a year ago, that was a loss of 35 cents for alcoa. we're going to get official results on july 16th. the ceo saying here in a statement, we had strong preliminary results for 2 second quarter. he says it reflects strong market improvement. you can see shares up here, slightly, mel, afterhours. back over to you. >> kate, thank you. kate rooney. once upon a time, this used to be the first out of the gate in earnings season, used to be a read on the economy. maybe not so much anymore. >> no, and when they spun off, you know, essentially the exciting part of the business, the specialty metals business, this piece of -- call it the dirty metal, was largely something that has been left for dead, except for that it's not. it's still one of the biggest aluminum companies in the world. i think this is a space that has more head winds, more tied to the industrial production dynamic and i don't think it gets better. >>> coming up, a gloomy forecast. why analysts are seeing some clouds forming for visa and mastercard, and how you should manage th

they're companies like mattel and alcoa who are well sensitive to the economy.f you think the economy is doing really well, which there is evidence that it is, this could be an interesting play. the mega caps are less sensitive to the economy due to their cash piles and there's this whole secular theme around ai, but they have that increased sensitivity. there's a little bit flow rate going on in the mid caps space. if we get lower interest rates as well, that's an interesting play. >> the lower rate, that's the point investors would always make. you're having the best of both worlds? >> you're having high quality companies with pretty stable revenue flows, but lower rates if they do come. we can talk about that in a moment. if the lower rates do come, that's going to be helpful because there are more in the economy than the mega caps. the technology sector, it's really doing its own thing. the whole conversation around earnings has to do with cloud and intelligent cloud. it doesn't have much to do with the day-to-day economy at this stage. >> you also make the