation in warehousing and distribution is uh is and the Investments that are being made into that which is very expensive. From a capital point of view, it's pretty impressive. Ferrari's profit in a quarter one jumped 24. in quarter one, they had a profit of 297 million euros a 10 increase in shipments.

They beat estimates uh, they uh, increase their margin a full percentage point to 26.9 This is interesting because there's a here's a real luxury automaker and those are some sweet margins. Those are the margins. Tesla's delicious. Had 26.9 Hey, maybe FSD will get us there one day, but wow, those are nice margins.

but then again, when you look at how many vehicles they shipped in the quarter, oh yeah, that's not that impressive Tesla shipped over 421 000 vehicles in the quarter Ferrari got out the door 3 567. but that is up 10 from a year ago, which isn't really big growth. but hey, Moderna actually surprised despite lower demand for the coveted vaccine. I mean I think most people now are like I'm not getting another 5G uh implant I got enough 5G Uh, Moderna did maintain its full year guidance of around 5 billion dollars in revenue from its covet vaccine uh, which apparently comes from government contracts for the shot.

So I wonder what happens if people don't end up taking those and the government pays for them? Is that sort of just like a guarantee? like yeah, we'll buy this many years of your shots whether people take them or not? Yikes. Anyway, Uh, Nestle did end I reread the nest Lastly, earnings call because I was a little frustrated that they said they raised prices nine percent in the first quarter. Uh, actually, when I reread the earnings call I was really impressed because what they were talking about is year over year, which that's what I initially thought, but a lot of headlines were promoting how Nestle was able to raise nine percent in the first quarter. but that is a year-over-year measure and the CEO is talking about how prices have basically been up nine percent for three quarters now.

and in the second half of 2023, we expect that to roll over and prices will be in the words of the CEO quote, flatish, which is fantastic because we want that inflation to roll over everybody does. Whether you're a bear or whether you are a bull, you want inflation to roll over. Uh, AMD uh Revenue largely flattish their earnings call. We went through this in detail yesterday in the course member live stream wasn't very bullish.

It wasn't that great, especially since operating margin dropped significantly. Uh, and while there's hope for the second half, hope is not an investing strategy for Starbucks 57 of their revenue I was blown away by this actually comes from Starbucks Rewards members. That's great because that's how you sucker people into always coming back to Starbucks 57. More than half of their money comes from people who have the Starbucks rewards program.

That's 30.8 million people are part of that program. Wild. I mean I'm in it, you know, hashtag not sponsored but wow. Uh, so then we've got uh.

this. The stage drone attack was really interesting. Uh, and we don't know with certainty that this uh Kremlin drone attack here is staged. But there's a lot of talk that uh, this, uh, Circle Here on the left actually shows what are two individuals climbing up on a ladder and then what it looks like is a drone that actually hits the flagpole and ends up blowing up above the individual.

So let's see if we can get this to play here. Uh, okay, yeah, let's go a little bit of a refresh stand by for the video. Uh, In the meantime, then we'll also touch on uh, what's going on in New York There's some drama there. Oh, here we go.

Okay, now we can play the darn video. And here's your drone attack. Um okay, are you serious? What is going on there? We go. here we go.

Okay, you see those two people who? who are these people up on a ladder on top of the Kremlin Oh no. Oh no. Drone explodes on the flag. Oh what a bummer.

Yeah. so Ukraine is saying they're not involved. A lot of people are calling this a flash false flag operation I think uh probably the best comment that I saw on Twitter was a quote from from James Power91 quote worst Insider job I've ever seen uh anyway in uh uh, more uh, sort of politically dividing news. uh Jordan Neely died on a New York City subway incident occurred on the F train in New York there's video circulating showing a 24 year old white dude uh who was in the military.

uh he's out of military now. But anyway. uh he administered a Chokehold on this 30 year old. uh, black guy.

So of course now you've got the media painting this as white versus black. Uh because uh the guy was freaking out saying he wanted to die and uh didn't have any food and and was hungry. Free and and frustrated police ended up questioning the 24 year old guy who put the 30 year old in a Chokehold and the 30 year olds Jordan Neely He was a previous Michael Jackson impersonator. So people on the left who uh, you know honor the Michael Jackson impersonator Like this guy's a good guy.

He just needed mental health help. Uh and then of course you have people on the right who say bro, don't be a criminal He had like a rap sheet of like 44 uh, incidents or charges against him. Uh, don't be a criminal and then you don't get killed And then people on the left are like dude, this is racism. This is white versus black.

You publicly lynched a black person. The person needed help not to die. Uh, you've got. this is politics.

It gets very messy. Then, as with politics, you got Elizabeth Warren Claiming that Uh companies are responsible for 40 of the inflation thanks to Greed The Economist Actually put a great piece together in response to this. First of all, there's no statistic to support this from Elizabeth Warren Although that doesn't surprise me very much. Uh, apparently there there's very thin evidence according to the Economist that corporations are simply Being Greedy Uh, companies didn't all of a sudden become greedy because they could, but rather because of the demand that followed the coveted stimulus created a lot of these pricing pressures that we have, which really enabled everybody to demand more more money for labor, more money from businesses.

So really, this this idea that corporations are solely Being Greedy is is not based in actual evidence. Uh, although of course that is an easy political thing to say. And then of course you'll want to watch ticker the ticker symbol for Pac West today because we might have another banking crisis of it. Uh, yet again.

now a Beverly Hill Wells Bank struggling and looking for a Suitor to buy them Of course most of the suitors are like why would I buy you now if I could wait a couple weeks and buy you for pennies on the dollar. So that does it for this new and refined version of a Meet Kevin Report Season Two Episode One.