“The best of the bull market is still ahead of us.” That’s how Nick Griffin, Founding Partner and CIO of Munro Partners, sees it. The Australia-based global growth investor joins In the Money with Amber Kanwar to explain why the AI boom isn’t a bubble — it’s the start of a once-in-a-generation expansion. Griffin says we’re only in year three of a bull market that could last a decade, with trillions of dollars still to be spent building the infrastructure for artificial intelligence. From data centers and chipmakers to clean energy and sports entertainment, he breaks down where the biggest opportunities lie — and why staying optimistic could be the smartest move in markets right now. Listen now on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
I gather from all the hoots and woo-hoos coming from the TV room last night that the Jays won.
Here are five things to know this morning:
Technogold: Tech and gold continue to power the markets higher this morning. The AI trade is alive and well after Taiwan Semiconductor boosted its sales forecast and spending plans. Gold continues to make record highs with Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan saying gold can “easily” go to $5,000 or $10,000 in this environment (still waiting for 6% US treasury yield, but I digress). The US government shutdown and a flare up in tensions between the US and China aren’t keeping the bulls at bay. Earnings are also a welcome distraction. While we are still in early innings (there’s that baseball talk again), 78% of companies are beating profit expectations. Today there are there are 10 companies reporting on the S&P 500 including regional banks which beat expectations but aren’t seeing much action in the pre-market. There are no companies reporting on the TSX this week.
Trucker rally: Shares of J B Hunt are pumping 13% in the pre-market after profit beat expectations on the back of cost cutting efforts. The stock is down 19% so far this year on weak demand and lower shipping volumes. The results don’t suggest that is changing any time soon and it seems that the trucker delivered on promised cost cuts a lot sooner than expected, helping to juice the stock this morning. Dow Theory fans will note that the transports have not confirmed new highs made by the industrials, however there are those who think semiconductors are the new indicator of economic strength vs good old fashioned companies that just move stuff around.
Limited coverage: Travelers is falling 5% after the property and casualty insurance company delivered mixed results. The Dow component could weigh on the Dow this morning. While earnings beat expectations for a sixth quarter in a row, investors are disappointing that the amount of premiums kept at the company only grew about 1%. Investors are quibbling about a “low-quality” earnings beat helped by lower catastrophic losses relative to last year when the company had big payouts related to Hurricane Helene.
Lean on me: Snowflake is popping 4% after announcing a deal with Palantir to leverage its data software to develop AI applications. At least, I think that’s what they are doing. Palantir is still a black box to me. Snowflake has had a great run this year up 55% but unlike many other tech stocks, it hasn’t reclaimed its 2021 highs. The stock is still down 40% from the 2021 peak.
Dreamforce: Salesforce is up nearly 7% after promising sales growth will pick back up again. Their new forecast implies annual growth of 10%, which is better than the 8-9% they’ve put up recently. Salesforce is another stock that hasn’t participated in the tech rally as investors try to figure out if its helped or disrupted by AI. For this reason, Nick Griffin of Munro Partners said on the podcast its tough for him to own the stock until that is cleared up. “If Salesforce can get Agent Force to work, which I’m sure they can, and then people use they put their AI strategy in Salesforce, then the revenue is going to grow and the earnings are going to grow,” said Griffin, “Vice versa if people use chat GPT as the top of funnel and Salesforce effectively just becomes a repository for data and your user experience so to speak is or your user interface is actually chat GPT then that’s bad for Salesforce and I can’t actually tell you what’s going to happen here. Because I don’t know what all the corporates in the world are going to do.” 
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