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Thoughts on the Market

Thoughts on the Market

De: Morgan Stanley
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Short, thoughtful and regular takes on recent events in the markets from a variety of perspectives and voices within Morgan Stanley.

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Episodios
  • The Political Cost of the AI Buildout

    The Political Cost of the AI Buildout
    Feb 18 2026
    More Americans are blaming the AI infrastructure expansion for rising electricity bills. Our Head of Public Policy Research Ariana Salvatore explains how the topic may influence policy announcements ahead of the midterm elections.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Ariana Salvatore: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Ariana Salvatore, Head of Public Policy Research for Morgan Stanley. Today I'll be talking about the relationship between affordability, the data center buildout, and the midterm elections. It's Wednesday, February 18th at 10am in New York. Markets and voters continue to grapple with questions on AI, including its potential scope, impact, and disruption across industries. That's been a clear theme on the policy side as voters seem to be pushing back against AI development and data center buildout in particular. In key states, voters are associating the rise in electricity bills with AI infrastructure – and we think that could be an important read across for the midterm elections in November. Now to be sure, electricity inflation has stayed sticky at around four to 5 percent year-over- year, and our economists expect it to remain in that range through this year and next. Nationally the impact of data centers on electricity prices has been relatively modest so far, but regionally, the pressure has been more visible. To that point, a recent survey in Pennsylvania found that nearly twice as many respondents believe AI will hurt the economy as it will help. More than half – 55 percent – think AI is likely to take away jobs in their own industry, and 71 percent said they're concerned about how much electricity data centers consume. But this isn't just a Pennsylvania story. In other battleground states like Arizona and Michigan, voters have actually rejected plans to build new data centers locally. So, what could that mean for the midterm elections? Think back to the off-cycle elections in November of last year. Candidates who ran on this theme of affordability and actually pushed back against data center construction tended to do pretty well in their respective races. Looking ahead to the midterm elections later this year, we see two clear takeaways from a policy perspective. First, it's important to note that more of the policy action here will actually continue to be at the local rather than federal level. Some states with heavy data center build out – so Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, and Texas among others – are now debating who should pay for grid upgrades. Federal proposals on this topic are still pretty nascent and fragmented. Meanwhile, public utility commissions in states like Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana have adopted or proposed large load tariffs. These require data centers to shoulder more upfront grid costs; or can reflect conditional charges like long-term contracts, minimum demand charges, exit fees or collateral requirements – all of which are designed to prevent costs from spilling over to households. And secondly, because of that limited federal action, we expect the Trump administration to continue leaning on other levers of affordability policy, where the president actually does have some more unilateral control. We've been expecting the administration to continue focusing on broader affordability areas ranging from housing to trade policy, as we've said on this podcast in the past. That dynamic is especially relevant this week as the Supreme Court could rule as soon as Friday on whether or not the president has the authority under IEEPA to impose the broad-based reciprocal tariffs. The administration thus far has been projecting a message of continuity. But we've noted that a decision that constrains that authority could give the president an opportunity to pursue a lighter touch tariff policy in response to the public's concerns around affordability. That's why we think the AI infrastructure buildout debate will continue to be a flashpoint into November, especially in the context of rising data center demand. Next week, when the president delivers his State of the Union address, we expect to hear plenty about not just affordability, but also AI leadership and competitiveness. But an equally important message will be around the administration's potential policy options to address its associated costs. That tension between AI supremacy and rising everyday costs for voters will be critical in shaping the electoral landscape into November. Thanks for listening. As a reminder, if you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please take a moment to rate and review us wherever you listen; and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.
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    4 m
  • A Novel Way to Shop Online

    A Novel Way to Shop Online
    Feb 17 2026
    Our Head of U.S. Internet Research Brian Nowak joins U.S. Small and Mid-Cap Internet Analyst Nathan Feather to explain why the future of agentic commerce is closer than you think.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Brian Nowak: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Brian Nowak, Morgan Stanley's Head of U.S. Internet ResearchNathan Feather: And I'm Nathan Feather, U.S. Small and Mid-Cap Internet Analyst.Brian Nowak: Today, how AI-powered shopping assistants are set to revolutionize the e-commerce experience.It's Tuesday, February 17th at 8am in New York.Nathan, let's talk a little bit about agentic commerce. When was the last time you reordered groceries? Or bought household packaged goods? Or compared prices for items you [b]ought online and said, ‘Boy, I wish there was an easier way to do this. I wish technology could solve this for me.’Nathan Feather: Yeah. Yesterday, about 24 hours ago.Brian Nowak: Well, our work on agentic commerce shows a lot of these capabilities could be [coming] sooner than a lot of people appreciate. We believe that agentic commerce could grow to be 10 to 20 percent of overall U.S. e-commerce by 2030, and potentially add 100 to 300 basis points of overall growth to e-commerce.There are certain categories of spend we think are going to be particularly large unlocks for agentic commerce. I mentioned grocery, I mentioned household essentials. We think these are some of the items that agentic commerce is really going to drive a further digitization of over the next five years.So maybe Nathan, let's start at the very top. Our work we did together shows that 40 to 50 percent of consumers in the U.S. already use different AI tools for product research, but only a mid single digit percentage of them are actually really starting their shopping journey or buying things today. What does that gap tell you about the agentic opportunity and some of the hurdles we have to overcome to close that gap from research to actual purchasing?Nathan Feather: Well, I think what it shows is that clearly there is demand from consumers for these products. We think agentic opens up both evolutionary and revolutionary ways to shop online for consumers. But at the moment, the tools aren't fully developed and the consumer behavior isn't yet there. And so, we think it'll take time for these tools to develop. But once they do, it's clear that the consumer use case is there and you'll start to see adoption.And building on that, Brian, on the large cap side, you've done a lot of work here on how the shopping funnel itself could evolve. Traditionally discovery has flowed through search, social or direct traffic. Now we're seeing agents begin to sit in the start of the funnel acting as the gatekeeper to the transaction. For the biggest platforms with massive reach, how meaningful is that shift?Brian Nowak: It is very meaningful. And I think that this agentic shift in how people research products, price compare products, purchase products, is going to lead to even more advertis[ing] and value creation opportunity for the big social media platforms, for the big video platforms. Because essentially these big platforms that have large corpuses of users, spending a lot of time on them are going to be more important than ever for companies that want to launch new products. Companies that want to introduce their products to new customers.People that want to start new businesses entirely, it's going to be harder to reach new potential customers in an agentic world. So, I think some of these leading social and reach based video platforms are going to go up in value and you'll see more spend on those for people to build awareness around new and existing products.On this point of the products, you know, our work shows that grocery and consumer packaged goods are probably going to be one of the largest category unlocks. You know, we already know that over 50 percent of incremental e-commerce growth in the U.S. is going to come from grocery and CPG. And we think agentic is going to be a similar dynamic where grocery and CPG is going to drive a lot of agentic spend.Why do you think that is? And sort of walk us through, what has to happen in your mind for people to really pivot and start using agents to shop for their weekly grocery basket?Nathan Feather: I think one of the key things about the grocery category is it's a very high friction category online. You have to go through and select each individual ingredient you want [in] the order, ensure that you have the right brand, the right number of units, and ensure that the substitutions – when somebody actually gets to the store – are correct.And so for a user, it just takes a substantial amount of time to build a basket for online grocery. We think agentic can change that by becoming your personal digital shopper. You can say something as simple as, ‘I want to make steak tacos for dinner.’ And it can add all of the ingredients you want to...
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    11 m
  • Introducing Hard Lessons

    Introducing Hard Lessons
    Feb 16 2026

    Iconic investors sit down with Morgan Stanley leaders to go behind the scenes on the critical moments – both successes and setbacks – that shaped who they are today.

    Watch and listen to the series on your favorite platform.
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    2 m
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