美股财报季押注AI高增长 ASML与台积电面临估值大考

美股财报季押注AI高增长 ASML与台积电面临估值大考 标普500指数超35%的盈利扩张预期高度绑定半导体与科技龙头，若核心巨头无法兑现业绩指引，处在高估值的大盘将面临剧烈回调风险。 节目全面拆解了美股三季度财报季的严峻考验：在美债收益率攀升与大盘逼近历史高位的背景下，标普500高度依赖科技与AI板块50%-60%的超高业绩增长来支撑估值。主讲人以其投资组合中的核心持仓ASML为例，剖析了其EUV技术垄断壁垒、独家供应链和装机管理服务带来的长期护城河，并横向对比了台积电的稳健估值以及摩根大通、联合健康与达美乐的业绩表现。此外，节目重点探讨了Meta发布内部代号为“Watermelon”的Muse Wonder全新前沿大模型，认为其在个人Agent场景落地与估值重估上具备巨大空间；尾声部分则通过Kelly Clarkson网暴布鲁克林小店的争议事件，借用攀岩家Alex Honnold的处世哲学，呼吁人们放平心态、避免对生活琐事过度反应与精神内耗。 美股第三季度财报季拉开序幕，标普500指数整体加权盈利增长预期超35%，其中科技与AI板块预期增长50%-60%，承担了指数70%-80%的盈利增量。 (0:00) 半导体核心风向标ASML本季营收预期大增50%-55%、EPS预计增长89%，前瞻市盈率达33倍；台积电前瞻市盈率为21倍，估值相对更为稳健。 (6:19) Meta发布代号为“Watermelon”的全新前沿AI模型家族Muse Wonder，其基准表现逼近Claude Opus 5.5，目标切入个人Agent生态，分析认为其合理前瞻P/E可重估至26-27倍。 (20:00) 传统板块业绩分化明显：消费必需品EPS预期仅增3%-4%，摩根大通CET1资本充足率达14%保持稳健，联合健康与达美乐比萨则面临商业模式层面的壁垒侵蚀与监管隐患。 (15:35)

Joseph Carlson指出，美股迎来预期极高的第三季度财报季，大盘在国债收益率上行的背景下仍逼近历史高位，其核心支撑高度依赖科技巨头与能源板块的超额盈利扩张；而半导体基石企业与前沿AI模型的突破成为维系高估值的关键。 宏观压力与AI盈利扩张的严重分化 (2:37) 尽管美债收益率上升通常会对股票估值倍数带来下行压力，但标普500指数依然徘徊在历史高位附近。Carlson与彭博分析师指出，市场正处于一个需要“拿出真凭实据”的关键节点，标普500指数加权盈利增速预计将突破35%（基准预期为29.6%），但其中70%至80%的盈利扩张极度集中于科技与AI领域，另有部分由地缘政治驱动的能源和材料板块贡献。 数据显示，能源板块每股收益（EPS）预计增长约110%，科技与通信服务预计增长50%至60%；相较之下，必需消费品板块仅录得3%至4%的微弱增长，公用事业与金融板块同样表现平淡。这种分化意味着整体大盘的抗风险能力极其脆弱，一旦领涨的科技龙头无法达到拉高后的盈利门槛，估值将面临显著回调压力。 半导体双雄ASML与台积电的垄断壁垒 (6:19) 在Carlson个人的14只持仓组合中，ASML作为第五大持仓（市值约12.4万美元，未实现收益9.2万美元），其Q3预计营收增长达50%至55%，EPS预期增速高达约89%。尽管其前瞻市盈率达33倍、自由现金流收益率仅1.5%，但Carlson强调其护城河正在加深：新一代High NA EUV光刻机将行业代差扩大至十年以上，数千家独家排他供应商及高昂的晶圆厂转换成本构建了极高壁垒，其装机管理服务经常性收入也有望在未来十年从近100亿美元扩张至250亿到300亿美元。 作为制造链顶端的代工霸主，台积电同样具备顶层定价权。无论芯片设计端英伟达与AMD如何竞争，先进制造均需交由台积电代工。台积电当前前瞻P/E约为21倍，自由现金流收益率为1.5%，市场预期未达极端泡沫水平，具备稳健的持有价值。 传统行业标的：摩根大通、联合健康与达美乐分歧 (15:35) 在传统板块标的中，摩根大通展现出优质资产特征，前瞻P/E约为13.5倍，P/B为2.49倍。其一级普通资本充足率（CET1）维持在14%的健康区间（低于9%为警戒线，15%代表资金过度冗余），商业与个人贷款及净利息收入长期稳步增长，资产负债表扎实。 相比之下，另外两家企业面临结构性挑战。联合健康虽有深度价值重组的预期，但健康险利润率显著高于一线医疗机构，容易招致监管与立法审查，且缺乏用户口碑；达美乐比萨在接入DoorDash与Uber Eats后，其原有的自有配送护城河被平台海量餐饮选择稀释，核心竞争优势明显削弱。 Meta发布Muse Wonder加速个人Agent落地 (20:00) 扎克伯格近期披露了代号为“Watermelon”的前沿大模型家族Muse Wonder，推动Meta股价单日上涨3%至4%。该模型在基准测试中已逼近Claude Opus 5.5，并在陌生任务的测试时计算资源（Test-time compute）扩展上展现出扎实的泛化能力，摆脱了单纯依赖固定数据集刷分的质疑。 在落地应用上，Muse Wonder定位于专为个人打造的Agent系统，例如可自主整合日历、地理位置并规划跑步路线，以接管繁琐的日常琐事，同时配有严格的底层权限安全机制。Carlson认为，相比主要作为工作或问答工具的竞品，Meta在个人Agent领域的定位与社交网络护城河，支撑其前瞻P/E重估至26到27倍。 网红舆论审判失衡与生活琐事的精神内耗 (24:04) 在常规的“翻车吐槽”环节中，歌手Kelly Clarkson因在纽约布鲁克林一家名为“Art of Play”的店铺遭遇态度冷淡的店员，在拥有880万粉丝的账号上公开指名控诉，引发了浏览量达4400万次的全网网暴，并引来NBC、ABC等全美主流媒体的报道。店方随后澄清涉事展品实为非卖品道具，而Clarkson则坚称店员撒谎且态度傲慢。 主持人指出，动用千万级社交影响力对一家小型独立店铺进行舆论审判，严重背离了处理摩擦的比例原则。正如攀岩家Alex Honnold所主张的专注与冷静哲学，普通人在日常生活中因赶不上飞机或遭遇无礼对待等细微瑕疵便陷入极端情绪内耗，本可以通过理性沟通或直接放下翻篇来化解，不应将小麻烦无限升级为舆论危机。 本季美股走势高度绑定于少数科技与半导体领军者的业绩兑现能力。在宏观利率压力未减的环境下，市场能否消化高估值，完全取决于后续大模型商业化推进及半导体产业链能否如期交出高增长答卷。

[0:00] Joseph Carlson: There is a lot riding on this earnings season. [2:37] show me [10:00] 节省时间并提升良率 [19:31] Mark Zuckerberg: Muse ordered me Watermelon. How thoughtful. [20:00] Mark Zuckerberg: Agentic [20:00] Bench maxing [24:04] Joseph Carlson: Fail of the Week [24:04] Kelly Clarkson: 这确实在售，但要一万五千美元，我帮你找个买得起的吧 [24:04] Kelly Clarkson: 不仅粗鲁而且是个骗子 [30:00] Joseph Carlson: proportionate response [31:07] Alex Honnold: 天呐，我赶不上飞机了，该怎么办

[0:00] Now, we're finally getting into the third quarter earnings season. Over the next four weeks, the majority of companies in the stock market will report their earnings and give us a progress update. In that, it'll determine the direction the market takes. Because like many earnings seasons, there's a lot priced in. But in this case, that is especially the truth. There is a lot riding on this earnings season. The growth expectations are extraordinary. In fact, the weighted growth of the S&P 500 this earnings quarter is expected to exceed 35%. That is a massive growth by the market. And the majority of this earnings is reliant on a small number of companies, the so-called AI companies and the energy companies. Now, I'll be breaking down this data, trying to make sense of it. We'll be going through how much of the market is made up by AI, where the earnings are all going, and how this will likely play out over the next year. We'll also be looking at my portfolio. We'll be breaking down how fast my portfolio is expected to grow this quarter. We'll also be looking at the week ahead. For example, if we look at the calendar here, we have a lot of companies reporting earnings this week. For example, we have JP Morgan. That's a big one tomorrow. We have United Healthcare. We have ASML. I own a lot of ASML Super important company in the semiconductor industry And of course we have TSM and many others We be going through each of them and I be giving you my thoughts on what to expect We also, of course, have news to go through. For example, Mark Zuckerberg ordered a watermelon. He teased that this morning. In reality, that was the code name for the new model that he was going to release. The new model is called Muse Wonder. The stock is now up 4% on the day. And he posted the benchmark. So we'll be looking at how good this model actually is. And then finally, as a fail of the week, we have to highlight Kelly Clarkson. We'll be going through her spat with a small business at the end of this episode. Now, of course, just a reminder, if you haven't already, try out Qualtrum.com. It is a website that I own. I created the membership, so it's mine. But even objectively, scientifically, it is the best membership in the world. I really think you'll enjoy it. A lot of people have a lot of fun with this membership. You gain access to a private Discord community that's moderated. You'll meet like-minded investors, and they're very ambitious. You'll learn about a lot of stocks that I don't even talk about as well as you gain access to a lot of exclusive content deep dives AMA's I have hour-long portfolio updates going over each stock that I own and ones that are on my watch list as well as Qualtrum is getting better and better with The technology for example, I just released the mobile app in iOS and Android The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive people love it It helps you check your stocks keep up to date It really easy to use I think you like it So try it out now risk You can do so at Qualtrum Now jumping in we start off with Q3 earnings season It has begun This is the first week. Around week three is where we really have the biggest earnings drop. That's when all the big tech companies report their earnings. But even this week, it starts off with a bang. With TSM and ASML, those are two companies that are very symbolic of how the whole AI thing will go. And why is AI so important? Well, AI is not just a buzzword. AI really means a lot of earnings growth in this market. Now, the media has hyped this up to, of course, be a very important earnings season. There's many articles like this where Barron's is saying that the next move for stocks hangs in the balance as we jump into Q3 earnings. Now, even though oftentimes it feels like every earnings season is the most important earnings season, I do believe that this one is actually really important. And part of the reason why is because bond yields are going up. There's a lot of reasons that the market should be down more, but yet the S&P 500 is trending towards all time highs. So when we look at this, we're in a situation where stocks should have a lot of pressure because yields are going up on treasuries. Yields are going up on bonds which typically pushes stocks down but they been resistant And part of the reason they resistant is because stocks are growing quickly So investors are more forgiving of their lower starting yields when you can assume a great amount of growth. And the growth being implied in this quarter is substantial. From FactSet, they say that the S&P 500 is likely to report earnings growth above 35%. So that's the total earnings growth of the S&P 500. Just incredible. So now we know that the analyst estimates expectations are at 29.6%. But the reason they say that it can grow at maybe above 35% is because the majority of time companies report earnings that are above analyst expectations. And this isn't just like a wild prediction. This is mathematically significant. In fact, in 37 of the past 40 quarters, the actual earnings growth rate has exceeded what the analysts predicted. So overwhelmingly, we have a likelihood of exceeding it again. Now, we know that AI companies, it's not just talk, these companies make up the huge majority of earnings in the S&P 500 to a staggering amount. This highlights the concerns that investors have that so much of this market is being driven by AI. While investors are enthusiastic about hyper earnings growth fueled by AI companies, many are also wondering about how long this trend can continue and what will happen to share [5:00] And it ends. It's all AI land, to a lesser extent, energy and materials, but that's because of geopolitics. It wouldn't surprise me if 70 to 80% of the growth can be attributed to tech and AI. What they're saying here is not an exaggeration either. It is all dependent on AI. Another analyst at Bloomberg said, it's not make or break, but it's a show me. And the rally needs confirmation because the bar has been raised. Normally, companies get to step over a lowered bar. This time they have to jump over a higher one. The risk is with this bifurcated market that the companies that are really generating all the earnings are concentrated into a smaller number of companies, specifically Technology and energy. Energy is expected to grow around 110% in its earnings per share. Technology, when you factor in AI companies, communication services, is going to be in the range of around 50 to 60%. And then you get to the other sectors, the ones that nobody cares about anymore, financials, utilities, consumer discretionary, consumer staples. Some of these are barely growing at all. For example, consumer staples are expected to grow EPS around 3% to 4%. These analysts aren't exaggerating by saying that so much of this market hinges on AI companies. There's such high expectations for them. And the market's growth and revenue and earnings per share is being driven by AI companies as well. I can even see it in my portfolio. When I look at my portfolio and the growth of it, I have a number of positions. 14 different companies, all different sizes. most in both its earnings per share and in both its revenue is ASML. ASML is my fifth largest position. It's a $124,000 position with $92,000 in the green. So it's been an insane winner already. and ASML is still expected to grow substantially. Now, this is also a company that's reporting earnings on Wednesday. So let's go ahead and take a look at ASML before it reports its earnings this Wednesday. To put this in perspective, when I do analysis on my companies going into this quarter, I have each one of them here with their unreported quarter expectations. The top company by revenue growth this quarter is ASML. It's expected to grow 50 to 55 percent. It depends The estimates range from upwards of 60% to like 45, with a mid-range of around 50% to 55%. That is incredible revenue growth. Again, this is not earnings per share growth. This is revenue growth. That's a lot of year-over-year growth. Now, if we look at ASML through the lens of earnings per share, which is even more important than revenue, usually, we want the earnings of the company to grow. What do you know? ASML, again, is at the top of the list. in the semiconductor industry, both contrasting AI and physical hardware, is the one that's doing the best. ASML is expected to grow its earnings per share by 89%. somewhere in that range. Again, the annual assessments vary, but most of them agree it's going to be substantial earnings per share growth. When we look at the earnings per share on the chart, we see that it's not a particularly low year. a year ago. So this isn't like it's coming off of some super low baseline or anything irregular. No, this is just organic growth by ASML. So ASML, like many of these AI companies, has extraordinarily high expectations, and they need to fulfill on this. They need to come in with these numbers. Otherwise, the stock will be very hurt. So there is downside here. When we look at the company itself, the valuation is relatively high. It's at a 33 forward PE ratio, a 1.5% free stock by any means and it has extremely high expectations. Now normally when I have a stock that's a large position with a high valuation and extremely high expectations, I would approach this earnings with this stock with a lot of trepidation. It would be something where I'm concerned or nervous about going into it because, well, I don't want to lose my gains. With ASML, I have taken some money off the table. I sold some when it was close to $2,000 per share and But even with its current share price I remain holding this position and I'm going to hold it into earnings. Now, I can't guarantee which way the market will react. The market has sold down ASML incorrectly in the past and they could do it again. But I believe with a high degree of confidence that this company is going to generate incredibly good returns and good business prospects over the next decade. When I look at ASML, I'm not looking at this one just for this quarter. I do own it going for the next 10 years. future. Let's go ahead and just look at some of the things that could occur that I believe are very probable. One of them is continued revenue growth. Now, revenue growth drives everything else, the margins, the earnings, all of that is driven first by the revenue growth of the company. And why does revenue growth continue to grow for ASML? Well, we're going into a world where everything needs a chip, like virtually every device needs a chip. And in order to produce good quality chips that actually work for all different applications, and to produce [10:00] them at a cheap price with a high yield efficiently, you have to go through ASML's machines. Ten years in the future, I believe you'll still have to go through ASML's machines. Now, there's a thought that over time, moats erode, they get weaker. Like ASML will have Chinese competitors catch up or different companies like Sony will compete with them somehow. That does happen in some cases, but I actually believe it's going to be the opposite with ASML. I think the moat is actually going to get... bigger and deeper and wider over the next 10 years. When you look at what's going on, they're actually starting to sell more of their high NA EUV machines. These are like their supreme EUV machines, not their lower, the lower ones, which even the lower ones are so, they're such a wide moat, nobody can copy those. But they're starting to sell their new generation ones. that are so far ahead of competitors, they're just not even in sight. There's no one else doing anything remotely close. They are literally over a decade ahead of the next competitor, and they are gaining distance. The distance is not closing in, it's getting wider between ASML and the next closest competitor. There's also the thought that people want cheaper chips, but that means you have to go through ASML. And over time, the moat for ASML is not just expanding technologically, they're not just getting better at what they do at a faster clip than anyone else, expands in lots of different ways. For example, in their supplier relationships, in all their materials, in their logistics with their customer relationship, ASML has navigated this perfectly. Management has been restrained and disciplined in growing the relationship with their customers. They like them. They have agreements. Their customers, up until a point, were even invested in ASML. And now they have deep-rooted relationships with all the fab makers. These are companies that operations. And these are big, expensive machines that would take an enormous amount of effort to uproot. And then just going into the supplier relationships, all the exclusive agreements, literally thousands of different companies that ASML gets its supplies from, that would be very difficult for another company to replicate. Now, only would a competitor have to replicate ASML's technology, all their supplier relationships, they'd have to figure out all the chemistry, build all of it together. But even if they have a machine that's about as good, they need to all the customers of ASML to switch from ASML to them to save some money in the process. Most of these companies don't want to save money. They want to save time and they want to increase yield. That's really what costs them the most. So they'll go with the company they have trust with. So you also have a logistics, a distribution mode, You also have the fact that when they install machines, you have to continually upgrade them, service them, and you have exclusive agreements doing that. This is called the install-based management sales. It seems like management's a bit of a euphemism here, but it's basically after machine is installed, it's still incredibly complex. You need experts to run it and service it and upgrade it to the new iterations, the new technology. All of that is very expensive. ASML I believe that in 10 years, this could be a $25 to $30 billion business. Right now, it's just approaching 10. So if you have install-based management triple over the next 10 years, the earnings per share growth of this company is going to grow on a baseline. The biggest thing I'd portray for investors here is when I'm looking at companies, I'm always trying to look at potential weaknesses, competitors on the horizon taking their market or stumblings from management team. And I just don't see any here. ASML remains with top-tier management, highly disciplined and long-term focused. I don't see any competitors that are doing anything that's remotely threatening to the company. There's always chatter of it that maybe it will happen, but I don't see it here. And I believe that ASML is one of the true companies that has a full monopoly. a full-on monopoly. Now, they're not going to abuse it because they're good stewards over it, but they are in a very unique position. So this one I'm remaining fully invested in. Now, the next one I think is worth going over, the company that's likely the most consequential this week, closely followed by ASML is TSM. And many of the things that I said about ASML, I also think are completely the same for TSM. They share a lot of the same bull case. For example, both of these companies... It doesn't really matter which design company wins or which chip ends up winning. It doesn't matter if it's AMD or NVIDIA. These companies fulfill on overall AI demand. So they're at the top of the food chain. Now, TSM is just below ASML. ASML has like a super monopoly, but TSM is pretty monopolistic as well. It only has a couple of companies doing the same thing. So it does have some level of competition, but it is very concentrated. And overall, the company has an incredibly fruitful path ahead. robotics, by machines, by AI. There's so much devices. There's so many things that people are creating all the time. To even keep the base level of chip production necessary. [15:00] very Companies like ASML and TSM are going to continue growing for the next 10 years. TSM is also not that expensive by the numbers. Trading at a 21 forward PE ratio, 1.5% free cash flow yield. This doesn't look like it has overly high expectations. It's a little bit lower expectations going in than ASML. So I believe that TSM will have great earnings. I think that investors invested in this company should see no reason to sell it as of yet. Now, looking back through the week, we also have companies like JP Morgan, United Health Group, reporting earnings all tomorrow as well. I generally think these companies are going to do well. With JP Morgan, this is one of the best companies in the market. I actually really like this one. I own JP Morgan for a while. I made some good money buying this one close to COVID. I sold it at what I thought was a big gain. And it was, but the stock just kept going up. So this was a mistake to sell this one. It currently trades at a 13.5 forward PE ratio. With banks, you should probably use the price to book. 2.49 is expensive for a bank. So it depends on how you value this one. If you value it as a digital tech company that also is a little bit of a banking system, then JP Morgan's cheap. If you value it as primarily just a bank with some tech add-on stuff, then it's expensive. In any case, the growth has been incredible. Look at how much it's grown in the past 10 years. at the deposit size. We have KPIs here showing that the deposit size is increasing. More people are saving money, putting their money in JP Morgan. The net interest income is also going up. So as treasury rates go up, as interest rates go up, the average loan, this is an interesting one. This is throughout all of their business, commercial and personal, continues to go up as well. So they have more average loans. We have another KPI that's been added here. This is one that I actually had to look up. I wasn't familiar with it. I'm not a banking expert, but it's a CET1 ratio. And this basically says... how good the company would be at covering for severe loan losses or their risky investment profile. If it gets up to a point where they have 15%, That's almost like the bank is being too conservative. It just has too much money to cover for even terrible situations. If you get below 9%, that's where things start to get dangerous. And for JP Morgan, they've never really gotten down below that 9%. They are right now at 14%. So right now, JP Morgan has a very conservative profile. There should be no concerns as far as their banking and their loan profile is involved. I like it going into this earnings. I think it's going to be good. I think that banks are set up really well right now. I wouldn't mind being invested in JP Morgan. Another company that I've looked at before is United Health Group. This is one that a lot of investors jumped in with Warren Buffett. I decided to stay out of it because I just don't love the business. Insurance companies are not a fun business. I don't like companies in general where basically every customer hates the company. That's not something that I like investing in anyway. And with United Health Group, it also is one of those situations where they earn a lot more money than even the hospitals do. which doesn't make sense. Why should insurance companies have such higher margins than hospitals and healthcare providers themselves? So there's some problems with the industry that I think could cause issues legislatively down the road. And now the stock is being viewed as a deep value turnaround company. I think it eventually will, but it's not an industry that I'm interested in going into. For me, there's just too many customer bad vibes with that one and too much regulatory concern. Then we have Domino's reporting earnings. This is another one that I'm not super bullish on at this point. is actually accelerating growth because of DoorDash and Uber Eats. But in my opinion, I don't think that's a good thing for Domino's because Domino's historically was one of the few places that had delivery. So when you wanted to order food delivered, You would basically pick between Domino's and Papa John's and other pizza places. And you'd call them and they have their own delivery network. That was a unique part of the company. But now with DoorDash... When people want food delivered, it's not limited to just pizza. So I have to believe that that's a little bit of a downgrade in the operations of Domino's. Now people are just ordering from any restaurant. They open up something like... Doordash, and they have a whole menu full of different restaurants all over the place. Domino's is just one more company. In the era of Doordash and Uber Eats, it doesn't make me quite as excited to own a company like Domino's where their whole thing is delivery. Now, those are the most important companies reporting earnings this week. And then next week, it gets even bigger. We have companies like Tesla and Netflix reporting earnings. And then the third week is by far the most important with all the big tech companies. So just make sure you're following along. They'll Meta continues trading with a lot of confidence. The stock has a lot of momentum. It's moving up 3% to 4% on the day. After Mark Zuckerberg said on Twitter, he posted that Muse ordered me Watermelon. How thoughtful. With a picture of a watermelon. Now, what does that mean? Well, Watermelon has been the codename for their new model, for their advanced model. Alexander Wing has said internally that Meta is finally catching up to OTAs. [20:00] and AI. They're finally catching up to the Frontier models. And how are they catching up to OpenAI? Well, with this model, which is Watermelon, that's the code name for it, but its official name is Muse Wonder. Mark Zuckerberg released today, introducing Muse Wonder, our new family of Frontier models with state-of-the-art performance for personal and professional agentic work. To put it simply, Muse Wonder is super good, and meta has been leapfrogging ahead of the competition Then we have MuseSpark 1.1, then 1.2 that leaped ahead two positions. Then we have MuseSpark 1.3 that leaped ahead another three positions. Then we have MuseWonder. Then we have MuseWonder Full, which is now literally ahead of all the models except for Claude Opus 5.5, and it is barely behind Claude Opus. So you can see how fast this is gaining on the other models. Now it's virtually it also addressed concerns of the benchmarks because we know a lot of models can be trained specifically to perform well during some like benchmark test. This is bench maxing is what some of them are calling it now. The important thing here is that both of the models improve similarly on out of distribution tasks as we scale test time compute. But given its distribution performance, Muse Wonderful performs even better on unfamiliar tasks in Muse Spark 1.3 trend would predict. So this is like a weird way of saying that they're not trying to game the benchmark. They're not bench maxing by just making their models good at a couple tasks that are particularly curated to advance in a benchmark. No, even when you throw all different random tasks, things that it's unfamiliar with, it also has incredibly good performance across the board. Now, they give examples of this model, like planning a run. You can see it just open up someone's calendar. It makes a new calendar entry. at a map of the location, and then it literally draws out a run depending on the person's desired distance they want to run. It puts all the information into the notes. It has the time for it and everything based on what they want. So if you want Muse to map out a run, you can do that. So this is like one example of I think how Mark Zuckerberg and Alexander and all these people envision people actually using Muse. It's just to do the kind of annoying things that you don't want to do for you, like planning a run. You probably want to go on a run, but you don't want to actually go and figure out where to run and the distance and where would be a good run that's different from the last one you did. So you could have it do that kind of annoying part while you get to focus on the fun part, which is going out and actually going on a run. I think that's how they envision it. Of course, there's going to be a lot of people that try to use it in bad ways. There's a lot of controls they're doing to make sure that the models are safe, that they ask for permission before taking tasks, that they don't display your information or your personal stuff anywhere. because if Meta loses trust with their models, if Muse isn't trustworthy, then people aren't going to use the Muse app. And so far, that's one of the best things they have going for them. I see overall that this is another huge step in Meta. I've become more and more bullish on this company over time. I think the base thesis for the company is that it was growing really fast. It has a wide moat and it's at a cheap valuation. But now you have a company that also is leading in the pack of AI companies. It has a truly frontier model, with Claude, and it's the only company that has a personalized agent, which is Muse. Nobody really looks at ChatGPT or Claude as being their personalized agent. They use it for different business applications, maybe answering questions, but Muse has become the de facto agent. So I believe that Meta still has a significant opportunity here. When I look at this company, it's one of my most exciting investments today. It's I think the company should be trading at a 26 to 27 Ford PE ratio. I think there should be more multiple expansion. I still believe Meta is undervalued. Now, moving on, we get to this week's fail of the week, which in this case, I have to, I believe somewhat surprisingly, highlight Kelly Clarkson, who is somebody that I don't believe I've even thought of once since... American Idol. I think she was on the first season That's back when that show was actually really cool. It was exciting. The first season of American Idol, it was something I think the family could gather around and watch. Now they're on season like 15 or 16. Who knows? But in any case... Kelly Clarkson is the singer, American Idol winner. Presumably she's done stuff after that. I'm not familiar. But regardless, she showed back up on my radar when she went ultra viral after having a very angry post about a small business. Let's go ahead and take a look at this post. Kelly Clarkson says, just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldn't afford it and was told... He could find something comparable for me. Wow. [25:00] Oh, dude, you're an idiot and just lost a huge sale. But y'all could go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman. For sure, check it out. Thumbs down. That's the post. So from her own words, she was excited to visit this Art of Play store in Brooklyn, like this small shop that has some rad things in it. and she was looking at something that was probably expensive, and the store employee or owner, whoever it was, gave her the Julia Roberts treatment in Pretty Woman. So, said like, God, you can't afford this. Look at you, dressed in normal clothes. Maybe she wasn't like dressed up fancy or something, and so the employee just assumed that she couldn't afford something expensive. When I was reading this, I was immediately skeptical. What store owner is actually judging whether or not someone can afford something by what they're currently wearing. I don't think people are doing that that much anymore. Most people that have a ton of money don't dress up super nice. There's plenty of people that have millions of dollars that are dressed in just completely normal clothes, blue jeans and a t-shirt. So I don't know who would be doing that It just makes me a little bit skeptical Am I really to believe that Kelly Clarkson drove to this place She looked at something expensive and said hey I interested in this thing knowing of the price of it And the employer, owner, whoever it was, looked at her and said, you know what? I don't think so. I can tell you can't afford this. So let me find something a little bit more comparable for you, something that you can afford. Does that sound like a real exchange? It doesn't to me. But that's apparently the exchange that she had. And she posts this and it just goes super viral. This is like a level of viral that we don't often see. It got 11,000 reposts, 10,000 comments, 266,000 likes, and 44 million views. Now, again, this Art of Place store is like a small business. It's like a hole in the wall business. And now it's a post with 44 million views. Now, the owner of the place getting bombarded with, I'm sure, tens of thousands of people enraged by Kelly Clarkson's post, responded with this. Yesterday, Kelly Clarkson visited us in Brooklyn and inquired about buying Molly, a one-of-a-kind singing and dancing bird automation who plays an important role in our magic show we host here. Molly is permanently attached to the wall and isn for sale However the negative experience Kelly described on Twitter would resonate with anyone who has ever felt judged in a shop At Art of Play whether or not someone comes in to make a purchase or simply look around for a while they are equally welcome We greet everyone who walks in the door with an invitation to pick things up and play. And they do. Many stay for hours enjoying puzzles, games, and toys. Imagine our surprise when our small local business was suddenly attacked by 8 million people who have never visited our store. It's been a surreal experience to be the focus of such widespread outrage after just one mentioned by a celebrity. So that was their post. And keep in mind, prior to this, this store had really good ratings on Google. Like everybody thought that they were treated really well. So Kelly's experience here was somewhat unique by the company's own reviews and ratings online. And you think that it would end there, but it didn't. Kelly responded to that, doubling down on her criticism for this small business, saying, Cool, cool. Sure. It wasn't for sale. That's the narrative art of play is gonna go with thumbs up So the whole conversation we had when I asked you if it was for sale whilst pointing to the price tag hanging on the wall With the title singing bird didn happen as you elevator eyed me saying in a condescending tone Yes it for sale but it costs fifteen thousand dollars So if you like me to find something comparable for you I can That all never happened And now it not for sale Okay cool So you not only rude, you're also a liar. Got it. Now the store responded to that again, saying they've tried to talk to Kelly in person to clear the air because that specific one isn't for sale. It's for a different model and so on and so forth. And this is really blown out of proportion. Now, when I look this, I think, I don't know what happened here. I don't know what experience Kelly Clarkson really had. We don't have like video footage or audio recording of what went down in this store. But even by her own admission, it was a store employee acting condescending to her. That's the crime that was committed here. One employee in one exchange in one store acted condescending to Kelly Clarkson, of which she took to Twitter or X to post with her 8.8 million followers blasting the company, putting their full name, putting their address, what city they're in, and then telling of this terrible experience she had. Now, I get it. You know, stores should treat people well. Employees should be nice to their customers. That's in their own incentive to do that. And they shouldn't be judgmental or they shouldn't try to look at people and judge how much money they have by how much they wear. Even though I'm skeptical of that happening, Yeah. [30:00] any store doing that, they shouldn't do that. But regardless, you Even if the store was rude, even if this employee was judgmental, even if she had a bad experience, does that warrant Posting this on an 8.8 million follower feed, millions of people, literally 40 million people have now seen this post. Was the experience so bad, Kelly, that you had to get it out to 40 million people? Do you think that's a proportionate response? Do you think they really deserve this? 44 million people, now it's on national television. NBC and ABC are doing news articles shop that she had a bad experience in, that somebody was a little bit unfriendly to her. To me, it just feels a bit disproportionate. I don't think this is a, this is not a proportionate response by any means. This could have been handled in a thousand different ways, one of them by specifically talking to the owner beforehand and explaining the rude experience. Maybe doing that before escalating it to your feed of tens of millions of people. And I think there's a lesson such small things. This is a small thing. Having somebody treat you unkindly or judge you a little bit in one store or small business is not a big deal. And it's certainly not deserving of blasting that entire small business to the world, making them a national news story over that minor inconvenience. And it's also something that I think relates to what Alex Honnold has said before. He's the rock climber. He does climb sometimes where he doesn't use any gear. It's called free So he has to be extremely focused when he's doing that. In one interview, Alex said that he thinks generally people stress out about too many little things. For example, he'll see people in airports freak out if they miss their flight. Like they just lose their mind. They'll go, oh my gosh, I lost my flight. What am I going to do? And he's like, catch the next flight. They happen every couple of hours. It's not a big deal. What's the problem with waiting a couple hours in an airport? It's an air-conditioned building with food all around, yet this person's acting like it's life or death that they missed their flight. And we do that a lot. Someone cuts you off in traffic, and now you have road rage. Someone is unkind in a business, and now you're going to put them on blast in front of the whole world. These are small things that people should just relax and forget about and move on. That's going to be it for this episode. Hope you enjoyed. See you in the next one.