00:00 Speaker A
The Nasdaq is the worst performer here as bond yields rise, but my next guest is looking under the hood on technology, focusing on AI and adoption and the impact on personal names.
00:13 Speaker A
Come join us. I'm Chris Versace, Chief Investment Officer at Tematica Research. Chris, it's always a pleasure to meet you.
00:19 Speaker A
Maybe let's look at the big picture, Chris. Well, this is the last full week of trading of the year. Broadly speaking, how do you feel about the market going into the new year of 2026? So, Chris, are you positive?
00:30 Chris Versace
Am I being constructive?
00:31 Chris Versace
I would say I'm cautiously optimistic. You know, we in the S&P 500 have been hitting new highs recently, and it's kind of been bouncing around in that area a little bit. For me, what's particularly interesting given the market multiple is the outlook for earnings growth. Where can we see superior revenue growth?
00:54 Chris Versace
Of course multiple expansions and the secret sauce to alpha, that's what we want to look for. So I'm looking for areas that are poised to drive earnings growth significantly more than, you know, the S&P 500.
01:05 Speaker A
So what are some of those fields? Are they like the heavy names in AI? Is that what I'm looking for?
01:10 Chris Versace
That's certainly one area, and I think it's an area that I, well, you know, have some understanding of. You know, we're seeing a lot of things happening right now. There are questions about corporate and consumer adoption of AI.
01:21 Chris Versace
Well, we like to say, do you have the funds to pay for all this? So we did our homework and looked back at internet penetration and smartphone penetration and looked at what's going to happen in the first few years and when we should start worrying a little bit.
01:41 Chris Versace
But Josh, let me tell you, it's not just adoption because it's exploitation. Thinking about the Internet and looking back at the amount of data,
01:50 Chris Versace
With all the content and all the data that video consumes, it continues to be consumed, created, pushed, consumed, and pushed through the network as more applications become available, especially streaming.
02:04 Chris Versace
Let's take a step back and think about AI moving from text to video in light of next week's announcement with Disney and Open AI. I think we're at the threshold where that starts to happen. So we continue to see a very, very positive multi-year outlook for AI.
02:18 Chris Versace
It's not just the deployment, but more importantly the usage, and what that means for digital infrastructure. So I go back to names like Nvidia, Marvell, Arista Networks, and others that are in the professional portfolio on the street.
