00:00 Speaker A
And is it also a good thing for the stock market? I mean, I know you’ve been a a bull for a while here, Ed, and you recently um put out a note where you talked about the growth that we’ve seen in earnings, kind of despite all expectations to the contrary here. So, that productivity picture, that would also seem to be potentially good for margins and continue to be good for earnings.
00:30 Ed
Yeah, that’s absolutely correct. Uh I think the earnings data really do be all these uh uh fearmongering that uh are going on about the economy being uh uh much weaker than uh than we’re thinking. Uh earnings suggests quite the opposite that the economy is doing just just fine and that uh productivity is uh maintaining uh profit margins, which is really surprising. And so it looks as though companies are absorbing some of these tariff increases either the importers are in the United States or the exporters are uh over overseas. and the um uh the fact of the matter is that the earnings are turning out to be better than expected. I’ve I’ve been among the bulls and even even I’m uh amazed by uh the strength of earnings. I thought that uh the market would by the end of the year uh be discounting $300 a share, which was a very aggressive number. And now I think the market may actually be discounting something something higher than that. Uh $300 a share by the end of the year, if that’s what the market starts to anticipate for next year, uh then multiply that by 22, which is where the multiple is right now, and you get 6600, which is basically what we are right now. Um, I mean, I I think we’re going higher probably 6,800. and and that would be uh with a uh earnings number that turns out to be higher in terms of expectations.