Global Trade This Week – Episode 147
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Keenan Brugh 0:00
You're watching global trade this week with Pete mento and Doug Draper.
Doug Draper 0:09
Hello, everyone and welcome to another edition of global trade this week. We're mixing up our hosting duties this week. I am Doug Draper. I'm only half of the show. The other half is usually Pete mento. But he's on assignment. He's not on vacation. From my knowledge. I think he's just working hard. So Keenan is jumping in and gonna do an excellent job. We got some killer topics today. So Keenan, what's going on, man? Hey,
Keenan Brugh 0:36
I'm doing well. Missing the snow up in the mountains right now. But you know, I'm happy. It's sunny in springtime, here in Denver in the Front Range. But you know what? I got a foot of snow up there. It sounds great.
Doug Draper 0:50
I know. That's insane. It's May usually that's like a mid mid to end of April. Not mid mid May. So
Keenan Brugh 0:57
yeah. How are you doing today? I see you're rocking a new hat.
Doug Draper 1:02
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for noticing. So it's for KU University, Kansas. And I think I've mentioned it on the show a couple of times. My daughter is a rower for Kansas. And she is she had her final race last weekend. And then she's graduating this weekend. And then she's going to compete in the big 12 championships down in Texas, the following weekend, and so we went back and there's this cool ceremony, they have a Kansas. First of all, I'm so proud of my daughter. We don't talk about our kids a whole lot on this thing but but she is just a rock star. She has been a rower for four years, if you've been a division one athlete, you can appreciate the hard work that goes in but but there's a ceremony at University of Kansas called a K ring ceremony. And if you're a four year Letterman Letter Person, you get this really nice ring that designation shows that you're, you know, a graduate and been involved with, with a sport, you're all for years. And when you go back for homecomings or other type of events, there's always K club events that give you priority access. So she was pretty excited about it. We had to help, we had to celebrate with her. And I wanted to represent the great school of University of Kansas and Lawrence, Kansas. So just super proud of my daughter and wanted to let our audience know about that.
Keenan Brugh 2:24
Absolutely. Well, congratulations to your daughter and your family. And that's very exciting. And we should celebrate more things. I know, we often cover tough topics of transportation and economics, but it's also good to look at the positive things that we want to celebrate. Yeah,
Doug Draper 2:38
cool. Well, thanks. Thanks for giving me that time. I appreciate it. So. But to your point, Keenan, this is all about global trade, specifically, what's happening here and now in a forward leaning perspective. So let's get into a man. What's your first topic?
Keenan Brugh 2:54
Yeah, so my first topic I'll share my screen here is hungry, hungry robots. I always love the pithy punch lines pulled up by the Economist crew. We've heard a lot about the growth of AI and Nvidia and different aspects around this. But this was the first time I had seen some numbers, ultimately from the EIA showing the rapid growth of use by AI data center. So to help people seeing this or to read it out to people who are listening only in 2022, conventional data centers used, let's say, three or four times as much as cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and everything else like that. And there's just a sliver nonexistent of AI data data centers, and then their forecast based on this government data is predicting in 2026, that the dedicated AI is will be not quite as big as cryptocurrencies, but getting into the same order of magnitude closeness, and that those two are becoming a bigger chunk of all data centers together, which includes every web service and social media and bank and everything. So these two subsections are particularly large, because the big conventional data centers is a large, long tail of different industries. So they're significant. Also, particularly the growth rate, even in 2026. It's predicting AI data centers will still be smaller than cryptocurrencies. But cryptocurrencies isn't growing that much between 2022 and 2026, where the AI has exploded. Now, we don't know is this just a ramping on and it's going to start tapering off maybe, but it seems like the projections I've seen are looking more and more like it's going to be continuing into the, into the future as a growth rate that will be pretty, pretty significant. And one of the aspects that the economist was talking about with this is that these companies involved alphabet, Google, Amazon, Microsoft they want to do this in a clean way. They're using more and more power, lots of power. But they also want to report to their users, their investors, their regulators, that they're doing things in a clean way. And so there's a lot more demand specifically for these projects involving, can we set up solar? Can we set up wind, sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow all the time. So are we going to have natural gas peaking. Another one of my colleagues, when we were talking about this story this morning, he was saying he had seen this about BlackRock and Larry Fink and elsewhere, citing and here they were talking about how even as they're trying to use renewables, that's going to come along with higher demand for natural gas. So this ties into logistics several ways, not only does logistics utilize and work with AI technology, however, we also are moving parts for data centers, we're moving parks for power production facilities that then power these things. So it definitely touches and especially if we ever have a future with electric vehicles in the transportation space, then ultimately, we're going to be needing this energy to and so it's interesting how optimistic So a negative case, wow, look at all this new energy usage pollution from a new industry. Okay. But look at the optimistic side, what new economic value could be saved or created by these AI solutions? And can they be bundled together seemed like there was some interesting stories of companies like Google partnering with other companies like steel plants that also use a ton of electricity in the making of steel? They're bundling their demand together to then have like, hey, we know we're going to be using this much electricity. Is there a clean energy provider that can power us to try to incentivize and maybe rapidly change the electrification process towards more renewable energies? Keep an eye out for the natural gas demand as solar and wind can't do everything all the time. Also keep an eye out on nucular. I know, we've nuclear we've been communicating sounded like George Bush there for a second nuclear power. I know I've said this before. And I believe Pete has been an advocate of quality nuclear power as a way forward with a lot of these issues. And there's definitely cases of Fukushima and examples of what not to do. Though there are people investing whether you like it or not, there are people like the head of chat GPT Sam Altman is investing in a couple of different both fission and fusion, which is even more far off type power, which maybe we do need some moon shots like that I haven't seen anybody yet bringing up the thorium power, but I always love if thorium can make a breakthrough, where we have a lot more fuel and a lot less radioactive or nuclear weapon, proliferation potential would be very nice, because then we can have secure money in the form of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, as well as AI that can help us inform and make decisions or advise human experts in their decision making processes for a better future. So double edged sword, as always, you know, we're using more electricity, and therefore more carbon with these new technologies that just exploded on the scene, though, there's also some potential benefits of it. And I know, there's a lot of aspects of this topic, but what were some of the things you noticed or any thoughts you had on
Doug Draper 8:21
it? Yeah. Thanks. I think that, you know, vast amount of processing power, which is, you know, the aggregate of what you're talking about needs vast amounts of electricity. Yes. And that the two comments that I would make, as you know, what else requires a lot of electricity, electric vehicles, crypto, mining, all of which, so just the power that is needed to sustain all of these new ventures and everything else is is amazing. But the one thing that you mentioned with Blackrock is all of that is going to be a huge capital, you know, capex capital expenditures, and who has that kind of money, solar, you know, that to generate a, a solar array or a huge wind farm or something? Yeah, that's investment banks and asset management companies like BlackRock. So I think you're gonna see a lot of those entities chasing into this industry. The other piece is that compliance and regulation which is you spoke about real briefly is how how's that going to come into play? Because there will be requirements and regulations related to efficiencies, and how those things are going to factor into growth plans right so it'll it'll be interesting but and then hopefully, I don't know if you and I are gonna see it in our in our pocket books or not, but if the big data centers are sucking all this power and juice and infrastructure is being built to support it, what does that mean for for you when I when I need to turn my lights on or, or warm my house during the winter months?
Keenan Brugh 9:58
Absolutely. If they start us Seeing the power before more supply gets put online and they'd be bidding up the price, right? But then in the medium to longer term those capital needs could then create more production that then eventually it could mean cheaper electricity for us. So there's always multiple factors, driving any supply and demand price equilibrium type calculation. So we we tried to predict but yeah, it's always fun to see what actually happens.
Doug Draper 10:25
Yeah, well, I'll turn my heat down to like 65. So I can still serve on my phone. All right, there you go. There you go. I'll be part of the solution. And you're a half glass full guy. So I appreciate your last comment on that one. So absolutely. What
Keenan Brugh 10:39
do you have for us here this morning? All right. So
Doug Draper 10:41
my first topic is related to the FMCSA. And their pilot program that started a couple of years ago, year and a half ago or so related to recruiting new drivers that are under the age of 21. It was a big hype, about how do we address and deal with the driver shortage? I believe that it's real, right? There's some people out there that say, Oh, it's just about allocation. There's enough drivers. But I think in reality that that is a absolute fact that's happening. So anyway, the one of the ideas was let's address the driver shortage with the next generation of drivers, all these young bucks out there trying to do it. So in I think it was July ish, or summer of 2022. They granted kind of an apprentice driver situation with folks under 21. And they were approved to operate commercial vehicles 80,000 pounds on interstate commerce. But they had to be there a probationary and they had to be in a in a cab and call accompanied by like a qualified, experienced driver, right. So like you and I dealt with on driver's ed. So it didn't take off. And so here's my take on it. Kena. Number one is, I think they did a pretty poor day, the the FMCSA, or whomever they hired, think they did a pretty poor job of really understanding the analytics of their target market. Right? It sounds good to say, here's all these kids, let's make it accessible to be drivers. I don't think they understood that people are not interested in this generation may not be interested in that, even though there's an opportunity at an earlier age. I think there was number two, just a little bit of lower interest on trucking companies. I think a lot of that had to do with insurance. Right? You put a kid, it's 19 years old behind a big rig semi that weighs 80,000 pounds, doing 65 miles an hour down the highway insurance companies like wait, what what are you talking about? Right? So I think that that played into it. And then I think just the fact that it's here and now I have solve a problem right now with my drivers in my situation and moving my freight and my cargo right here and right now may have deterred folks from from some interest, right. But I'm going to kind of go old man here, Kenan, and all ended up this this comment. But you know, it seems good on paper. And like I said, I don't think that the the group that put this out there did a good job on analytics. And here's my, here's my old man taking. And I got kids in this demographic, and they have friends. And I've known them. And this is gonna sound horrible, but I'm gonna put it out there, right? Is that kids in the 18 to 20 year old bracket, they want to live at home, they want to play video games, and they want their mom to do their laundry, they have zero interest in getting up and having the responsibility of driving a car. I've seen it. So people right now are like Draper, you're an idiot. What about the future of, of our workforce? Yes, there are people that are motivated, and out there. But there are a lot of people that I know a lot of kids that are still trying to find their way, which is fine, that are living at home, doing those things I spoke about. And so that's just a societal issue we have to deal with. And that's a whole nother show. Kenan? We're not getting into that one. But I think my point on this one is the analytics of what does an 18 to 21 year old want to do with their lives was probably miss representative on the whole foundation of this pilot program.
Keenan Brugh 14:23
Very true. I'll start off especially as I'm filling in for Pete by saying kids these days. Just Just kidding, just kidding. Out there kids out there. Though. Some of these trends have been going on for a long time and to your point, there's the here and now need for drivers or moving things however some of these pipelines take a little while take a little while and I know you've been at educational type events through the Denver transportation club as I've I looking at kids in I don't know middle school, high school looking at different career fields. You know, you can have interesting Congress stations make it relatable about how their iPhone got to their pocket and things. But most weren't really all that interested for how big of an industry transportation is. And especially if you're gonna be on the driving side, I wonder if there's the glamour aspect or like the jobs people want, or even, you know, just is it worth it? I don't know, I haven't looked too closely at why the younger audiences aren't coming in. But it's not just transportation. This reminds me, when I've worked with various video production clients, the insurance industry has had a hard time for the last 20 years bringing in young talents, even though they have lucrative jobs, other manufacturing industries have all been trying to do the same sort of thing let people know about you could get this good job, you can develop your skills, you can go into management, you can do all these things, you can use computers, you can do this or that. And they've always had a tough time to. And I think we're also seeing the the results of some of these downward cost pressures, where people don't want to pay all that much, you know, then if you don't offer that much money, you're not going to get people coming in. And so I think things with like inflation, different technological changes, companies, whether transportation or manufacturing anything, they can't afford, or don't want to pay all that much more. But when we're in 2024, and the dollar is not worth what it was in 2014, or 2004, is it worth getting off the couch when I have chicken 10 DS and video games here at home, you know, and I mean, so it's that that the price discovery of what is going on there, which I mean, you see other things on minimum wage type conversations. And then as that rolls out in California, you have McDonald's, rollout self service kiosks that then they just don't have people. And so it's, there's, there's different pressures, kind of fighting in different directions. So that'll be, that'll be interesting to see. But it is impacting transportation, though. It's not just transportation. Another term I've heard people discuss around these things, too, is the competency crisis, where maybe in some trades, sometimes welding or different, you know, plumbing or different things like that, where there's a lot of older people who have a lot of skills, and they're starting to retire. And they're they haven't been working with their apprentices underneath them for 510 15 years. And so we're losing a lot of knowledge capital from people who have been doing these highly skilled trades for a while they're now retiring, and there aren't young people interested and there aren't young people, middle young people with the skills developed. So this is a widespread phenomenon that will need to be compensated somehow. I mean, a company is going to be hiring people to make their company work, they're gonna have to pay more incentivize people somehow. And yet, maybe it sounded like this group maybe missed the mark, or they're just fighting uphill economic forces that are bigger than they can really tackle.
Doug Draper 17:55
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting to see. So I'm sure my comments are a little controversial, but you'll be happy to know that I'm charging my kids rent effective June 1, whenever they're settling in for the summer. So I'm dead serious, they got to pay for their, their car insurance, their phone, and they're paying rent. So welcome to the real world. And speaking of that, that transitions us to halftime, it's brought to you by CAP logistics key. And that's your people over there. And we appreciate all the things that you do for this show. Real
Keenan Brugh 18:29
quick on that I forgot I even miss this one. We have people at CAP logistics, working an event today with the Colorado Business Roundtable on workforce development. I can't believe it slipped my mind. But we're out there. We're always hiring and looking for people. And we want to have the partnerships and the pathways of reaching these people. This event doesn't have kids or young people at it, but it is more groups, you know, schools in the Colorado area, different pipeline sources, as well as many other companies, much more of the audience are other companies that also need people. So this is a very widespread thing. And cap is out there. I think we're doing a relatively good job. But at the same time, it's a challenge for us and everyone out there. So I'll be excited to hear what my colleagues come back and say from that events.
Doug Draper 19:15
Yeah. Good. I'm glad that you brought that up. A cobra, it's a good group to to engage with. I know you've been big supporters of that. So cool. All right. Well, back to halftime, right. I just wanted to get in on on something that I saw just this morning. I had not heard of this. You had heard of it. So let you give your two cents and then we'll jump on to your topic. But there's this thing called Neom. The line which is like it's in Saudi Arabia, and it's defined as the future of urban living, where they're saying that no roads, no cars, minimal emission run on 100% renewable energy 95% of the land will be preserved people's health and well Bing will be prioritized, unlike any city. Oh my god. Okay, that sounds good. And then I looked into it. Kenan, these are 205 mile long buildings that are laying on the ground, completely enclosed and self sufficient that they're building. They're literally doing this right now. It's under construction. And Shaka, they're experiencing some delays and some setbacks. And they're saying that this project, if it happens, and the Saudi Arabian government is saying, absolutely, it's going to happen, it's going to be north of $2 trillion. Right? And if you look at the scope and the magnitude of this thing, that even seems a little bit low, but I had no clue this was going on over in Saudi Arabia, referred to as the line, the future of urban living. So you would you made mention you had heard of this thing, right?
Keenan Brugh 20:52
I have, it's been going on for a couple of years now, where there were there was definitely a lot of hype when first announced because it is a very ambitious type project. And people take it seriously, because the people behind it, I don't know the names, but I'm assuming some royalty, family members of the Saudi Arabia royal family, which has a lot of money if anyone needs reminding Saudi Aramco, oil is a very big commodity, and they have a lot of money from it. They're a large part of the OPEC cartel, and they get a lot of profit. With that, I'm happy to see that people are doing moonshot type projects. But yes, the news these days does seem to be that they're getting a little bit of reality check of what's possible, even with a very large budget. So I had heard different connections, people working for them on media, there's been a lot of architectural renderings and a CGI computer videos of the fly throughs of what this city's going to look like, you take an idea, then you put it into the real world for testing, and they're getting that feedback now. So I think they are going to be doing something I think they seemed like they were very serious about it. And sometimes there's like big announcements of we're gonna build the world's tallest building, and then it just totally scraps. I think people aren't doing it. But there may be some reality checks of scaling back what's possible, or redesigning some of the aspects due to unforeseen consequences. You know, if you just say we have an idea of a line and put it through, there might be complications with something like that being projected onto nature and reality. So we'll see. It'll be interesting if they are able to, to create it, if they're able to make sort of a future world I know. An analogy I think of is their neighbor, the United Arab Emirates and Dubai, right, putting all this oil, money capital into building a place people want to go, and ideally, also other sustainable best practices and their energy practices, because they know that their massive wealth comes from oil, and that oil might not be the only source or be able to get the same source of future. So a lot of these countries have been wisely investing divesting away from just oil putting their eggs in other baskets. they'll invest in solar fields, and they're doing different things like that. And so there could be good returns and a reduction of risk from their perspective, even though it is a very expensive task. So yeah, I'm seeing a lot of new stories come out recently that it might not be as possible as was previously done, but I'm not sure. Did you see what like the sharp news of like, why this just now everyone's talking about how it's getting pulled back a little bit? Do you know what problems they're running into?
Doug Draper 23:32
i The article I saw I didn't get into the specifics other than then funding and some of the realities of trying to build this massive wall flash line. So I don't know I'm sure it's a myriad of things and some traditional construction challenges, but it's probably more
Keenan Brugh 23:51
ones than this. But as I'm scrolling through the Washington or The Wall Street Journal here, apparently they're having an issue that there's bird migrations through that route, and there's gonna have like a ton of dead birds flying into this thing all the time. Windows are a huge deal. Like people talk about wind turbines. I saw a chart recently, if I have it, I'll pull it up here. But very small number of birds are killed by wind turbines compared to house Windows built in Windows, right? And you just make a big solid wall windows or not across an entire region. Birds are gonna hit that thing. So that's probably not the biggest thing there's, they're struggling with, but that seems to be one of the things they're struggling with.
Doug Draper 24:34
Wow. Interesting. We'll have to do some follow up on that one the line more to come. Yeah. Well, Ken, you're sticking with your theme related to anyway, I'll let the audience I won't spoil your halftime.
Keenan Brugh 24:48
So my first topic was related to AI robots being hungry. I've also been seeing some reports and video clips of the next generation of humanoid Robots being developed. We've had Boston Dynamics making dogs and humanoid robots for a while. Their latest one is pretty freaky and advanced, of course, but they're not alone anymore. Tesla is making things Japanese companies are making things Chinese companies are making ones I even saw Israel had one, theirs was the only one that didn't have a head per se. I don't know if they're trying to get away from the uncanny valley. But personally, it seemed a little bit more uncanny to look at a robot without a head, I'd rather have, you know, Honda style, like even just like a mirrored face or something. That was kind of weird. But they're being used for different purposes, security warehouse operations, people are making ones ideally for elderly care, different tasks. Right now, they're still a little slow in some of their movements. However, they don't need to take breaks, they don't need sunlight, they don't need water, they don't need to sleep. So thinking about some of those things, even as now, kids these days want to ask for more and more money, and companies are still under pressure. In some cases, they can afford to offer them more money and get the talent because they need it to grow their business and other cases they can't. There may be more and more looking to hey, can we just hire a robot? Can we can we have Tesla trucks drive these these? Like the freight? Can we have robots, man this power station or this warehouse? And just make sure no one's breaking in? yet to be seen? But I'm curious about your take if you're ready for these if some robots are a little more acceptable to you, or if all of them are not? And what is your plan to defend against the takeover?
Doug Draper 26:43
Defense Plan. That's priority number one, right? I'm sure. Pete would have a lot of comments on that. I don't know. It's interesting to see all the applications, I think some of the real world applications will happen not in logistics and supply chain. But some of the mundane tasks that you that you had made mention elderly care, I'd never thought of that one that would pop to mind. Well think I know water.
Keenan Brugh 27:07
I don't know the latest companies to point to but I keep an eye on it could happen in any country. But Japan, for instance, that has a very aging rapidly aging demographic, they're going to need a lot of care and they don't have the people just aren't there, let alone kids not being interested. The kids aren't there to become the nurses and health care people. So I think that will be probably a lead for the human interaction might be there for that. But before that point, there will probably be more industrial applications, whether in farming or warehouses. I don't know. Yeah,
Doug Draper 27:37
yeah. Well, I can't wait to see the Saturday Night Live skit, when some robot is taking care of some elderly person and retirement community. See how that goes. Yeah, I can, I can picture it. So anyway, that was halftime. I appreciate everybody listening in. is brought to you by CAP logistics again. Visit cap logistics.com. They're good people to help us put on this, this podcast. So as I always say Kenan, Namaste, appreciate what you guys are doing for us. All right, topic. Three. I don't know. Is it you? You want me to go?
Keenan Brugh 28:12
Either way? Yeah. Okay. Cool. So we just got the data from the US Census Bureau that for March, the top trading partner for the US was yet again, Canada. And this makes the third month in a row. So all of q1, Canada was our top trading partner, and Canada or Mexico. I'm sorry, Mexico, did I misspeak, I'm Mexican, I was to Canada is to Mexico has been our number, our number one trading partner. And that matches with what we've been seeing too. I mean, we do a lot of business with Canada and Mexico. They're both right up there. But we've been seeing a lot of interest in Mexico, seeing a lot of manufacturers moving down to Mexico. There's a lot happening in Canada, obviously, too. And they go back and forth. But I think more historically, I'm used to seeing Canada top this list. And so if I did slip, that would be wise, because often it has been Canada, but it is Mexico. And while they all might keep growing, I think there's gonna be a big push for Mexico robots aren't taking over all the jobs yet. We still need manufacturing, we still need assemblies. And we're seeing more trading back and forth between Canada and the US between US and Mexico. And Mexico is growing right now. So that's something we've been seeing as well. Customers very interested in companies growing in Mexico. I thought that was interesting on the part of it kind of tying into the robots and other things. One of the core components that is going back and forth are computer chips, you know, we might send in raw chips to Mexico to then be assembled in the larger computer units. But besides passenger vehicles, Auto Parks, computers are right up there. 2.8 billion is significant and the ATT might continue to grow as Nvidia and other companies are moving towards the North America, whether they're in Canada in the US, I know different Intel, and people are looking at Arizona to try to manufacture even just to hedge their bets. Taiwanese companies are investing in Mexico or the US just to make sure that they have a continuation plan, if any geopolitical changes might happen over in the Asian area that would otherwise disrupt their businesses. So very interesting to see. I don't know if you've been interacting with Mexico on what you've been seeing in Colorado, California warehouse type stuff.
Doug Draper 30:41
Yeah. So the, as far as my personal interaction, no, but one thing has been happening, obviously, is the de minimis and the fact that you can import for duty free under 800 bucks, and there has been a lot of warehouses popped up just on the other side of the of the border. And people and companies are actually marketing that now. Right? They're basically saying, Hey, we're doing this. It's part of the rules and the regulations of US Customs and Border Control, and we're going to do it. So that's the one piece I've seen specifically in the warehouse in front of it. But the other piece that I like about it is nearshoring reshoring. Friend shoring, it's been a lot of talk, and it's kind of cool to see the realities of that, coming to fruition, always kind of flipping on. What do we do now type of thing be careful, what you ask for right is what is the infrastructure look like? To support the movement? You know, I know cap does a decent amount of business in and out of Mexico, like what? What's the infrastructure, the, you know, the trucks, the trains, the trans load facilities? Are those regulations going to be changed? loosened, if that's the right word as the trade continues to go, but we've talked about it with the ports. Now, there's only so much product, you can move through the ports, it's going to be interesting to see what happens. What does the infrastructure look like to support that dramatic and quick pivot with North America, trading amongst itself so rapidly? A rapid pivot? So that's the one thing that I'm going to keep an eye out for?
Keenan Brugh 32:19
Absolutely, it will be interesting to see. Yeah, what do you have for us here on the back half?
Doug Draper 32:24
Cool. Well, here's this one. This one's a little bit different. It's not, it's global trading. Right. And what I mean by that is, the New York Stock Exchange, has a data analytics team that is now researching interest to go to a 24/7 trading model. Right? So what I mean by that is that currently, it's like nine, this is Eastern time. 930 to four is the trading time. So that's like 3035 hours or so a week. And then they're looking at, what if we just have it 24/7 All the time. And part of me is like, Hey, that sounds great. But then you start thinking of some of the things right? And, you know, it seems like all we talked about is the negatives of these things, right? So there's certainly some positives, but here's a couple things that caught my attention. The reaction and volatility to the movement of stocks, throughout the world are going to be magnified, right? So it's almost like the squirrel mentality, you know, it's 10 o'clock at night, something happens, I get woken up because I need to make a trade. And I do something along with 5 million other people, and then the stock dramatically shifts the other direction. So the volatility, and the reaction of a 24 hour cycle could be could be a sensory overload for lack of a better term. I think that this potentially could say global trade markets consolidate. Right? There's the stock market in Japan in the UK, and things are foremost, if it's 24/7. Why do you need three when you could just do it with two, or potentially one. So if this does happen, I could see that being talked about or or considered. And then I guess, to our first topic, and this is somewhat positive, is that maybe AI will help engage in support kind of the after hours trading. Because if there's 24/7, and you try to overlay the current model of literally humans trading on a floor people need sleep and water and sunshine, like you had said earlier. So maybe AI will come in to support that operating hours that humans can't at two o'clock in the morning if something comes across the wire that somebody needs to respond to immediately. So anyway, Keenan, I think eventually it's going to happen. It's just the way that things are moving. But I think that there could be some crazy Fallout could come from it. But anyway, it's not global trade related, but it's global trading and a caught my attention. So I wanted to bring it up on today's show.
Keenan Brugh 35:02
It does relate in to the other topics. Yeah, the trading algorithms, they don't need to sleep, you know, like, they don't need caffeine, they don't need to sleep. It'll be interesting to see if the demand is there. There is already after hours market trading to some capacity. And things do happen on news events, like you said, but then it's not as much because people just know to focus during the day. But if that were to become a switch, people might just have their algorithms spread out over 24 hours and responsive to different news. When I worked in the finance and brokerage industry, there was a lot of caffeine usage, humans. And my co workers had so much caffeine and so many cigarettes, it was a lot of stimulants in order to keep the financial system running. Maybe there'll be some health benefits and some better sleeping. If this opens up to 24/7. Some people might not get as much sleep, if they're trying to act in the market all the time. Other people might actually get more if robots are then just a normal Park. They had high frequency trading back when I worked there, I mean a while ago, but I feel like the number of trades influenced by an algorithm is higher today. And so maybe it does make more sense and makes more sense to have it in one place where people can buy and sell on the official markets as opposed to trying to do over the counter. How do I profit on this news that's going on? Can I jump in to the Asian one and to your point, people play different stock markets when they're awake, like the Japan Nikkei index and different things. And so will this lead to more centralization if there's one that you can trade on all the time anyway? Why do you need to go to the Hong Kong stock exchange? And do that, for instance? So that'll be interesting. It could be a force of consolidation. I hope people sleep though, so don't don't stay up all night.
Doug Draper 37:00
Sleep water and sunshine. That's right. That's our theme for this one. And that is the end of this week's edition of global trade this week. Keenan, I appreciate you sitting in for Pete. I like the show. This was a we knock this one out great topics. Good banter and want to thank our audience for listening as always, every single week, if you have comments or questions, anything about what we're talking about, please put it make comments in all the platforms that we push this the show out. So again, Keenan, thank you, and we will check you next week. All right.
Keenan Brugh 37:34
Sounds great. Have a good one, everybody.
Doug Draper 37:36
All right, rock Josh.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai