A (3:57)

John, do you think that Alphabet is going to be able to lean into. You talked about memory. It did seem like one of the things that changed with this model and some of the product announcements that came along with it is it's going to kind of follow you around your Google experience. So if you use Gmail, if you use Search, if you use Google Drive, it's going to kind of get to know you a little bit better, be able to maybe even control those things in certain ways. Is that ultimately from a business model and Google not being disrupted by OpenAI? Is that a step in the right direction if you are an Alphabet investor?

C (4:32)

Yes, I think it is. Because when you look at how many, how many fires Google has a little iron in. It's a very busy company. It's a company that has very long reach. And so as it gets to know you better, as it, as you interact with its AI model, you. Yes, it can monetize that in many, many ways.

A (4:54)

The other big news for the week, if we're, we're talking about a vertically integrated company with Google and Alphabet, and I think that's interesting is we're starting to see these business models play out. How is everybody going to work with each other? Google's really doing everything. They're making chips, they're building the data centers, they're building the artificial intelligence models, they have the products. The other thing to look at from a business model is companies that are more modular or horizontal business models. So this is Nvidia and it's Microsoft, it's OpenAI and it's anthropic. That was the Other big announcement for the week, they got $30 billion worth of investments that's coming from Nvidia and Microsoft. It's another circular deal where Nvidia in particular is investing money in Anthropic and that money will eventually come back to Nvidia through the purchase of chips via Microsoft. But this is kind of a logical step for them to, for Anthropic especially to move off of something like Google cloud and Google is one of their biggest investors to go to some of these other partnerships and start using Nvidia chips more in Microsoft cloud. So Rachel, what did you think when you saw another huge deal sort of between this handful of players that do seem to be circularly financing each other?

B (6:09)

I think that this is the new normal in this space, at least for the near future. And I think a lot of these really significant investments, these circular deals in AI, I think it does seem suggest a future, at least for the near term that could be dominated by a few major players. Now I do think 10 to 15 years from now that paradigm is different. But for now I think it's clear. Companies that have the enormous capital required to develop and deploy cutting edge AI, they are really few and far between. And so this does create a very powerful ecosystem that at least for now could make it difficult for smaller competitors to compete. And I think it's leading to consolidation of influence among the largest tech companies. But I do think that's a natural part of the journey. For now, the bigger, the most capital efficient players dominate. But I do think as time goes by, you're going to see more competitors emerge that could create new opportunities for investors and the industry as a whole. One thing I'll note, I mean, it's really kind of fascinating to see how this industry has developed through the years. You go all the way back to the early 1980s, there was this massive surge of interest in AI and there was the AI winter, but AI research continued in the background and now you have a genuine resurgence in the 2000s. We're in the beginning of the, of the life cycle for the potential of this industry. It's very exciting to think about.

C (7:22)

Yeah, I mean the Mag 7 is definitely the king makers in the AI market right now. They're the ones with the money, they're the ones that are making the deals, you know, but money isn't the only thing you need to succeed in AI. I really think that, yes, while money helps, all these companies are happy to have it, but I think there's still room for a scrappy startup to come in here with a different model or, or just doing something differently. Necessity is the mother of innovation. So I think that there could be room for a AI startup to bootstrap itself and really shock the world. And so it's hard to predict when that would happen, how that would happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did happen.

A (8:05)

History does say that the big companies kind of lead the next phase of innovation. IBM and PCs would be a good example of that, but they aren't necessarily the long term winners. So we'll see if John's right about that. Next we're going to talk about the fall of bitcoin and what's going on there. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

D (8:23)

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A (9:19)

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Bitcoin has fallen periodically below $90,000. We have seen strategy, the former micro strategy, drop. They were once the biggest buyer of bitcoin, probably are still the biggest individual buyer of bitcoin. John, is this a sign that the crypto trade has hit a wall again? We've been through this before, but it seems like the, the momentum that was happening even just a few months ago is kind of ended in the, in the crypto space.

C (9:46)

Yeah, it does seem like momentum is ending and it's kind of ending right on schedule when you'd expect it to, at least from the perspective of bitcoin. And so bitcoin does have some pretty regular patterns and it seems to be related to the halving cycle, which impacts the flow of new bitcoins into the circulating supply. And so it messes up with supply and demand. And while those things are still coming back into balance. There can be big swings in the price of bitcoin upward. But around a year And a half, two years after a halving event, which we had one in early 2024, things start to stabilize and it seems to peak off. And we can have. In the past we've had bear markets with bitcoin with a drop of 80% or more. And so you would hope that bitcoin has grown out of that extreme volatility at this point, perhaps with higher adoption. But in reality, yeah, the bitcoin stalling out, the price stalling out, it's pretty much right on schedule. So I find that interesting. What does surprise me as well though, you'd expect this crypto space to have matured to the point where not all of the alternative coins are trading in pair with bitcoin, but there still seems to be a lot of directionally tied movement with all of the coins to the price of bitcoin.

A (11:06)

John, do you think that the maturity of the space in general, and I'm thinking about the business models maturity of companies like Coinbase Circle, we have plenty of others, you know, even companies like Robin Hood and Sofi getting into the crypto space, does that actually change things or is that not necessarily going to be related to bitcoin and the tokens themselves?

C (11:28)

Yeah, I mean it is very different this time than say four years ago or eight years ago when these other cycles have happened with bitcoin. So interesting. We did talk about strategy and yes, it owns 650,000 bitcoins, so certainly a big player there. But so many as you brought up, so many crypto exchanges are now publicly traded blockchain businesses such as figure there are many companies with bitcoin treasuries. There's a lot of more interconnectedness between let's say real world economies and these crypto economies. And so it will be interesting to see if there is a crypto winter, so called crypto winter, as we have had in past cycles, how much impact will that have on the real world economy? But vice versa, how much is the real world with Robin Hood and all these things, all this new retail investment coming in, does that break the past cycles? It, it definitely could.

A (12:21)

Rachel, that does seem to be sort of the elephant in the room is that yes, there are these typical cycles with bitcoin, but they also seem are really correlated with market cycles when there's periods of high volatility, when speculation goes up, guess what? Bitcoin goes up. It's not necessarily a great hedge to something like the dollar or interest rates, it's actually more correlated with risky stocks. So what should we take away from that?

B (12:48)

Yeah, I think it's an interesting point you make because there has been, I think this idea that's still really widely debated amongst a lot of people in the crypto world of whether the, whether bitcoin and other assets like that can be a hedge against inflation and some of these other macro concerns. I think we've seen at least in times that that hasn't necessarily been the case. You know, Bitcoin's price dropped as low as about 89,500 on Tuesday. That's a significant decline from its all time high over 126,000 in early October. And I do think this decline is part of a wider retreat from speculative assets both across traditional markets and the digital asset world. I think we're seeing that at play right now. And as you noted, during periods of economic stress or even market crashes, cryptos often demonstrated a correlation with more tradition high risk assets. And obviously, you know, crypto can be accessed and transferred globally with an Internet connection, so there's a high degree of liquidity and accessibility, but still that correlation remains. So I think we're seeing that connection between real world events and how crypto and stocks are performing. I think we're seeing that now. Could a crypto winter be coming? I'm not really ready to call that, but I think we do need to be realistic about how these assets perform in volatile market environments as compared to stocks.

A (14:05)

The other big news of the day is retail. We got earnings from Target. We're going to talk about that when we come back. You're listening to Motley fool money.

E (14:12)

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A (15:21)

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. Retail numbers are coming out again. We got numbers from Target and TJ Maxx this morning. The surprising one to me is Target. The. The results weren't particularly good. The stock's not actually down all that much, down 1% as we're recording early in the day on Wednesday. But this is something I thought was crazy. The current drawdown in Target Stock is at 66.8%. That is worse than the fall in their stock during 2009, during a very deep recession.

B (15:52)

Yeah.

A (15:52)

So the market does not like what they're seeing with Target right now. Rachel, what is the broad takeaway, both short term and long term for Target?

B (16:00)

You know, Target's been dealing with a myriad of its own challenges for several years now. And I think in an environment where certainly consumers are under pressure, but they're also being very selective about where they put their money to work, I think we're seeing that play out. You know, their Q3 earnings. There was a year over year drop in net sales and profits. Comparable sales dropped. Both GAAP and adjusted earnings were down. GAAP earnings per share actually fell about 19%. Target's chief commercial officer noted that consumers are prioritizing, you know, gift giving over other holiday spending, but broadly signal that they expect a weak holiday spending season even as they're introducing 20,000 or more new items across various categories and they're forecasting an ongoing sales slump. Now, contrast that to a business like TJX companies. Obviously, the business models of these companies are different, but still, there could not be more variants.

A (16:53)

Yeah, they were very exc in their release about the results. Everything seemed to be better than expected.

B (16:59)

Absolutely right. So where you've got Target forecasting a week holiday season sales are down. The CEO of TJX company said the holiday shopping season is off to a strong start for us. You know, they said our availability of merchandise is outstanding. We're really excited about the deals that we're seeing. They're expecting comparable sales to rise between 2 and 3%. They even elevated their upcoming expectations after their better than expected Q3 results. So a really strong quarter for TJX companies, a very weak quarter for Target. I think what we're seeing is maybe consumer weaknesses persist, but how that plays out to different companies is going to be on a very much case by case basis.

A (17:39)

John, the story for Target over the past few years and the reason that they hit the high in 2021 that they did was their digital sales. And that sort of encompasses delivery, pickup, all this. They're kind of trying to become an Amazon competitor in that space with, with quick delivery. Is there any green shoots there or is there this just sort of a fundamentally problematic time where Target's just trying to find its way?

C (18:05)

Well, it is a problematic time where Target's trying to find its way, but there are green shoots in the digital businesses for sure. And I think that's really important if you are looking at Target stock today, if you're an investor shareholder of Target, you definitely want to see this. And so in fact that's where basically the only green shoots of the business are in the digital offerings. And so like Roundel, it's retail media business, all double digit growth, Target Plus. So this is like the marketplace where there's some curated offerings over 50% merchandise value growth. I mean that's really important. And even, even I know that we hate to bring it up every single segment, but Open AI Target has a new thing with OpenAI.

A (18:48)

I was surprised to see that they were one of launch partners with their, with their retail shopping thing.

C (18:54)

Yeah, it's not exactly who you'd expect to top the list is Target. But yeah, definitely jumping on the bandwagon here with allowing the OpenAI chatbot to help shoppers find holiday gifts. So maybe these are some things that can eventually start to change some of the direction with the business can start to change the economics of Target's businesses for the better. And I believe that that is something that can happen. But it does need to keep pushing ahead.

A (19:22)

Quick question for the end of this Target stock is trading for 10 times earnings, 11 times forward earnings. John, are you interested at that price?

C (19:29)

I definitely am. And the one that you didn't mention was it's paying out over a 5% dividend yield now and it's, it's paid a dividend for over 50 consecutive years.

A (19:37)

So yeah, I don't know if this is a falling knife or not, but it is interesting. There's kind of, you would think there's got to be a turnaround somewhere. This is such a big name, so so much retail space case. But we'll see where they go. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about and the Motley fool may have formal recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows the Motley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes for Rachel Warren, Jon Kwast and Dan Boyd. Behind the glass, I'm Travis Hoyam. Thanks for listening to Motley Fool Money. We'll see you here tomorrow.