Meme Stocks or Manipulation?

25:11The other day, the stock, which is a market cap of less than$5 billion, I think, traded more shares, more volume than Microsoft. So Matt Levine, as only he can do, wrote this yesterday. New meme stocks dropped. Last week, a reader emailed me. I have a funny AI thing that happened to me this week. My friends and I were talking about Carvana on Tuesday night, which got me curious. And I asked ChatGPT what the equivalent of Carvana today is. ChatGBT told me OpenDoor. So as any responsible investors do, we both bought a fair share of OpenDoor. The next day, the stock went roaring and went up by over 50%.

25:48That's the end of the email. Matt Levine wrote, nice trade for him. Very much not investment advice for you. Welcome to investing in 2025. I don't know why we should be surprised by this, but this is how a lot of people are looking at the market. Not everybody is going to the Iris Home Conference. Not everybody's coming into this office looking for really professional and sound advice. They are looking for hot things to buy. They want to make money. Fan the flames. And there we go. People want. So that's a really important reason why it's not manipulation. Eric doesn't control what other people do.

26:18Number one. And there's a whole conversation that's taken off as a result of him spotting this opportunity. That's away from his Twitter feed. It's on Reddit. It's on like Twitter. It's on other venues that he has nothing to do with. if people choose to read his opinion and agree with it or think enough other people will agree with it that there's an opportunity at a certain point like we have to hold adults responsible for their own actions nick how much open door did you buy zero i was gonna say you're suspicious i haven't had an individual stock in years i haven't because i'm sitting on it all right so back to the market environment um and where we are today bespoke has a chart showing the 100 most short stocks versus the Russell 1000, a three-month performance spread.

27:06And we're back in 2021 territory. Like we're back. We're back. Wait, these are the most highly shorted stocks as like relative to the rest of the market. It's a spread. So this is 2020 all over again. We're doing it. 2021. Yeah. I mean, it's just the meme stock stuff all over again, right? You just said it. I mean, I don't know what else there is to say on that. Why are they shorting$2 stocks again? Wasn't that, aren't the memories fairly raw and recent from like three years ago? I mean, GameStop, everyone, you start shorting and then, okay, that creates an opportunity for prices to go up very quickly because now these people have to close out their positions and it's just - It's almost the most bullish call you can make these days.

27:44If you see the hedge fund shorting stocks right now, the meme stock crowd is all over it. They've been looking for a while for something like this and the right market environment to Michael's point where anything goes right now, melt it up. So they got this, why Krispy Kreme? We're not eating more donuts. I'm not eating more donuts. But all of a sudden, this stock's up 34 % in a few days. Yeah, I saw Kohl's was up 36 % in a day. Kohl's did not come out with AI. Like, that's a short— Oh, you only can get that with a short squeeze. I guess the question is, like, has no one learned anything? Why are we shorting$1,$2,$3 stocks?

28:17Even if we think they're zeros, like, it's almost like you're asking for somebody on a message board to whip up a mob to wreck you. Yeah, the cost benefit's just not there at all. Well, how about this? If there's a lot of shorts, if 20 % of the float is short, a stock under$5, just don't do that. Like you're asking to get blown up. Here's another metric showing that this is, by this metric, it's even crazier than 2021. A lot of this is from a daily chart book, by the way. Non-profitable tech retail investor participation percent. So I guess that's measuring what percent of these non-profitable names, like whatever these dog shit names are.

28:55These are publicly traded companies with no earnings. That are losing money. Okay. 25 % of the volume is coming from retail investors, which is higher than it was at the peak in 2021. And it's working. So it won't always work, but right now it is. Yeah, right. So environment, like certain environments lend themselves well to this kind of activity. This is making people way more money than the stuff coming out of University of Chicago with small cap beta. Oh, I can earn, none of that's working. I can earn an excess of 1.5 % a year, maybe over time on average, or I could buy open door and ride a few one to three in two weeks, not in two weeks, in three days.

29:31Yeah. And blowing yourself up, especially for people that love to trade these meme stocks, it's not a big deal. Sometimes they publicize it. They were doing it back in 2021. I'm taking a flyer here. People love the drama of the bet. That's what people are doing. They're betting. Why are they doing it now? The environment is ripe for it. It's not like we have all the stimulus money coming our way, but I think people are just tired of waiting around for the next big thing. They probably missed Bitcoin. They're like, I got to get in on this. Probably missed GameStop in the early days i got to get in on this people want the action i just think there's there's something we're going to talk about this later in the show but i think this is actually caused by housing prices being too high and so all this money that would have been hey i need to buy a house i need to do that it's just money just and this is i saw this is not even really my take i saw this recently someone said i have an unsubstantiated take that like there's all this money in all these different asset classes because it's not in housing like it normally can't buy real estate like i can't afford because with rates where they're and those that even have the money to buy real estate.

30:24It's like, well, with rates where they are, I don't want to do that. So I have this money sitting in either in treasuries or I have it, you know, I'm going to bet it on things. Right. So that's how I see this playing out. It's just there's so much money. And what are the opportunities to chase? Right. Housing is not one of them. So it's meme. And it's not even just rates. It's also a lack of supply, although in certain markets, supply is coming back online. But like or it's the question that young people are asking themselves, is this the best use of my money, sinking a million plus into an asset I might sit in for 40 years?

30:55What if I want to move the family to Costa Rica for the year? And I think that's a fundamental change, especially for younger investors. That's going to affect the wealth management business, too. If all of a sudden that 30, 40 percent of their capital is freed up to do things, that changes the equation. Maybe they will. But right now, there's no point in doing it if you can't afford it. And if you have that extra money, take a flyer on a few stocks. So interesting. Or invest in experience. So the Fed is indirectly causing this. Unbelievable. They're keeping mortgage rates so high that people are sitting liquid enough to trade meme stocks when they should be making mortgage payments.

31:30What's in the box? All right. I brought a gift because I always like to bring a gift to this, one of my favorite podcasts. And you know how I roll. You know how I roll. That's nice. I had this made for - That's a sweet deck. This is a sweet deck. Nick's orange and the blue because that's how we get down. Yeah, yeah. And I'd love for you to... Let me see the other... Let me see the flip side. Oh, it's green. Sweet. Love it. Were you a skater? Were you a green? Were you a skater? No, no. I looked like one, but I wasn't one. Were you a skater? He still is. I'm a full lifetime skater. No, I've seen you on your board.

32:01Yeah. I've seen you on a long board. That's right. Did you skate here today? I skated here yesterday to drop off my subject heading for the airport. Oh, thank you. We love it. Yes, and thank you Thank you for having me on the show. We love it. So, Nick. That's going. That's getting hung up. Yeah, that's got to get hung up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll throw trucks and wheels on it and ride all over this office if you want. Nick is 100 % right. On Animal Spurts this week, Ben posed the same question, and I laughed at it. I said, come on. No, it's ridiculous. We got two emails. No, two is not a million, but we got two emails saying, actually, and here's one of them.

32:37Wanted to chime in on something from today's episode. Ben asked if people are using their down payments cash to invest in the market. And Michael brushed it off. For what it's worth, that is exactly what I'm doing. And then he laid out why. He's renting. They have money. They can't buy a house. So he's not the only person that's doing this. Yeah, it's tempting, right? Like, let's say you have 500 grand sitting in an account. And you're sitting in treasury bills. And you're not about to buy a house because nothing's changed. You're either treasuries or you're in the risk assets. You take 20 grand or whatever, or five grand.

33:07Yeah, yeah. You get a text and someone's like, yo, yo, yo, Eric Jackson, open door. It's like, I was going to buy a house, but fuck it. Let's go. Let's YOLO into open door. I guess I could see that phenomenon. I could see people saying, well, the money's just sitting here anyway. And look how good the market is. And look how much action. And my friends are talking about all these things they're trading. Whatever. I'll take 20 grand. I'll throw it into some stuff. See if I can turn it into 50. I'm a follower and reader of Vanda's research. Fanatrak does great research on what retail investors like us are actually doing with our money.

33:40And they track how we're investing outside of the defined plans, outside of the 401k, the IRAs, et cetera. And we are back at elevated levels, back to the close to the 2021 levels. In the trenches. Yeah. And the things that we are buying outside of our just normal allocations to our 401ks, which is all the big funds, all the big stocks, are very interesting stocks along AI. But you're going to get an open door in there. You're going to get a Krispy Kreme just because that's where the action is in meme stock land right now. So retail investors are back in it looking for opportunity because they're seeing this big melt up and want to be a part of it.

34:12In the last 30 days, I've been buying Solana, Jilby Aviation, and Archer. Oh, they're both mooning. These are the blue chips of my portfolio now. To the moon. The blue chips are bullshit. But like to that point, I see my own drift. I wasn't doing that six months ago even. Right? Right? And it's just like, now I'm entertaining ideas, even flyers, whatever. Like, I'm entertaining ideas myself, saying to myself as I'm doing it, this is so dumb. I almost bought Intel. Yeah, the talk about a money loser. So - Put this option short up. Calls are almost 70 % of the total market volume. Again, hasn't been this high since the 2021 meme days.

34:56One more, just more confirmation. The equity euphoria indicator. Last week, the Barclays equity euphoria indicator, which used an options data to quantify investors' giddiness, jumped to its highest level since late December. So I guess if you're listening to this. Yeah, we're there. You're listening. We're there. Please be careful. Maybe pump the brakes a little bit. Maybe no more individual positions for a minute. Maybe just let it breathe. Keep doing what you're doing with your 401k, your bi-weekly, whatever you're doing. But if you're going to entertain new positions, Just be a little, be careful.

35:31Isn't this the hardest thing? When your portfolio value is at a record high and you look at your holdings and in green in your app or on the brokerage website, you see like, you see all your stocks like up 80%, up 50%, one after another, after another. It's really hard to talk yourself out of how great you are in that moment. And the problem is it's at that moment where most people are like, what else should I buy? Because you're getting the oxytocin. It's like firing all your serotonin, oxytocin, all those good chemicals are firing all over your brain. And not just from the money you're making, but from you told other people and they made money.

36:17He told me to just keep buying. Yeah, yeah, Nick. No, but so right now - Does not apply for individual security. That's the danger right now. And people that might normally own 20 stocks, are buying like 30 stocks because everything they're buying is working. And they're not looking for the next blue chip stock that could go up 10%. Now they're looking for the junk. I just think it's crazy we're having this conversation. Like three months ago, April was like the world's ending. Tariffs are going to ruin the world economy. And now we're back to mean stock. It's like - Yeah, but there's an adrenaline factor to a near-death experience.

36:52That's fair. And I think three months ago, a lot of people looked at their portfolio and we're like, oh my God, this is so horrible. And it looked like, oh, this is really going to be a shitty year because this tariff thing is going to be going on all year. And then that goes away a little bit, reverses, but we just had a near-death experience. Think about it in real life. Unbelievable. People get that shot of adrenaline. They start making out with each other. Like, think about it like, oh my God, we almost died. I think you're my girlfriend now. Like that, you know? But the gaps between near death and euphoria are so compressed right now.

37:26We talked about this the last time I was on the show. The bear markets are super cute. They last a couple of weeks. And then we're back off to the races. And then we're back in this concern about a correction. And then we're back off to the races. That's because we haven't - There's no time to catch our breath. We haven't had a real economic reset. No. I know the bottom 10%, again, obviously, they're hurting always, but especially now. But a real recession that impacts everyone. Not just rolling recessions, which we've had. obviously real estate and tech in 2022, but where everyone's eating it.

37:55We haven't had it. Caleb, brag a little bit about Investopedia. So you're the editor-in-chief. And I remember when you joined there and you were talking about the opportunity. Yeah. You have largely - Came right here to this office or at the Park Avenue office. That's right. You have largely witnessed that opportunity bear out. Yeah. I mean, you guys are a super important site. I think everyone at some point in any given month that's searching for investment terms land on Investopedia in some way. What are the most search terms that people are landing on this summer? And what do you see going on in the platform right now?

38:29I'm so glad you asked. By the way, monthly active users? Monthly, we're about 12 million uniques. Okay. What percentage that America versus rest of the world? Half. Wow. Half US-based. These are, I think, a lot of self-directed investors, not by definition, but - Students, right? Two? Yeah, students is where we kind of started. I'm actually bringing Investopedia back to school next year on a university tour because I think we really belong there, helping people learn about money before they got out of school with$36 ,000 in debt. Kids studying for exams, securities industry exams. You guys are like a companion.

39:05Yeah, we are 26 years old. That's like 260 real years. In internet time. In internet time. And we've evolved, but we've evolved because financial markets have evolved. but we're still there for people to be like, what does that mean? But more and more, and as I've been there over the last decade or so, it's been about what is and now what? And that's kind of what we want to be, the voice and the guide for the educated investor. But we know a lot of advisors use us to either get smart or smarten up their clients. So we play in that space as well. But we also realize that the nature of money has changed for a lot of people.

39:38Now, some principles will always be there, compounding, dollar cost averaging, all that good stuff that we learn, that we teach, that you teach. That's always been important, but we want to be the ultimate resource for all things money for everybody. We have a great name. We have a great brand. It's an honor to be the editor-in-chief and represent it and be the face of it, even though I have a great face for podcasts, apparently. But we are lucky to still be here, and I think because the brand is so strong, it's really hard to maintain that in an AI world. I was just looking at a story out of Axios, citing where ChatGPT and the other AI platforms take content from.

40:15Are they scraping you? Oh, my gosh. Right. So what do you do about that? Dude, on my screen, I have this. I was just going to go there. I hit EBITDA, and Gemini gives me the answer. And you obviously are the first link, but now I have to scroll down to get you. Yes, and that's a problem. They're f***ing your shit up. That's a problem. And we're doing whatever we can to protect ourselves from crawlers. We just announced a partnership with a site that protects that. But we also have, through our parent company, Dot Dash Merit, a deal with OpenAI that's been well publicized where there's a licensing fee and they cite it.

40:44Yeah, like Reddit's getting paid. New York Times are getting paid. Money has to change hands. It does. And our leadership, God bless them, has been behind that 100 % since the start from our chairman and CEO at IAC on down to our CEO at Dot Dash Merit. We have to protect ourselves. At the same time, we can't just sit here and say, oh, no, AI is just eating us up like Pac-Man. And we got to find other ways to deliver content and experiences to people. We were talking earlier about these live events that I do now at Future Proof. We've been doing a lot more in video, obviously, on various platforms.

41:16I just took my podcast to Vodcast Live because I want to find other ways to engage audiences where they are. But we still have to be building the right educational experiences for investors for 2025 and beyond because we can't just sit here and let it happen. No, you have to evolve to it. So back to the question of what have people been looking for? I was just looking for the past six months. And obviously, we had a lot of people looking up bear markets when we were darn close to bear market. Call options. What are those? Best inverse ETFs. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's always a good sign. Not ETFs.

41:49Inverse ETFs. Yeah. We had people looking up Bitcoin for the first time. If they hadn't looked it up before, what is it? How is it mined? How many will ever be mined? Like, what is this thing that just keeps exploding? If we're going to be the crypto capital of the world, they want to make sure that they understand that as well. Smoot-Hawley, we went back in history to teach him about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Why are they important? And then obviously around Buffett's announcement of his resignation, he's super popular on Investopedia. A lot of people looking at that. But you can see the full spectrum pretty much of America, really, but the world, but what they're worried about.

42:24And you can see the people on the bottom who are struggling. What's a hardship withdrawal on my 401k? What's the best personal loan to take right now? Should I tap my Roth IRA? To how do I leverage? Those queries are hitting Investopedia. Oh, because we have it all. We have 40 ,000 pieces of content on the site. So it's everything from how do I protect myself to how do I get promiscuous and take advantage of this upside and take advantage of this meme stock rally or this crypto rally? Do you guys have a fear greed index? We have the anxiety index, which tracks traffic to fear-based terms. Fear-based terms like recession, like correction, like...

42:58So I'm sure in April, All the way, right? All the way. Screaming like a two-year-old toddler in a toy store when it's time to go home. And for good reason. But then it switches just as quickly as our emotions switch with the market. So if you look at price, price is a great indicator of interest. Volatility is very good for us because people get worried and they're concerned and they want to do something. Learn first, then do something. And that's kind of the way I want Investopedia to evolve. Come to learn, and then we're going to help you do. You have the data on that anxiety index, the spikes.

43:29I assume it spikes. We have that going back to the financial crisis. Yeah. You sent that to me years ago. You should give that to us and let us plot different markets against it. I'd love to see if it's earlier than other fear-agreed index. That's what matters. Years ago, a hedge fund came to us and did that very, very study, and they found that it does precede the VIX. Was it Scott Bassett? I'm sure yours is better than Bull Bear. the AI stuff that is always quoted. That feels laggy. That's a survey. Yeah. That's a survey. But it's also, it's older people. It's older people. And ours is, if you think about it, when you get freaked out, what do you do?

44:04You Google something or you look it up. You're like, wait, what is that? What's it called? What's it called? The Anxiety Index. The Investopedia Anxiety Index. So we have it going back to the financial crisis because that's when, you know, we started waking up to that. I wasn't there at the time, but thankfully we started tracking that data. Being around 26 years, having as many visitors as we do, as many readers and as much content gives you a ton of data. We have an incredible data team that helps us analyze this stuff. Want to talk about dumb money? No, we'd skip it. We're going to skip that?

44:29Yeah. Okay. I thought that was my segment. It was. Yeah. Where are we going next, Mike? This is yours. Personal responsibility. Oh. So, all right. Let me tell you a story. This is a true story. This just happened. And a lot of advisors are talking about this. And I'd love to hear what you guys think. A client tells her advisor, doesn't matter what firm it is. It's a big, big RIA. Client tells her advisor, I want to liquidate my IRA. The advisor claims that they try to talk her out of it because there are taxes and penalties. And the client says, just tell me what the taxes and penalties are. In the IRA?

45:11Yeah. Like to liquidate it early. Oh, like get their money out. Like give me my money. Liquidate it. So like at the end of the day, the advisor is not the boss. The client is the boss. So you can warn a client, this is not a great idea. The client doesn't tell the advisor what they're doing with the money either, which I think is a really key part of the story. The client takes that money,$82 ,000 out of her IRA, also somehow has another$800 ,000. And this person is listed in the article as a cashier at a retail store. So I'm not a thousand percent sure how, where that money came from. Anyway, the client gets sucked in by somebody in her DMs who's running a crypto scam.

46:00It's someone actually impersonating someone else who she trusted. And it's a crypto scam. And she puts all her money in it. And$882 ,000 goes to zero. Okay. Horrible. We all agree. Nobody would say something as callous as serves you right or tough shit. Like you have to have compassion for people. Because this person's not getting that money back. But here's the thing. Now this person is suing the RIA. And by the way, only 82 ,000 of her loss came from the RIA. The other 800 grand came from somewhere else. But this person needs money. So her answer is, well, I'm going to sue the RIA because they should have talked me out of this.

46:40All right, that's over the line. I think that's like, I think it's like outrageous, but I don't think the judge is going to throw it out. I feel like this suit, either they'll settle it just to get it over with. On what merit? What is she claiming? She's claiming that the advisor did not. Here, I'll tell you exactly. And then you guys tell me what you think. They broke the fiduciary rule. Yeah. Come on. According to the lawsuit filed in New York federal court, the woman believed the firm, quote, would have her best interest at heart when operating as her financial advisor. Instead, the firm recommended a liquidation of her account to meet her objectives when it knew or should have known its recommendation was unsuitable because of the purported investment with the fraudster.

47:30The advisor doesn't know about the fraudster. The client is not saying, yeah, I want to put it all into this crypto thing that somebody DM'd me. So like at a certain point, I understand the frustration, you lost all your money, but what do you want the advisor to do? like hit you over the head with a, with a pan. Well, what we would have done, we would have just delinked. We would have said, you're not our client. Like the word, this is obviously. That is the right answer is to say, you're not taking our advice. We're not, we're not taking money. I think it depends on, on how big, okay. 80 grand, how much other money do they have with you?

48:00If that's like all her money, I, you don't know the full situation. I read the article and the advisors basically saying we were strongly against this. We told this to the client. Like, as long as you have that recorded somewhere and it's like timestamp, then like, I feel like you're going to go scot-free. At the end of the day, the client made that decision. Should you have pried the client more? Possibly. Should you have advisors that are more like better at doing that coaching? Of course. But at the end of the day, like if someone's like, no, I want this money. I want to pay the fees. What are you?

48:28They are the boss. You're right, Josh. They're the boss. Here's the complaint. Quote, this is the plaintiff, what they're saying. Despite the rising prevalence of pig butchering and cryptocurrency scams, no representative ever inquired further as to why blank's investment required an early liquidation of her retirement account. The complaint read. I find that hard to believe. Instead, the firm asks no further clarification or explanation of plaintiff's investment purpose and only asked how much she wanted withheld for federal and state tax deductions and mentioned the penalty fee for early withdrawal.

49:07So she took out most of her money in June, and didn't take long to lose it all. I don't know. I think the advisor has to say a couple of things, like don't do this, or I really don't think you should do this because. But if the client's not telling the advisor what they're doing with the money, how strenuously can you say no to someone whose money it is? I think it's just going to come down to how good is the documentation. Because like maybe, let's say the advisor is super busy and like this client says, I need to take this money out and this person is not really pushing back. they're like, sure, take it, whatever.

49:40Like, what do you need? Okay, they just want to get it done. They're not really thinking through. If there's no recommendation to not do anything with it, then she might have a case. Oh, you're right. Because the advisor might be like, oh, it's an$80 ,000. I don't have time for it. It's just fine. Imagine this client has another million with them. I know 80 grand in the grand scheme of the relationship is not that large. It's what's 8 % right, basically. So you're like, okay, yeah, whatever. No big deal. Just sign it off. And now they're saying, hey, I should have that money back. The bigger issue is this type of stuff is exploding.

50:08these scams. And it seems so obvious to us. Like, how does this keep happening? This is on tick. By the way, this is a DM on TikTok, which is incredible. So how do we, how do we as an industry and as a society do a better job of protecting these people? How loud do we have to scream? Do not give money in DMs. People aren't like this. How do, how do we do it? You could do whatever you want. They're not going to listen. They're not going to listen. But you could also have rules in your portfolio that would not allow this. And I'm sure her advisor was like, what are you doing? If they knew, I'm not sure.

50:48With AI, the impersonation and the specificity and the precision is going to get so bad that the scams are going to explode. Yeah. Yeah, they're worried. Sam Altman had a big conclave with leaders from financial services this week. Of course, he's pitching, you know, open AI services. But like cybersecurity in the age of AI, you know how you log into your brokerage account? It's a face ID on the app on your phone. That could obviously be faked. Voice print is another way. Like when I call into Fidelity, I don't have to tell them anything about myself because they identify me based on me answering a question.

51:30All of that can be faked very easily. And I think Sam Altman's message to the people from the banks and brokerages whom he met with was like, like it or not, we open Pandora's box. It's open. Like this is what it's going to be. We need Theranos to take the blood from our fingerprint to validate speaking of scams. I think what you said is right. If there are contemporaneous notes in Salesforce, I don't know what CRM, this advisory firm uses. If there are contemporaneous notes or, God forbid, an AI note taker from a Zoom call, which would be amazing, where the rep is telling this woman, do not do this, that's open.

52:11Case closed. Just give it to the judge. Why are we even talking about this? But you also think what it – because you really need those details. Without that, it's really hard to know because you're right. If it's like, oh, it's a small piece of their portfolio. Like, okay, let me just get this done. I'm busy. They don't want to get it through. Who cares? It's fine. Take your money. It's like, okay, I don't recommend that. She had an extra$800 ,000, apparently. I mean, yeah. So maybe she had a lot more money. You don't know. All right, guys, switching gears. There's$7 trillion in money market funds.

52:34Hence the crime wave. And hence open. Yep. What— Look at this. How does this line go down? What would have to happen for this line to go down? Houses get more affordable. Rates go down. Is it just interest rates come down and people buy houses? Yes. Maybe that's probably the most obvious one. Yes, literally. I mean, either housing— That's what should happen. One of three things, either house prices come down, interest rates come down, or both. That's the only way it's going to allow these dollars to go somewhere. I'm telling you, I'm in this line here. I have some treasuries that I'm waiting to buy.

53:06This won't go from$7 trillion to$2 trillion, but it'll go from$7 trillion to$6 trillion. The trajectory will only change if and when there's something else to do. What do you think about that? I totally agree. And I think a lot of people who fear the stories that we've just been talking about are just like, I'm fine here at four and a half percent. I'm just fine here. Or maybe this is the older crowd that is retired that wants to de-risk a little bit, take some off the table or keep it in savings. I think it's a lot of that. I don't necessarily think this is a shift where all of a sudden this thing flips on its head.

53:39Maybe it goes down to$5 trillion or$6 trillion, but it will be because of the big asset purchases. But it's not going necessarily into the S &P 500. Last year, when the Fed started cutting rates, we thought it would be a new rate cutting cycle. It was just a couple of rate cuts. Michael said, I really don't think people are pulling money out of money market funds. Like unless like we get to 2 % and people really get antsy, they'll probably stay put. And that's exactly not only they stay put, you can see the number go up. The money just kept pouring in. And I guess I'm curious what you guys think.

54:14At what Fed funds rate does this materially change? Is it like, what's the magic number in the mind of the investor? I think it's low. I think it's lower than three. It's not 4%. No, it is under three. Under three. Because 4 % is pretty comfortable for a lot of people that just don't like taking risks. And if people are still scared, and they should be, of scams in the market or big crashes like we had for a minute during COVID. Four is still high. relative to recent history. What's the equity risk premium for big institutional managers? They got to protect capital. They are paid to protect capital for rich people and then find alpha whenever they can.

54:54Right now, it's not so hard to find it, but I think plenty of people are very happy with the bulk of their savings, especially older people, earning for 4.5%. What do you think? Yeah, even after inflation, you're basically flat for the year. And so people are like, yeah, I can deal with that. Oh, like if inflation is 2.6, what is it now? It's just 2.9 over the last years. But with 4, so like in theory, there was a real return. You think of real returns. People don't. I know they don't, but still, you can make the argument right now that if you buy treasuries, you're basically getting like no return.

55:24I mean, yes, technically, according to the last year, we got a real return. Maybe inflation is higher than we think, and so maybe it's only, you know, it's just flat for the year. Plus, and I know you guys probably talked about this, and I'm sure you saw it, more 401k millionaires than ever were printed last year. And you talk about this as well. I've heard you talk about it. You write about it in your books. A million bucks sounds like a lot was always the number that a lot of people wanted to get to. A million bucks isn't a million bucks anymore. But for a lot of people that got there, they're like, oh, I got there.

55:50I want to stay here. And this is a way to stay. I saw something from American Express, as Ernie's called, that I wanted to talk about it. And I know American Express serves an affluent consumer, obviously. But this stood out to me. They're talking about the year-over-year growth, and they break it down by Gen Z, millennials, Gen X, and baby boomers. The year-over-year growth for Gen Z was 39%, which is wild. What is it? 39 % in terms of services build business, so spending. Equally remarkable is millennials, people my age, make up 30 % of all spending on Amex on the consumer side, which is more than baby boomers are spending.

56:32So millennials are doing all right. And Gen Z is doing all right. This is the experience economy. People are spending it on experience, not on the homes. They want to have that ultimate Instagram photo at that special place with that special chef and that special drink. So Nick, here you're going to ask. I want to give this to you in a sec. But the next chart shows millennials and Gen Z. It compares the delinquency of American Express customers versus none. and it's 4.4 % for millennials and Gen Z. Those are 30 days past due, okay? And for Amex customers in this age cohort, it's only 1.9%. And there's a similar spread on Gen X, Baby Boom Riverside.

57:11So again, Amex, I know is not representative of the entire economy, but for these people, they're doing all right. And Nick, you are these people. You spend time with these people. What do you see in terms of experience, services, spending? I mean, I think a lot of this, once again, I keep repeating the same point, but it comes back to housing. And like the whole idea of the American dream is you're supposed to buy a house and do all this stuff. I think the American dream has changed in a lot of ways. And people are traveling a lot more. TSA throughput is hitting records. Right. And so if you think about like, like I think about my parents when they were young, they did not get on airplanes often.

57:41I'm guessing your parents didn't either. Right. But now it's like very common for people like my sister went to Japan and she does not have a very high paying job. It's like people say, you know what? I'd rather not own. I'll rent and I'll travel the world and see stuff. And so you're right. Everything Caleb said, Instagram generation, that is more important to have that photo versus just like, oh, I own a house, right? I actually think it's smart, though. So do I. I love that. Now, here's where it's not that smart is they are – if you live in a top 20 city, you're throwing away a lot of money in rent.

58:10Some would dispute that characterization. It's not throwing it away. You're not throwing it away. You're consuming it. Okay, if not, we agree. But you are not building equity in an asset. That's fine. You don't have to. or maybe you work for a company that's comping you with stock options and you are building an asset. You're just built, it's not in a physical, that's perfectly fine too. I know that's more common than ever. Um, so that's where it's to me, not that great, but where it's really great. These are the times of your lives, like, like the times of our lives, I should say, like, uh, what's more important than how you spent your life.

58:45Like I spent, I spent my life seeing, going out and doing and seeing the things that I wanted to see, not anchored to a fucking pile of bricks in a suburb somewhere. I kind of find that to be really admirable about the way millennials and Gen Z are carrying on. I'm sure a lot of them wish it were the opposite and they didn't have to go out and look for so many. Because when I watch Instagram video of people standing in two hour lines in Montauk. It just looks dumb as shit to me. But I was also that age and I'm sure I was doing things equally that dumb. I just wasn't doing stuff like that. We were cut the line, kids.

59:23We knew the promoters. I come from a different world. But like, I sort of get it in the absence of the ability to buy a house. Well, yeah, we should be in Montauk waiting online to get into a bar. I also think there's a little of this going on. I have 19 and a 21-year-old, two daughters and I talked to them and their friends about investing in this whole thing. They know what I do, but a lot of them just reject the premise. They understand what investing is and how you can build wealth with it, but I get a lot of the time from them the question that I can't answer, and I think I've asked you this before, why does this keep working?

1:00:01What's this? This stock market. Why do investments continue to grow? I know it's worked forever and it's worked for the last hundred years or so, but they reject the whole premise of the fact that this market is just going to keep going up. Companies are going to keep generating profits. The stock market is a place to generate returns. So if they don't believe in that, less and less younger people may not believe in that. They see the get-rich-quick schemes, whether it's crypto or meme stocks or whatever, and they're maybe not as invested in the investment process as we were taught to be in the financial services media and the market has taught us to be.

1:00:36Maybe they just reject it and they're like i'm gonna spend it on their role models though are super involved in business this gen gen z's role models are all creators and influencers and people that have built companies and people like they look up to people like kai sanat and mr beast and they look up to like alex cooper and alex earl and these are people that created their own lane for themselves they built their own platform, their own content. They hire their friends to hold the cameras. Like iShowSpeed is a kid surrounded by his old friends that he grew up with, traveling the world doing stunts.

1:01:16But it's a business. So I do think that Gen Z is enamored with business. But to your point, I think they look at the stock market like another casino. Oh, there's no sport on I want to bet on? All right, maybe I'll do some crypto. Maybe I'll do some stocks. That part I agree with you. But I don't think they dislike the premise of capitalism and business and making money. They don't like corporate capitalism. I think they question the premise. That could be the difference. I think there's a lot of that as well. And they're also, you know, a lot of them going into a job market where they're fearing and they're hearing that AI is going to take every job anyway.

1:01:50So what's the point of it all? Why even buy into this if it's all going to come crashing down? This is a really nice segue to my answer to why does the stock market go up and why will it continue to go up hopefully forever and ever? Positioning. Obviously, yeah. And obviously, you know, with bear markets in between and lost decades and all that sort of stuff, is greed in a good way. We are all greedy. It is never enough for each of us. And it is certainly never enough for any of us. And at the corporate level, people are motivated to get up, improve their financial situation. And all of that shows up in earnings per share.

1:02:21And that is what drives the stock market ultimately. It's really that simple. So in 2018, I tweeted this pie chart. And I said, the market cap of the top five S &P 500 companies were equal to the market cap of the bottom 282 companies. And seven years ago, this seemed out. People lost their shit when they saw this, by the way. I remember that. I was on Twitter then. People seemed outraged that how could this even be? Look at this. It does not compute. Please make it make sense. Well, here we are. It's way worse. Seven years later, and they're equal to the bottom 411 companies. The top five. The top five.

1:03:03Have the same market cap as the top five. Or is it, no, the top seven. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The top, I know what we're looking at. Just look at me for a second. The top five are now equal to the bottom 411. Oh, 411. I'm the captain now. The MAG7. The MAG7 is equal to the bottom 432 companies. It's been nice. It's just unbelievable. That's a great argument for index funds if I've ever seen one. Yeah. All right. Last thing to kick the hornet's nest a little bit before we move on to Nick's books. Last week, JC was in that chair talking about how$2 trillion is around the air,$4 trillion for cryptos around the air.

1:03:38And I'm like, dude, come on. It's NVIDIA. It's not nothing. It is a lot of money. You're sounding ridiculous. And I was thinking about this yesterday and I was telling Josh, hey, wait a minute. It's not actually$4 trillion. dollars. And the reason why it's not actually$4 trillion is because it's not a market cap. We have transposed this idea of, okay, coins outstanding times price is market cap, the same way we do with the stock market. It's not the same thing. Because hypothetically, if everybody went to sell NVIDIA, just everybody went to sell, and I know there's buyers for everybody's sellers, but if everybody went to do that, at some point, either NVIDIA would buy all of its stock back, or more likely, private companies, private consortium investors would come in, whether it's at$2 trillion or$3 trillion or$1 trillion, and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we'll buy the whole thing.

1:04:26We'll take all of it. And give me the$90 billion in revenue, and we'll just take it all. There is a floor for these businesses because there's cash flows and fundamentals. Similarly, there is a theoretical ceiling because at some point, the numbers don't make sense. With Bitcoin and crypto, these are not real numbers because Bitcoin can theoretically go to a dollar. If everybody truly went to sell and Michael Saylor was the only buyer, nobody would want it. He's not going to want all the Bitcoin if nobody else wants a Bitcoin. So the$4 trillion is - The leverage would take him to zero way before it got to zero.

1:04:58There's no floor. It's artificial. Similarly, the cap or the ceiling for which we're thinking about these numbers, as crazy as it sounds, it might be a lot higher than we think. Because not only does everybody not want to sell, but it's a race to buy Bitcoin and there is a fixed supply. And so it might get - if this argument, if you're listening to me and you want to f***ing strangle me and this is pissing you off, it might get a lot stupider. What part do you think would piss people off that there's no ceiling? The part that I'm saying that$2 trillion. Like Bitcoin could be$25 trillion and there's no loss thing it can't.

1:05:28Because it's not actually$25 trillion. Well, that is the bull case from an investing standpoint, is that there's no ceiling, but there is a limit to the amount of Bitcoin. That's literally what the bull case is. Correct. I mean, this is true of any stock. This is true of any individual stock. No, it's not. I'm saying like if everyone goes to sell, pick a stock. If everyone goes to sell that stock, it's going to go down. And the only – just to play devil's advocate, I more agree with you than disagree. But he's saying the fundamentals would create a floor. But I'm telling you, if there's – if everyone's selling NVIDIA, I mean everyone, it's going to$1 trillion.

1:06:02The fundamentals don't exist anymore. But you're being literal. But they do exist. The company continues to sell chips and earn money. In what situation is NVIDIA down 75 % and that is like not a fundamental – like the chips aren't worth anything. 70 % in 2022 when the crypto market crashed. And I know that because I owned it. But the fundamentals of the business, they might have been up and down, but they were still earning revenue and profits. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Trust me, I support asset ownership versus like an income producing asset, like a business over crypto. I get that. I'm just saying, in what world does that happen where this is like, you know, NVIDIA is off 80, 90 % or something.

1:06:44Pick any business. My point is the cash flow support a floor. Wherever the floor is. No, I agree. There's no floor to Bitcoin. The insight is what I gave you yesterday. It is. I said, invert! You must always invert! No, what I said was, we are borrowing this term market cap from the stock market world because it's all we know. It's like a skeuomorph. Like Apple made the icons on its desktop, the filing cabinet, the clock, because we're comfortable with that iconography. And we understand file account. Okay, I put files in there. That's why we use market cap. What it actually is, is supply, like a dollar.

1:07:23We don't talk about the market cap of the US dollar. We talk about the dollar supply. With Bitcoin, we should really be saying supply. We should not be saying market cap or shares outstanding because it's not a corporation. But too late, that ship has sailed. And I think we're stuck on this market cap mentality for the end of time. What do you think? I think things are going to change really fast here. I was at Bitcoin 2025 in Vegas about a month or so ago, and I've been to a few of these. This was very different. There were entire aisles now of Bitcoin lenders that'll give you fiat currency, legal tender for your Bitcoin.

1:07:59There are plenty of multimillionaires out there that don't own a single share of stock in the S &P 500, don't own a single treasury, have very little money in a savings account, but they have$10 million in Bitcoin. because they started buying because they heard somebody on some chat group, you know, who knows where back in 2014. But now they're in the system. That's what your point is. They're in the system and they're borrowing against it. You can now buy a home with Bitcoin. You could buy, put down money for a mortgage. And as soon as you're using it for leverage to access legal tender, fiat currency.

1:08:29More inflation coming. Right. More inflation coming our way. But if it goes to zero, what happens then? There are real assets now tethered to the value of Bitcoin. Right. So when JC, and I heard him say it on your show, if it goes to zero, or nobody's going to care. There's about 50 million people that are going to care because they own Bitcoin in some way, shape, or form. Now, there's probably about a million that own most of it. We all know that. His point was systemically. Systemically in the capital market. Bitcoin can't bring down Citigroup. Yeah, he's right about that. Not until Citigroup gets into the, yeah, we'll take your Bitcoin and give you a mortgage.

1:09:01So let me ask you a question then. That's a really great point. I'm glad you made it. This week, just an acceleration in TradFi. I hate that word. in regular financial institutions doing deals in the crypto world. You saw PNC Bank do a tie-up with Coinbase. PNC Bank has customers that are multimillionaires that want a solution to crypto in some way tied in with their regular bank account. This makes so much sense. Of course, we're going to see more of that. Coinbase is rapidly emerging as like the legitimate way for traditional financial institutions to link the traditional financial assets of their customers with their crypto holdings.

1:09:44If you had to bet, you would definitely say over the next six months, there'll be way more of that. It's just starting. It's just starting. Every single earnings call had questions about tokenization and stable coins on the financial side. Every single one that I listened to. Yeah, and you had Rick Edelman on here and he was just talking about everything is going to be tokenized. So there's going to be a proxy for everything else out there, but a lot of it is going to be based in this crypto world. So I understand it would not affect the capital markets necessarily. Not yet. But it's creeping deeper and deeper into our capital markets.

1:10:14Your argument is even at the current$4 trillion for the crypto asset level, it's plenty systemic. Yeah. BlackRock has$78 billion of Bitcoin. Yeah. Zero would hurt. Zero would hurt. Yeah. For sure. I think it would hurt. And it would be also people who have grown up with this as the next way to make money or the best performing asset they've ever seen in their lifetime and best performing asset in air quotes that we've ever seen. This would be not only that, it'd be like a confidence ripper. It'd be like ripping the rug out from under a lot of people who believe that this is the future. We asked people in our recent survey, what asset class do you think will perform best over the next four years under this administration?

1:10:55Stocks, stocks, number one, US stocks, number two, crypto. Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I actually, if you told me the order were flipped, I'd believe that. It's pretty close. I'll tell you that. Yeah. Can we talk about just keep buying the original Nick Majuli book? Okay. Let's do it. It aged exceptionally well. So you put the book out in 2022, sold 400 ,000 copies. That's insane. You definitely did not buy most of those. The book is a huge hit, dude. 80 % of that is non-US. So let's start there. Why do you think this book translated so well to investors around the world in a way that most finance books in America really don't?

1:11:36What do you think it was? I think it was just the data I put in there. Because if I'm being honest, like Just Keep Buying is not like, I mean, the name is, I guess, original, but like the idea of, oh, you just, you know, dollar cost average over time, that is an old idea. But to a new generation of investors, it's brand new. But I also put a lot of, I think the new piece was the data. And like, I basically proved it. I was like, look, this is, you know, the subtitles proven strategies, right? So like I wanted to prove this like undeniably. And so that's, that was the point of the book. And that's why I did it.

1:12:05And that translates all the data and all that you're not going to really find that in many other books that is talking about these types of things. And so because I had all of that, it translates. But there's a chart I put in here, I think is very useful. So, you know, the biggest countries I've sold in our Japan and Taiwan, I have over 100 ,000 sales in each of those countries. And I think one of the reasons - By the way, dude, you sold 100 ,000 books in Japanese. and in Chinese. And 100 ,000 in Chinese. And in Taiwan, yeah. I mean. It's great. The Taiwan, like I knew about Japan. Kids selling investing books in a communist country.

1:12:35It's unbelievable. Wait, what about Thailand? Do you get paid in dong? No, I don't actually think I have a, no, there's no Thai version yet. It's in production, but it's being delayed. Long story. But I'm saying, look, this chart, I think, is very useful because there's a lot of Asian investors buying U.S. assets. 42 % of their assets are actually in U.S. assets. That's crazy. Not assets, foreign assets. So, and that's US stocks and bonds. And so these flow, this is from a Bloomberg article. And these flows are happening. And so like when I'm thinking about, well, how is this impacting me personally as like an author?

1:13:05It's like, that's how it's doing it. But everyone's like, they want to keep buying. What if you caused this? I didn't cause it. The Medjoolie effect. Ironically, I - What if you did? I joke that like, you know, I was born in November, 1989, that, you know, the Nikkei peak the next month. And then like my book came out in Japan in June 23. And it peaked seven months later, like in early 2024, right? or they, or I'm sorry, re-reached those highs from 30 years ago, right? So I got a 30-year drawdown. It finally, you know, 34-year drawdown, it came back. And so, no, I'm obviously not causal at all.

1:13:34I mean, in some very, very marginal way, but no, this has been happening for a long time. The Chinese are buying a lot of homes here in the United States, the apartments in New York City. You can think about all these things where there's a lot of money in Asia that's coming in here. And I think that's a big piece of it. There are a lot of Asian retail investors. There's a couple of things I love. One of the things is that the repudiation of your message, just keep buying, has always been, now do Japan. And you can say, all right, I'll do Japan, motherfucker. New record high for the Nikkei this week.

1:14:06What else you want me to do? Yeah, and I put it in there. What else you got? We have stock markets around the world now breaking out. But you did Japan. The dumbest thing is like people went all in at 1989 and they never bought another single share. Yes, Japan sucked. It happened. But what if you dollar cost average in Japan? Yeah, and that's what I did. I have a chart in the book where I say, if you put a dollar a day into the Nikkei, right? And of course, you know, with currency fluctuate, there's a lot of other things there, but let's just say a dollar a day in there, you would have kept pace with inflation, which is not great, but that is typically what you see in the worst from like 62 to 72, I think, or 62 to, I think, 82 in the US, which is like one of the worst, like 20-year periods.

1:14:42It was something similar. Like if you just kept buying dollar cost averaging over that period, you would have basically kept pace with inflation, which is one of the worst periods in US history. What's so funny is like you, one of your most known blog posts was where you answered the question with data the way that you do. What's smarter? Lump sum investment at one point in time or dollar cost average. Don't put it all in now, but put it on over time. Definitively the right answer because markets trend higher over time is the lump sum wins out over most time periods. And you proved it. But the message of just keep buying is a DCA message.

1:15:19And the reason it's necessary is because most of the people reading it don't have all the money they're ever going to make. They're going to make more money next year. So it has to be a DCA message. Yeah, and also, I mean, those are two different, I think there's a definitional issue here. So there's two different definitions for DCA, which we both use all the time. And so like, we're talking about like, oh, everyone just calls, you know, we call Bitcoin market cap. The same thing is the issue with DCA. So when you're doing like dollar cost averaging the original definition, it means like you're just buying over time, but you're buying when you get paid.

1:15:48So if you think like your 401k, you don't say, oh yeah, I'm lump summing every two weeks in my 401k. But that's what you're doing. People call that dollar cost averaging, but you're actually making lump sum investment because you're buying as soon as you have the money. That's the important piece. Like when are you buying? If you're buying one, as soon as you have the money to invest, that's like lump summing. The 401k contribution is a lump sum. Looks like a DCA because it's periodic over time, but it's a lump sum because you're not getting the withholding and piecing it into the market. You're just throwing in.

1:16:17You don't say take 15 grand out of my first, I mean, no one has a 15 grand first paycheck, but like, you don't just say, hey, I'm going to donate, you know, or contribute 15 grand, take that out of my paycheck and I'm slowly going to put it in. No, you just take it out throughout the year, right? That's a, I mean, that's technically a lump sum investment. Which speaks to what we were talking about earlier. Why does the market keep going up? You taught me this. Well, that's a really good answer. It's the relentless bid. Every two weeks we do the same thing. We don't change our allocation. That's you?

1:16:41Credit to you. The relentless bid is great. But it's, you're right about that. And we don't change our behavior at all. First of all, your books are terrific. Just Keep Buying is an amazing title. I appreciate that. For one, this book is incredible too. I've recommended it to people already. And you're great at taking the data and storytelling with it in a way that makes sense to educated investors. So let me see this. This is terrific. The Wealth Ladder. So camera two, I'm showing you Nick's new book. This is called The Wealth Ladder, Proven Strategies for Every Step of Your Financial Life. Now, you did something in here that's getting traction on social media.

1:17:17You broke people up. It's not a caste system. I saw somebody say that. I didn't see that yet. I'll have to look later. You'll love it. You'll love it. It's not a caste system. It's rungs. You're not ranking people based on where they belong in society. What you're saying, the rungs of the wealth ladder, right? So you're saying like the lowest rung, but you're not using that term. You say levels. I use levels because a lot of this is marketing. Like if I had called my first book dollar cost averaging, no one would have bought it. Just keep buying is a better thing. I call these levels. What's levels one through six?

1:17:47And where would you, where would you put me? Yeah, so this is household net worth. So it's households and then net worth is all your assets. So this is not income. This is not current income. This is literally assets minus whatever debts you have. Yeah, we'll get to this chart in a second. But for the levels, just straight up, level one, less than$10 ,000. And this is for the US, less than$10 ,000 in net worth. Level two is$10 ,000 to$100 ,000. Level three is$100 ,000 to$1 million. Level four is$1 million to$10 million. But you're calling these things something. You're saying - Oh, no. In the tweet online, I said, let me get to that.

1:18:21These are all different economic classes, which I'll get to at the end. Level five is - Wait, hang on. I know you have to drill the line somewhere. These seem a bit wide, the bands. They are wide. They are quite wide. $1 million to$10 million. Yeah, they're wide. Somebody with a net worth of$1 million does not have the same lifestyle as somebody with a net worth of$10 million. Yeah, I agree. but the one at a million is closer to level three and the one at 10 million is closer to level five. I'm saying the people, four and six are basically identical. I know you have to travel on some of that. I'm saying like four million, six million are basically identical.

1:18:47Like you're saying that's$2 million, but that person is not going to spend that$2 million. They're going to have a little bit more income. They're going to maybe have a vacation home. They're not flying private. Your lifestyle changes with massive, like a 10X logarithmic jump. That's where you're starting to see. That was your big insight. That's my big insight. And the whole reason I came up with this levels framework because a lot of people have done levels of wealth. A lot of different people have done it. The problem is there's no easy way to memorize this. And so by using the logarithms, it would just made it so much easier doing 10X.

1:19:15So, hey, if I know that level three, 100 ,000 to a million, if I know that's like the middle class, which it is in the United States, 43 % of households are in level three. What's the middle class, level three? Level three, 100 ,000 to a million. 100 to a million is 40 % of the country? 40 % of the country, 40 % of US households. Okay, but then you talk about the difficulty in getting from one level to the next. Yep. And of course, most people don't ascend into level five. Yeah. That's less than 2 % of households ever make it to level five. And level six, which is 100 million plus, that's like, you know, less than 0.0001%.

1:19:48Now, do you have to fight a main bad guy at the end of each level? No, unfortunately not. You sort of do, though. I guess there's like the bad, the thing to look out for. Yeah. In level five, like it's like, it's over concentration. Who's the final boss? I was going to say the end of level five is a mistress oh no there's that too I mean there's like the personal attack the temptations that come along of course that's everywhere at level three it's the IRS level four is Powell alright so congratulations the book came out this week yeah came out on Tuesday alright so you're doing a ton of shit yeah can we get you on Caleb's podcast it's on it's booked he gives me the best intro so I love your podcast I know you're going on Jill Schlesinger and she texted us to find out the most embarrassing thing about you that nobody knows.

1:20:32I should just send her that photo of me in high school. Maybe that's pretty good. But I should like the photo. I have to be honest. She might be in possession of that photo. You were a metalhead. Yeah, I know Ozzy. I mean, crazy. I'm supposed to be celebrating my book and everything. Ozzy dies this week. And so for me, that's like a big deal. I know that's a big deal. If you're a metalhead, Ozzy is your Jerry Garcia or Kurt Cobain. Or he's your Ozzy, basically. He's your Ozzy. He was there before all. I mean, I guess I don't know what Jericho Garcia was in the timeline. You know what's interesting?

1:21:02Ozzy's biggest songs all predate you basically being born. Yeah, for sure. I mean, he was, you know, early 80s. With Sabbath. Sabbath was the metal band. They started metal in the 70s. They started that entire genre, right? The Beatles actually started heavy metal. What song? Helter Skelter. It's debatable. I say it's more rock. It's not really debatable. The Beatles were a rock band from Liverpool. Oh, I know who the Beatles are. Thank you. Helter Skelter is the first heavy metal song. Some have said Steppenwolf, Born to be Wild. They say that's the first metal song. This has been debated. Trust me.

1:21:34I've thought about this a lot. This has been highly debated. Have you quantified it? I have not quantified it, but I think it's Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf. He says heavy metal thunder. You know, when he's 27. What was it that attracted you to metal when you were a teenager? Was it just the people you were around were into that? It was high energy. It was high energy. Yeah, there's a lot of high energy to it. I just like the sound of it. I mean, you know, I started growing my hair and I just, I liked it. For a metalhead, you quote a lot of great rappers in this book. I know. Well, I love that, too.

1:21:59You got Jay-Z. They're also high energy, right? I got Pusha T. Did you watch the Billy Joel doc yet? No. Yeah? Worth it? Not yet. I'm going to watch it this weekend. It's a requirement for a long time. I mean, you're from New York. Come on. Well, what were your—I'm guessing your music was like— Was you a skater? You were like one generation older than me. Okay. Clash? Pearl Jam. Reggae. Are you the—what? Reggae. Yeah, I have a reggae head. Reggae. Pure reggae. Dancehall reggae. I had a reggae show in college. Wow. If I wasn't doing this, I would probably be a reggae entertainer at Sunsplash. Wow.

1:22:33All right. Can we do the— Why another white guy with dreads? Yeah. That's what the world needs. Can we do that chart real quick? Yeah. Because I think this is important. Throw it up. This is showing—this is the snapshots of wealth over time from the Survey of Consumer Finances, the Federal Reserve. I've broken this into the levels, right? So the level one, less than 10K, level two, et cetera. And what you can see, that bottom dark blue in level four, that's the big story here, which is in 1989, which is the first bar, it was 7 % of US households. And by the way, this is inflation adjusted wealth.

1:23:02So this has already been adjusted for inflation. In 1989, that's 7 % of households. Today, it's 18 % of households. It's the stock market? It's stock market, home prices. A lot of different things have contributed to that. There's just more wealth than ever before, right? I think it's not just stock market, though. It's compensation. Home equity, home equity, compensation. But also, level one is shrinking. Yeah, level one was 25%. Now it's about 20%. So that, like, the poorest part of society is much smaller. And this is, once again, this is inflation-adjusted wealth. And so those are shrinking.

1:23:30And there's more, you know, in the upper middle class, as I call it, 1 to 10 million, which is supposed to be location agnostic. Obviously, if you have, like,$8 million and you're in Alabama, you're definitely upper class. But, like, I was trying to say, even in New York City, like, I'm trying to be location agnostic here. I think this is the big story here because there's more people in that bottom bucket. And that's creating a lot of competition for these resources. I wrote about this recently. And for stocks. Yeah, I mean, for stocks, I mean, house prices, you know, as I said, the Amex lounge is overrun right now.

1:23:57It's crazy. Like you go, there's lines to get in there. There's more people with these cards than ever before. I think the upper middle class is going through an existential crisis. And I think we're going to see this play out over the next few years. Right, the system is not built for this much affluence. This many people experiencing affluence. Everything is buckling. There are no more VIP experiences because everyone's a VIP. It's turned the travel rewards and the credit card rewards business on its head. If you watch what the airlines are doing with reward points, it's not what it's worth.

1:24:24On the Amex call, all they asked about, they're like, sorry to keep belabling the point, but it was all about competition with cards and rewards. It's a new game. Agreed. All right. Guys, did you have fun on the show today? What? Loved it. Loved it. I had a great time. I got to tell you, you're two of my favorite people to talk to. This is just a dream episode for me. Thank you, Caleb. The deck, the book. I'm so proud of you. Investopedia. so proud of you coming out with your newest book. This is just an awesome time to have you guys. So I want to just say thank you so much for being here. We end the show by asking people what they're looking forward to.

1:24:59So obviously I know selling a million books is on the list for you. My honeymoon, we're going south of France. So tell me what you're doing. We're doing, we're going Nice for four nights and then three nights in Paris and then we'll be back. Oh, that's a sick trip. What do you do? What do you do in Nice's beaches, right? Yeah, we do a little bit of that. You'll go to Monaco. You can go down to Saint-Tropez. There's a bunch of different stuff you can see. Monaco or Monaco? Shot to Howard. Yeah, Monaco. Yeah, we'll call it that. Now, famously, your wife is a renowned lover you shared with us. So is Four Nights in Nice enough?

1:25:31That's a great question. All right. We'll ask her. We'll do it after we turn off. Yeah, maybe we'll have you back on after the honeymoon. We'll have her come on and interview her. What are you looking forward to, Caleb? I'm looking forward to pictures from Nick's honeymoon.

1:25:49beyond that again I'm trying to arrange a university tour for Investopedia take us back to school where do you want to go? some of the biggest schools throughout the country especially those in the process of planning this? in the process of planning it looking for partners that want to be a part of it but I have this dream of making us a real part of young people's complete education because I don't think they're getting it so that's one big deal but also Future Proof's coming up shout out to that we're going to have some real fun there We've got some great panels coming up. We're thrilled to have you guys there.

1:26:21It's really an honor for us. And this has been an honor, too. But right when I'm out of here, I'm on my way home to New Mexico to see the parents and see some old friends. So I will be in the land of enchantment when this airs. Good for you. Caleb, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Michael, what are you looking forward to, my friend? Visiting day. Oh, shit. That's what I should say, too, right? Our kids are at a summer camp. Oh, nice. They're at a sleepaway camp. This is the third weekend, which is when you go up and see them and bring them food. What do you have to bring him?

1:26:53What snack list that he asked for? She's not like a big eater. So I don't know. He doesn't care really? Not a huge eater. I think the nugget wants me to bring him a porterhouse and Peter Lugar's. Stop. Wow. No, I bring him like an Italian hero. He's thrilled. They're not babies anymore. They're not asking for candy. Oh, Smith Street Deli. Again, it's the only deli that's open on time. I asked Shari, my hero. She said, no, it's closed. It's closed. Yeah. So we'll hit the deli. We'll hook them up. All right, guys, it's been a pleasure. Hey, shout out to all the listeners, all the viewers. We appreciate you guys.

1:27:27Thank you so much for coming to tune in. Please make sure you check out of Dollars and Data, which is Nick Majuli's blog. Buy his new book, The Wealth Ladder at fine booksellers everywhere. Check out my friend Caleb Silver's website, Investopedia. and make it, where the f*** are you going? He's already leaving. You know visiting day's tomorrow, right? See you later. This f***ing guy, can you imagine? He just Irish exited a podcast. He's going to buy some Open Door, I think. What's funny is, this is our 201st show. He knows how this is supposed to end. I've lost my train of thought. Good night.

1:28:04Goodbye. Thank you. Thanks for having us on. Thank you. I was so unbelievable. He just Irish exited a podcast.