Tech should be a part of long-term strategy but not the whole thing, says Julie Biel

Joining us now is Julie Beal. She's chief market strategist at Cain Anderson Rudnick and a CNBC contributor. Great to see you again, Julie, working overtime. But let's start- Here we are again. We teased a little bit on your NVIDIA position. Can we just start there? Because I always think of you as more of a small, maybe it was a small cap when you were first buying it. It's in another portfolio than the one that I run, but at our firm, we've owned it for over a decade. And that was really based off of this technology that was quite groundbreaking. And its applications were still not really, it hadn't really found its footing in terms of the right application for this really powerful chip. Eventually it found that in gaming, and then by a very happy accident, it is the perfect application for it in AI. All right, so what's the concern that you have with large cap tech in general right here? I think that the expectations are really, really high in terms of what AI can deliver in the near term. And my concern with NVIDIA in particular, not that we are interested in selling the position, but the thing that gives me a little bit of pause in terms of adding, is just that there's so much customer concentration, right? It's about five companies that are driving the majority of that business. And so it's not that I'm worried that these companies are gonna go elsewhere, not materially really, but what I worry about is just that they slow down their spending. And when you have expectations as high as they are for NVIDIA, that can be a concern that can really create a lot of disappointment and hurt feelings in investors as they pull back. That said, I think there's been disappointment and hurt feelings in how small caps have done since the Fed cut. Yeah, but I think it makes sense, right? If you look at 90% of a stock's performance, it's really driven by earnings and small cap earnings really haven't troughed yet. The hope is that second quarter really was the earnings trough for them and that in this quarter is that we're gonna have reporting soon, we're going to see that growth. The thing that's nice about it is that expectations are still relatively reasonable, valuations are reasonable and they have much easier year-over-year comparisons than what you see in large caps. So I think the setup is good. It's impossible to predict when the turn is gonna happen, but I think small caps should be part of every investor's balanced diet. And your biggest area of confidence in single stocks for those who are curious, I mean, you've got a couple of water plays in mind right now. Yeah, I think water is definitely not as sexy as AI, but it's pretty critical and our infrastructure is certainly very underdeveloped and underfunded. There are a few names such as Advanced Drainage where we're really converting our concrete pipe over to these more plastic HDPE pipe. This is what they have mostly in Europe. They have a really solid competitive position in this market and I think there are really attractive growth fundamentals. They're less volatile from an earning standpoint than most of what you're gonna see in other sectors. So again, I think it's part of a balanced diet of what you want in your portfolio. I wonder if that's who I should blame for the road work that's been going on all around our town. They're replacing some kind of water pipe though. Maybe we should check back in with the firm. Julie, thanks. We appreciate your time today and your thoughts on the whole situation. Thank you. Julie Beal with Kane Anderson Rudnick.