Humilis CEO Brian Belski Talks US Market, AI Trade

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Tom Keene (0:07)

We're going to flip it on its head right now. We're supposed to talk to Belski, who's nailed this bull market with short terse research notes. And then after that, we talk, you know, Vikings football. Let's flip it for the 4-0 Vikings. But Grant, would he recognize his team with 12.8 points defense per game, first in the NFL?

Brian Belski (0:30)

He would, because if you think about the Purple People leaders, Gary Larson, Alan Page, the guys that ran up front. And think about this. He had Chuck Foreman in the back in the back field. Fran Tarkin did it with the short passes, but the defense is amazing. I mean, we're not going to win a lot more games scoring six touchdowns all year long and no offense.

Tom Keene (0:54)

I mean, if you look at the... For me as a non-NFL type, my favorite division is a division.

It's a Dick Butkus division. It's like really ugly.

Brian Belski (1:03)

The black and blue, the old black and blue.

Tom Keene (1:05)

Can the Vikings in the modern game compete, say with Seattle, in a 52 to 42 football game?

Brian Belski (1:12)

If they get the offense going, remember Kevin O'Connell loves to be able to push the ball down field. The problem is they just can't get the ball out of the quarterback's hand. So they can if they get their offense going, but they need some time.

Tom Keene (1:24)

One more question. New Orleans this week, and I'll be watching.

Brian Belski, you gave a quarterback to the New York Football Giants, all of Bloomberg 11-3-0. I want your brief on this new quarterback for the Giants, who you discarded off the track.

Brian Belski (1:38)

JJ.

SPEAKER_4 (1:39)

McCarthy?

Brian Belski (1:39)

So I'm going to take two steps back and remind everybody that I was born and raised in Minnesota.

We have PTSD with respect to every single sport. This is classic Minnesota sports. We're going to trade this guy. He's going to figure it out. He's going to have the gold jacket. He's going to be in the Hall of Fame.

Tom Keene (1:58)

There's Belski. We're like, okay, let's take you over to Humilis and your new wonderful firm here. You nailed this bull market. Did you do it because you were PTSD?

Brian Belski (2:12)

No.

We get accused a lot, Tom, of being Pollyanna and not looking at the facts. They don't read your research. I mean, we turned bullish on this market. What I would call the current market setup, in November of 2008, when I was at Merrill Lynch, I wrote my very first bullish report. Then in 2009 at Oppenheimer and 2010, we segued the call to say 25-year secular bull market. Nobody believed us. They still don't believe us. And within this big secular bull, you can have cyclical bulls, cyclical bears. We'll have another cyclical bear at some point, but we have at least 8 to 10 years left of this run. It's going to be longer than 25 years.

SPEAKER_4 (2:49)

So what's going to be the driving force with this run? Let me guess. Is it AI? Can we have another new idea?

Brian Belski (2:55)

I'm going to say something controversial. I don't think the top of this bull market in the 2030s is going to have anything to do with AI.

It's going to have something to do with probably a new emerging market and a commodity super cycle that nobody's talking about. And so typically and historically, you need to have so much money into the markets and so much deal flow on all this other assets chasing it. We're not doing that in AI, Alexis. Everyone's scared of AI, the Vingrad is going to kill us, or there's not a lot of IPOs, there's not a lot of secondaries, there's not a lot of equity issuances. You need to see that to have a mass affluence with respect to chasing these AI stocks. It's not going to be AI. So in the current cycle, meaning the current cyclical bull, AI is clearly driving it. But the end of this big cycle in 10 years or so, is not going to be AI.

SPEAKER_4 (3:45)

Can you tell us what it might be? You said a commodity super cycle?

Brian Belski (3:49)

Commodity super cycle driven by a new emerging market that no one knows what it's going to be. Could be Minot, North Dakota. Could be Wilmer, Minnesota, where I grew up. I don't know where it's going to be, but it's going to be some emerging market that no one has identified yet. It always happens this way. I've seen the movie before, and no one's talking about that.