Now we gotta cover what the Bears are saying and boy ah bloody. Morgan Stanley is back with another one or a buddy from Morgan Stanley's back with another bear piece and I love reading what the Bears have to say because even though I am a bull at heart and I think the Nike Swoosh recovery is real I want to pay attention to what the Bears are up to because you always got to know what your enemies are doing. It'd be silly to be blind to what your competition is doing. So what are we gonna do? We're gonna look at this piece right here: Morgan Shenley The bond market is questioning the fed's Dot Plot Basically, I'm gonna keep this one simple for you.

So the bond market is pricing in Cuts Jerome Powell per Mike Wilson Morgan Stanley's analyst who's the big bear in the office. he probably doesn't have many friends in the office, but who knows. Anyway, he says, look, the fat is really explicit that we're not going to cut rates this year. Why is the market cutting in these rates? Well, it's probably because the bond market is saying the US economy is either going to fall into recession or banking stresses are far from resolved.

But he actually missed an argument here. and I'd like to point out where the Bulls could be wrong and where the Bears could be wrong, but he missed an argument here. It is entirely possible that the market is pricing at a massive set of rate cuts by the end of this year because a they're doing what the FED refuses to do, say that inflation is going to plummet and rates are going to come down. As a result, the FED can't say that because if they say that inflation won't plummet so they're in the game, they're in a psychological game.

whereas the Bond market is not subject to that psychological game. They're actually putting their money where their mouth is. They're not using their mouth as a psychological tool to get people to stop spending money to affect demand in markets, right? The Bond Market is not only saying either we're going to fall into recession or banking stresses are over. it's actually threefold.

Either we go into recession or banking stresses or inflation is about to plummet or a combination of all three of these. But the third one is actually very encouraging because if inflation goes away and we could cut back to, you know, a low interest rate regime, the recession's over. People got enough money to keep spending. Look at what happened with Lulu yesterday.

People are spending money like they're drunk, people are still spending money like crazy. It's absolutely insane now. Morgan Stanley suggests that you should cut from Exxon uh and Simon Property Group and instead on their Best Buy list or Fresh Money Buy list. What is this? a grocery shopping list? That sounds lame? They should think of a better list than that.

They suggest you add Colgate I Had to look up what CL was because I'm like who buys Colgate Uh, but anyway Colgate and Walmart I actually think these and and that's because they're positioning defensively I bluntly wrote next to that wrong And the reason I think that's wrong is because these are exactly the kind of companies that are going to lose pricing power in the environment that we're in right now. Employee costs go up. These companies disproportionately have a high employee costs for the amount of Revenue they have compared to uh, you know some of the high free cash flowing pricing power stocks that I like Again, whether it's in busy if I just combined and phase and Nvidia and phase Nvidia Taiwan Semiconductors Tesla Apple those companies pricing Power Walmart Come on, that stock has done phenomenally over the last year because it's a defensive play. But that's a trade and when the fundamentals come through, that trade will fade away.

My opinion: Okay, but you already know that. Uh, so they of course suggest that earnings are going to fall going into the recession. But listen to this. He actually says we focused.

We had a macro discussion and we focused the session on credit availability. which credit availability is actually still remaining strong. Uh, which is shocking in the short term. labor market dynamics.

A lot more labor. Supply We know that earnings guidance slowly going down. We'll look at the chart in a moment and pricing Power I Love that they talked about pricing power and we'll look at some of his conclusions on this. So what did we have over here? We're seeing another quarter where estimates are being lowered.

That's fine. So earnings are decelerating now. Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson Believes that earnings markdowns have a lot more to go. He believes the consensus is that earnings are going to basically do this at the S P 500 or that this is what the consensus estimates are, but he actually believes we're going to be on much more of this downslope.

So he really thinks earnings for S P 500 companies are going to fall a lot more than expected or is priced in I Agree with him just not on all stocks. Pricing Power Stocks I think Will Survive Now uh, Morgan Stanley's Mike Wilson suggests that look, when inflation happens, you can. Everybody can raise pricing. You have a lot more operating leverage, but the problem is, when inflation goes down, you're operating leverage.

In other words, how much you're able to increase sales above your operating expenses? Opex Like sales and Gen goes up maybe five percent, but Revenue goes up 15. Positive operating leverage. But what happens in a disinflationary environment? Well, you might see revenues decline five percent, but your operating expenses go up 15 exactly I Actually think that's exactly what's going to happen to Staples not pricing Power stocks. Now we could actually be aligned and that he might be thinking, look, maybe it's the S P 500 that gets burned I agree with that because there are a lot of Staples in the S P 500.

now uh, something that I thought was very interesting is I Purposely wanted to see what chat GPT would say about this so we ran chat. GPT What does inflation do to operating leverage and they talk about exactly this about how inflation can increase operating leverage. However, it's worth noting uh, that inflation can also infect a company's pricing power, which could affect operating leverage. For example, if a company has strong pricing power and can pass on inflationary effects to customers, it may be able to maintain profit margins.

The question though is do you get pricing power solely because of inflation I Believe the answer is, every company gets pricing power because of inflation. The real challenge is which companies maintain pricing power when that inflation goes away and that's what Mike Wilson is warning of. So he thinks when that inflation goes away, the easy pricing power all the easy PP goes away. Way now you enter the bear Market where only the companies with true pricing power survive the recession.

Mike Wilson suggests that Equity risk premiums right now are way too low to justify being in stocks now. I Wrote on this that yields potentially manipulate this and that's because right now the risk-free rate is so high because of the inflation we're fighting and Mike Wilson did only go back to about 2008 here. So I have a little bit of an asterisk on on his bare thesis here and I Do also think that he has a point though. he has this point that says it's possible Equity investors are simply looking ahead towards the next bailout and the next stimulus regime.

He might be right about that. He might be right that Equity markets are looking towards basically the FED just to cut to zero. and maybe we start getting stimulus checks again, not just for the chips act, not just for EVS and energy, but also potentially expanded on employment or otherwise. maybe now.

Baron In mind that breadth has been exceptionally weak as large cap stocks are holding up the averages right now, basically thinks look, if large caps start falling, it's over because those are the only things holding up the S P 500 right now now. He also makes an argument here about real estate briefly that we do not think that real estate is going to suffer the pain that we saw in the global financial crisis or the Savings and Loan crisis. And specifically, while they'll be, they'll still be weakness in lending and mortgages. Ultimately, we believe that a real estate won't suffer with the exception of retail as much as it previously had in the past.

However, credit cards still running hot and in my opinion, that reiterates that people are on it in terms of well spending through this recession. Now, my goal was to end this, but I Want to add some more commentary before the Bell so we're going to listen to the bell and then I want to add some more commentary in my thesis on this Ever go against Nike because it's a great man you Texas But wow, these guys are well ahead of nights. Let's get the opening belt here. CNBC Real-time exchange at the big board pentagram structured Asset Management celebrating the recent listing of its first ETF Nice screen welcome Welcome to a green open everyone Okay, so I gotta get to the course member live stream.

But what are my opinions on what Morgan Stanley is saying here or or specifically Mike Wilson He has a point that yes, in a traditional recession, wouldn't it make sense to go to Staples especially Walmart Yes and that's why people have gone to Walmart over the last year because the idea is that poor people stop shopping at Target and fancy places they go to Walmart richer people stop spending at Target and Whole Foods they go to Walmart and that actually has been happening. He is correct about that, but in my opinion, being correct about that is actually looking into hindsight. Well, we look at Walmart stock. Over the last year they've done very well.

They're only down 1.73 Over the last year, they've done extremely well in terms of holding up shareholder value. The problem is in my opinion, this is a company that is actually looking at pain ahead. Take a look at the following: We're going to look at their fundies really quick. So this is the last time I looked at the fundamentals on Walmart Uh, which actually this was not the last time.

this is an old one. this is from July I Want to go ahead and pull up a more recent uh Fundy on Walmart but we could look at this really quickly so we looked at gross margin actually still being very incredible for Walmart sitting around 23 percent, gross net margins sitting around four percent, which was fantastic. We'll get a recent report over here. They have lots of, uh, let's see what do we wrote over here.

Lots of cost and little cash is what I wrote. They have a lot of payables now that can tend to be very normal for a merchandiser. and when we look at their net cash provided by operating activities though, they're still pumping out somewhere around 9.2 billion dollars in operating cash at the last six months of 2020 or the first six months of 2022. When you you take out or look at just free cash flow, they were sitting at about 1.5 billion dollars of free cash flow.

so they got free cash flow. They've been holding up very good defensive stock, but we want to look at some of their revenues so let's go ahead and get their last quarterly report and look at that and we'll jump on over to the course member livestream. So if we go on over to their last press release, we'll get a little bit more of a look into Walmart because obviously it's moving into Colgate and Walmart for a reason a defensive play. The idea is that eventually if people get rid of all of their discretionary spending, the one place they'll still go is Walmart.

It's not a terrible argument, it's a very traditional recessionary mindset argument. The question really becomes: how deep is the recession going to go? Are we going to be in a situation where we keep this recession going so long that you do end up killing people buying new iPhones or new cars or whatever. Maybe. So sales at Walmart year over year up 7.4 percent Membership down three percent, but you're still up seven point four percent in sales, which is great.

But keep in mind, inflation roughly matches that. So if you look at a real adjustment of revenues, we're probably actually about flat for Walmart in terms of growth. But in addition to that, you're actually negative on operating income. Look at that 5.5 Which means if you inflation adjusts their operating income, they're probably negative 13 in operating income year over year.

I Personally believe that is going to worsen. that is going to get even more difficult. That's my thesis. Again, it's very different from Morgan Stanley but I believe the following: I Believe that companies that do not have pricing power are going to be companies like Walmart where basically you're keeping up with inflation here, but your cost of sales are exploding at a higher rate and so is your Opex at a higher rate than you're able to raise revenues.

Because you don't have pricing power, you're dealing with extremely price sensitive customers. You're not dealing with price sensitive customers or as price sensitive customers at Apple for example or end phase uh. And therefore I think their operating leverage will go substantially negative. This is actually exactly what we saw with Chachi PT Look at this revenues.

What do we have? We have revenues up 7.4 but their operating income is actually down 5.5 It's a little bit of an oopsy-doopsies and it suggests they have negative operating leverage, which makes sense in a disinflationary time. This is why I think Mike Wilson is actually wrong to go into Staples At this point, going into Staples would have been a great thing January of 2022 In a Nike Swoosh style recovery, it's a terrible thing to go into my opinion. Now if we look at their actual bottom line. Uh, let's go to net Income per comment Share: Uh, net income very nice percentage-wise increase from last year.

That's because of some of the write Downs they took last year and some lawsuit losses regarding uh Pharmaceuticals that they had to uh take some losses on some some lawsuits and settlements. Uh but anyway, ignoring that, let's I really I Think it's easier just to compare operating income over here because this is a little complicated because of the comparisons of the different quarters. Uh, but in my opinion, this is not necessarily something that's super exciting. Let me look at their cash flow quickly and then let's look at Colgate briefly and then we'll jump over.

course member live. So they actually had a nice free cash flow though I will give them that look at that Very nice free cash flow you had. If we subtract these two numbers here, you've got about a 12 billion dollar set of free cash flow. so plenty of cash, but declining operating leverage Again, you would expect that though.

So if we go to Colgate investor relations, let's just see if they have positive Opera trading leverage or not Because that's what our bear here is suggesting is that earnings are going to plummet all the growth companies haven't properly priced in yet. All of the pain that's to come. and basically the S P 500 is being propped up by companies like Microsoft or Apple or otherwise and the real pain is coming. Okay, so let's look at where he's moving money too.

Colgate and Walmart we just looked at Walmart Let's quickly look at Uh Colgate and we have their annual report right here. so this annual report is just out from them. What we're going to do is we're going to jump over to there's income statements. Let's see if we can find them here.

income statements while I look for their income statements. remember uh, we've got a paid promotion promo motion where you could get life insurance in as little as five minutes by going to Maccabin.com Life, you can actually get 12 free Stocks by going to Metkevin.com free that's with Weeble It's my favorite platform I actually just moved all my money out of TD Ameritrade and we're moving over to Weeble because TD's a pain in the butt on mobile. Uh, it's the thinkorswim. platform is pretty decent, but mobile is just trash.

uh. and I prefer how Weeble transfers over your your sticks and your your drawings and your Fibonaccis and everything I Love that. uh and then of course check out the buy now play later options now in the courses on building your wealth link down below. oh what do we have here? Colgate All right so Colgate's revenues.

Let's do this brief and then jump over to courses. remember live stream So Colgate has net sales here that have grown 17967 year over year divided by 17421. Wow. Only 3.1 percent growth.

How do you argue? you have pricing power with 3.1 percent growth? You don't Holy Smokes and their costs went up by about 10. 9.5 percent increase in cost of goods sold. So you are absolutely experiencing inflation at Colgate your cost of goods sold are skyrocketing. Uh, and your sales are barely growing on a real basis.

an inflation-adjusted basis. You're massively negative on sales If we look at operating profit. Oh, it's negative. Why would you buy this garbage? Uh, your your uh uh.

Let's see 28.93 divided by 3332 your negative. Uh, let's write this here. Negative: 13.1 on operating profit year over year. Why would you do this? There's no PP this.

There's literally zero PP like it's not even micro PP It's like it's like negative PP it's it's an inverted PP it's inside out. This is problematic. Uh, now the crazy thing again is these staples have actually held up CL Let's see how it is CL Stock I don't know I haven't looked, uh, but oh look, uh, let's just do year over year. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

This is stupid. Look at that. Colgate Negative Operating income negative Operating Leverage trash. The stock is down 1.8 year over year just like Walmart Why? Because the Bears The weenie baby bears are like, uh, recession.

Okay, we must move money to defensives. That's because what happens? Well, because you have money managers who pick up their phone and their clients are like I'm worried about a recession and then the money managers are like it's okay. You're paying me to reallocate to defensives. We have done so.

Are people really going to stop buying toothpaste because of a recession? Are people gonna stop buying Walmart Uh, Chocolate bars because of a recession? No, of course not. Don't worry, we have you defensively positioned. But in the long term what's gonna happen. The fundamentals are going to Shone through and these people are going to get wrecked.

It doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense. So what do we have over here? Uh, let's just look at cash flows really quick. Uh, cash provided by operations? That's decent actually. 2.5 bill Capex.

Over here you're at 1.9 bill in free cash flow. It's very good. It's a free cash flowing business, but it's because they're milking an existing business. Their actual operating leverage in their PP is negative.

I Wouldn't want to go near it like what would you rather have? Okay, this is this is your choice right now. This I I Really want you to think about this. Keep in mind, this is the same stuff that I do with course members in our live streams daily which I got to get to uh and so if you're not a course member, you're missing out on this kind of perspective. All right, you pay once you get lifetime access.

All right. Here's the thing would you rather: defensives which are down one percent year over year. You know what? I'll be generous and so I'll say you're You're at a two percent discount year over year. You have negative real revenues.

You have negative operating leverage. basically. Uh, you have, uh, negative PP But you do have free cash flow. A free cash flow is positive.

That's true. Okay, would you rather that or do you go over here and you look at uh, pricing Power growth stocks where you have a negative 20 year-over-year discount? You have positive real Revenue You have positive operating uh, leverage in a dis inflationary time as well. Which basically means you have positive PP Uh and your free cash flow? positive. So what would you rather? No discount and negative real revenues or discount and positive real revenues with operating leverage.

and PP The only reason those stocks are doing well right now is because it's a trade. It's a trade. If you want to trade it, that's fine. You can play the cyclical trades, but if you're looking for a long-term portfolio building hashtag not personalized Financial Advice: Some people get mad.

they're like, why do Finance channels save This is not Financial But they're obviously talking about financial advice. This could be Financial advice. but it's not personal financial advice. There's a big difference I Don't know what your situation is if you have a hundred dollars to your name.

Should you go YOLO at all into Tesla that's different from somebody who's got 10 million dollars. Should you YOLO 100 in the test? A very different question, right? People get mad about the stupidest things, mostly because they don't understand legal definition. but anyway, which one makes more sense? In my opinion, It should be obvious. Okay baby, that's my opinion, Now with that said, I Gotta take care of my course members.

So I'm gonna hop on over because usually we do the bell with them and you got a little bit of a special freebie over here. Now we're gonna see and answer all the questions they have. Why is Donald Trump a money manager? It's gonna be huge. Okay, because we like PB We want to grab it by the PB and we want huge baby.

That's what we won baby. I'm gonna go now.