On TCAF this week Josh and Michael spoke with Michael Santoli, Senior Markets Commentator at CNBC. They discussed the surprising strength of the stock market, what’s keeping the bull market alive, interest rates and the growing U.S. debt load, why corporate earnings remain so powerful, and whether today’s valuations can keep climbing. They also get into AI spending and the return on massive tech capex, market breadth and rotation, the rise of retail investors, options-income ETFs, why bears keep moving the goalposts, and what decades of market history can teach investors about adapting when the old rules stop working. (Listen)

We are excited to announce that Morgan Housel’s podcast, The Psychology of Money, has joined The Compound. (He talks about it in the first minute of the above episode.) If you are unfamiliar with Morgan, he is the author of three personal finance books including the New York Times bestseller The Psychology of Money. If you want more Morgan he recently appeared on The Icons and Ideas podcast with Creative Planning CEO Peter Mallouk.

Corporate America is on fire. Matt Cerminaro at Chart Kid Matt shows Q2 revenue growth with every S&P 500 sector in the green. AI-related growth is obviously a big deal, but it is not the explanation for everything going on.

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Next week on TCAF, Josh and Michael will be joined by Ed Zitron, CEO of EZPR and author of the popular Where’s Your Ed At newsletter to talk all things AI.