Latest / TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast / #771: Why AI Demand Won’t Collapse with Mel Mattison
Transcript
- 0:00mil madison welcome back to the show sir well thank you for having me marty i appreciate it
- 0:06yeah well we're going to talk about a lot of things today ai is it real is it hype
- 0:10is a mixture of the two we got the fed obviously warsh has taken the helm since we last spoke
- 0:16uh we've got some micro stuff to talk about in terms of individual memory stocks that that you're
- 0:23following and then we can get into the fiscal side of things, how much debt the U.S. federal
- 0:31government is and how they can sustain that debt and all the entitlement programs that they build
- 0:36up and then probably ending it with Scott Bissent's call for a new economic regime at the
- 0:45New York Economic Club a couple of weeks ago, which has been a hot topic in my circles.
- 0:50We covered it this morning on the weekly show I do with my partner, John Arnold at 1031.
- 0:55And I'd love to get your thoughts on that.
- 0:57But I think just starting with the hottest chick in the room right now, which is AI.
- 1:01How are you reading this?
- 1:04Well, AI is definitely one of two main forces that I see driving markets, right?
- 1:11I think it's AI.
- 1:12And then what I want to just kind of encapsulate, because there's a lot of interplay, it's just kind of geo macro stuff.
- 1:23And, you know, that's Iran.
- 1:26That's Ukraine.
- 1:27That's the Fed.
- 1:29That's fiscal deficit.
- 1:31And those are things that the reason I categorize those together is because they're not related to like earnings.
- 1:36Right.
- 1:37So another simple way to say it is what's going on in the broad market, like broad macro.
- 1:42and what's going on with earnings and company specific.
- 1:45And earnings are all about AI.
- 1:47And I just cannot see a way that AI is going away.
- 1:53Like, I think there's a lot of people out there
- 1:56that are talking about, you know,
- 1:59who's going to be the winners,
- 2:00who's going to be the losers.
- 2:02And I do agree, that's not the easiest game to play.
- 2:06But I do think there are certain segments
- 2:08that it's very hard to argue.
- 2:10like for example why sk hynix at four times pe should be trading cheaper than it is like like
- 2:20if you say mel what's what's the base case where micron at like seven times forward earnings is
- 2:28just the earnings are going to fall off the cliff cliff between now and the end of the decade
- 2:32and i just can't picture that case because it's like okay is it going to be open source or closed
- 2:40source, who knows. But at the end of the day, if compute demand is going to just go up exponentially,
- 2:46it's going to need memory unless you're stipulating that there's going to be some newfound
- 2:52memory breakthrough. And I think if your hurdle rate for investing in something is that it's
- 3:01impossible for some black swan new technology to take it out, then there's literally nothing to
- 3:07invest in? Like, you know, I mean, are you going to invest in Bitcoin? Well, quantum could come in.
- 3:13Are you going to invest in U.S. treasuries? Well, the government could collapse and all of a sudden
- 3:19Congress could say we're not going to raise the debt ceiling. Are you going like if you literally
- 3:24want to say there's no black swan impossible downside, then you can't invest in anything.
- 3:31So I will grant you there could be some big memory breakthrough.
- 3:35But absent that, you have companies like Micron signing a multi-year agreement, trading at six, seven times earning.
- 3:45You have capacity growing at two, 300 percent a year, not capacity, demand of what people want growing at two, 300 percent a year.
- 3:56While capacity is only growing at 20, 30 percent a year.
- 4:01And you have companies like Apple saying we've got to raise prices.
- 4:04You've got I mean, if if if there's not truly a memory shortage, if there's an Ed Zitron, you know, false narrative out there that this is all BS, then why is Apple raising prices?
- 4:18Like because then there's no demand like there's no problem.
- 4:21Why? Why would Apple want to raise prices if if this is all just going to collapse in the next three months?
- 4:26And I just can't see it.
- 4:28And I think Ken Griffin put out a post the other day about like the days of like hedge funds monitoring pocket or parking lots and saying I'm betting on this quarterly earnings.
- 4:39Like that's the old alpha.
- 4:42The new alpha is like looking at this stuff and taking longer term views.
- 4:45And I don't know if Micron is going to be $800 or $1,200 a month from now, but I'll bet it hits $3,000 in the next 12 months.
- 4:54I'll just bet it does because it's just too cheap.
- 4:57It's just too cheap not to double or triple from here.
- 5:02And I think people that think, oh, it can't do it.
- 5:06You know, what has Bitcoin done?
- 5:09What did gold do between 1980 and 19, excuse me, 1979, 1971, when it was, we were taken
- 5:19off the gold standard in 1980, it went up 25 X.
- 5:22And so I think people that think like these things have run their course, they have to
- 5:27to look at the fundamentals and micron at seven times sk hynex at four times uh the korean stock
- 5:35market which is collapsing in the last 24 hours and nine percent down is now trading at the cheapest
- 5:44fee multiple it has in like the last 48 months like everything just keeps getting cheaper
- 5:50and people just want to say you got to sell because it's all a big bubble and i just don't
- 5:54yeah i mean the the ed zitron call out it's funny because i've seen his commentary and him
- 6:00do the sort of the the cycle of going through cnbc bloomberg and getting clipped out on x and
- 6:09he's saying there's nothing there nobody wants these things and then i'm juxtaposing that to my
- 6:14usage of it which has gone up i think personally exponentially if you're just looking at all the
- 6:18agents and subagents we're running here and then you project that forward of more people adopting
- 6:24this, particularly agents. And we're definitely not even at the 1% adoption threshold of everyday
- 6:31people. And then you think of like robotics and self-driving cars and all the computers.
- 6:37And the memory demand there is like exponentially more. Like it's ridiculous. And Ed, I've listened
- 6:44to, I'll be honest with you, I've probably listened to 30 to 40 hours of my podcast because I do not
- 6:50want to listen to a bunch of bulls telling me how great AI is and just buy Micron. I want to listen
- 6:55to the people that are saying, here's the problem with the story. And he has certain points.
- 7:02But the thing about him is one thing I'll say about him, he's one of the cleverest
- 7:07speakers I've ever heard. He is so quick and fast with the remark, but he's so quick and fast
- 7:13with the remark that often you'll listen to him and you're not really processing what he's
- 7:18logically saying because if you really break down logically what he's saying it really doesn't make
- 7:23any sense like he basically says stuff like well anthropic and a open ai can never be profitable
- 7:30that that's one of his key arguments that it it's all a subsidized good there'll never be the demand
- 7:37for it it's never going to be profitable they're the only buyers of compute but then at the same
- 7:45time he'll talk about how like open source models are much cheaper. People want to use them. Well,
- 7:55if AI actually has a use case, even if it is open source models, it still requires compute.
- 8:02It still requires the hardware. It still requires memory. Does that mean that open AI is going to be
- 8:10a $4 trillion company. I honestly don't know. He might be right. OpenAI might not be the best buy
- 8:17right now, right? I mean, like if I was a private investor and that's what I did for a number of
- 8:22years was basically secondary market investments in large private companies, would I be telling
- 8:28people go into OpenAI and Anthropic right now? No, I wouldn't. But does that mean that AI is
- 8:34not going to happen? And I think if you go back and people love to compare it to the dot-com boom,
- 8:39So let's compare it to dot com. Did pets dot com, you know, blow up? No. But did the Internet? I mean, blow up meaning become a huge success. But did the Internet become a huge success? Yes. And and and look at the top companies in the quote unquote Mac seven. You had Apple and went public in like the 80s. Microsoft, same thing. These things went through that. They had huge market caps. They came out of it.
- 9:05You also had companies like Google that weren't even public until after the dot-com boom.
- 9:11Tesla, same thing.
- 9:13And so the internet and everything that happened there was real.
- 9:18And it was a huge thing.
- 9:19And it became a big deal.
- 9:22Did we have a huge blow-up top and then a collapse?
- 9:27And then even a slow but steady rise to even greater market?
- 9:32I mean, what was the Nasdaq when it collapsed?
- 9:34I think it was like 4,000, like 30,000 today.
- 9:39Okay.
- 9:39So like you're, you're telling me like, oh my God, look at the.com.
- 9:43You could have bought the NASDAQ at the very top of the.com boom and left it in your IRA.
- 9:50If you're a 30 year old guy and you're coming back and you're 50 right now, you still got
- 9:5510 years before you can access it.
- 9:57And it's up like, you know what?
- 9:59Almost 10 X.
- 10:00So I think if you zoom out and you look at what's going on, AI is not going away.
- 10:06Crypto is not going away.
- 10:07Bitcoin is not going away.
- 10:09The fiscal mess we're in is not going away.
- 10:12It's getting worse every day.
- 10:14That debasement trade that was so hot last year that let gold get over $5,000 an ounce,
- 10:20Bitcoin over $120,000, silver over $100,000, that's not going away.
- 10:25it's just we're going through all these micro rotations and every time something happens like
- 10:32meta says oh we're cutting back on compute and then it you know skyrockets you know 20 percent
- 10:37in the next two trading days which is what meta did um you know it's it's it's the money's rotating
- 10:44and the thing is is the money's got to go somewhere and the money just keeps building
- 10:50It's the 401ks. It's now the Trump accounts. It's the fiscal deficit. It's the whole merry-go-round that has led the S&P to go from 666 in 2009 at the GFC lows to over 7,600.
- 11:14today, it's going to keep happening. And if you let yourself get shaken out every time there's a
- 11:2020, 20 or 15% pullback, I think you're just missing the big picture. Yeah. I mean, before we get in
- 11:26the Trump accounts, which I know you want to cover with those passive flows that many people aren't
- 11:31talking about. And I've said this multiple times over the last six months, like this seems like
- 11:35there's like an equity market, not like a bailout, but like a mechanism to produce passive flows.
- 11:40But before we get to that, the Ponzi needs more sources.
- 11:44Yeah. And that's a good one.
- 11:46Yeah. And that's a great.
- 11:47We're going to keep doing it.
- 11:47So yeah, fight it. Go ahead.
- 11:49But like bring it back to like Zitron and some of his criticisms,
- 11:52like one of which being a lot of these companies, particularly
- 11:54the hyperscalers, have gone from buying back stock
- 11:58to hitting the ATM, the issuing stock, raising equity
- 12:01and even going into more debt.
- 12:03So they're highlighting that as like, oh, this is the end.
- 12:05And I've been thinking about this a lot, too, because
- 12:08you do want to check your priors and be like, okay, where, where, where am I maybe having a
- 12:13blind spot here? But like, when I see that, it's like, you could take that signal that way,
- 12:18which is like, these companies are desperate. They're diluting equity holders to raise cash to
- 12:22keep piling money into a loser is what Zitron would say. But the other one is like, well,
- 12:27maybe there was just a period of time post 2008 where the allocation of capital warranted the sort
- 12:34risk matrix that these companies have warranted like hey we just buy back stock try to choose eps
- 12:40and now there's finally an opportunity to to deploy capital into not only deploy capital but
- 12:47deploy capital at scales that we haven't seen that makes sense to do this so like just trying
- 12:51to get in the mind of like the boardrooms of the hyperscalers specifically and that decision around buying stock back or hitting the ATM raising debts And does the opportunity of the AI infrastructure build out
- 13:06Is it is it so large that it warrants these types of actions?
- 13:11I mean, everybody used to complain when they were doing all these buybacks, like they have nothing to invest in.
- 13:15And it's a bad sign because they're buying back stock.
- 13:18And now it's like, oh, no, well, they're not buying back stock anymore.
- 13:22And so, look, I mean, Apple, to me, just hitting new highs today and it's up over 50 percent in the last year.
- 13:30I mean, like that's something I want to stay away from.
- 13:33Like we just keep going through this micro rotation and it's like, OK.
- 13:38Apple is going to have to raise prices.
- 13:41It's up over 50 percent in the last 12 months.
- 13:43It's at an all time high.
- 13:46Like maybe I want to go into other things.
- 13:48About a month ago, I basically said, I think this sell the suppliers narrative is overdone and look to buy Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft.
- 14:00And they're breaking out. I mean, you know, these stocks have not made a new high since October.
- 14:08They're still not at new highs. So I do a little tweet once in a while.
- 14:13That's essentially just a basic basket of the four hyperscalers.
- 14:17hyperscalers and look at where they're at. And they are up well over 10% from the lows just like
- 14:2410 days ago. They are not yet breaking out. And I think that there's two things that I think
- 14:34Zitron has wrong. And I think the market gets concerned about that they shouldn't.
- 14:38One is debt. I did a post a few weeks ago where I basically said, how long would it take for each
- 14:45of the hyperscalers to pay off all of their debt off of cash flows if they stopped AI spent.
- 14:53And every single one of them could pay off every dollar of debt they've raised within two quarters
- 14:58with free cash flow. Meaning if all of a sudden AI is a bubble, AI is stupid, it all sucks,
- 15:07and we're going to essentially, we're Google, we're Amazon, Meta, we've raised some debt.
- 15:13how long would it take from free cash flow, essentially our paycheck, if we were employees,
- 15:18to pay off our credit card bill? The average is like 3.2 months. And they could all pay them off
- 15:24within less than six months. Now, what happens after six months when they're now debt free?
- 15:30Now they're going to trade at price to earnings. And then you look at a meta and you say, oh,
- 15:35it's trading at 18 times, 20 times. And now they have no more AI spend to do. They have no more
- 15:43debt to pay. They have no interest expense. And that's if AI fails. So if Zitron's right,
- 15:50and AI is this big nothing burger, and the big, everybody's going to, he said things like,
- 15:56we're going to look back in a few years and say, what the hell were we doing building all this
- 16:00compute? Well, then number one, you got to take away the threat, right? You got to say, well,
- 16:05there's no threat to Google because people might say, well, Google's, no, if AI is a nothing burger
- 16:11and it's going away, then Google's going to still have its moat.
- 16:14Amazon's going to have its moat.
- 16:15Microsoft's going to have its enterprise software moat.
- 16:18So if AI is truly a nothing burger, as Zitron says,
- 16:22then there's no threat to the business model of the hyperscalers.
- 16:27If AI is truly a nothing burger and they can literally pay off all their debt
- 16:31and go back to these free cash flow monsters,
- 16:35buying back their stock with both hands within six months,
- 16:39then what is the risk buying meta below a market multiple like there is no risk then if that's the
- 16:47narrative he paints now he doesn't really talk about another narrative which i actually think
- 16:52could be the actual narrative that plays out which is that ai is going to become this ubiquitous
- 16:59huge force greater than the internet greater than you know the typewriter the word processor a lot
- 17:06of the recent big inventions, maybe even greater than radio or TV.
- 17:10Going back to the railroads, I think is what a lot of people think is the best analogy.
- 17:16If it really is the greatest technology since the 1800s in the railroads, and the railroads
- 17:21became huge, and they became huge money makers, but there were boom towns, huge boom towns.
- 17:27I was in Colorado hiking last month, and there are these ghost towns, and they spring up,
- 17:35and they existed for like 10 years because you know the railroad went through they they mined
- 17:42out all the silver or lead or copper that was there um and then they disappeared because it
- 17:48was mined out or um you know the population just gave up of being there but during that 10-year
- 17:55period i mean people made fortune and so do i think like you can just buy micron and hold it
- 18:00for the next 40 years and retire?
- 18:02No.
- 18:03But do I think Micron's got a longer window
- 18:06of seller returns than six months to a year?
- 18:12Yes, I think it's got a multi-year time horizon
- 18:16for outperformance.
- 18:18And I think a lot of these AI names do.
- 18:20I think a lot of these chip stocks do.
- 18:22I think if you look at the Korean market,
- 18:24which has been selling off, it does.
- 18:26But you look at the Korean market,
- 18:28It's 50% of the Korean market is two stocks.
- 18:31It's SK Heineck and Samsung.
- 18:33The average stock in the S&P 500 trades within a 50% band every year.
- 18:39Well, if two stocks make up half of your index, and they're actually a little more volatile
- 18:45than your average stock, they're going to trade in the 60, 70, 80% band over the course
- 18:50of the year.
- 18:51That's going to drive 30, 40% fluctuations in the index.
- 18:55That should be expected.
- 18:56but what do investors get in return for increased volatility and risk?
- 19:01They get return.
- 19:03And I think,
- 19:03I think people that are looking at micron hitting the 50 day and buying it at
- 19:08nine,
- 19:0910,
- 19:09they might not be happy.
- 19:11They did that a week from now.
- 19:12I think they're going to be very happy.
- 19:14They did that six months now.
- 19:16And so I'm not here to say,
- 19:18look,
- 19:18this is what's going to happen.
- 19:20But if I had to do a short term bet,
- 19:22I think what these stocks are waiting for is,
- 19:25mega cap earnings coming in the next two weeks and they want to hear that but shy they want to
- 19:35hear jassy they want to hear these people say we're still going to be spent and they are because
- 19:43they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they came out and said you know what this whole ai thing
- 19:47was a waste but they might say things like look we're experiencing some supply constraints on
- 19:54power or, you know, there's some pushback on data center build out. And so our CapEx might actually
- 19:59not increase that much, might even decrease a little bit. Initial market reaction might be,
- 20:06oh my gosh, it's all over. But I think what people are going to realize is this is just not going
- 20:11away. Like it's the spending's not going away. They've been worried about it since 2022 when
- 20:17this whole thing started. It goes through these micro rotation. And then all of a sudden,
- 20:23it's like oh my gosh there's open claw oh my gosh there's you know anthropic is cash flow or
- 20:31heading into profitability but oh no they're not because actually you know colossus they gave
- 20:37i mean all this stuff keeps going on and it's just meanwhile the valuations keep going up the
- 20:45The profits keep going up.
- 20:47And I think waiting and trying to call the top has just been the dumbest thing you could
- 20:53possibly do because it is going to top.
- 20:58And I've had some thoughts that that's probably not too far away.
- 21:02I don't think it's necessarily five years away.
- 21:04It could be two, three years away.
- 21:06I think it's going to have to do more with fiscal concerns than the AI thing.
- 21:11But look, market's not going to be going up 25, 35% a year forever.
- 21:16And there's probably going to be a 30, 40% pullback, I think, by the end of the decade.
- 21:23But I just don't see it happening this year.
- 21:25And I think the earliest it could possibly happen is going to be next year because the spending is just in place.
- 21:33I mean, the gears are going and you can't stop the train to kind of borrow an Alden phrase.
- 21:43You can't stop the AI train on a dime.
- 21:47It could stop eventually, but you can't stop it next quarter.
- 21:51It would be a multi-year phase out of it.
- 21:55And I think, you know, in the meantime, earnings are just, you know, they're at unbelievable record paces.
- 22:02We're going to do over $400 in earnings in the S&P 500.
- 22:06The PE is cheaper now on the S&P than it was at the beginning of the year.
- 22:11You've got companies like Samsung, which I know isn't in the S&P, but it's going to do over $200 billion in profit this year.
- 22:21And people are saying, why is this a trillion dollar company?
- 22:25Well, I mean, if I told you, look, I can make $100,000 a year the next five years in a row,
- 22:33I will give every single dollar to you.
- 22:36And then at the end of it, you're also going to own every single dollar I make after that
- 22:40for the rest of my life.
- 22:42I think a million dollars is, I mean, $500,000 is a pretty cheap price to pay.
- 22:48And that's what people are paying.
- 22:49I mean, I think some of the cheapest stocks I've ever seen in my life are these Korean memory names.
- 22:59I mean, it's just I just don't understand.
- 23:04How like three times earnings.
- 23:09Growing at 65, 70 percent.
- 23:12And that's what I mean, they've been growing well over that.
- 23:14But this is what's forecast for fiscal year 27.
- 23:17these peg ratios are ridiculous and people are selling it and saying it's a bubble because they
- 23:25believe what that somebody's going to come out and there's going to be a memory fairy that figures
- 23:29out or look anthropic and open ai can blow up that that's not going to hurt micron or sk hynix
- 23:38samsung in the medium the long term in the short term yes open ai oh ai blew up it's going to hurt
- 23:45it. But AI is not going away. It requires memory. That's like saying, you know, when I was a kid,
- 23:55a big computer was the Commodore 64. If the Commodore 64 blows up and nobody wants to buy
- 24:01another Commodore 64 or another Atari 2600, then the whole video game industry is dead.
- 24:07It's like, I mean, no, that's not the case. These were the biggest two companies when I was a kid.
- 24:12they dominated it. Commodore 64, Jungle Hunt, you know, Atari 2600, Pac-Man. I mean, these were the
- 24:19games, the cartridges dominated video games. If you said those companies are going to be
- 24:24jacked S, you know, within a matter of years, therefore get out of all the video game suppliers.
- 24:33I mean, how did that go for you? And that's what people are saying. That's what Citron saying.
- 24:38open AI and Anthropic are shit companies. Those are the word he likes to use. He basically says
- 24:44they're scams. He says they're never going to be able to make a profit and they're going to go away.
- 24:48And because of that, the entire basically financial system is going to blow up
- 24:52and all of this debt of the hyperscalers is going to go away. He even referenced in a recent podcast,
- 24:57the possibility of NVIDIA going bankrupt. Like literally, like he's talking about NVIDIA
- 25:04possibly going he said it was unlikely but he said it's possible nvidia is going to go bankrupt
- 25:09i mean marty this amount of fear-mongering and then it's played into you listen to the kids
- 25:16booing at college like there's this ai a lot of people have talked about sam aldman and dario
- 25:24modai being like though you know it's like mussolini and hitler like they're they're very
- 25:30bad spokesman. Nobody likes these guys. They come across as arrogant. They come across as
- 25:38condescending. They're not relatable. And the stuff that they say a lot of the times,
- 25:46it just puts people off the wrong way. And I think there's this whole thing where
- 25:52This is not going to necessarily end in OpenAI being a trillion company I don know if it does But even if OpenAI eventually becomes a lucent technology that doesn mean that there not going to be
- 26:12a Microsoft and an Amazon emerging from the internet slash now AI ecosystem. And I just
- 26:24I just think trying to pick the exact time that this is going to happen, like, okay, next week,
- 26:30you know, they're going to say CapEx is over and it's going to crash. I think you just want to,
- 26:36you want to stay invested, stay for the long term. But I think you also want to really stay
- 26:42diversified and not have everything in chips and AI. You want to have emerging market,
- 26:48like not just Korea, but things like Brazil. You want to have Bitcoin, want to have gold.
- 26:53you want to have a material sector you want it you don't want to put all your money in chips
- 27:00it's number one it's too volatile you'll get blown out and number two the rotation is going to
- 27:05continue and i think we're just you know probably on the verge of getting started uh back into the
- 27:12whole gold basement well that's a good segue into the next topic which is the fed in macro
- 27:20As you were discussing before we hit record, a lot of people are beginning to price in rate hikes later this month.
- 27:27I think it's at 50-50 right now.
- 27:29If you look at the probability of there being a rate hike or them holding it steady, what's your take on this, Warsh?
- 27:36Again, coming in between now and our last interview, and how are you viewing all of this, Warsh, at the helm?
- 27:45I do not think there's going to be any rate cuts.
- 27:50Um, somebody who, you know, I respect, I've referenced many times, he's talked about a
- 27:57potential for Warsh to hike actually in July and do a surprise hike.
- 28:03This would essentially like cert fendent independence, but then talk it down and say,
- 28:09that's it.
- 28:10Um, so like a 25 basis hike possibly, but nobody is even talking about like a major
- 28:16hiking site.
- 28:17And if you listen to Warsh, I think he comes off a little conceited sometimes, too.
- 28:25I think he probably needs a better haircut.
- 28:26But he just does not strike me as someone who's oblivious to the broader macro concern.
- 28:37As an example, in his first press conference, he was asked kind of a leading question about are financial conditions loose?
- 28:47and it was kind of a left-leaning journalist that wanted him to somehow argue they're not.
- 28:54And he basically came back right away. He said, look, in housing, no, financial conditions are
- 28:59not. If you're a hyperscaler looking to borrow debt and spreads are at all-time height, then yeah,
- 29:07financial conditions are, excuse me, financial conditions are not very light. It's pretty easy
- 29:14to borrow right now. And so we have this tale of two economies. We have a housing market,
- 29:21which has been the primary driver of the economy about half of the time, right? If you look at,
- 29:29okay, what happened when the dot-com boom bust? Housing took over. And then we had like a five,
- 29:34six year housing bubble. If you look at net worth of Americans, it's still mostly in real estate.
- 29:42So the biggest market in this country for your average American is real estate. It's the house. And that has just done nothing in recent years. There have been certain markets that are extremely supply constrained with kind of blue political leanings where they like a New York where like, you know, they're just not building anything.
- 30:09and, you know, rents are, I think rents are over $5,000 a month right now for an average bedroom.
- 30:15And, you know, yeah, prices have gone up in places like that.
- 30:20But if you live like where I do in North Carolina, I mean, you know,
- 30:26a house has not moved up or down more or less for years.
- 30:30You know, you got to go back to the last World Cup, you know, to see, you know,
- 30:35house prices cheaper or more expensive than they are right now. I mean, like housing just has not
- 30:41moved. And at the same time during that period, earnings, nominal earnings, and I'm using nominal
- 30:49because housing prices that move are up like over 20%. So for your average American, if you want to
- 30:56buy a house in Durham, it's 20% cheaper now than it was four years ago. People say, well, what are
- 31:01talking about 20% cheaper because houses have not moved. Nominal earnings are up that
- 31:06compounded over the last four years. And I can, I can go down my street and look at Zillow and look
- 31:14at like, what did a house sell for in like September, 2022? And you put a house on the
- 31:20market right now, it's going to sell for the same thing. And then if you look at what is the average,
- 31:26you know hourly earnings increase nominal terms not real um it's up over 20 percent
- 31:32compounded over the last i mean that's a 20 reduction in housing and that's basically the
- 31:40biggest segment of wealth in the entire economy and the most directly interest rate sensitive
- 31:50segment. So if you're Warsh and you're saying, okay, if I raise rates, what am I going to do?
- 31:57I'm going to hurt housing. That's going to hurt construction spending. That's going to hurt
- 32:03Josh Mo American where most of their wealth is in housing. Is it going to stop OpenAI from spending?
- 32:11Is it going to stop ETA from borrowing because their interest rate on their, it just went up 25 basis points?
- 32:22No, it's not.
- 32:23And so I think Walsh recognizes that the Fed's interest rate tool is a very blunt tool.
- 32:29And that by raising rates, he's not going to stop, you know, electricity inflation because of AI.
- 32:37Like that's on a course that's absolutely separate from whatever, you know, the two year yield is.
- 32:44And so all he's going to do is hurt the average person and also stymie bank lending, which I think he wants to stimulate.
- 32:55And that and that goes into Besson and Besson's speech about, you know, tokenization, about deregulation.
- 33:03And so there's this big strategic narrative that I think the Trump administration has right.
- 33:11And then at the same time, we're fighting this big tactical narrative that I think the Trump administration has wrong.
- 33:18So they keep making these tactical mistakes, these fumbles, but their long-term strategic vision of embracing digital assets, embracing deregulation, letting AI, letting America compete, bringing back manufacturing, all these broad strategic goals, you know, one big beautiful build, appreciation, tax cuts, all these are huge strategic tailwinds.
- 33:45but then at the same time we keep getting these huge tactical headwinds whether it's tariffs
- 33:51brand war whatever and this is the wall of worry the market keeps fighting and we keep getting the
- 33:57ups and downs we keep getting the rotations and then at the end of the day you look back and you
- 34:01say oh my gosh apple's up 50 in the last 12 months yeah well let's talk about the big strategy from
- 34:10dissent and trump administration what they're getting right long term and then follow that up
- 34:16with what they're getting wrong and how they can maybe right course there yeah i think you know
- 34:22what like i said what they're getting right is you know deregulation i think one thing that has not
- 34:29been understood enough is um the relationship of the balance sheet to interest rates what works
- 34:37effect. So I think this is where the market has been getting it wrong. The market looked at Warsh.
- 34:45They see him as a hawk. They think he's going to decrease the balance sheet. That's going to
- 34:51decrease money supply. The inflation and inflationary aspects are primarily driven by money supply.
- 35:00Money supply does not necessarily need to be increased by the Fed balance. It can be increased
- 35:05by bank lending. It can be increased by the velocity of money. And those are the things
- 35:11that Warsh really wants. He wants to start, and this is already starting, move back more lending
- 35:20from banks and less from private credit. Why is that important? If I'm a millionaire and I've got
- 35:27$100,000 I want to put into a bond issue. And I do it through private credit. I take that $100,000.
- 35:36It essentially gets withdrawn from the economy and it lends it to the company. Net-net, it's zero.
- 35:44I had $100,000 spending power. I now lose that $100,000 spending power. I loaned it to a company.
- 35:51they got $100,000 of spending power.
- 35:54If a bank says, I want to loan you $100,000,
- 35:59they credit your account, $100,000,
- 36:03and then they debit their liabilities, $100,000,
- 36:07there's no decrease.
- 36:09It's money printing.
- 36:11There have been so many people fed,
- 36:14you know, I'm a big central bank guy.
- 36:16The biggest printers of money are not central banks,
- 36:19commercial banks.
- 36:21The commercial banks, the reason they're regulated the way they are, the reason there's the OCC, the reason there's the FDIC, the reason there's the Fed is they can literally make credits on their balance sheet, excuse me, debits on their balance sheet for their own liabilities and credit you with an asset.
- 36:40That's money printing, money creation.
- 36:43We had so much money being created through private credit.
- 36:47That's essentially, you know, putting a ceiling on M2, right?
- 36:55And so we don't need the Fed's balance sheet to expand if commercial banks start lending.
- 37:01This is what wars, the deregulation.
- 37:05This is all part of the investment plan.
- 37:08This is, you know, we don't need to raise interest rates every time growth comes up.
- 37:14We don't need to have a huge Fed balance sheet.
- 37:17We can absorb treasury supply through stable coins or tokenization.
- 37:23We can.
- 37:24So there is this big broad strategic plan that I believe is out there that I think is going to be necessary.
- 37:33Because if you do not address, and we're already at over $800 billion, that interest expense this fiscal year, and we still got the rest of July, August, and September fiscal year.
- 37:53People are worried about $80 billion in Google equity raise.
- 38:00I mean, like, look, this net interest expense is over 10 times that already this year.
- 38:06And it's just growing.
- 38:08And this is the thing that is a nasty little secret.
- 38:11This is what my big concern is longer term, is that almost all the expense of health care for an individual comes in the last 24 to 36 months.
- 38:24and we are just now getting into what I would call an accelerated death rate,
- 38:32baby boomers, where if you look at, you know, when was World War II over?
- 38:37I'd say 40.
- 38:39So the first boomers, let's say born in 46, were now exactly 80 years, right?
- 38:46So the oldest baby boomers are now 80.
- 38:49I don't know about you, but most of the people I know,
- 38:53they do pretty good in their 70s.
- 38:56I mean there always exceptions for cramps But really where the health problems start cropping up for most of the older adults that I know is in their 80s And boomers this is the first year the oldest boomers are just hitting 80s
- 39:12And if you look at fiscal projection for Medicare health spending, it's going to blow up.
- 39:19And so we're getting interest expense blowing up.
- 39:22At the same time, we're going to have health care spending blow up because boomers are hitting what I would call peak medical carry.
- 39:34And that's not going to end anytime soon.
- 39:36And it's just going to get worse.
- 39:39And so if you look at the we're going to hit $40 trillion in U.S. debt coming month, we're going to hit over a trillion dollars in interest expense year to date.
- 39:52in a couple months, how you can look at the US dollar
- 39:58and not say, I wanna own gold, I wanna own Bitcoin,
- 40:02I wanna own silver,
- 40:05in the same way that people thought was so smart
- 40:0712 months ago.
- 40:09And the debasements, you know,
- 40:11guys from Morgan Stanley coming on Bloomberg,
- 40:13debasement trade, and now it's like, oh, look,
- 40:19AI stole a little bit of thunder from me.
- 40:21I mean, look, there's no question about it.
- 40:24Stuff's going up four or five times.
- 40:26But people are starting to see the easy money days are over.
- 40:31You know, Micron, I think, like I said, it could be $3,000 a share in the next 12 to 24 months.
- 40:37But that's not what it did in the last 12 to 20.
- 40:41And I think once people start to recognize and once people see the plan,
- 40:46the the the OCC the office of the control of the currency which largest bank regulate on CNBC today
- 40:54talking about how he just approved circle to be a bank you know like this this stuff is starting to
- 41:00happen where crypto um bitcoin they're they were fighting like up a river for four years under by
- 41:11He basically said, like, Carl Quintanilla asked, like, aren't you worried about giving Circle a bank license?
- 41:20He's like, look, all I'm doing is following the statutes and the laws as they're written.
- 41:26And I can speak from firsthand experience that until recently, if you mentioned crypto to a regulator, you were like, you know, it was, you just didn't do it.
- 41:44I started three different broker dealers, TechFi Security, Equity Security, Invested Security.
- 41:49They're all broker check.
- 41:50People want to start them as a CEO.
- 41:52I went through the whole FINRA application process of all three.
- 41:55two is new broker dealers one is a continuing application buy a broker
- 42:00every single time and we had the best manhattan attorneys that advised
- 42:08and guys
- 42:11every single time they would tell us don't mention crypto like once you mention that
- 42:20you're going to be persona non grata you're going to go to the back of the list
- 42:24if you have to mention it, but otherwise allude to you might go into other aspects of business.
- 42:32And there was no legislative statute law in the books that said, if you're involved with
- 42:39cryptocurrencies, you can't have a broker dealer or you can't have a bank. There's no law prohibiting
- 42:45it. It was just a stance that the regulators took because they were essentially in the back
- 42:50pockets of the big bank. And it was a threat to the big banks, and it is a threat. This is the
- 42:56whole reason why the Clarity Act hasn't been passed yet. Because the banks do not want stable
- 43:03coin issuer like Circle basically paying out interest and not being regulated like a bank.
- 43:11Well, guess what? Now Circle's a bank. So we're going to get through these hurdles,
- 43:16and we're going to get over this.
- 43:18We had Securitize, SECZ is the ticker,
- 43:22go public via SPAC a week or so ago.
- 43:26You know, it traded down quite a bit
- 43:29and I actually bought some late last week, some today.
- 43:34I'm not making an investment recommendation,
- 43:36but, you know, it went public with SPAC,
- 43:38traded up to like 14 and got down to $6.66 last week.
- 43:43And, you know, this is a tokenization company, you know, blockchain.
- 43:51Again, to reference Jordy Visser, he likes to talk about agents, the agentic economy.
- 43:57It's going to be, you know, they're not going to be using dollars.
- 44:01Once people start to realize this, they're going to say, oh, my gosh, I need to be there.
- 44:07Just like a year ago, people were like, oh, my gosh, the basement trade.
- 44:13I need to be there in gold and silver.
- 44:15Then it ramps up, you know, 150% sells off.
- 44:20Everybody hates it for six months.
- 44:21And then it starts again.
- 44:24And so I think the same thing is happening right now with some of these chip stocks.
- 44:29And what was hated, some of the hyperscalers, like I said, I mean, they're having amazing returns.
- 44:37I mean, look at something really quick, like a meta.
- 44:42I mean, this thing was literally 540 bucks a share like five, six days ago.
- 44:52And today it hits 675.
- 44:55But yet if you hear people talk about, oh, meta hyperscalers, what a dog.
- 45:00Well, look, these things are in ranges.
- 45:03They're trading around.
- 45:04The money is moving.
- 45:06um and i think at the end of the day if if you're gonna argue maybe this could be our last quick
- 45:16topic would be like the trump accounts like what's going to keep this party going it's just an
- 45:22endless stream of passive there's a michael green argument it's you know pees can blow up
- 45:29They don't need to stay at 25. It could go to 30, 35, like because the passive bid is not going away and is only getting augmented by the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in perpetuity just from one law going into effect on July 4th, which is the Trump accounts.
- 45:50yeah so let's jump into that
- 45:52I mean
- 45:54what should we follow
- 45:57there in terms of adoption
- 45:59to then try to
- 46:00port to the flows
- 46:03that you just described
- 46:04because everybody
- 46:07has access to a Trump account you have to physically
- 46:09go out and get them for your kids
- 46:10how's this going to play out in your mind
- 46:15I think it's being way
- 46:19underestimated
- 46:20by the market because I don't think people fully understand the tax advantage of these.
- 46:28And it's not just $1,000.
- 46:32It's the ability for anybody to give to a kid that, and it's $5,000 and it's available
- 46:41to every single person under 18.
- 46:43so every american under 18 can go create or their parents can go create a trump again
- 46:52not if you're 16 you're not going to get a thousand dollars so it's like you have to be
- 46:59born i think since trump took office or something like 2025 2026 there there's a there's a there's
- 47:06a lower age range where you get the thousand dollars and then there's other people making
- 47:10big gifts like Michael Dell, Brad Gerstner, different people that are, Gerstner's just
- 47:19doing the video.
- 47:20But the big thing is the tax advantage is that, okay, I talked about boomers turning
- 47:2880.
- 47:29We all know boomers have 70 plus trillion dollars.
- 47:33they can put $5,000 a year for each of their grandkids into this account,
- 47:41and it's going to grow for their grandkids tax-free.
- 47:46When they're 18, the kid wants, they can roll this over into IRA,
- 47:56and then when they're 59, they can take it out tax-free.
- 48:00There have been some studies showing that if a kid that's born now for the next 18 years,
- 48:09$5,000 is contributed, which ran it.
- 48:13That's a lot of decent amount of money.
- 48:15It's less than a hundred thousand dollars though.
- 48:17That should the markets perform as they have, um, by the time that kid is 59 and a half
- 48:26and could withdraw it, it should be between 13 and $15 million.
- 48:30because you're starting that early.
- 48:32This is the power of compounding.
- 48:34It's the same thing that AI guys talk about,
- 48:36how humans think linearly.
- 48:38We don't speak exponentially.
- 48:41Or Einstein talking about compounding
- 48:43the most powerful force in the universe.
- 48:45And you're like, you know, is that really right?
- 48:48Like put $90,000 into its account at 13.
- 48:52And well, yeah, because of compounding,
- 48:54because it's that many, 60 years.
- 48:58We're starting from year zero when the kid's born.
- 49:00to 59 and a half, so it's called 60 years.
- 49:05Nominally, S&P is up 10, 11%.
- 49:07You're putting that money in.
- 49:11And so whether that's going to happen or not,
- 49:14that can be up for debate.
- 49:16What I don't think is going to be up for debate
- 49:18is that there's going to be a lot of well-off grandparents
- 49:21putting money in accounts.
- 49:24Now, what has to happen with that?
- 49:26It's in the S&P 500, and it can't be sold, right?
- 49:30I mean, the kid can't, oh, I put it into my six-year-old grandchild.
- 49:34I just put $5,000 in.
- 49:36Next month, I'm going to sell it.
- 49:38No.
- 49:38It's a passive bid.
- 49:41It's an unstoppable passive bid because every year there's new kids born.
- 49:46So I think it's three and a half million kids born.
- 49:50Some of these numbers were gone through on our recent All In podcast with Brad Gertz.
- 49:57It really spells all this out well.
- 50:00And, you know, they don't tie it necessarily to S&P terms.
- 50:04They just talk about the great tax savings.
- 50:07But I think if you combine what they're talking about, the tax savings, combine that with Michael Green's passive bid thesis, combine that with the fiscal deficits and that we literally can't clamp down on inflation.
- 50:20Like we can't just start raising interest rates when the government is primarily funding itself through U.S. Treasury bills and start hiking up those rates when we're running over a trillion dollars a year.
- 50:31Like Lou Grohman, you know, what are you going to do, sacrifice the currency or bonds?
- 50:36Right. I mean, like, are we either going to let the bond market blow up or are we going to sacrifice the currency?
- 50:42In other words, inflation. We're going to have that.
- 50:45Now, there's going to be counterproductive or counter forces with productivity.
- 50:51But at the end of the day, this whole market fear, oh, my gosh, we've got the second coming of Paul Volkner in the Fed chair seat.
- 51:01And he's just going to start hiking rates because inflation is at 3.2%, which I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow, and it's always risky making a call less than 24 hours before a number comes out.
- 51:12I wouldn't be surprised if we're well below expectations.
- 51:15and even more low next month.
- 51:21And I think we could have some deflationary prints,
- 51:24like literally negative numbers,
- 51:28especially if the Trump administration
- 51:30would get out of its way a little bit with Iran stuff
- 51:33because those are the tactical headwinds I talked about.
- 51:37But when you had oil go from $120 a barrel
- 51:41down to a six-handle,
- 51:44in a matter of weeks,
- 51:47I mean, that's going to be good for reducing inflation.
- 51:49So I think, you know, all of these signs,
- 51:53like there's so much noise out there,
- 51:55a lot of volatility,
- 51:57but like you just can block that out and say,
- 52:02look, I think I want to have...
- 52:04of a 4% allocation,
- 52:07memories,
- 52:0912% allocation to gold,
- 52:138% allocation to Bitcoin,
- 52:14whatever those allocations are right for you,
- 52:17hold on to them.
- 52:18You're going to be very happy
- 52:20with where you're at six months,
- 52:2212 months from now.
- 52:23And I just mentioned that
- 52:25because there are a lot of
- 52:26doomer voices out there.
- 52:28There are a lot of people saying
- 52:29this AI thing is going to blow up.
- 52:31I think credit is going to blow up.
- 52:33you know uh ram war is going to send oil to 200 there are a lot of people that i think could be
- 52:39scaring people into saying oh my gosh i need to take my money out of all risk assets and put it
- 52:43into a cd um i think that's going to be the wrong decision i could always be wrong but i mean i i'm
- 52:52i'm about as bullish as i've i've ever been i think i think 15 000 by the end of the decade on
- 52:59probably
- 53:02yeah you've always been very bullish
- 53:05on the show and
- 53:07it seems like
- 53:09let's see I mean the AI
- 53:11stuff like when I hear Ed Zitron
- 53:13I have to wonder like is there
- 53:15some sort of nefarious
- 53:18incentive driving it
- 53:19or is he not using it
- 53:22or is he not using it the right way because you can
- 53:23he just sells his research he makes money on
- 53:26that yeah
- 53:27but as a research kit
- 53:29because I'm using the stuff
- 53:30we've basically automated a ton of
- 53:33the back end stuff, the TFTC
- 53:34and like I said, my token usage
- 53:37is going up exponentially
- 53:39it feels, particularly with the new frontier
- 53:41models launching, we're hopping on them right away
- 53:43and it's
- 53:45undeniable
- 53:45objectively, just looking at my
- 53:48micro situation, looking at my business
- 53:50it is helping us be
- 53:52crazy productive
- 53:54it is a multiple and productivity
- 53:56the costs are manageable for us as a small team.
- 53:59Maybe that's different for enterprises.
- 54:01And it does seem like enterprises are trying to figure out
- 54:05how to manage token spend
- 54:06and what the right mix of frontier models
- 54:08and open source models is.
- 54:11But I think to flatly say that this is a bubble
- 54:15built on idiotic technology that hallucinates.
- 54:19Yeah, he claims it's nothing.
- 54:21He doesn't even make the claim
- 54:22that like open AI and Anthropic are, you know, insecure business models.
- 54:28Like he literally makes the claim that we're going to look back on this period and say,
- 54:32this was the biggest waste ever.
- 54:34And we're going to be like massively oversupplied with compute.
- 54:39And I would, I like will grant him that there's no guarantee.
- 54:43Like I said, that open AI becomes a $10 trillion company one day.
- 54:47In fact, I kind of doubt it ever does, but that does not mean that AI, that data
- 54:52that are built outs are worthless.
- 54:55That, you know, meta,
- 54:57like I made this argument months ago
- 55:00where I was basically like,
- 55:01look, everybody's talking about shortages of compute.
- 55:05The hyperscalers own compute.
- 55:07Microsoft owns compute with Azure.
- 55:09You know, Amazon with AWS.
- 55:12Meta with what they built out for themselves,
- 55:15which is now selling.
- 55:16Google with Google Cloud
- 55:18and what they built out for Gemini.
- 55:20They own compute.
- 55:21if there's a need for compute it doesn't matter if it comes through open ai anthropic
- 55:27rock uh glm you know kimmy minimax like it doesn't matter when the the baba model like
- 55:35if it needs to be computed it needs the hardware and the hardware is going to be valuable because
- 55:42that demand is going up crazy and like you talked about and mentioned earlier we're not even getting
- 55:49into robotics.
- 55:50I mean, we're not even getting into all this stuff.
- 55:53And like, is a lot of that stuff going to be on the edge?
- 55:56Yes.
- 55:57But guess who's going to make the memory for the robots, right?
- 56:00Is that, so it's like, you know, mind the miners, you know, this is, this is the, the
- 56:05railroads, man.
- 56:06I mean it was like the same thing picks and shovels mind the miners You know like I said honestly I would not invest in Anthropic or OpenAI right now
- 56:18I just wouldn't.
- 56:19I mean, not anything significant.
- 56:22And I think we've seen SpaceX, you know, not have that great of a reaction in the market.
- 56:29um but i think there's a valid criticism that when people are willing to draw out like where
- 56:36spacex is going to be in 15 year like who the heck knows where spacex is going to be
- 56:41and so that deserves a pretty heavy discount even if you grant that it's going to access
- 56:47this 24 trillion dollar tam and it's like granted at all but you got a discount the hell out of that
- 56:53but was it a big leap once the automobile was invented to say automate autos are going to be
- 57:04a big thing didn't know if ford was going to be great studebaker a lot of companies went bankrupt
- 57:10a lot of railroad roads went bankrupt a lot of dot-coms went bankrupt but at the end of the day
- 57:17hey, this was a transformational technology.
- 57:20I just don't see how, and Zitron argues this a lot of the times,
- 57:24he basically says AI is not a transformational technology.
- 57:27Like it's not good.
- 57:29It doesn't do anything.
- 57:30It hallucinates.
- 57:31It's like, look, it's getting better every month.
- 57:35It does a lot of stuff.
- 57:37I mean, I'll tell you what,
- 57:38you could make the same argument about a word processor.
- 57:42You could be like, oh, what's a computer?
- 57:44It's a keyboard.
- 57:45I already have a typewriter.
- 57:46It's not transformation.
- 57:48I mean, sometimes the differences don't even have to be that huge.
- 57:52Just the fact that you can now talk to computers is huge, right?
- 57:57I mean, before the big LOMs, the best talking, you know, back and forth was like Alexa and Siri, and they all suck.
- 58:08And now, like, I'm like, you know, you start talking to these models and they're picking up on slang.
- 58:14you're picking up on, like, that is just a huge, huge leap. I mean, it's so easy to, you know,
- 58:21imagine like glasses and, you know, automatically, you know, translating and all the stuff that these
- 58:27things have already proven they can do are huge. They just haven't been fully implemented in society
- 58:33yet because people don't change as fast as the technology, but they will get implemented.
- 58:38just like, like I'm old enough that when I was a kid, we had a radio,
- 58:44had a rotary phone and we had a dial black and white TV with an antenna.
- 58:50Okay. That was the like epitome of electronics in like a 1981 household.
- 58:57There were people that first got VHSs. They got betas.
- 59:02My dad didn't like that stuff. There were people that got cable.
- 59:06I just didn't like that stuff.
- 59:07there were kids that got video games i mentioned the commodore 64 the atari 2600 my dad didn't like
- 59:15that stuff he bought a new video game console called the atari 400 which even though it was
- 59:20less than the atari 2600 was actually more expensive but it was a better computer but
- 59:26nobody liked it everybody liked the 2600 so like all this stuff happened all this stuff happened
- 59:31And then these companies came and went, but they have literally just transformed the world over what is a relatively short period of time.
- 59:41I mean, it's not like the iPhone's been around for even a decade, right?
- 59:46I mean, it came out 2007.
- 59:49I mean, excuse me, for 20 years.
- 59:51You know, it hasn't been around for 20 years.
- 59:55I mean, that's that is not a long time.
- 59:58that that's yeah I that pairs of socks older you know been around longer than
- 1:00:05iPhone like this stuff changes the world and AI is gonna change the world
- 1:00:11that not gonna end does that mean you know SpaceX and trade down to a share in the next 24 months Sure it can I actually don think it will But yeah I mean that thing got barely any revenue not profitable
- 1:00:29You know, I'm just saying like, would I want to put a bunch of money into SpaceX?
- 1:00:33No, I own some shares.
- 1:00:35I got a little allocation on the IPO and I bought some the very first day.
- 1:00:40Small amount.
- 1:00:41And I just put it away.
- 1:00:43because I do believe in the potential of it.
- 1:00:47But I'm not going to be a SpaceX maxi.
- 1:00:52Let me put it all into that.
- 1:00:53And I think a diversified portfolio, crypto, Bitcoin, gold, silver, equities,
- 1:01:03emerging market equity, everything except for bonds.
- 1:01:07I just don't like bonds because I just don't see a way for the fixed income return to keep up with the inflation that's going to be necessary to handle the fiscal issues that every major developed country, Japan, the UK, France, even China, just swamped in it.
- 1:01:35and basement trade's not hot right now,
- 1:01:39that doesn't mean it won't be.
- 1:01:42Yeah, it's not hot.
- 1:01:43It's the best time to allocate typically.
- 1:01:45It is.
- 1:01:47Every single time, people hate the hyperscalers.
- 1:01:50It's ridiculous how many times
- 1:01:52when everybody thinks it's the smartest thing to do,
- 1:01:56that's when everybody's invested in it
- 1:01:58and it's got nowhere to go but down.
- 1:02:01Like about four weeks ago,
- 1:02:03everybody's like,
- 1:02:03you got to bet on the um the the builders you know you don't bet on the spenders get out of
- 1:02:11the hyperscalers everybody was saying that hyperscalers knocking the socks off of the um
- 1:02:17you know uh quote unquote you know the picks and shovel plays um in the last three or four weeks
- 1:02:24because it just gets overdone and the narrative gets old and now you've got micron down 200 bucks
- 1:02:32and you've got meta up 80 bucks in the last couple of years and people are saying what the
- 1:02:38hell happened like i thought a month ago you were supposed to buy micron and sell meta
- 1:02:42oh actually a month ago you were supposed to sell micron and buy meta um and it's like
- 1:02:50longer term i think you just be diversified because it's hard to pick the perfect okay i
- 1:02:57I mean, when am I going to pick that perfect day that Meta stopped, Micron stopped?
- 1:03:03And I think you just want to be involved in these long-term themes.
- 1:03:07And this is why even when Bitcoin and gold were ripping last year, and I did once in a while go on a podcast and someone would say, no, you believe so much in gold and Bitcoin and the debasement trade.
- 1:03:19Why do you own equity?
- 1:03:20I'm like, it doesn't mean that the basement trade is always going to be, you know, doing what I think it's going to be.
- 1:03:27Do I think gold and Bitcoin will outperform the S&P 500 over the next 10 years?
- 1:03:33Yes, I do.
- 1:03:34And I still do.
- 1:03:35But it's not happening this year.
- 1:03:38And you know what?
- 1:03:40It's good to have that diversity.
- 1:03:42There's an old saying in investing.
- 1:03:43The only free lunch in investing versus that increases your Sharpe ratio.
- 1:03:48This is volatility.
- 1:03:50increases your expected return.
- 1:03:53And that's why I've never been a fan of like,
- 1:03:56just put every dollar you own,
- 1:03:59put it all into,
- 1:04:00put it all into gold,
- 1:04:01put it all into the NASDAQ,
- 1:04:04put it all into monster,
- 1:04:05biddy,
- 1:04:06strategy.
- 1:04:07I do believe in diversification
- 1:04:09and want to take short-term bets,
- 1:04:12take short-term bets,
- 1:04:13but I do,
- 1:04:15but I do it with all per,
- 1:04:18most of it is a,
- 1:04:19I think that sage advice Any predictions between now and the next time we meet after q3 um what what it let me see if i can come up with a shocker for you
- 1:04:33already well you're my favorite person to talk to um
- 1:04:40uh i don't know if i have anything that's actually
- 1:04:44two out of consensus.
- 1:04:46I do think that with gold,
- 1:04:51right around $4,000,
- 1:04:53Bitcoin not too far away from $60,000,
- 1:04:57that next time we meet,
- 1:05:00I would wager that gold and Bitcoin
- 1:05:04outperform relative to equity.
- 1:05:10even some high-flying
- 1:05:14I would much rather invest
- 1:05:17in big gold right
- 1:05:19micron
- 1:05:21doesn't mean I don't think they're
- 1:05:23not good
- 1:05:25I just think that
- 1:05:27especially by the end of the year
- 1:05:29we could be looking at some
- 1:05:33really
- 1:05:34I think this was before we came on
- 1:05:38but we're like three months away
- 1:05:40from the four-year anniversary of the FTX low in Bitcoin.
- 1:05:45October 2022, 16,000, four-year cycle.
- 1:05:50I wasn't a believer in four-year cycles,
- 1:05:52but you know what?
- 1:05:53We seem to be following well.
- 1:05:56And we're going to bond four years after the last bottom.
- 1:06:00That's October.
- 1:06:02We're in the middle of July.
- 1:06:05Basically, if people have said,
- 1:06:07okay, Bitcoin winner, like, well,
- 1:06:11winner's getting ready to end.
- 1:06:13Because, you know, if we're bottoming
- 1:06:15in the next couple of months,
- 1:06:17you know, I think you need to start adding now.
- 1:06:21And to me, Bitcoin, 57,000,
- 1:06:27whatever it hit last week.
- 1:06:31I mean, that's a gift.
- 1:06:33Gold at 4,000, silver, 60.
- 1:06:37Now is the time to be buying those.
- 1:06:43Not.
- 1:06:47The hottest.
- 1:06:50And not SpaceX.
- 1:06:52Yeah.
- 1:06:54It is funny.
- 1:06:55The four year cycle does seem to be repeating.
- 1:06:57And it's always good to zoom out with you, Mel.
- 1:07:00I think this was like the most dense.
- 1:07:03high signal.
- 1:07:06We've ran through all this
- 1:07:08in an hour and eight minutes here now.
- 1:07:10So thank you for coming on.
- 1:07:13Let's catch up in the fall
- 1:07:14when Q3 is over.
- 1:07:18And I'm always looking forward
- 1:07:19to our end of year retrospective
- 1:07:22and predictions for the following year.
- 1:07:24So it's going to be a fun one.
- 1:07:26I'm too.
- 1:07:26And I've got a few that I'm actually thinking
- 1:07:29could still come to fruition
- 1:07:30that nobody thought.
- 1:07:31One of them was Mag7 outperforms S&P 500.
- 1:07:38I had Bitcoin outperforming gold.
- 1:07:42I had some things that didn't seem to make sense back in January that I predicted at the end of the year.
- 1:07:50And they still don't make sense, to be honest with you.
- 1:07:52But I think there's still plenty of time left in the year for some of those things to come full circle.
- 1:07:57and I think a lot of people that kind of gave up on the mag seven early in the year gave up on
- 1:08:03Bitcoin and thought gold was the bee's name um as it hit 5600 there's no way Bitcoin's gonna
- 1:08:10outperform it um I still think Bitcoin's gonna offer gold for 2026 and I
- 1:08:16clip it and send it to Peter Schiff freaks
- 1:08:21no we'll uh we'll catch up in the fall brother enjoy the rest of your summer
- 1:08:27i think peace and love freaks