Nvidia's $1 Trillion Revenue Announcement, the Fed's New Inflation Forecast, & Kraken's IPO

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0:33Robert Croak:Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 Sponsored Job Credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome back to the Rich Habits Radar, our Friday episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, where every Friday morning, we're coming at you with the biggest headlines impacting you and your money.

1:09Robert Croak:This episode of the Rich Habits Radar is brought to you by VCX, the public ticker for private tech, which is now listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Go check it out. My name is Austin Hankwitz, and I'm joined by my co-host, Robert Croak, and the three things sitting at the top of our rich habits radar this week include the Federal Reserve raising their inflation forecast and signaling that rate cuts might not happen at all this year. NVIDIA's CEO projecting$1 trillion in AI chip orders over the next two years and also confirming that China is ordering chips again. And we're also going to be talking about a weird structural shift in the American economy.

1:51Robert Croak:The United States now officially has more spas and gyms than stores selling physical products. Robert, you're a physical product guy. I'm sure you've got a lot to talk about with that. And be sure to stick around to the end where we talk about Kraken, the crypto exchange, freezing their IPO given the Bitcoin bear market. All right, Robert, let's dig into our first story.

2:13Austin Hankwitz:Yeah, this is going to be a really good episode. There's just so much really kind of big news out there around our money. And on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve voted 11 to 1 to hold interest rates steady at 3.5 % to 3.75%. That part was expected. What wasn't expected was everything else that came out of the meeting.

2:34Robert Croak:Yeah, Robert, a lot came out of that meeting. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said inflation's not coming down as much as they had hoped. He said the implications of the Iran war on the U.S. economy are uncertain, and it's too soon to know the full impact on the economy. The updated summary of economic projections told the rest of the story. The Fed raised their core PCE inflation forecast from 2.5 % to 2.7 % for 2026. Headline PCE also moved up to 2.7 % in 2026. And GDP expectations slightly were bumped higher from 2.3 % to 2.4%.

3:11Austin Hankwitz:But the dot plot is where everything gets really interesting. And for those that aren't familiar, the dot plot is a chart where each of the 19 Fed members place a dot showing where they think interest rates should be at the end of the year. The median still shows one quarter point cut in 2026, bringing the target rate to 3.4%. But here's the shift. Seven members now expect zero rate cuts this year. That's up from six in December. And of the remaining 12, only five see more than one cut. In December, remember, 12 members saw more than one cut coming.

3:47Robert Croak:So let me break that down for you all. In three months, the committee went from a majority expecting multiple rate cuts in 2026 to now a super majority expecting only one or even zero cuts at all. Back in September 2025, the market consensus was three and a half rate cuts on average, right? That's the half in 2026. So everyone's like, cool, we're going to cut rates three, maybe four times in 2026. December's dot plot, they said two. And now after January's meeting, it was one. And now here in March, it's technically still one. But nearly 40 percent of the committee is saying, no, let's just make it zero.

4:27Robert Croak:Every single meeting, the market gets less relief that they were hoping for.

4:32Austin Hankwitz:This is Powell's second to last meeting as Fed chair. His term expires in May, and Trump has tapped Kevin Walsh as his successor. Walsh has indicated he prefers lower rates, but hasn't said anything publicly about where his thinking is given the current inflation picture.

4:48Robert Croak:So, Robert, we've kind of talked a little bit about inflation, the Fed, what happened this week. But, like, walk everyone through, because this is very important for everyone and their money. Walk everyone through how this impacts their portfolio.

4:59Austin Hankwitz:Yeah, it is super important. And the assumption is that inflation was a solved problem and that rate cuts were a question of when, not if. That assumption is breaking down right now in real time. And that's where the problem lies. The Dow dropped 750 points after Powell's press conference. And all three major indexes hit fresh 2026 lows on Wednesday. And major indices are down again on Thursday morning as we film this episode. So for your portfolio, that means a few things. Rate-sensitive investments like REITs, growth tax, small caps are all going to stay under pressure until the inflation picture clears.

5:37Austin Hankwitz:And if you're overweight in names that need rate cuts to work, you're fighting the Fed. And there's an old saying on Wall Street, don't fight the Fed. So when 14 of 19 committee members are telling you rates are staying at 3.5 % or higher through the end of the year, you better believe them.

5:53Robert Croak:Yeah, and the sectors that are actually working right now, think energy, consumer staples, utilities, a little bit of healthcare, they're working because they perform well in inflationary environments. The great sector rotation that we've been talking about on this podcast for the last maybe seven or eight weeks now is taking place. I mean, I'm looking at my VDE, XLE, XOM, DOW, what's another one? Oxypetroleum, OXY. All of these names in my portfolio, I've got like 50 or 60 ,000 invested in them back at the beginning of February. Because we talked about doing that inside the Rich Habits Network.

6:30Robert Croak:They're all up double digits now. And it is awesome. Where on the contrary, the MAGS ETF, which tracks the Magnificent Seven, is down 6 % year to date. Energy up double digits, sexy AI down 7%.

6:47Austin Hankwitz:Powell said near-term inflation expectations have risen, likely reflecting the substantial rise in oil prices caused by the supply disruptions in the Middle East. We're all seeing it on the news. We can't get away from it. And that's the Fed explicitly telling you that as long as the Iran conflict continues and oil stays elevated, inflation is going to go higher, not lower. The war started less than three weeks ago, and there's no ceasefire in sight. So plan accordingly with your money and stay on top of these things. We always talk about active management, and right now is when you need to be doing that.

7:22Robert Croak:Yeah, let's just like double click, though, because I think a lot of people are going to make the mistake of watching this episode and say, holy crap, I need to sell my Mag7 and go all in on energy, or I need to get out of the S &P and the Dow because they're down. I need to go buy other stuff. Don't do that. That's not what we're saying. That's not active management. Active management, in our mind, says, okay, cool, we're starting to see the writing on the wall. It's October, November, December. You know, we're inside the Rich Habits Network hosting live streams talking about these high beta names going crazy like Robinhood and Palantir.

7:52Robert Croak:And they're all having these climax tops and they're coming down 20, 30, 40, 50 percent. Bitcoin's now in a bear market, right? These things could be foreshadowing what's around the corner for the indices, S &P, NASDAQ, Dow Jones. Now we look at that, the S &P, the NASDAQ and the Dow Jones are all now today trading below their 200 day moving averages. that's not indicative of a bullish uptrend in the markets that is bearish to be honest with you but now is not the time to get reactive if you wanted to have active management you should have done stuff two months ago when we talked about it in the rich habits network now you're just reacting and remember wealthy people forecast broke people react do not react here's what you need to do here's your playbook if you're realizing all this at the same time right now like everyone else's continue to dollar cost average and the major indices like the S &P, the NASDAQ, the Dow Jones, VGT, VUG, all these big index funds and ETFs that we like and love because the mistake people make is they see that the MAG's ETF is down 10%.

8:59Robert Croak:They see that VOO year to date is down 4 % and just 4.5 % in the last three weeks, right? They see these numbers and they get scared and they stop investing. That's not you. You dollar cost average, you continue to invest all the time. You are not someone who says, whoa, I'm scared to sell everything, run for the hills and stop. Now is when people get wealthy. You don't make money when the stock market's at all time highs. You make money when the Dow is 8 % or 10 % off those highs and you can buy it. I bought shares of the DIA, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF, in my retirement account two days ago.

9:37Robert Croak:I did, right? Because I know when I retire in 30 years, it's going to be much higher than where it is today. That's the mentality you need to have.

9:45Austin Hankwitz:What a great outtake on the first point. Take us into the next point of this episode.

9:50Robert Croak:Next point is NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Wang, just projected$1 trillion in AI chip orders and China is back. So at NVIDIA's annual GTC developer conference on Monday in San Jose, California, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang took the stage to a packed house of people and made a projection that pretty much stopped the room and everyone's jaws were on the floor. One trillion in cumulative purchase orders for NVIDIA's Blackwell and Vera Rubin AI chip systems through 2027. A trillion dollars, like with a T, a thousand billion. That is double the$500 billion estimate that he gave at last year's GTC. Unbelievable, Robert.

10:36Austin Hankwitz:Yeah, I don't think there's a world where we're in an AI bubble just yet. Yes, there will be some names that might go down and might not scale as planned, but I don't think NVIDIA is one of them. And NVIDIA's most recent quarter was$68.1 billion in revenue, up 73 % year over year. I'm still a buyer of NVIDIA. I know you are as well. We are still bullish long-term on that. And that marked the company's 11th consecutive quarter of revenue growth above 55 % per quarter. And Wong is guiding for 77 % growth this quarter, which is roughly$78 billion. Remember, this is a$4.5 trillion company, the most valuable public company in the world, growing at a rate that defies everything we thought we knew about scale in these AI super growth companies.

11:28Robert Croak:NVIDIA's CEO is saying that this new demand is being driven by a fundamental shift in how AI is actually being used. The industry has now moved away from training large language models, which was kind of the first phase of this, to inference at a massive scale. So think agentic AI applications that spawn other agents to accomplish tasks that are generating exponentially more tokens than a simple chatbot interaction. Jensen Wong put it simply. If they could just get more capacity, they could generate more tokens and their revenues would go up. Talking about these companies like the Open Clause and the perplexities of the world that have got these AI agents.

12:08Robert Croak:If they could just get more capacity because the demand's there. People like Robert and I, we're using this stuff, right? If they could get the capacity, their revenue will go up. And that's why a trillion dollars is on the table.

12:20Austin Hankwitz:On Tuesday, Wang told reporters that NVIDIA has received purchase orders from China and is restarting manufacturing for the Chinese market. His exact words, that's new news for all of you, and it's different than it was two weeks ago or even three weeks ago. But that's our condition today, and our supply chain is getting fired up.

12:41Robert Croak:Now, here's a fun fact for you, Robert. China once accounted for a fifth of NVIDIA's data center revenue. And the company has been effectively shut out now of this Chinese market since the Trump administration required export licenses last April. NVIDIA took a$5.5 billion charge because of it. And as recently as their February earnings call, their CFO told Wall Street analysts that while a small number of H200 products had been approved for sale by the Trump administration, we've yet to generate any revenue from China. So this news is major.

13:15Austin Hankwitz:And Wong told CNBC the company now has clearance from both sides, the U.S. and China. And this deal allows NVIDIA to ship its H200 chips to China, provided the U.S. government gets a 25 % cut of sales. There are still caps on shipments, mandatory third-party testing, and significant licensing requirements. But the door is now open, And NVIDIA's current quarter guidance of 77 % growth assumes zero data center revenue from China, which is just crazy to think where this is going to go as they provide chips to China again. So if Chinese sales actually materialize this quarter, it's an upside that nobody is pricing in.

13:56Austin Hankwitz:So, Austin, this is really great news for NVIDIA holders like ourselves. What does this mean for the everyday person watching this episode and you and your money?

14:06Robert Croak:Well, I think what's really cool, just like before we jump in, is I'm looking at the stock price here. And since August of 2025, right, so almost, I don't know, what is that, eight months ago, the stock has been trading sideways. It hasn't done anything, which I think is just a wonderful opportunity for everyone listening right now to go back and think to themselves, this is when you're supposed to accumulate shares. not when it's going up and vertical like it did back in you know let's call it 2023 and then again here uh early 2025 it went from 100 a share to 180 a share you don't want to buy it when it's going up you want to buy it when it's trading sideways so me personally i'm excited about this news i think it's great and i'm buying more nvidia nvidia is now in a category of one right they're not competing anymore with the mag 7 they are it no other company in the world is executing at this level at this scale with this kind of revenue growth.

15:02Robert Croak:And it's important, but you guys got to keep this in mind, a$1 trillion order pipeline over two years doesn't automatically mean the stock is just going to go vertical from here, right? No one can predict what the stock is going to do. And at$4.5 trillion in market cap, the market is already pricing in extraordinary growth. So the question isn't whether NVIDIA is a great company. We all know it clearly is. The question is whether now is a good time to buy the stock. And if you're like me, you just want to own equity in NVIDIA. I've been dollar cost averaging, and I'm sure Robert's been doing the same.

15:35Austin Hankwitz:Yeah, it's crazy to think how it seems like for the last three years, people have been crying to the mountaintop saying that NVIDIA is overpriced and the stock is too overblown and it's going to retract. Yet when you look back five years, the stock price is up 1 ,287%. And the China development is genuinely new to all of this, and the street is not modeling Chinese revenue in the current quarter. If orders materialize at scale and Yuan's language suggests they will, that's a meaningful catalyst. But there's a geopolitical risk baked into every Chinese shipment. Export controls could tighten at any time, and the 25 % government cut eats into margins.

16:17Austin Hankwitz:So just keep that in mind along the way. And the licensing requirements create operational friction. and this is incremental revenue, not a return to the pre-restriction era. So make sure you guys weigh that in when you're considering the pricing of NVIDIA and if you should buy more.

16:33Robert Croak:And again, I want to emphasize, no one can time the market. NVIDIA could be trading down 50 % in six months from now. I have no idea what's going to happen. I will dollar cost average. I'm telling myself, I want to own equity in this business. I think it's the future. I think the earth is being completely rebuilt with AI in mind and NVIDIA is powering it. So you can come for us in 12 months when NVIDIA is at whatever price it is. I don't care. I'll be buying more. I think NVIDIA is great.

16:58Austin Hankwitz:I agree with you 100%. I always want to be diversified. That's the message I share, you share. But I also want to own the leaders in every sector. And NVIDIA is definitely that. So let's get on to our last point. And this one is really, really fun. America now has more spas and gyms than stores selling actual stuff. The Wall Street Journal published a piece this week with a headline that literally stopped me in my tracks. America now has more spas and gyms than stores actually selling real goods. Crazy stat, but let's get into it.

17:32Robert Croak:Yeah, for the first time in history, service-based tenants like salons and spas and fitness studios and things like that leased more than 50 % of total retail square footage in the United States in 2025. And according to data from CoStar, the commercial real estate analytics firm, service tenants now account for just over half of all retail leasing. Whereas 15 years ago, the number was 40%. Think about that. 15 years ago, it was 40%. Now it's 50%, and it's tipping over into the majority.

18:05Austin Hankwitz:Yeah, I feel like in downtown St. Petersburg, there is a med spa or some sort of one of these wellness centers on every corner. and the National Director of U.S. Retail Analytics for CoStar said something that perfectly captures the shift. He said, a handbag used to be a luxury symbol. Today, a more common sign of status is spending money on things like yoga classes or facials. So think about that for a second. The status symbol in America has shifted from what you carry to how you look and feel, and I agree with it 100%. And I'd rather feel good and look good than have something that's a depreciating asset that I'm spending my money on.

18:43Robert Croak:There you go. That's why the U.S. wellness market hit$2.1 trillion just the other year, according to a Global Wellness Institute survey. That includes spending on spas and beauty, nutrition, mental, fitness, and public health, and all that stuff, but literally over$2 trillion.

19:00Austin Hankwitz:On the supply side, e-commerce has permanently reduced the amount of physical space retailers need to sell goods. Online sales accounted for 16.4 % of total retail last year, up from 8 % in 2016. So physical retail space is being vacated, not because demand for spaces drop, but because the kind of tenant filling that space has changed.

19:23Robert Croak:And on the demand side, Americans are spending on experiences, self-care, and wellness at a rate we've never seen before. There are now dedicated shops for those laser facials, IV hydration, vitamin infusions, Botox, red light. therapy, cryotherapy, all that stuff, right? So, and it is, it's nuts. Fitness center openings have surged as well. The fitness sector now makes up nearly 30 % of all service-based leases. Planet Fitness, a publicly traded company, added over 1 million net new members last year, and they announced they're opening nearly 200 locations. So, Robert, what does this mean for you and your money?