On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome Joel Litman back to the show. Joel is the founder and chief investment officer of our corporate affiliate Altimetry, where his team uses their Uniform Accounting system to look beyond the as-reported numbers in financial reports to see how companies are really performing.

Joel kicks things off by discussing the resilience of the U.S. stock market, which has taken many professional investors by surprise. He states that historically, tariffs have not been a tax on consumers, with exporters absorbing 50% to 60% of costs to maintain their market share. Joel also argues that the U.S. dollar continues to be strong and that despite recession woes, corporate credit shows the economy is persistent...

Throughout the horrible pandemic lockdowns, corporate credit, at least for public listed companies, stayed unbelievably strong. The banks stayed open, the public debt markets stayed open, and as long as corporate credit's open, you don't have an extended bear market.

Next, Joel urges folks not to give in to the "fear of getting in" (the counterpart to the "fear of missing out"). Because investors are seeing new highs, they think they've missed out on buying in, but Joel says that's a mistake. Joel also shares his thoughts on the usage of AI and how many concerns over it replacing the entire workforce are unwarranted. Additionally, he says that the investment advice it provides is often incorrect and that is should be used as a supplement to research instead...

People will hear me in the office, and they're like, "Who's Joel talking to? He's arguing with ChatGPT again." ... And I'm like, "No, that actually isn't correct. I can show you the research that says what you just told me is 100% wrong." ... I think the AI is unbelievably productive when you use it for a very specific place that you could double-check the data quickly, whatever else. And then lead that up to your mosaic of the reason you buy stock.

Finally, Joel reflects along with Dan and Corey on Nobel Prize-winning economist Eugene Fama and the scope of his knowledge. Joel also provides a brief explanation of what he and his team look for at Altimetry. And he provides a glimpse of some of his latest research...

It's not just AI. U.S. supply-chain infrastructure with all these businesses that are having to get built. If someone puts up a new industrial plant because they're going to start making widgets, in the United States because they want to avoid the tariffs and they're not going to make it overseas, you need an entire infrastructure to support that business. It's not like they just put up a company and whatever. You need everything to support it.

Click here or on the image below to access the interview with Joel in video format. To listen to the full episode, visit our website or wherever you get your podcasts.

(Additional past episodes are located here.)

The transcript is coming soon.

This Week's Guest

Joel Litman is the founder and chief investment officer of our corporate affiliate Altimetry.

He has been on CNBC, quoted in Barron's and Institutional Investor, and interviewed in Forbes. He has been published in the Harvard Business Review, is a top contributor to Seeking Alpha, and co-authored the highly acclaimed book, Driven: Business Strategy, Human Actions, and the Creation of Wealth. He is a professor at Hult International Business School, a Financial Times and Economist top-ranked international MBA program. He conducts seminars regularly for financial and industry conferences around the world, such as for CFA and CPA chapters.

Joel is a member of CFA Institute, the global association for investment professionals, and the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. He is a CPA (Certified Public Accountant), received a B.S. in accounting from DePaul University and an MBA/MM from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.