 Welcome, folks. My dad is out. I'm filling in for the hour, and we got Apple rocking in this afternoon at a higher price. That's carrying the markets a little bit higher right now. We got the S&Ps positive by five. You're trading at $5,085. You see the lows made it about $5,067. And boy, the market gets a gift today as Apple. Not going to be in the car business. They're not going to be employing 2,000 people in that division. And they're not going to be burning billions of dollars. That endeavor has been going on since 2014, 10 years. Finally, they see the writing on the wall. We'll get over into it. NASDAQ 100, you're up by a quarter percent, above $18,000 yet again, $18,018. Dow in the negative territory, not getting quite the lift with the rest of the market. Dow up 132 points, just below $39,000 right now, $38,984. And you got the Russell up by 1.2 percent. So let's just get right into it, man. Apple shares. There's a run for you. You're up 910 percent. You're up $1.60. You ran more than four solid dollars. That news coming out just prior to 2 p.m. Eastern time. You're up to $18,392. $179.56 was the low at 2 p.m. Eastern time. You see it dip a bit lower. It's a one-minute bar. I pulled up to illustrate the type of move. Didn't take long. Within 60 seconds, the market said, that's OK. We will stop spending that money because that is a long-term endeavor in terms of what they're going after. And long-term endeavors, when you're spending money, think about it when a company purchases another company, right? It's a long-term endeavor. In the long term, it's going to pay off. In the short term, though, they're spending capital. And that's what they've been doing. And the news hits. 2 p.m. Eastern time. Execs tell staff to wind down work on the project. Titan employees on some of the car teams are going to move to the AI division. Reprioritizing. What is at stake right now as Apple? Reprioritizing in a big fashion. EVs, they are out. AI, they are in. 2,000 employees. They surprised them with an internal memo, I believe it was. Yeah. The decision was shared by the COO, Jeff Williams and Kevin Lynch, the vice president in charge of the effort. They told staffers that the project will begin winding down and that many employees on the car team, known as the Special Projects Group, or SPG, will be shifted to the Artificial Intelligence Division under executive John Jane Andrea. Those employees will focus on generative AI, an increasingly key priority for the company. Can't understate that. They also have a bunch of hardware engineers and car designers. That's a little bit of a different story, of course. They can't quite shift them to generative AI. They might be able to apply for other jobs in the other Apple teams. None the less, there will be layoffs unclear how many. But yeah, that endeavor stops in an instant. Now, some of the points they talk about here, right? They finalized that decision in the recent weeks. It comes just a month after Bloomberg reported that they were at a quote unquote break, make or break point. They were thinking about pushing it to 2028 and then reducing the self-driving specs from level four to level two, whatever that means. It's just less. I mean, they wanted a self-driving limo, man. And at some point in this, they're talking about, yeah, they had some grand ambitions, man. Let me slide up. They originally were thinking about, yeah, here we go. They started working in 2014. They set their sights on a fully autonomous electric vehicle with a limousine-like interior and voice guided navigation. They didn't think would be where we are in 2024. I think they bought some of Elon's Kool-Aid, man, in terms of Tesla having a self-driving fleet of vehicles coming at you within a couple years, right? I think all of that kind of caught wave because even a company like Apple went for that endeavor in 2024 when nowhere near where they thought that they would be on that car endeavor. Most recently, they were looking at a car priced at around $100,000, but inflation creeps in. And what were they worried about? They're worried about margins. How can they make as much as they want, even selling a car at $100,000? And they're probably right. When you get the average vehicle selling for $50,000, Apple is going to be a premium product. That's for sure. It had been thrown around that they were going to work with other car companies, right? They weren't just going to create a car company out of nowhere, but it was going to be an Apple vehicle. But they were concerned about the margins that they are typically used to, and they're probably right. And the car company is not like selling air the way they sell cloud space, et cetera. And they continue to invest, of course, actually not even that much when you think about it, $113 billion for research and development over the past five years. Annual growth rate is 16%. I say not that much when the company is valued at $3 trillion almost. And they recently launched that Vision Pro. Yeah. So nonetheless, man, that gives a lift in the market. You got Apple shares, you're basically approaching 180 when that news came out, you're trading at 183 right now. That puts a lift in the NASDAQ 100 for some correlation there. You were at one o'clock here, you caught a low. The Apple news comes out at two o'clock when you're trading about 17,963. So that gives even the NASDAQ 100. You were still slightly in the red when that news hit, it's carried the market back up to where we were this morning, slightly higher prices for the NASDAQ. We jump around to some of the other tech companies. Amazon down about 610% right now, we jump over to Microsoft shares down about 110%. You've got Elon out there. Always nice to have less competition in the market, right? You got Elon out there commending Apple in there endeavor to wrap that up some kind of a tweet, whatever it is. Tesla shares right now you're up 58 cents trading at 199.98. And I think we got a caller. Jump over. We have Costa from Boston. Costa, good afternoon. What can we do for you, man? I'm doing well, man. Thanks for calling. How's beautiful Boston. I heard you guys are going to get some lovely, lovely weather up there for late February pretty soon. Yes, it's beautiful. Nice. Enjoy it, man. February. We're getting a little hot in Florida, but we got it made, of course. But what are we looking at? We're looking at a little gold Costa? No more. And I bought it at 33 the third. Okay. A week ago. Say that last comment again for me one more time. Where's the bottom? Boy, you know, it's interesting how these gold companies have really underperformed it, you know, even versus the gold contract, right? You know, this is a tough looking chart for Newmont man, even versus some of the other gold equities Costa. You know, I'm not sure it looks like they had their numbers on February 22. This equity was trading at 33. It comes lower. And you've crept lower to 29 84. And you know, even you back it up February 20. This equity was at $34. You're trading under 30 right now. I'm just going back February 20. One week ago, right? Just for context, you go back to February 20 in the gold contract, and you were at, you know, $20 lower $15 lower, at least at the same price. I'm not sure, man, that that does not look like a stock with strength as it continues to trade lower. You know, December 27, you're at 42 bucks, you're at 29 85. If anything, I try and keep your style, your, your stops tight right now. Because you see the slides, I know you know, man, but you see the slide, right? We were just at 42, all of a sudden we're at 38 like that. And the gold contract hasn't done that type of a move. So they are dealing with some woes right now in that in that equity business. And Newmont in particular looks a little weak, especially even versus some of the other equities cost us. So be careful on that one. Find yourself a stop, man. Pick a stop. You can always get back in. We got some volatility. We got an upside comment, but put that stop in there. Okay. Okay. All right. Appreciate the comment. Take care. Stay to folks come back with our man and bond market or as important as ever right now with how they're driving