Fresh data from ice on home prices and supply and how were setting up for the important spring selling and buying season and thats coming up, but first, lets get a check on the markets overall which are relatively mixed and were flat for most of the major indices and the dow is up 0. 1 near session highs and we were down much earlier in the day and the s p 500 just about flat on the session and the last trade, and the nasdaq composite 16,250 thereabouts off 0. 2 . Meanwhile, check out whats happening trendwise for many of the Regional Bank out there and basically green across the screen as people are starting to see some signs of value out there and perhaps getting a mean reversion trade and Short Covering and people taking out some of those bets on the down side and taking profits there. On the Regional Banking side, you can see the etf is doing relatively well and Zions Bancorp will be taking on the s p 500 this month and the up oncommunity bancorp is up three bucks a share on the big figure. Bitcoins rally continues right now. It was above 65,000 and now 66,000 earlier today and its trading just a hair above 67,000, just around 66,900 from here. Remember, the alltime high in november 10 of 2021 was was 68,982, lets call it 69,000 for all intents and purposes and keep an eye on bit coin prices. The European Union levied an antitrust buy against the company and at the same time apple is unveiling its latest round of laptops and computer chips with plenty of focus on ai in those capabilities. For more, we are joined by our own steve kovac and deidre bosa, as well, and here for the trade is kim forest, the chief Investment Officer over at boca Capital Partners and an apple shareholder, as well. Steve, lets start with you on the current state of play with regard to apple, visavis, a massive find. One of the biggest finds in technology for eu history and the first one against apple. And just to put this in context here, this is a 2 billion u. S. Fine and 1. 8 in euros and you also have to look at whats coming this week and in europe its going into full effect and that puts at risk 10 of annual global revenue from these companies. For apple that would be 40 billion with a b and if you think the 2 billion is a lot and take a look at potentially here if theyll break the rules that will go into effect later and since it broke we did hear from spotify and spotify is the company that started this complaint against apple and its the same argument that weve been hearing for so long that they characterize as unfair fees and of course, the eu sides with them and basically saying this is a win for them, but they dont believe apple will necessarily comply and he layers skepticism here and he points to actions apple has taken when these regulatory things happen and how apple finds ways kind of around it which, in fact, theyll do at the and apple is saying spat phi wouldnt be the Market Leader in streaming music if it warrsnt for the iphone and the e phone wouldnt be the iphone if it wasnt appetizing for people to buy and this will be a houge case of wht well see in the u. S. And were expecting the antitrust suit to drop any day over similar items. This is a big, beefy case going on. It is also interesting, too, because the way that apple frames it, theyre not wrong that the installed base for ios is one of the main reasons why many of these apps get the traction that they do. Whats kind of ironic that apple points out in their statement that spotify has 56 of the european streaming music market already. If what theyre hinting at is spotify is alleging antitrust behavior which is the antitrust guy when it comes to music streaming in europe and how exactly does the next chapter play out in this appeal process, then . That is to be determined. So they are going to appeal, but more interesting is the dma process. They put out these rules and they were similar to this case in the pages and the like and apple laid up its idea for compliance with the europeans new rules. We dont know, apple doesnt know if those ideas are actually going to fit the letter of the law that the ec is looking for. So what the real next shoe to drop is when the ec sees these practices in action do they start investigating right away . Do they start looking at apple and saying we might fine you the 10 of the global revenueif you dont change x, y and z and that is the letter of the law and that is the risk right there and apple is of course, making all kind of arguments against that saying. It puts security at risk of our users by letting these outside apps go on phones and the same arguments theyve been making forever, but well see it in practice very soon. Its just a matter of days. So well pivot from that to the other story thats surrounding apple right now and thats what seemingly is for some investors a catchup trade or a catchup effort being made by apple to put itself back at the forefront of all of this investing in artificial intelligence. There are some folks, deirdre, who believe that ai is something that apple has missed early on and that theyll now have to catch up to everybody else. I think that steve and i can agree that a their 2 billion fine apple is a rounding error. Its a speeding ticket at this point and it is how apple was perceived in terms of this generative ai arms race. So today they announced a new version of the macbook pro which uses the m3 chip and its calling it the worlds best ai computer. They are autofilled and predictive capabilities and better features for images and its an evolution of what we already know and are used to and thats what investors are taking issue with saying we dont have the big product. Theyre more aiadjacent and theyll use an upsell cycle strategy and theyll put these features into the next generation of iphones and with the Macbook Computers and this question, is it enough . And wall street is pretty divided here. Theres some that think that apple does have to catch up to your point that theyve been spending a lot less in rnd on sort of the future and what that will look like in the age of ai versus are they going to be able to do this because they have a 2 billion in installed base and theyll use Edge Computing and ai will sit on your phone or laptop. So thats sort of the debate in the market right now is where is apple in this ai race . Deirdre, it was interesting only because Clockwise Capital and i were emailing back and forth. Microsoftapple specifically because theyve swapped spaces in terms of the biggest out there and what not. One of the things he brought up was this idea that apple in the most Current Quarter that we have, the Fourth Quarter and its december 31st had at least a spend for capex as a percentage of revenue that was significantly smaller than what microsoft spends on capex as a percentage of revenue. Yeah. How long do you think it will take before apple can convince investors that it was spending enough in order to be competitive in ai . Well, theyll have to announce Something Big later this year which i know steve kovac has his eye on, as well and theyll come up with a Cohesive Strategy that leapfrogs apple and puts it into the conversation. This is exactly the chart that i was talking about and that caught our eye on tech check as well and it cost us a percentage of annual revenue and its about 9 of its annual revenue last year and compare that to meta which we know has been building up its gps capacity and its infrastructure and then you have amazon and google, its ahead of 17 . The idea that apple isnt spending as much as its percentage of an annual revenue and its a good question for steve, as well and i dont know how optimistic you are on the launch later this year. Does it need the infrastructure . Does it need the gpus or can it be on the edge and create an interesting proposition . How much nvidia is it buying and what also becomes the question the enormous pressure apple has put on itself now by preannouncing, by the way, ive been covering apple since about 2010. Ive never seen them preannounce an announcement in this fashion and just the fact saying they dont even say well announce a new iphone one day. They dont even say that and here they are hinting at the ai. Lets look at the announcement today. If you are an apple investor and you say what is apple going to do in ai and you read the press release they give one examel and its some thirdparty photo pp, i think, ive never heard of that runs 40 faster. Maybe apple thinks thats the ai key and thats the great answer to this ai question. Or an appetizer. Or an appetizer. I dont think thats a thirdparty app that they could have put on the computer a year ago, and it puts enormous pressure what tim cook said at the meeting puts pressure on create some Ground Breaking new, generative ai product. Well have to wait and see. I dont know what that looks like. At least hes saying ai. It was like he was allergic and was saying machine learning. There was a paragraph. Kim fort at boca capital. You heard what deirdre was saying. You heard what steve was saying. As an apple shareholder, do you feel optimistic and say i will continue to be a shareholder over the medium and longer term . Well, i think its how do you define what apple is. We know that theyre not a Business Software developer like microsoft andthey do develop their own chips, but its not necessarily in the hot area, ai, so what are they and why should they be in your portfolio . Well, they are a supplier that gets a whole lot of eyeballs on things that run ai, and are they going to be displaced any time soon . And i think the answer is no. One of the reasons why i continue to own this is theyre unbelievably strong moat. Once you become a user, try not to become a user, right . So they absolutely need to step up their game in iphone and any of their devices because theyre a device maker, not a softwaremaker and they need to be the platform of choice to get it into the hands of the consumer and maybe into enterprise and mostly into the consumer and that is why they continue to be in our portfolios. Kim, why do you think or as an apple shareholder, maybe ill frame it differently. They are shutting down their car ambitions and theyll shift resources to artificial intelligence. We heard that. Theyve said it for the record. Are you okay . Less happy . Sad about the fact that cars are no longer a part of the equation and that the resources will go towards ai or not . Im thrilled. I dont know why they were in the car making area anyhow because a lot of it is on batteries, yes, i get that and electric motors, but mostly its in, you know, all car stuff and i dont think apple had a whole lot of knowledge about that and maybe we would have had the prettiest looking car, whatever, most aesthetically car ever in the history of the world, but as an apple shareholder, i really didnt care. Im glad theyre back to understanding what they do and this feels very microsoft, i dont know, maybe 2014 when they stopped chasing apple. When microsoft no longer wantewanted to develop a phone and they just understood where their role was in the world as an enterprise, and im happy theyre leaving the world of evs behind and concentrating on what it does best. You know what it really does best is iphones. Yeah. Thats the spin everything. It is, right . How much does apple tell a story about how all of this works in the ecosystem of ios and iphone specifically as opposed to new mac hardware and generative ai visions and everything else. Heres what a lot of the analysts are saying and this is mostly speculation, but i can also consider this informed speculation from their history doing it. They can hold a lot of these, whatever ai features they announce. A lot will be global and that means if you have an iphone today, a new ios update will be out and youll be able to use it and reserve the best stuff for the iphone and it can only run on this iphone and we created this new chip that can only run this stuff and that is how in the past theyve used it to drive upgrades and go back in time to a few years ago when they introduced the 5g iphone and that was the upgrade cycle and go back to the iphone 6 lineup and that drove the biggest upgrade cycle, period. Everyone wanted those big screens. Those are more hardwarerelated things and going behind the scenes and a lot of the stuff theyre talking about today with these new macbooks and you just need the Internet Connection and you dont need the latest and greatest hardware to run. So theyll have to prove that the iphone is worth an upgrade just on those ai features alone. You get the last word. I just want to introduce this idea that the killer piece of hardware in the age of a imai not actually be a smartphone. That is something that is getting some discussion in the valley. Could it be a pin like the humane ai pin . Could it be a rabbit device . That is the existential question that is far off in the future because certainly, kim talked about the moat and its entrenched and look at what happened with google and search, right . Everyone thought search was so dominant and here to stay. Now were having this big discussion, and there is that question, what is going to be the hardware of the ai era. It is so complicated for sure. Deirdre, steve, thank you very much for that. Bee can tawe can talk about thi we need two hours. Kim, stick with us, please. Well get your take on the markets overall and everyone is waiting for the latest Economic Data for clues about the first Interest Rate cut. You are focusing on longer term trends in the market which are telling you to invest specifically in technology and in computer chips in particular. Right. Well, i hate to be one of these people, but were coming up on about a year ago before none of us knew the phrase generative ai, right . And it now has colored everything. Well get to our last discussion, but i strongly believe as an ex Software Engineer who worked on neuronetworking and thats what generative ai is built on top of, and i think it is going to be the driver of productivity and as well. Apple will step up and dostuff to make sure that they are meaningful in that ecosystem. More than that how do we play this . So far we play it by buying nvidia and i dont think it is necessarily game over with chips. They have fine products that could not just displace leadership. We dont know what thats going to do, but im sure that they are going to play in this ecosystem of increasingly in the server farm area for Generative Ai Applications and i have to throw this in just really quick. These models need so much horsepower, they can only be delivered on an end unit so far and you wont have things figuring things out not connected to the internet. You will need a whole bunch of data and a whole bun of exotic software for generative ai to continue learning. So dont expect that on your handheld device any time soon. And the servers to power them. Thats probably the reason why super micro will be included in the s p 500 later on this month given the massive run weve seen there. Before we let you go, kim. I dont want to keep it just about technology because there are other parts of the market that are important, as well. We want to see this broadening out. Is there anywhere else besides computer chips and technology that we can find some value for investors these days . Sure. I think the world is always changing in the world of Consumer Discretionary and thats because people are people. They get bored of shopping at the same place and theyre looking for new, and i think that you always have to be aware that shoppers change, and to keep an eye out for whos hot and whos not. Right now i think that two companies that again, we own are kind of interesting. One was formerly hot and thats vf corp. The company hit some potholes recently and management is taking a close eye to rejiggering the format there, and i think thats something to look at, but i also like Urban Outfitters expect the for Urban Outfitters, the store, all of their other brands are firing on all cylinders and that company has been able to survive a very, very long time and delight their customer. Kim forrest of boca Capital Partners, thanks for the conversation well see you soon, kim. Thank you. Congress is back in the hot seat after narrowly averting a Government Shutdown thanks to a bill last week. Emily wilkins is live with the story. Hi, amly . Hi, dom. Nearly six months after their initial deadline, lawmakers have completed the legislation to fund part of the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. The 460 billion agreement was announced by democratic and Republican Leaders over the weekend and they finally have the actual detailed text which means it is likely that congress is going to be able to prevent a partial Government Shutdown that otherwise would have began at the end of the day on friday. It includes several Foreign Policy measures like preventing the sale of any oil in the Strategic Petroleum reserve in china and it would strengthen the tracking and review of u. S. Forest and farmland. The house is set to take the first vote on the spending package on wednesday and law maersks dont get back in town until thursday night and the speaker will use an expedited process that will require the help of doem democrats and it would keep the hard liners from holding up the process on getting these critical spending bills through. Of course, congress isnt out of the woods yet and this is just the first package of bills and theyre considered the easy ones and the next are expected to be much tougher to negotiate, a shutdown is still on the table. Emily wilkins, thank you for that. Well see you soon. Were looking ahead to the retail earnings with three buys and a beilin colluding three hovering at alltime highs and theres still room to run thanks to the Balance Sheet and well have that coming up next, plus, commercial real estate could be in one of the hottest sectors and where one sees the biggest risks and opportunities. The exchange is back a