#DeSaster on Twitter, NVIDIA’s Potential Stock Market Record, & A $22.5 Million Ghost Town?!

0:00Hey Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs. Oh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this. Yeah, I do. Now, where did I put my keys? You will find them where you left them. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE SIPC. Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I am Neil Freiman. And I am Toby Howell. Today on this beautiful spring morning, we are going to talk about what the heck just happened on Twitter Spaces last night when Ron DeSantis announced he was running for president.

0:43And we will also explain why there are so many Thai restaurants in the U.S. Plus, we very well might see Wall Street history today as NVIDIA is on the verge of breaking a stock market record. Then we're all honoring the life of the late Tina Turner today, but no one more so than the Australian Rugby League. Neil, it's Thursday, May 25th. Let's ride.

1:11All right, so it is Thursday right before Memorial Day weekend, and this is the busiest travel day of the long weekend for air travel, according to AAA. So if you are headed out of town today, please drink a few airport beers for us. I know. I also saw it. Yeah. The FAA is saying there's 51 ,000 expected flights today. So neither of us are flying though. So we're both, you rented a car. Yeah. So I'm going to figure out where to go. But airport Wi-Fi is going to be put to the test. I mean, Boingo hotspot. It is their time to shine. I know. They actually come through pretty clutch most of the time.

1:45But I was just thinking there would be so many people working at terminals today that if the Wi-Fi goes down at LaGuardia, we might have an economic meltdown. I know. You're going to see a lot of people fighting over plug space. That's going to be a premium right now. All right. Speaking of meltdowns, let's go to this Twitter Spaces thing last night. So last night, Ron DeSantis announced that he was running for president on this live audio feature on Twitter called Twitter Spaces. This was a conversation with Elon Musk and tech investor and Musk's buddy, David Sachs. There was so much hype for this, particularly around the idea that this event would be a milestone moment for Musk and taking on Fox chair Rupert Murdoch as the new kingpin of conservative media.

2:28It was just unprecedented that a major candidate for president would choose to announce his candidacy on a quite janky social media platform where you can't even see his face instead of a traditional TV channel like Fox News. And everything that could go wrong did go wrong, to be honest. Twitter spaces bugged out for about a half an hour because Twitter's servers melted down. So they had to close out the first space, open a new one, and only then could Ron DeSantis announce that he was running for president. He went on to have a long conversation with Musk and Sachs about things like how the mainstream media sucks, DeSantis' conservative policies in Florida.

3:06And then they spent a decent amount talking about Bitcoin and other kind of niche topics. Yeah. Everything you said, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. And everyone was dunking on this. DeSantis and Musk were getting it from all sides. You had President Biden releasing a video kind of poking fun at the fact that the Sandus can't even launch a campaign. How could he be a good president? I also love they included audio from the space of like that scratchy microphone feedback. So you had Biden weighing in. You had Trump just going ham on truth social, calling him Rob DeSantimonious, which is a hilarious nickname that he's trying to make into a thing.

3:47and then you also had Fox News running banners on their website saying if you actually want to see and hear Ron DeSantis tune into Fox News where he jumped on to also give a little campaign announcement and then basically everyone who had any interest in like dunking on Musk too was was teeing off so literally all sides from all different ends of the political spectrum all joined together to just say like this did not go well but this is a broader picture of In recent weeks, there have been a lot of headlines that say that Musk is declaring war on Rupert Murdoch and is trying to take over the, you know, the kingpin title from him at Fox by what he's doing at Twitter.

4:29And he's turning Twitter into this basically conservative media outlet. Just look at what happened recently. The Daily Wire, which has been Shapiro's conservative media company, is moving all of its podcasts from YouTube to Twitter. obviously we had uh tucker carlson move his show after he got fired from fox to twitter and then musk has reinstated a lot of the other sort of media right-wing media personalities that had been banned under the the old regime at twitter for sure so there were you know a bunch of whispers being like musk is coming for murdoch musk is coming for murdoch and then this kind of didn't work out and fox basically declared war last night and they say look desantis you snubbed us and musk you're coming for us and uh yeah we don't like that very much yeah he was definitely the center of gravity seemed like it was shifting to twitter but maybe after last night it's slowing down a little bit i also just want to take a step back and say that this was definitely a risk that ron de santis took obviously launching your campaign on this untested like feature on twitter is is a risk but like i got shades of obama 2008 where that campaign run he really embraced social media as like a way to connect with his audience.

5:42And this was DeSantis like trying to do the same thing saying, hey, I'm opening myself up from questions from the audience, even though they never actually got questions from the audience, which I thought was funny. And so, and then you also have the Musk sycophant saying that, listen, 3 million people total came through this space at one time or the other, which is not a bad number, but it's, people are looking at it with a little grain of skepticism for comparison fox primetime averages 2.09 million people so you kind of i don't want to say like it was the it wasn't smooth and it didn't go off without a hitch but also it generated a fair amount of buzz so i can see right why he took this risk musk was doing the whole uh you know all presses good press right kind of vibe after he's like it's this is the biggest news story in the world even if it was all you know virtually 99 negative i would say taylor swift and ice spices collab has a claim on the biggest news story in the world yesterday so do you think this is like in terms of who this is bad for i would say i agree with the analysis that is this is way worse for desantis than musk yeah i mean well musk musk can do the whole silicon valley thing where he's like look i'm moving fast i'm breaking things this is a new thing the fact that we got DeSantis to come on at all instead of Fox was a coup for us.

7:01And look, we'll improve it next time. No big deal. I cut 80 % of staff. So obviously we're working pretty lean here. Meanwhile, DeSantis had a choice of what to do and he chose the very untested feature, which even Twitter engineers said was still in beta and that no one was preparing for this particular space. Yeah. I mean, you only get to announce your candidacy once and he's not going to get that one back. All right. Let's move on to NVIDIA, Neil. I teased it at the top of the show, but But NVIDIA, who makes chips for everything from gaming to crypto mining to AI, is on the cusp of breaking a stock market record long held by Apple.

7:36So NVIDIA's stock jumped 28 % in after hours trading yesterday. And if those gains hold when the market opens today, kind of as we're speaking, actually, the company will add$219 billion to its market cap in one day. That would break Apple's November 2022 record of adding$191 billion to its market cap. And to put that$219 billion number in perspective, Neil, McDonald's's current market cap is$208 billion. So NVIDIA is on track to add an entire McDonald's in one day, which is just crazy. And I still haven't even mentioned where this jump is coming from. So yesterday, they reported earnings. And one thing in particular stood out to investors.

8:18NVIDIA's data center group reported$4.2 billion in sales versus$3.9 expected. That's a 14 % increase. And it's a great sign that customers are using NVIDIA's chips to deploy and train their generative AI applications. There's that magic. I've never heard that word before. I know. It's magic. And the outlook that CEO Jensen Huang gave that sent the stock to the moon, I'm going to read one quote from him. We're seeing incredible orders to retool the world's data centers. Call it a 10-year transition to basically recycle or reclaim the world's data centers and build it out as accelerated computing.

8:55And then he goes on to say that most of that workload will be dedicated to, I quote, predominantly generative AI. So, crazy, crazy day for NVIDIA. It's a gold rush. It's an AI gold rush. Companies everywhere that are using AI are seeing huge stock market booms. But I've never seen analysts talk about a company the way they're talking about NVIDIA after this guidance. I think that's what really, really sent the stock to the moon was this guidance because they were projected to grow revenue over the next quarter by 7.2 billion. That was the analyst estimate. And they said we're going to get 11 billion dollars in sales.

9:31So so it seems like the the A.I. people aren't just talking about it. They're actually spending money on it or spending money on NVIDIA. And so NVIDIA is actually the one that's actually monetizing it right now because we've seen Google roll out BARD and Microsoft roll out AI Bing. But the monetization of that is in the future. But NVIDIA is the one actually making money from all this hype right now. If we have to retool the entire world's data centers, like, yes, obviously they're going to make some money. I think it's so crazy how this news just steamrolled all other news of the earnings call.

10:05because actually NVIDIA's overall sales fell 13 % from a year ago, but it's just the guidance that they provided is why people are so bullish. Also, just some other things, just smaller tidbits in the earnings call is that their gaming division sales fell 38%, which is kind of interesting to me because gaming is seen as this recession-proof thing. People game no matter what's happening in the economy, but falling 38 % does give a little bit of an outlook into what's happening in the broader economic sphere. And then also their automotive division, which is very small still, under$300 million in sales, grew 114 % year over year.

10:43So they're also riding the autonomous and electric car, which needs their chips as well. Boom. So NVIDIA just rides every single boom. Like they're hanging 10 on every wave that we see coming forward. So just a heck of a year and a quarter. When we say big tech going forward, what you should think of NVIDIA as part of this group. I mean, they're going to probably hit a $1 trillion market cap soon. And there's only a couple other companies at that threshold right now. You have Apple, Saudi Aramco, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon. They're the only companies that are worth more than$1 trillion right now.

11:18And NVIDIA is looking like it's going to join them soon. Yeah. Fang. Replace the N in Fang. It used to be Netflix. Replace it with NVIDIA. Yeah. And video is probably worth like three Netflix is right now. Yeah. So we'll see what happens with them. But they are just absolutely crushing it right now. Let's move on to debt ceiling stuff. The U.S.'s credit rating is on notice. Fitch, which is this big credit rating agency, put the U.S.'s credit on watch for a possible downgrade yesterday because Congress is really taking this debt ceiling debate down to the finish line. And there's a chance that the U.S.

11:52defaults on our debts as soon as next Thursday. Right now, the U.S. has the highest credit rating possible from Fitch, which is a triple A rating. That means we're always good to pay back our debts. We're like your friend on Venmo who always sends you money 30 seconds after you send a request. Am I like that? I feel like I wait. You're very you have great Venmo etiquette. No, you pay very. I have a triple A rating. We rate people on Venmo. I have a triple A rating. But that is in danger for the U.S. because of what Fitch says is increased political partisanship that is hindering reaching a resolution on the debt ceiling.

12:27Basically, all of this bickering in D.C., we may not be the most reliable borrower anymore. And even agreement to raise the debt ceiling now won't change much because this could happen again as long as the debt ceiling exists. And that was the most important point for me. It's we could reach a agreement on the debt ceiling, but Fitch would still possibly downgrade our debt in the future because the debt ceiling exists and there will always be this risk overhanging us. For sure. Interestingly enough, the U.S. doesn't have a triple A rating across all the credit rating agencies. So Fitch is one, but then S &P is one as well as Moody's.

13:03So the S &P already cut the U.S.'s rating back in 2011. so now actually technically we're a a plus which is the second tier and that number that rating hasn't changed over the last 13 years so we're still a a plus so these things do have long lasting effects like if fitch decides like hey us you're no longer triple a then it could last for decades basically and the problem with not being triple a is if you have a lower credit rating then your borrowing costs often go up. Yeah. As we know from, you know, just regular, our own credit rating and stuff like that. It works, yeah. Literally when you hear the words credit rating, think like your credit card rating and how it, yeah, it's credit score.

13:45It makes like securing a loan more expensive, similar on the world stage as well. I also did some digging. What are the other AAA credit rating countries from Fitch's? It's Australia, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg actually has a AAA. Well, they're rich as anything. I know. And then Singapore as well. So that's not everyone. But this kind of gives you a sense of where who the AAA credit ratings are in the world. So just looking ahead, what's going on with the debt ceiling? Both Fitch says they think a debt ceiling agreement is going to get made. And Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker, is telling investors not to worry.

14:21He's like, we got this under control. We're far apart, but things are moving along. Obviously, the deadline is one week from today. The house is going on recess because of Memorial Day. I can't believe it. He's sending them home for Memorial Day. Well, most people don't do anything. They're not doing anything. It's like a group of four people that are negotiating. So everyone else is going home for Memorial Day, but he's going to call them back if they reach an agreement. And they have 24 hours to hop on a plane back to D.C. and vote on a debt ceiling increase, which, you know, I hope happens.

14:52But can you imagine just being at your little barbecue you and then getting a call from kevin being like we got a book a book a flight on uh google flights getting to reagan national and vote on this thing so we don't have an economic meltdown for sure all right great first half of the show before we jump into the next story we're gonna take a quick break close your eyes exhale feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today well i'm letting go of the worry that i wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.

15:28And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast? Smart move. Being financially savvy? Smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling, just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer.

16:08Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Neil, yesterday, the singing legend Tina Turner passed away peacefully in her home in Switzerland. She was 83 years old, and boy, were those 83 years impactful. She's a rock and soul icon. She won 12 Grammys, and lots of people know her songs like The Best and What's Love Got to Do With It. But what lots of people may not know is that Tina Turner is credited with essentially saving the Australian Rugby League. Through her manager, who was Australian, Tina partnered with the league to film a series of ads, the most famous of which is set to her song, The Best.

16:47The goal was to change the image around Australian rugby from this blokey, barbaric sport to make it much cooler, much sexier sport with commercial appeal. Neil, I can't overstate how much the Australian rugby world loves Tina Turner for this. It was funny. I was looking through all of the tributes that were going to Tina yesterday. And you had like Mick Jagger and Cher and Obama and everyone just being like, oh, she meant so much to us. It was so great. And then you kept scrolling. And it was like these random Australians being like, I love Tina. Like this, she was such a part of my childhood.

17:20Like I associate her with rugby and my, and you know, all of this nostalgia. So you just had, you know, she, she might be more and more in Australia than anywhere else in the world besides, you know, her hometown or the United States. It's truly wild. It actually reminded me reading the story of how it came together, reminded me of the way that Nike landed Michael Jordan. It was like that crazy of a thing. So basically the Australian league was struggling. It was seen as just amateurish and like it didn't really have any economic prospects going forward. But the rugby league's CEO's assistant happened to be friends with an Australian rugby league fan living in America who also just happened to be Tina Turner's and actually Olivia Newton-John's manager.

18:03And so that's how the two got connected. And just kind of on a whim, he said, would Tina want to come in and film like an ad for the league? Yeah, because they wanted her to expand her reach outside of the U.S. And rugby was looking for legitimacy. So it was kind of this match made in heaven. I feel like the rugby league got a little bit better of the deal than Tina. Oh, for sure. But, you know, Australia is a large market and now they love her there. Yeah, that is good managing. Very good managing. I also just have some other Tina Turner facts because, again, she is just a legend. So in 1988, she performed for an audience of 180 ,000 plus fans in Rio de Janeiro.

18:41That was a Guinness World Record at the time for the largest playing concert audience for a solo artist ever. So 180 ,000 fans. Taylor Swift could never. I know. She probably could. Say you would put Taylor Swift on a stage in just an open field. How many people do you think would come? Oh, millions. The Swifties, they mobilize. and then also uh this was a fun fact too tina turner's the first artist to have a top 40 hit in seven different decades in britain and for 2020 the one that got her in was a remix of what's love got to do with it with kygo which is this uh electronic artist so i just think that speaks to just her her lasting appeal yeah seven decades that's that's crazy right there all right p tina Your music is amazing.

19:29Let's go to Neil's Numbers, which is where I share three interesting facts that I read from the week's news. The first one is I have a question. Have you ever wondered what the breakdown of Asian restaurants in the United States is? I can't say I have. I actually have. And luckily, Pew just released a report that looked at the landscape of Asian restaurants in the U.S. And it confirmed that Chinese, Japanese and Thai restaurants dominate the scene. So 71 percent of Asian restaurants in the U.S. serve Chinese, Japanese or Thai food, despite those groups making up just one third of the Asian population here.

20:03Of the big three, unsurprisingly, Chinese food is the clear leader, accounting for 39 percent of all Asian restaurants. Japan is next with 28 percent, which is remarkable growth considering that sushi did not exist here until the 1960s. But there was this boom in the 80s and 90s. And do you know why? What was the innovation? The only thing that came to mind was conveyor belts. Oh, you were so you got the first letter right. California roll. The classic California crab and avocado was a little more palatable. Interesting. To U.S. consumers than, you know, raw fish. I'm happy it did make inroads because, boy, do I eat a lot of sushi.

20:42And then finally, you probably eat a lot of Thai food, which is really curious because Because Thai food accounts for 11 % of all Asian restaurants, despite the Thai population being only 2 % of all Asian Americans. And the reason for this is the Thai government. So the Thai government did this thing called culinary diplomacy, where it pushed the opening of restaurants abroad. And it kind of helps a lot of Thai expats help open up restaurants. And the whole point of this is, you know, soft power. And, you know, we're probably talking about Thailand more because we eat the food rather than maybe the Philippines or Indonesia, which have much larger populations, but they don't have as many restaurants.

21:19They Tina Turner America. Tina Turner. All right. Let's move to Argentina, which just released its largest denomination banknote ever. The 2000 peso bill. Here's the but it's worth about four dollars. And that's because Argentina is suffering from hyperinflation with prices rising 109 % annually in April. People there literally have to carry around stacks of cash to pay for everyday purchases. And banks have had to open new vault space to accommodate more bills to supply ATMs. Economists there have been pushing for a 10 ,000 peso note to make life easier on citizens because you need to drop like 300 bills on the table just to pay for dinner at a restaurant.

22:01Yeah, I've seen those pictures. The entire table is covered by money. And yeah, tipping there must be a nightmare. It's clear that Argentina's economy needs a little more than a World Cup victory to right the ship. It's expected to tip into a recession later this year. But the federal, the central bank there just jacked up interest rates by 600 basis points to 97 % to quell inflation, which is way more than the interest rate hikes we've had here. Are my final number. So they're two of the most famous races this year. The Monaco or two of the most famous races on the calendar, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indy 500 are happening this Sunday.

22:37So I've got a racing stat. Here it goes. New research from scientists in Japan found that Formula One drivers tend to blink at the same place on the track during each lap, which is on straightaways where they aren't changing speeds. Drivers tend not to blink when accelerating or decelerating or when making turns. So they just pull a Brooks Koepka when they're turning. This is a big finding because people, until now, people were thought to blink at random intervals. But when you're doing an extreme sport like racing, closing your eyes for even one-fifth of a second, which is how long it takes to blink, could lose you valuable information.

23:10Because humans blink up to 30 times every minute. So when you're traveling at over 200 miles per hour, like a Formula One driver, that could mean you lose over a third of a mile of visual information per minute due to blinking. That is truly a crazy stat. And I also, I hate it. You just made me conscious of my blinking. Everyone listening to this now is like, am I blinking? I was like, I am blinking so much and I'm losing so much visual information. Yeah, so someone needs to do a podcast analysis on YouTube and see how many times we're blinking. I wonder if we synchronize our blinking. I know.

23:44Oh gosh, now I'm thinking about it. Neil's blinking for everyone listening. All right, Neil, thank you for your numbers. Insightful as always. Our final story today shows that the real estate market is a little livelier than we might think. That's because a literal ghost town just east of the Coachella Valley in California sold to a mystery buyer under the name Ecology Mountain Holdings for$22.5 million. So the ghost town in question is called Eagle Mountain and it's this former iron mining town that once had a peak population of 4 ,000 people. But by the 1980s, environmental concerns kind of shut down the once booming mine and the town began to fold.

24:26So one fun fact about this ghost town is actually 14 movies, including Christopher Nolan's Tenant and Michael Bay's The Island, have been filmed at the site. So it is still being used. But Neil, what do you think? Did Ecology Mountain Holdings get a good deal? Sure. I mean, this reminded me of what Walt Disney did because you know what I'm talking about? In Florida, where he created all of these holding companies and bought up all of these properties around and then eventually everyone's, and then he was like, ta-da, Disney World. Yeah. So people are like speculating as to who who bought this.

24:58It doesn't seem like as much of a mystery as it seems because so Ecology Mountain Holdings is the company that bought it. And then everyone was like, well, there's also this company named Ecology Transportation Services, which is located in the same California city as this other one. And they have these big red trucks going. That's what they do trucking. And and then people have been seeing big red trucks going into this new city. So it's not like the biggest mystery in the world. I hope we get like a random like Disney World parker though. Now that you got my mind on it, I would love a little ghost town theme park to spring up.

25:34I also did a little bit of research just to quickly end the show about other ghost towns. There's one in St. Elmo, Colorado that only costs$89 ,000 to buy. And the reason is, is because it's located 9 ,000 feet in the air on a mountain. And it's a four acre parcel of land. And so, but Neil, if we want to cobble together a couple of Argentinian pesos, I think we could potentially, we could buy this thing and make it into our new studio. There are a lot of ghost towns up in Colorado because of all the silver mining that left. So I don't know, ghost towns when I'm on vacation, they don't like particularly interest me.