The Next Circle IPO, Ric Edelman on Crypto Allocations, Novo Nordisk vs Hims, Dumbflation

26:45The transparency is better than anything we have seen. The ability to be inclusive is better than anything because of the demonetization that occurs. And the democratization that arises, allowing anybody to engage in fractionalized shares is why we're going to take current shares of stocks and ETFs of stocks and turn them into tokens of stocks. Which will happen first? Individual company stocks become tokenized or baskets like ETFs? Both are already underway. You already see crypto companies that are providing this opportunity already in its infancy, but it goes beyond stocks. You're going to be able to see tokenization of real estate first.

27:24The first tokenized project was in 2018, a condo here in Manhattan. The St. Regis and Aspen was tokenized. Major buildings in Dubai are being tokenized because the global real estate market is three times bigger than the global stock market. Does tokenizing a piece of real estate turn it into a de facto security? Absolutely. And that's part of the good news because we take a highly expensive illiquid asset and we now make it liquid and demonetized because nobody can afford except pension funds. funds and insurance companies. Let's take the Aspen example. Walk us through this. So whose resort is this?

28:00St. Regis? St. Regis. Okay. So I don't know. Let's hypothetically say it's a$100 million facility. Yeah. Turn into a token of 10 bucks a piece. Okay. So now somebody that wants to be a resident there and own a piece of the property can buy it in smaller increments via tokenization. They do not have to sign paperwork and become a K1 LP of whatever private equity firm controls it. Now, all of a sudden, it can trade. Somebody owns it. They could sell it. Somebody new can come in. Is that tied at all to having a residence there? No, not at all. First of all, it's a hotel. So you're just an investor.

28:39You're just an investor. And being an investor, I remember when Wrigley Gum sent chewing gum to all their shareholders every year. If you go to the St. Regis and you own one of these tokens, they'll give you a discount on the room. Now, you own this. What do you get? Is there a cash flow that's paid through in a tokenized way? Or do you just own effectively equity in the property that you can sell at hopefully a higher price? You own equity in the property. And what some of these tokens are doing are sending what are called airdrops, which is essentially a dividend, where you get more in-kind payments.

29:12So you get more tokens. So they're sending you more tokens of the property. Exactly. Exactly. Is that dilutive or is that coming from someone else? No, it's not dilutive because you're getting, well, you could argue it's dilutive in the same way a stock dividend that's paid in kind. Exactly. You could argue that. It is taxable. There's some debate in tax circles as to you pay the tax on receipt or do you pay the tax when you sell it? It's an example where the IRS has to create more regs of clarity in the crypto space. But let me give you a more fundamental example of how transformative this is.

29:43Because yeah, we can do this to the IBM building. We can do it to the Sears Tower. We can do it to name your big building where individual investors are excluded because they don't have the money to engage. Now, if you demonetize by offering$10 tokens on a billion-dollar building, everybody can participate. Turn it into your house. We know that for most Americans, their home is their biggest asset. When they reach retirement, it's an illiquid asset. They need more income in retirement. They don't want to sell the house. They don't want to reverse mortgage. We certainly don't want that. So they can now tokenize that million dollar house into a million tokens of a dollar each, selling them off as they choose to generate income.

30:17Now, why would somebody, I understand the reason to sell it, you're creating liquidity without losing the house. Right. Why would somebody buy a tokenized interest in my house? For the same reason you would make any real estate investment. We know that institutional investors own 30 % of all the residential real estate in Denver and in Phoenix and a lot of major cities. They recognize that they can generate growth from appreciation. They can also generate tax benefits from being a real estate investor. They also can, when that property gets rented, turn it into rental income. So the same reason applies.

30:50In other words, you're not doing this as an investor for anything unusual. It's simply becoming available. So we're tokenizing exotic cars. They have no vote. They have no say. So if I have a home that is listed at$2 million and I decide I'm going to paint the whole thing black and I'm going to, I don't know, put spikes on the roof and I'm going to allow, I don't know, like all manner of disruption to the value of the home, you the token holder have no say. That's what makes it, separates it from shareholder votes in a corporation with a board of directors. Unless, you're right, unless that home is being tokenized via a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization.

31:32In that case, the homeowner is part of that decision. Yes. In that case, everyone who owns a token has a vote. Okay. Gotcha. All right. So tokenization, you think, is going to be as big as the market value in Bitcoin. I'll give you a simple example. Look at Franklin Templeton, which is leading the way in tokenization, and BlackRock, which is doing this as well. Larry Fink's lettered last week, his annual shareholder letter, cited tokenization as the next major thing. In other words, instead of having 15 or 20 asset classes that we currently use to build a portfolio, you're going to have 15 ,000 asset classes.

32:04Everything will be tokenized from comic books and rare coins to artwork, exotic cars, old wines, everything you can think of that is a real world asset will have a token associated with it, creating astonishing opportunities for portfolio customization. So this would be part of that, let's say, hypothetical 40 % allocation into crypto. Correct. It's not all Bitcoin and ETH. Correct. There would be tokenized real estate would fill a slot, let's say, hypothetically. As well as the companies that are making all this happen. So companies like Coinbase, which are the crypto exchanges where you'll trade, companies that are providing the crypto tokenization that facilitate the development of these real world assets into digital tokens.

32:46Companies like the digital banks that are allowing you to hold the assets. Companies like Circle, which has just gone public, a major stablecoin company. So you would throw those equities into the crypto bucket? Correct. Okay, and they're getting big. Yes, and the whole point being, you want diversification in crypto the same way you want diversification in equities. So let's talk Circle for a moment. Came public about a week and a half ago. Seventh largest IPO of all time. Only raised a billion dollars. I guess I shouldn't say only. That would have been unthinkable two years ago that a crypto company was gonna raise a billion dollars on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ.

33:19But they did. The stock, I think, has quadrupled since coming public. Obviously, what that demonstrates is massive institutional demand for companies that have figured out a way to become a cornerstone of the crypto ecosystem. Undeniable. You don't have to buy it. You don't like the valuation. What you can't deny is that other people do. Exactly right. And you have to understand why that is and why Congress is passing as its first crypto bill - The Genius Act. A stablecoin bill. Yeah. It's the low-hanging fruit because everybody, even Elizabeth Warren, has to admit that stable coins matter because they strengthen and support the dollar rather than compete with it.

33:56And this is why the Treasury Department loves stable coins. They reaffirm the importance of the – they reaffirm the centricity of the dollar in the global financial system by pegging their value to the dollar. Right. When you buy – when you take your dollar, turn it into a stable coin, they take that and put it into a USD bill. Very specifically, part of the Genius Act precludes stablecoins themselves from paying interest because they don't want this new technology to immediately render the banking system, let's just call it redundant for now. Which is why BlackRock and Franklin both created on-chain money market funds that look an awful lot like stablecoins, except they do pay yield.

34:41And they don't call them stablecoins. They don't call them stablecoins. They call them on-chain money market funds. You don't buy them in a brokerage account. They're an online app on your phone. They are cheaper and therefore higher yielding. And they're safer. They're immediate. They're 24-7, 365. And they've already, between the two of them, amassed nearly$3 trillion. Are they investing in the same traditional money market instruments that a money market mutual fund would? Yes. OK, so they're buying treasuries? Treasuries, commercial paper. OK. OK. Are they rated? Do the ratings agencies even look at these or not yet?

35:17I haven't noticed. But if they do get rated, they would be rated AAA like all the other money market funds. OK. One of the things about Circle that's come up since the success of its share price is how reliant the company is on the continued partnership with Coinbase. It's the house stablecoin at Coinbase. The problem is it pays Coinbase a ton of money in what we refer to as distribution costs. And paradoxically, the more money that comes into Circle via Coinbase accounts, the higher those payments go, but not in a proportional way. And this is, I think, at the heart of the bear case on Circle.

36:00But maybe there's more to the story that I don't understand. No, I'll even expand on that point. everybody's paying attention to the Bitcoin ETFs with$100 billion in assets. Almost all of them custody their Bitcoin at Coinbase. They all pay Coinbase fees. The funny thing is Coinbase is making much more money on these ETFs than any of the ETF sponsors are. In custody fees. Exactly. And we've centralized, because of that, Coinbase is a centralized crypto exchange. We've centralized a decentralized technology, which the crypto maximalists saying, this is nuts, why are we doing this? This wasn't what Satoshi had in mind.

36:34Wait, hold on. Coinbase is making all the money and Coinbase's top shareholder is BlackRock, second shareholder is Vanguard. What did we do? And it's trading in the S &P. Right. Let's put this Tether graphic up, John. I thought this was an interesting slide. You're saying this explains why Tether, the largest stablecoin, generated$13 billion in EBITDA in 2024. Nobody knows that, by the way. More profit than dozens of America's largest corporations. So take that$13 billion in cash flow that Tether generated. That's more money than McDonald's, John Deere, BlackRock, GE, Salesforce, Target, Ford, Abbott Labs, Delta, IBM, Charles Schwab.

37:16Can that be true? Think about this. I'm going to give you money. Yeah. You're going to manage it for me for free. You're going to take the money and buy treasuries. No return for you. None. Right. Right. All you want back is - Access to the money. Nominally, the dollars that you put in. Right. And I can do whatever I want. And you're going to put the money in treasuries and you're going to keep the yield. This is maybe the greatest business. This is maybe the greatest business that nobody believes in. Why the hell didn't I think of this back in 2012? Right. Tether is super controversial because of, and I haven't been keeping up to date, but the complaint about Tether is nobody knows what they're actually investing in.

37:55And this is the reason for the Genius Act is that there's no regulation right now. Tether's offshore. And there's no requirement that they buy treasuries. There's no requirement that they disclose what they're doing with the money. Will they conform now in the wake of this law passing? Well, the law hasn't been signed yet, but that's the anticipation. This is why Circle went public first, because they're a US-based company. They're conforming to all US laws. They're doing audits. They're doing disclosures. They're conforming to all US rules that exist, and they're going to conform to the Stable Act.

38:29And that's why it was easier for everybody to support a Circle IPO than a Tether IPO. If JP Morgan has a coin and Fidelity has a stable coin, and Fidelity has a stable coin, and someday probably Schwab has a stable coin, and this just becomes a standard thing that all large financial institutions offer, is it too late? Has Circle already built up the network effects to where they're unassailable? Or do you think there will be many of these? There's going to be many. It's not too late for everyone to get engaged because even Circle doesn't have all that much money yet. Nobody's got trillions of dollars, which is why all the major banks, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citi and Wells have announced a consortium to jointly create a stable coin they'll all use.

39:12Fiserv just announced yesterday that they're creating a stable coin that their 3 ,000 community and regional banks are going to use. And two weeks ago, Amazon and Walmart independently announced they're going to create their own stable coins. Okay. Basically, remember when you used to go to Disney and they had Disney dollars? Yes. Well, you now are going to be a customer of Walmart. It's going to be like loyalty rewards structure. So if they can get you to download the app because that's your wallet and it's filled with Walmart digital dollars that either from returns or whatever, no one's going to walk away from that money.

39:48Exactly right. And you also have the benefit, I believe, of Walmart and Amazon with their reputational concerns. They're not going to let anything go wrong with that stable coin. Will there be interoperability between – so if you're a regular consumer, you probably don't want to hold seven different currencies. You probably don't want your dollars and all these different stable coins. It becomes really difficult to manage and understand what you have. Is that the role that Coinbase plays or will the banks play that role? Who's going to help you keep track and keep custody of everything? I think that's going to be a huge business opportunity as someone is going to come out being the fundamental wallet of choice.

40:26Exactly. That holds and facilitates arrangements with everybody else. Think about, I mean, I've got a PayPal account and a Venmo account and a Zelle account. Yeah. How annoying. So annoying. And so having a single provider that gives me access, you know, a hub and spoke approach is where the future is going to be. OK. Now, you are not counting stable coins in this crypto allocation because they're effectively cash a yield free money market. Right. It's worse than cash. Correct. Yeah. As an from an investable standpoint. Correct. OK. So that's not part of what you're doing. Correct. OK. Got it.

40:57Let's put this let's put this graphic up with the allocations. So walk me through what this means It's a graphic Ranging from 0 % crypto Up to 40 With Bitcoin valuations Yeah, so these are two Projected outcomes So the theory is You take a 60-40 portfolio You invest$100 For five years We're going to ignore taxes If you have a zero allocation That's a typical 60-40 At the top of the chart If Bitcoin blows up and becomes worthless. You have a 100 % loss. At the end of five years, because you didn't own any crypto, you're 100 bucks at 7 % a year. Is that a reasonable 60, 40? Yeah, we'll take it. So 100 bucks over 7%, five years, 100 bucks grows to 140 bucks.

41:44No problem. On the other hand, what if Bitcoin does as great as it might? And a lot of the projections, you mentioned Matt Hogan earlier, a lot of folks are projecting that Bitcoin is going to be a million dollars. You're at$500 ,000 now? Yes. OK. We'll get into that in a second. Put a pin in that. So that's a – we'll call it a 10x increase from its current price of about$100 ,000. So if that were to occur, Bitcoin's future price is far higher. It grows 10x over the next five years. If you have a 10 % allocation and Bitcoin becomes worthless, the future price of your portfolio will be$126. That's if Bitcoin is zero.

42:25Because you got the gains from stocks. You got the gains from bonds. Right. You lost everything in the 10 % crypto sleeve. You still wind up going from 100 to 126. Right. Disappointing relative to 140, but not catastrophic. If things go right. You're now 236. And that's if Bitcoin. Hits a million. Hits a million bucks per Bitcoin. And there you see the 25 % allocation and the 40%. So even at a 25 % allocation, if Bitcoin becomes worthless, in five years, you still have more than you started with. You've got 105 bucks. even if Bitcoin goes totally broke. So Bitcoin goes to, you have 25 % allocated, let's just say strictly in Bitcoin.

43:04Yeah. Okay. If Bitcoin goes to zero from$100 ,000 per coin today, you go from$100 in your portfolio to$105. Yeah. So it sucks. And you lost a big chunk of your assets to Bitcoin, but the rest of the portfolio bailed you out. Yeah. You're still no worse off than where you started. You don't have much profit, but at least you didn't lose money. Now, this is a great thought exercise, but as you know, and everyone knows listening to this, in reality, most people are not going to allocate once. They're going to allocate over the course of their life. Correct. Which complicates the return assumption, but the illustration is still worthwhile.

43:43Absolutely. And we know that from dollar cost averaging, by slowly adding to your portfolio, you improve the NPT statistics. Well, most people do the opposite. Well, true. They'll buy high and sell low. They'll buy, they'll take a 1 % allocation at 100, and then at 150, they'll raise it to 10%. No question. Okay. This is just human nature. We can't fix that. And we also, you can't fix stupid, right? Right. And we also know that people aren't going to rebalance the way that they should. They're not going to tax loss harvest the way that they should. So this is an incredibly simple example of a one-time investment buy and hold for five years.

44:13And it shows pretty compellingly that the worst case scenario ain't so bad. Yeah. And compared to the upside, because the upside has such incredible potential that it dwarfs the downside. One thing that's interesting to consider, and we don't know this because we only have 15 years of Bitcoin data. A lot of people make claims, oh, it's correlated with the stock market. Oh, it's correlated with gold. Oh, it has no correlation to anything at all, which is probably the truth at this point. But there are periods of time where it looks just like the NASDAQ. And I think the nightmare scenario for investors considering a 10 % allocation is, well, let's see.

44:52I have, in this scenario, 10%, I'll have 50 % of my money in stocks, 40 in bonds, 10 crypto. Yeah. Okay. In that scenario, think about how dominant technology stocks are in the S &P piece. So I get wiped out there, 30 % bear market. Yeah. And I lose 50 % in crypto. Yeah. I de-worsified my portfolio. That's the thing that I think makes people the most nervous. Yeah, but is it any worse than just owning the S &P? I don't know. I'll let you know what happens. Yeah, I mean, in the S &P, as you noted, a third are in the Magnificent Seven, a third of all the money. So is it any worse having a third of your equities in seven stocks as opposed to having a third of your money there plus another 10 % elsewhere?

45:39Well, if Bitcoin acts exactly like NVIDIA does, I'll let you know. So a lot of people would say, yes, this is worse, but not necessarily. But I would also argue that we're talking about a static environment. And we know that as life actually evolves, we're going to evolve our portfolio management. Fair. You make a pretty pointed remark toward the end of the paper that I wanted to share with people. And I think one of the things that you talk about is you can't have an investment that's gone up a thousand X and still have the same opinion of it as you did at the beginning. and then you cross over and say, not only is it responsible to make sure your clients are allocated to Bitcoin, it's actually irresponsible not to.

46:26A lot of people would say like, well, I also don't allocate to REITs. Is that irresponsible? I also don't allocate to international small caps. Is that irresponsible? So I do think that there is room for the crypto skeptic to say, okay, that's your opinion. My opinion is that's just speculating on price with no cash flows, no fundamental underpinnings. And I think Rick is crazy. How do you answer that? I'm sure you have before. A couple of different ways. First, I get it. Well, what's your exact wording? I can't find where I got this from. Where I talked about whether you're a fiduciary or simply an order taker.

47:06Yeah, all right. So let's cue off of that. But I get the skepticism. But to say that it doesn't generate any cash flows, well, that might be true of Bitcoin, but it certainly isn't true of Circle or of Coinbase or of other companies in the crypto space that are equities. So I think it's a misnomer to simply equate the entire universe of blockchain technology with Bitcoin. You might be making an argument, you don't want to buy Bitcoin. Fine. That doesn't mean you stay out of the asset class entirely. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you believe in passive investing, which I think most advisors do these days, and portfolio diversification, then you would argue that you want to basically own the market.

47:50That's why you're buying the S &P 500. This is now part of the market. Crypto represents 3 % of the market. So if you own zero, you're essentially shorting the market. 3 % of all the wealth in the world? 3 % of the US wealth. Is it in crypto? Yeah, if you add up stocks and bonds and real estate and gold and et cetera, et cetera, you would discover that there's about$111 trillion worth of wealth in America. And the crypto market is$3 trillion. That's roughly 3 % of the total marketplace. OK, so what's interesting is that's how it flips. So originally it was more like I choose to make no decision on Bitcoin.

48:27I'm just not involved. Right. Now, if you have no crypto exposure and don't offer it at least as an option to clients, your point is you are you are making an active decision now. Now you're not now you're not just now you're not just like abdicating your your or now you're not just saying I'll leave it up to the client. Now you're actually actively deciding as a fiduciary. I don't invest in crypto. And you might end up being right for some period of time, but it's active. It's no longer a hands-off thing. Exactly right. And so my challenge to advisors is merely to make an informed decision. Don't go on assumption or conjecture or the recent past of five years ago where the world of crypto was totally different.

49:13I want you to prove to me that the claims you're making as to reasons not to invest are valid today. They might have been valid five years ago. That doesn't mean they're valid today. Because if you are relying on incorrect or outdated information, you're making a mistake that could harm your client's financial future. All right. This is you. If you're fearful that recommending crypto could cause a client to fire you, then you're suffering from a conflict of interest. And you know that if you can't avoid a conflict of interest, you are required to disclose it. So simply explain that to your client.

49:50quote, from my research and training, I'm convinced that crypto belongs as a part of your diversified portfolio, but I've been afraid to tell you that out of concern that you might terminate our relationship. May I share with you why adding digital assets to your portfolio is in your best interests without my worrying that you'll fire me. Do you get the sense that a lot of advisors really think they'll be fired for broaching the subject? Yeah, I hear it all the time. I think it's the opposite. I hear it all the time, Josh. These must be people servicing extremely, a population of much older people is the bulk of their business.

50:25I would agree with that. These are folks who are saying, look, I don't want to push my client into doing 2 % or 3 % in Bitcoin because they'll be so angry at that. And they said to me, don't ever dare talk to me about Bitcoin. I don't want to risk my client's relationship over a 3 % allocation. You're saying you have the obligation then to at least explain why they should listen. Yes. And not force them to do it, but just say, this is why I'm doing this with my other clients. Because the clients themselves don't have the facts. They have the same misconceptions that you have. They see like, you know what they see?

50:59Stick a banana to the wall with duct tape. It's in some crypto. Asshole is going to buy it. They see NFTs. They see Sam Bankman free. And all of those things are real. Yes. They read about a different scam being busted in the newspaper. Right. So it's not. And half of them are Democrats listening to Warren. Right. Right. Who is demonizing the space since day one. So it's not without reason that these concerns exist among older investors. So let's take the extremism out of it. Let's take the politics out of it. Let's take the emotion out of it and simply say, I'd like to talk with you about why I think this might make sense for you.

51:36I'm just afraid that you'll fire me by making you mad. And if you put it in that kind of context, the client would be like, all right, I'm willing to listen. The conclusion may be the same, but at least it's an informed decision. I would imagine with the success of Bitcoin's price, Coinbase near record highs, Circle being the biggest IPO of the year outside of CoreWeave, I would imagine these conversations have only just gotten easier and easier. For sure. Especially if you're talking to the half of the country that loves Trump. Yeah. So I think it's probably easier to broach the subject. and maybe it's the advisor that's more hesitant just because there is a lot of volatility in this asset class and volatility leads to uncomfortable conversations.

52:21Yes. And it also leads to being fired. Even if it's an inconsequential amount of someone's portfolio, it's putting somebody into a coin that's at$80 ,000 that drops to 30 ,000. There's no way to explain, yes, but I still did the right thing. Yeah. Even though we know that this is not always about outcomes, it's about process. We know this is, you know, long term. It's still very difficult for a fiduciary advisor who's gone through the CFP certification process to say, I'm going to deviate so wildly from everything I was taught and do this untested thing. And there's an elephant in the room we haven't mentioned yet.

53:01Getting sued, arbitration. Beyond that, Josh, you're right on those. the average advisor, 50 % in this country, personally on Bitcoin, but only 20 % are recommending it to clients. Why? Because their firms won't let them. It's the compliance officer who isn't saying yes, because the compliance officer often knows nothing about crypto, and they can't say yes to something they themselves don't understand. And they're also thinking about their career risk. I don't want to say yes, have it blow up, I'll get fired. What's in it for me to say yes? It's safer for me to say no. On Wall Street, as we know, Everybody loves to be second.

53:37Nobody wants to be first. Well, that's a good point because the first pioneers who made the run out to Oregon had arrows in their back. And then the second pioneers say, oh, OK, we won't go that way. We'll go a different way. So this is also human nature. But there's also safety in numbers. And so if you are an advisor who's on the fence, you don't have a solution yet, you haven't picked one of the 13 ETFs, you haven't found an SMA manager, you haven't wrapped your head around, well, maybe, you know, I should look at the next IPO that comes along. Like if you're, if you're not quite there yet, the thing that you're thinking is I'm going to do this wrong and I'm going to be the one.

54:18And look, we, we launched a crypto index with wisdom tree in 2021, right at the old top for a good point. I would point out, but the idea was not, all right, let's get this into everyone's portfolio. What we basically said was we have a way to invest in, I guess it was 10 or 11 different coins. We don't, some of these are zeros. Some of these are 10 X's. We don't know which is which the research was all done by Jeremy Schwartz team at wisdom tree. They're super passionate about this. They're going to follow the coins and they'll update the index. And we're not going to actively manage it. We don't know anything.

54:54If you want to do this with some portion of your wealth, you could do it. Great. We do it. The market crash, the Bitcoin market crashes anyway, alongside the NASDAQ and everything else. And that immediately triggers, or that triggers industry-wide. Anybody who said anything about crypto got an examination. So, and we did the examination and it was fine. But the point is, a lot of RIAs are not equipped to withstand the scrutiny that could come along with getting this wrong or, okay, it's okay that you did crypto, but you did it the wrong way. We don't like the securities you picked. We don't like the allocation you picked.

55:35We don't like the custody solution you put in place. We don't like the compliance oversight you did in vetting the instruments. These are the things that I think a lot of, there's 18 ,000 RIAs. Most of them really don't want to go down this road if they don't have to. The price pressure is forcing them to. So I don't know what the standard thing is now. Is it buy IBIT from BlackRock and just everything else will work out? Or like, what do you see people doing now? For those who are new to this and recognize everything you just said and just want to have an exposure, check the box, call it a day.

56:10Check the box, buy one ETF and tell your clients, good news, you're in crypto. Exactly. And BlackRock's going to deal with the bullshit. And we wish you well. BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Bitwise. Wisdom Tree, Grayscale, Cathie Wood. It's simple and easy to do. They're ETFs, so they trade like ETFs. You are familiar with them. The tax reporting is simple and easy. You can rebalance very simply. It checks the box. And just do that and move on. I want to end with why you think this is so important. And the reason is extended lifespans. And I've heard you speak about this topic for, I don't know, the last 10 years or so.

56:50and you're really passionate about this idea that all of the leading causes of death, I mean, you could even throw in DUI. We got the Tesla robo-taxi over the weekend. Every major leading cause of death in America, the stats are gonna start getting materially better, especially in the AI age. We're gonna have drug discovery on steroids. We're gonna wipe out all these things that humanity has lived with for 100 ,000 years. You really believe that we're going to see that material change or we're already seeing it now. Talk a little bit about why that makes you need to take more risk and own volatile assets.

57:30Yeah, it's all because of medical innovation brought about by computer technology, nanotech, biotech, bioinformatics, fintech, contributing to all of this. Gene editing. All of it. You know, we've got CRISPR technology. We have focused ultrasound. We have the human genome. And what's coming is the human cell atlas. which will be released this year or next. What's the human cell atlas? They're mapping, you know, the human genome mapped the DNA. The human cell atlas is mapping the cells, the individual cell types. Like a billion cells. There are trillions, but there are tens of thousands of cell types.

58:03They've already found thousands in the brain, hundreds in the gut. And once we can map the cells, we can then develop treatments for them. So this is revolutionizing health care in America. Go back to the 1800s. Leading causes of death included are syphilis. typhoid, typhoid, cholera. When's the last time is somebody dying in the U.S. of cholera? Well, we're trying to bring that back. It's an RFK project. We're rooting for them. So the leading causes of death today are heart disease, respiratory illness, obesity, diabetes. And all the cancers. Cancers and Alzheimer's. We're going to be curing all of that stuff.

58:41By the time you get to 2050, leading causes of death are going to be homicide, suicide, accidents, war, pandemics. So aside from those horrors, we're going to be alive because we're not going to die accidentally or inadvertently. Self-driving cars are a great example. Self-driving cars don't drive drunk. So it's massive change of longevity. You give the example, a 60-year-old might have 50 more years to go or 40 more years to go or whatever the case may be. You're going to need a lot of upside in a portfolio if you're not working anymore. What would you say to a 20-year-old who wants to invest?

59:19They've just got an inheritance. 20 years old, they got 100 grand. What percentage of it would you tell a 20-year-old for their retirement to put in stocks? We do this, and we tell people 100 % stocks. Of course you do. That's my own portfolio, and I ain't 20. Because you've got so many decades to go. But if you're at 60 with decades to go, why wouldn't a 60-year-old also have 100 %? Right. So now you're probably past your peak earnings years or you're in them. Right. It's unlikely you'll be able to work and earn at the pace that you had been for the prior three or four decades. But the money is going to have to go a long way.

59:53And there's another element to this. When I was in my 20s, in the 1980s, bonds were at 14 percent. And they've come down to, we saw, near zero, hovering now in the low single digits, which means the great bull market of bonds my entire investing career is over. We're not going to see the kind of wonderful bull bond market over the next 30 years. Well, mathematically, you can't. Exactly. So at the same time, we're going to need more equities. Bonds are not going to deliver the returns that historically we've grown used to. All of that explains why we need a greater equity allocation for much longer.

1:00:31And technologically, you need to be invested in the technologies of the future. And crypto is one of the leading ones. So I've been an equal part crypto curious and crypto skeptic. As you know, I haven't gotten everything right. I'm in I'm allocated to crypto. I hate a lot of people that I see come along and become charlatans in the crypto space. That's a big turnoff factor for me, given my own background in retail brokerage. I know one when I see one. But then I think generationally speaking, my opinion doesn't really matter anymore. We've got 30 million people with Robinhood accounts. They look at crypto and stocks interchangeably.

1:01:13You can talk to them until the cows come home about, well, stocks have cash flows and a lot of these coins, they're just based on what the next person will buy. You can do all that speechifying and in the end, they're just unmoved by it. They do what they see their peers doing. They are not interested in hearing arguments for why it won't work. They're more interested in hearing arguments for why it will. You're on the right side of history only because even if advisors my generation and older don't agree with you, the portfolios that advisors will be managing over the next 20 or 30 years are going to come from the demographic where crypto and stocks are interchangeable and second nature.

1:01:57Right. So like this is whether people like it or not, this is just what allocations are going to end up looking like. maybe not a year from now in the wealth space, but directionally, that's where it is. Do you feel that way? Very much so. And I'll turn it into a practice management conversation. My most popular course is called How to Build Your Practice by Hating Bitcoin. It's not about liking it or even recommending it. It's about understanding that a whole lot of your clients own it and they don't know what to do with it. They don't understand crypto financial planning, crypto taxation, crypto estate planning, crypto philanthropy.

1:02:32This is a wonderful opportunity for you to be of greater value to your client. And in the course of that, you'll gain more assets under management. You'll gain more referrals. You'll build your business by serving your client. It has nothing to do with liking it or recommending it. It's recognizing it's a part of the marketplace and you can't ignore it anymore. Clients are going to come to you with commercial real estate. You may not be bullish on commercial real estate. It's not the point. Right. I totally agree with you. All right. Rick, this has been amazing. Is there anything that hasn't been said that you wanted to get out?

1:02:59Well, I encourage folks to download the white paper. Tell us where to do that. You can do it at DACFP.com, D-A-C-F-P.com. It's free. And take a look at our CBDA program. This is where you get certified in blockchain and digital assets, an online 18 CE credit course with a world-class faculty. So you can really learn what all this is about. The legendary Rick Edelman, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll be sure to point people toward those information sources. We really appreciate you and all of your insights today. Thank you. It's a pleasure, Josh. Thank you. All right.

1:03:31That's it from us. like and subscribe talk to you soon

1:03:54all right 5 p.m. Eastern we are here with another all new edition of What Are Your Thoughts? I'm here with my co-host, as always, Michael Batnick. Michael, say hello. I will. Hey, we got a chat. The chat is blowing up right now. It looks like it's Nicole Appreciation Day in the chat. Everybody's saying hi to Nicole. Yeah, we haven't been live in a couple of weeks, and that's been my fault. I've been traveling. I was in Chicago. I was in Florida. Let's say hello to some people. Dr. Horton is back. Welcome back, doctor. Missy Ledger is here. Akbar Muhammad, what up? David, Georgie D, Evan Beauchamp, nice to see you.

1:04:38He says, Nicole Fandom is at all-time highs. You bet it is. You bet. Let's see. Scott A says, Josh nailed the straight of Hormuz talking point. Damn right I did. Let's see. Alex Matthias is here. Mike Russo is selling tiny bits of NVIDIA. Don't know what to buy. LOL. That's everybody's problem. Where did NVIDIA go out today? 147? Not mine. I know what to buy. I'll tell you later. All right. All right. Yeah, we'll do some - Tick around. We'll grind some tickers for sure. All right, guys, thank you so much for coming to the live. We really appreciate it. We miss you when we're not here. And thanks for bearing with me.

1:05:18But we are here tonight and we've got a sponsor. Michael's going to tell you a little bit about them. The sponsor is Public and you could do anything on Public. You could - I'm not going to say what I was about to say. That's inappropriate. But you can do whatever you want in terms of investing. Within reason. Within reason. You want bonds? Boom. Stocks? Boom. Crypto? Boom. Cash? Double boom. And let me triple boom the cash, Josh. You know what happened today? Jerome Powell said if it weren't for fears of higher prices in the consumer basket later on in the year as a result of tariffs, he would be lowering rates.

1:05:52But he's not. Which benefits us. Yeah. I'm not going to lie. I still got some money in cash. So I'm getting yields. and at public, you can collect 4.1%. My opinion, that's still fairly juicy. So check out public.com. Get it while it lasts, right? Slash what are your thoughts? Get it while it lasts because it won't be here forever. All right. That's public.com slash W-A-Y-T as in what are your thoughts? Thank you so much, public. I thought this was a fascinating story that I wanted to start with. Novo Nordisk, which is the maker of Ozempic. Excuse me. WeGovie. Endo-Zempic? No, that's Eli Lilly.

1:06:32Eli Lilly is Manjaro. This is way outside my comfort zone. So I thought Eli Lilly was - It's all the same shit. The maker of the weight loss shots and the diabetes treatment. Anyway, so there's this really big thing that's been going on all over the country, probably all over the world, which is there was a shortage. So the FDA formally placed this compound, semaglutide into what's called the shortage, which gives permission to compounding pharmacies to make their own knockoff version of a FDA approved drug and sell it. And you have a prescription. It's the same as normal prescription, LOL. But these compound pharmacies have been making a ton of money so long as that drug was in shortage.

1:07:24Now it's not in shortage, meaning there's plenty of supply. There's no emergency. You can get it. You can get terzepatide, which is the basis for a lot of the other popular weight loss drugs. But here's what's happened in the last three years since this, or let's say two years since this weight loss shot craze has taken off. The distribution has become not just doctors calling in prescriptions to CVS, but like an online phenomenon. And you've got companies like Rowe and Hims and Hers, which became one of the wildest stocks in the stock market over the last year or so. It's a meme stock. I classify it as a meme stock because it's heavily owned by retail and it's got like 35 % short interest.

1:08:10What does Hims and Hers even do? It's online what? Yeah, you know what's funny? You know what's funny? During the pandemic, I had the CEO on my podcast, Andrew Dunham, So HIMSS was doing like hair loss treatments, but you're too embarrassed to go to a doctor. You can get an online consultation in like 30 seconds and they'll prescribe the drug and they'll mail it to your house. Erectile dysfunction is another big one. People don't necessarily want to go talk face to face with another dude, right? Yeah. Or God forbid you have a female doctor. You have to have that conversation. So that's been a huge bull market for online pharmacy.

1:08:46And then, you know, compound pharmacy is like a really big thing. Professional baseball team. They have 40 players. Each player needs specific formulations of different things with vitamins and all kinds of whatever. And compound pharmacies would supply. So that's like an example. So it's a great business to be in. And it really took off like a rocket ship when these weight loss drugs all went into shortage. They were like, oh, we'll just make you. How many do you need? So that was then. Now what's happened is the drug has come out of shortage. But these companies like hims and hers, they're not stopping.

1:09:28They're not like, oh, all right, I guess we'll just fold up the tent. So they are continuing to advertise and market all over the place, bring in new customers, make their own formulated version, and sell it. And now there's friction. So why did the stock get killed so badly when Novo pulled out? So a few weeks back, Novo Nordisk announced a partnership with HIMSS because Novo Nordisk is in the fight of its life with Lilly. Profit margins for these drugs are coming down. Demand is obviously still high, but there's like 10 of them now on the market. So they cut a deal because HIMSS has the distribution.

1:10:08They have millions of customers. So they cut a deal with HIMSS where it's like, all right, sell our drug. And did that pump the stock and now it's taking it back? Is that what happened? Okay. So HIMSS and Novo Nordisk agreed to work on authentic WeGoV sales. Okay? Does the customer care? Customer would literally inject bleach into them. They have no idea. Right. This isn't about that. This is about like, this is about like branded, patented pharmaceuticals being knocked off at incredible dollar amounts. Okay. So what's the biggest takeaway for you? Well, here's what just happened. So they announced this partnership.

1:10:53And then yesterday, I've never seen this before. Novo Nordisk puts out a press release. Here's the headline. Novo Nordisk terminates collaboration with hims and hers due to concerns about their illegal mass compounding and deceptive marketing. This was their partner. I'm telling you I've never seen this before. Here's the TLDR. They had a partnership for one month, Michael. Collaboration over one month has ended based on hims and hers deceptive promotion and selling of illegitimate knockoff versions. This is press release language of WeGovie that put patient safety at risk. Norvo Nordisk will not stop taking action to protect Americans from the dangers of illicit foreign active pharmaceutical ingredients in knockoff drugs.

1:11:47So here's what it sounds like. It sounds like they struck this partnership. Hims and hers said, OK, cool. We'll sell your shit, but we're also still going to make our own and sell that too. and that was not what they agreed to in principle. What hims and hers has said in response to this is, actually, here's what's going on. We make a cheaper version that should be available to the public and Novo Nordisk is leaning on us and forcing us to sell their version, which is the more expensive. So I know this will go to litigation. I also know that this is the kind of thing that'll get the attention of the FDA.

1:12:27I mean, who knows today's FDA? They seem to be busy trying to reintroduce measles into the population, but this is going to get regulator attention. This is not going to stop with, oh, we're not going to be partners anymore. This is inflammatory, this press release that they put out. It was like a bomb drop. So do we have a chart of, I don't even know if I asked for a chart. Yeah, I don't see one. HIMSS crashed yesterday 35%. So this is like, I should have asked for this so we could show people. But again, this is a widely held retail stock, which is why it's interesting and why it matters. It went up 2 % today, so tiny bounce.

1:13:09But the day before, just absolutely pancaked. The stock has now fallen from a high of recent high of 65 back down to 42. In as recently as April, it was 25. So there could be some more air to come out of this before this is over. It's back down to a$9 billion market cap. What are your thoughts? I mean, I don't follow this stock, but it does, by the looks of it, it does appear to be a meme stock. I mean, I don't have any other thoughts. I thought you laid it out pretty well. Do you have any big thoughts? What's a big takeaway for you here as an investor? I always think about whenever I'm going to make an investment, the thing that stops me from investing, and it's not always right, I hate investing in things, companies that become overly reliant on another company.

1:13:59Because like in my mind, it's only a matter of time before somebody pulls the rug. Somebody says, look at this company. They live off of us. They have 40 % profit margins. Why are we allowing this? Like that, I watch this play out in our industry and finance all the time. So I always feel like it's not sustainable. Now, in this case, here we go. Thank you, guys. Well done. John, well done. So this is the short. So in this case, it wasn't gradual like Novo Nordisk, like gradually pushing this company out of the way that it had, you know, that it was going to be, it was one month. And again, the announcement was like throwing a grenade into the stock.

1:14:45Can you think of any other examples like this that happened in the past, recent or otherwise? No. I mean, this is like – this is the nightmare scenario though because this company effectively like doubled its market cap or more. Probably on rumors that there was going to be a partnership and then there was a partnership. And people are like, oh, cool. That's one big risk taking off the table. I was always worried that the FDA would crack down on the compounders. But now I'm not worried about it because they have a partnership with WeGovie. Like that would have been the way my mind works. Like, all right, that's a huge risk taken off the table.

1:15:21Turns out not so much. Here's another quick quote. Over one month into the collaboration, HIMSS and HER – so they – this is not the only telehealth company they partnered with. Okay? So they need to partner with telehealth because this is where the marketplace is going. This is where the consumer wants to be. the HIMSS customer wants to buy on HIMSS, doesn't all of a sudden want to be sent to a doctor's office. So they said, failed to adhere to the law, which prohibits mass sales of compounded drugs under the false guise of, quote, personalization, and are disseminating deceptive marketing that put patient safety at risk.

1:16:01So they'll have to substantiate all that, I assume in a civil suit or something at some point. But it's just very rare that you see two public companies that have just announced a partnership have it break up this fast and this ugly. All right, so I thought it was eye-catching. Nice segue to another twosome. Let's talk about Google or Waymo and Uber. Yeah, well, Uber in this case won't be reliant on Waymo per se, but the partnership is really important to Uber. So what is the partnership between the two companies? Okay. So Waymo is far and away the leading autonomous taxi service. They have their own app.

1:16:48They get their own customers. They've gained huge market share in San Francisco since launching. That makes sense, obviously. People are tech curious. A lot of people take the ride just to take the ride. And as a result, they're already as big as Lyft is in San Francisco, standalone. alone. Uber is not partnering with them in San Francisco as of right now. So launching there, Waymo has proven that they can be in effect in a city. And it's gone really well for Waymo. They've raised a ton of money this year from investors. Alphabet is only one investor. The partnership with Uber is about the fact that Uber actually has infrastructure and logistics all over the country.

1:17:30Think about it. These cars have to be maintained. Like things happen, things break. They get into accidents or wear and tear. They get dirty. Imagine 500 human bodies getting into these cars, eating ice cream cones. They have to go to a depot at night and be charged. There's a whole subset of things that have to happen, even with autonomous taxi where there's no driver. because with a regular Uber or a regular limo or taxi driver, the human driver is the person who owns the car and they clean it. They maintain it. They're responsible. Who's responsible for this? Does Alphabet want to get into that business?

1:18:12Does Waymo want to get into that business? Do they want to do fleet management? Probably not. Have you seen anything on the economics of what that partnership looked like? Has there been any reports written? I'd be curious. No, there's nothing public about it. But here's the premise. Uber has 18 partnerships with different autonomous vehicle companies, including the most recent one at sign, which is Volvo. And Volvo, just so you understand, is the second largest automaker by market cap on the planet or by sales, one or the other. So they have 18 of these things. They have WeRide. They have Waze, which is backed by NVIDIA.

1:18:48They have Waymo. Everyone but Tesla is partnered with Uber because what Uber brings to the table in addition to expertise on fleet management is Uber brings users. If you make the investment to put autonomous cars out into a given city, it's a huge expenditure. It's a huge technological lift. It's a huge physical investment that you're making. you need rides right away to justify the expense of that uber can legitimately drive a million rides to you immediately um you'll have to share you'll have to share the revenue um from uber's perspective it's found money and there's no human so there's no take rate from a person who needs to be paid but there's costs involved instead of running the infrastructure obviously like i wonder well they have it the infrastructure exists so the first city that waymo and uber partnered it by the way, we're talking about this because Uber made a almost, I think almost a record high today.

1:19:48It had a huge day. It was the number one performing stock in the S &P 500, took out 90 to the upside. And you know my opinion already. So the reason why this is important is Waymo is trialing a partnership with Uber in two cities. The first is Austin, the set which is already underway. If you hail an Uber in Austin, it'll give you your options for comfort, for black, or for electric. And you'll see it'll say autonomous. And you could decline it or you could say, yeah, f*** it, I'll do it. Okay? Already happening. Atlanta launched today. I don't think the timing was coincidental given that Tesla's robo-taxi launched over the weekend, which we'll talk about in a second.

1:20:37If it turns out that Waymo likes this business model where it's partnered with Uber in Atlanta and Austin, it paves the way for the potential for more cities. And the big prize is New York. Uber has made substantial political and infrastructural inroads in Manhattan, in Brooklyn, in Queens, in the Bronx. In order to do autonomous driving in these places, you're going to need an ally that knows these places. And frankly, Waymo just doesn't. So that's the big prize. And if Uber and Waymo can launch in New York, it won't be long before they have the whole thing on smash. So that's what as a shareholder in Uber, that's what I'm excited about.

1:21:21There are 100 Waymo vehicles on the Uber platform in Austin. Dozens are about to launch in Atlanta. It's very, very early. The Waymo autonomous vehicles on the Uber app are going to have the run of about 65 miles in and around Atlanta. So it's a geofence. You can't just get in the car and say, take me to Alaska. So do you think the pop in Tesla today, I'm sorry, in Uber today, was the result of the rollout, the excitement on the rollout or the flop for Tesla or both? I think it's the excitement of the Atlanta rollout. And I think I don't. So I don't know if Tesla is a flop. I think Tesla is sort of an incomplete situation.

1:22:05It's just the start. I assume whatever the problems were that people were snarking about, they don't sound insurmountable. The car went into the wrong lane and then corrected itself. The car did 39 miles an hour in a 35. Like these don't seem like, oh, no, the robo taxi is dead. what's notable about the robo taxi launch to me and i'm not long tesla is that they only had 10 cars and by law because they're not level five or whatever they had to have human drivers or elon thought the responsible thing to do was to keep a human driver so that there was no pr nightmare whatever it is so so there's that it's like not that impressive especially compared to where waymo is, but also the people who took the rides were selected in advance and they were all Tesla influencers.

1:23:03It was Dan Ives. He took two 15 minute rides around Austin. Like, what do you think he's going to say? He has a$500 target on Tesla. He's going to get in the car and say, this is nothing special. I know he's been in the Waymo. So it's him. It's like a guy that's like a Twitter Tesla fanatic. You know, it's like people like that. So they kind of seeded the population of first riders with friendlies. And again, there's only 10 cars. So maybe that helped Uber a little bit because people said, oh, okay, no big deal. I wouldn't count RoboTaxi out. Elon does not give up. I just think it doesn't mean for Uber what the bearers thought it meant.

1:23:45So I think a lot of this is the overhang on sentiment and price because I almost, I was fairly close to selling Uber last week. I thought to myself, price action was not good. If it broke 82, like convincingly, I would have sold because I'm thinking to myself, I did great in the stock. I'm up 30 % in a couple of months. I don't want to be in a battleground stock. Like I just, I don't need that. Not trying to get married to this. And I think that a lot of that sentiment that I and others were feeling, I think it got lifted today. Not I think, it was up 8 % today. All right. So here's the thing that you don't know that I do.

1:24:19This is going to be a network and software business. The cars will have no value. The cars will have - No, here's a thing that Jim Chanos told you that you keep repeating. What? What are you about to say? But he's not - No, don't act like you're a genius. I'm the idiot and you're the genius. You stole this from Jim Chanos. No, no. No, no, I've said this for three years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do not think, I do not think autonomous driving, the profits are going to accrue to the company that bends the metal and makes the car. Dude, I listened to Jim on OddLots too. I heard it too. So, well, this is my opinion for three years.

1:24:57This has been a threat for two years since Elon Musk has been saying RoboTaxi is going to be a trillion dollar business. Great. And here's the most important thing. And maybe this is why the stock ripped today. Autonomous is great for Uber. Their highest expense is managing millions and millions of drivers. Some people drive all day long. Some people choose to drive once a month. Some are professionals. Some are stay-at-home dads who are just picking up some extra income. It is an enormous human capital management responsibility. And it's where most of the expense is. The expense is not managing the app.

1:25:43It's built already. hiring engineers to run the app. That's not the most costly part. The take rate on these rides, the amount that they have to give to the human driver, the degree to which you can reduce that because the entire world population becomes accustomed to autonomous cars picking them up is hugely bullish for Uber. How far away do you think that is? Because that's not happening tomorrow. It's gradual. It's not overnight. Nothing's overnight. Right. But honestly, it's it's inevitable. Number one, it's inevitable. Number two, there'll probably be a two or three decade period of time where human drivers coexist with with autonomous vehicles.

1:26:25Yeah. So this is not just about the rider becoming accustomed to this police safety, safety officials in all these cities, municipalities, municipalities. Everyone's got to get comfortable with this. Let me ask you this. Drivers on the road who look next to them. And it's like a ghost driving the car. We're not, it's not overnight. It took a long time. In Tesla's quarterly report, all of them, they show how long it took for global penetration of electric vehicles to hit 10%. And it took a while. Do you think this, do you think the arc of this happens quicker or about the same as that took? I'm so glad you asked that question.

1:27:05What's great about that question is think about what's happening now with EVs. the trend is not pure EVs anymore. It's hybrid. People want the safety of knowing there's a gas tank there with the optionality of running it on electric. They don't need to save all the money. They'll save some money. That's what's selling right now. Hybrids is that we went from everyone's going to go all electric to, oh, wait a minute, actually, in a Midwestern winter, that's not the best thing. Can a human take the wheel of the Waymo if they need to? on the Waymo? I think so because it's just a Jaguar with a ton of cameras and sensors on it.

1:27:45I think it's still a standard car. I could be wrong. I think Tesla's approach is smart because that's just a regular Tesla with sensors on it, cameras. It doesn't use LiDAR, which is the big controversy. The technological specifics are uninteresting to me. I don't care. but what's smart about the Tesla approach is you could buy a Tesla Model Y and when you're at work and it's just sitting in the parking lot, you could flip on a switch on the app and toggle to active and it could become a taxi. Wow. Now, I'm not interested in that. I don't do Airbnb. No one's getting in my car. I don't even get in – like there's just no way.

1:28:31But there's millions of people who would love to turn their car into an income generating vehicle. That will be less interesting in a place like New York, New Jersey with high population density because there's no shortage of rides. But in a place where there's not that many people willing to pick you up and there are just cars that are sitting idle, turning a Tesla into an autonomous taxi is a pretty cool idea. Last question. I know we're 25 minutes on topic one already, but, and not to sound like a New York asshole, but traffic, pedestrian traffic in New York City is out of control. I think that, I don't know if the city can handle, at least today, autonomous vehicles.

1:29:12Do you? New York and Los Angeles are the prize. They're also going to be the hardest. So over under five years. Los Angeles, because of the traffic that already exists now, and also rioters in the street who like to attack robots. New York, because it's already f***ing undrivable. It's maybe the least drivable city in North America. Yeah, I don't think it's happening anytime soon, not knowing anything, but I would say like 10 years, maybe longer, who knows? So in a place like New York, you'll probably see it in the suburbs. You'll probably see it in Westchester. You'll probably see it in New Jersey before.

1:29:49Yeah, yeah, fine. And they have to geofence these things. So if you put a destination into the app, that's beyond what the car is capable of, it'll stop itself because a lot of people, this is the early days of Uber. Travis Kalanick just did whatever he wanted. All right. He just showed up places. I'm pulling the record. Let's stop. I don't think they could do that with this. Too much. All right. All right. Listen, it's an exciting time for autonomous vehicles, but it's not an overnight thing. Okay. All right. You know how Ben and I like to poke fun at media outlets for plucking random quotes from investors.

1:30:27Well, I think - That's your favorite. That I read an article last week in the journal and I found myself nodding my head for what these people were saying. And I think it also helps to explain the rally that we're seeing in tech stocks. So the Q's hit an all-time high today. I think in large part because people dumped them and now they're chasing them back higher. Okay, so Patricia Andrews, for example, Josh, let me tell you. Where is this article from? The Wall Street Journal. Let me tell you what Patricia Andrews did. She plugged tens of thousands of dollars into two tech-focused mutual funds during April's market turmoil.

1:31:02Now that those shares have rebounded, she's unloading most of them. She said, I feel like they're probably running out of steam, said the 60-year-old entrepreneur based in California. She plans to invest the profits in different pair of funds, focus on international companies. And she said, knowing that it's still a really volatile market, it just makes me say I've had enough of these. So credit to Patricia. She scooped them up. I've made enough on these. That's an important distinction. Okay. Tom Griffin, after scooping up shares of Tesla and NVIDIA during the sell-off, he pivoted to UnitedHealth and Wells Fargo.

1:31:32So Josh, you always say the money goes somewhere. Well, here it is. Let me give you one more example. Texas-based cattle rancher, Tom Griffin, again, he's 42 years old. Listen to how savvy he is. He said he isn't so much turning away from tech as he is searching for shares of large, reliable companies at a decent price. So Tom says, and I quote, when the whole market dips, that's when you buy the important huge companies. And he nailed it. So chart on, please. Good strategy. Yeah. I like that. Yeah, like no snark, no irony, like real talk. So retail flows. This is from Vanda Research via the Wall Street Journal.

1:32:09Retail flows into big tech stocks as a percentage of total flows. And you could see that as the market dipped in March and April, they went hog wild. And on the V-shaped recovery, they dumped him. So we spoke about this, Ben and I did last week. A net$7.1 billion has flowed into tech-focused ETFs in 2025. But funds that attempt to buy stocks at a discount, so let's say value stocks, saw an inflow of roughly$25 billion, while international ETFs logged in that inflow of 70 billion. So 7 billion into tech stocks, ETFs, 70 billion into international ETFs. People have been dumping tech stocks aggressively, which I think again, explains a lot of the rally.

1:32:57They dumped them and now they're probably piling back in. So, so they sold them like in late May, early June, because the rally was huge. Exactly. Pivoted to something else. And now they're like, oh, like, oh my God, Meta's running away again. Yep. Microsoft all-time high. I have a different take. Go ahead. I think we were told by Steve Quirk on The Compound and Friends that in a bull market, people buy individual stocks. And when the market is volatile and dropping, they buy ETFs. Oh, that's right. They buy indexes. Okay. That's what this seems like to me. They're telling you, what's this woman's name in Cedarville, California?

1:33:42Patricia Andrews. Put some respect on her name. Patricia Andrews plugged tens of thousands of dollars into two tech-focused mutual funds during April's market turmoil. Right on brand. That's exactly what we were told about, how retail tends to behave. Now, those mutual funds have rebounded. A month later, she sells that. And she's saying those have run out of steam and she's looking for international companies. So she's getting like – she's going further afield. And the other guy is doing Wells Fargo United Health. I don't – I feel like – I don't know if I could make the case that this is because everyone is all of a sudden bearish on large-cap tech.

1:34:28I can. Or buying a bad case. No, no. I don't know. No, they are. They are. So a couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet. Somebody cited Vandertrack saying that retail bought an institutional bail. Maybe I have that backwards. And one of them is going to need to chase these stocks higher. That's exactly what happened. But also Schwab's Stacks report, which shows individual investor behavior in Schwab. NVIDIA was by far, by far the biggest seller for like four or seven weeks in a row. So individual investors were actually, actually dumping these individual names. And now they're chasing them. So, all right, a couple of things.

1:35:03The good news is if you're a retail investor, this is a really big advantage you have over professionals. and you don't have that many, you don't have to do anything. Nobody is grading your performance. Nobody is calling you and asking you, why didn't you buy back NVIDIA? That's all well and good, but that's kind of a talking point. So you don't have to do it. Yeah, yes, you do. Because you grade yourselves hard, sure. Well, no, you might be compelled to do it. Exactly. But you don't have a career risk in not doing it. You could just say, all right, I sold NVIDIA at 136. Now it's 146. I fucked up.

1:35:40I'm not going to make it worse by chasing something. And then it falls back to 136. You're allowed to do that. And nobody will notice. Literally nobody will notice. You're the only person that will notice. I have noticed that the news flow around the giant tech stocks, the Mag 7 mostly, has gotten pretty bearish. With the exception of Nvidia. yeah um apple is obvious we don't have to belabor that we've done that already and that stock's hovering around 200 is not rallying with the rest of the tech tech market at all um they were saying this week that apple needs to buy perplexity just to catch up to where microsoft are um and of course their chinese competitors i think that would be a weird that would weirdly be a sign of desperation I think.

1:36:33I think Apple would go up 20 points. I have the opposite take as you. I'm not saying that the stock wouldn't rally. People are dying to be invested in perplexity. It's in the private market. You can't. If Apple bought it, I think the stock would go 220 in two seconds. It's my opinion. People would get really pumped, especially if they're like, what's the guy's name? Arvind? Brilliant, this guy. If they're like, he's the new head of Apple AI, Johnny Ive, kiss my ass. the stock will go nuts. It's my opinion. They never do stuff like that. So it's not going to happen. The last major acquisition Apple made was headphones from Dr.

1:37:11Dre. It's not an acquisitive company. They never do acquisition or they do tokens that you've never heard of. They do not buy big tech brands that people know. I don't know why. And I'm not saying they should or they shouldn't because what the hell do I know? I'm just telling you, they don't do that. So if they do do that, I think the stock will get, people will get excited. Because it's like, holy shit. Did you see what Apple just did? I'm telling you. Think about your, like a sports team. They announced a huge deal. We got Kevin Durant. He's probably not even going to be that great. It doesn't matter.

1:37:50Yeah, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that the stock won't pop. I think you're 100 % right. I'm just saying that I don't know if that would be ultimately like, what are they doing? This is not what they do. Well, let me tell you something. It's like the game of risk. And the map is mostly colonized. And OpenAI owns a whole hell of a lot of real estate on the consumer-facing AI side. Like almost most of it, I would say at this point. You got a couple of other continents on the map where there's some room to do something. And perplexity is one of the last ones left. You need to find a dance partner.

1:38:23If you're not going to build it in-house, that's one. Two, this ain't going to help them in China. China is not allowing perplexity into phones in their country. So if you want to do AI in China, you got to partner with DeepSeek or figure something else out that's homegrown and Chinese native. And that's a whole other can of worms. The news flow is bearish on Apple and Google, I would say. SEO. Dude, you see all the media and journalism layoffs? Yeah, Google is killing them. it's it's google is pivoting everything to gemini results uh-huh which is obviating the need for anyone yeah it's it's they're not sending people to business insider anymore it's really bad they're not sending they're not sending anybody to a lot of publications and it's also not necessarily helping the share price of alphabet because there was a lot of money in sending people to links derek thompson started a substack today he's he's something i mean he's a smart guy obviously saw the writing on the wall.

1:39:25He was at Atlantic. And I think they got a quote. Whoever wrote an article about his Times Journal got a quote from the editor-in-chief or the CEO of the Atlantic. Like, yeah, this is hard. It's not coming back. All right. This is Inc. Magazine. Just at the end of May. Just so people understand.

1:39:47That doesn't matter. The point is, if your business model was built on SEO, that The business model may not be functional for much longer because of the amount of searches that are not making it as far as the blue links. And Google, to survive, has to do this Gemini thing. It has to work. So that whole thing is going on. That's a really big market cap stock. Meta, did you read the article this week about Mark Zuckerberg is personally hopping on calls and sending emails to AI people? at other companies to try to recruit them away. I saw Ben Thompson talking about that. So this was in the journal.

1:40:30And he's like sending people emails direct and they're like, this is fake. But it's him. And the dollar amounts that Meta is offering people to leave open AI, for example, they're huge numbers, like tens of millions of dollars. And Sam Altman says, people aren't leaving. They're staying with us. All right, for now, if Meta gets more desperate, we don't know. So apparently, they have a WhatsApp chat called Recruiting Party. And they're legitimately trying to poach AI talent because they're falling behind. And their initial approach of, here, Lama is open source. Anyone could do whatever they want with it.

1:41:15They make this deal for Scale AI. it's a company that was founded 15 minutes ago they value it at 28 billion dollars they give the they give the founder 15 billion dollars for half the company give them a job so that's alphabet if alphabet's looking at that like they might have they might have to think think something up quickly the difference between nowhere and the other two stocks that we mentioned is meta is much closer to an all-time high yes it'll be there in a week i i think i would rather be meta than alphabet right now not forever just right at this moment i think i just uh i would rather have metta's core business is not under under assault well meta already does makes a ton of money utilizing ai for advertising they've been for they've been doing machine learning since the company was founded i'd rather be met i'd rather have metta's problems than alphabet's problems Let's talk about Circle.

1:42:11So here's a question. Put the chart up. This is one of the largest IPOs ever. And it's one of the biggest IPO winners we've ever seen for, I don't know what it did today. Did it go up? It was down 15%, but whatever. All right. No big deal. Effectively, the IPO price was 31 and it went to almost 300 in like three weeks. According to Renaissance Capital, Circle's 168 % first day IPO pop was the biggest IPO pop for a billion dollar plus US IPO on record. It's a record breaking IPO. I think this is from Sean. Over 30 years, there have been roughly $200 billion US IPOs. The average first day return is 16%.

1:42:59Only five have risen at least 100%. This one I told you did 170. So everybody wants in. Everybody wants whatever is the next circle. So I thought it'd be fun to put some candidates up in front of you. These are the crypto infrastructure companies that people seem to be the most. You have some circle stuff before we get to the names. Yeah, let's do this real quick. So I think that the fundamentals and the valuation of circle don't make any sense for long-term investors. I also think that it doesn't really matter because nobody's trading on discounted cash flows right now. This is a firm statement that there is massive investment demand for stablecoin and the like, okay?

1:43:44Like, period. That being said, it is just kind of wild. Tom Dunleavy tweeted this, that USDC revenue sharing, Circle and Coinbase. So Coinbase makes more money from Circle than Circle does. And yet Circle's market cap is like not quite closing in. But John Ma tweeted, Circle is now a$74 billion enterprise value. Oh, actually, it is closing in. Okay. Circle is more valuable than Robinhood, NewBank, Block, and just$4 billion shy of Coinbase. And again, Coinbase makes more money from Circle than Circle does. So Circle trades at 32 times revenue, 80 times gross profit, 152 times EBITDA, and 285 times earnings.

1:44:27So to which I would say, like people could scoff and say like, how dumb is this? And sure it is dumb, but the investor demand it's there and it's real, obviously. Well, I think, you know, I was talking to Rick Edelman on the compound, live from the compound yesterday, which guys, if you haven't watched that yet, it was, it was pretty incredible conversation, at least for me and how much I learned from Rick, but he was just, he was talking about allocation to crypto and what he is now formally recommending to people. And he's saying anywhere from 10 to 40%, but included in those allocations are the publicly traded equities of crypto infrastructure companies like Coinbase and like Circle.

1:45:12So he's like bullish on stable coins, not because stable coins themselves are going to rise in value. He's bullish on the relatively few issuers of stable coins, because if they can get share and hold it, it's a really great business to be in. It's like riskless printing of money, at least with where interest rates are today. So there's a little bit of a chase. If you're an asset manager, but you're limited to the stock market, you don't want to buy another 1 % of Coinbase. Here, all of a sudden, there's an alternative. Oh, we own Coinbase and we own circle. So there's a little bit of that going on, I think, and some people front running that.

1:45:55And that probably is part of the appeal. It's there's scarcity. Now, if you get 20 crypto infrastructure companies that are publicly traded and the aperture widens and it's Robinhood and it's Coinbase and it's and not the low quality miners, but you get like real infrastructure plays, that sort of that sort of maybe takes some of the multiple. Yeah, I'm sure. But yeah, Yeah, you're right, because it is a scarcity of equity that's on the publicly traded markets. But Circle is so far ahead of whoever would be number three in this space. And I don't even know that you can say Tether's number one.

1:46:29Okay, but this is important. Tether's$150 billion, Circle's$65 billion. Let's say both numbers go up. Or let's say Circle goes up faster than Tether now that they have a public. Yeah, but if Tether's public, it's not getting these multiples. No chance. No chance. Because people don't trust it. What if in their S1 filing, it's a breakdown of their assets? Does that change things for you? maybe. USDT is sort of foundational for global crypto. Like it's - I think a lot of asset managers, like I'm making, I didn't want to make up a name, but these legacy incumbent asset managers are not going to want to own that, I don't think.

1:47:05All right. Here are some crypto companies that have IPO filings in the queue already. No, hold this, hold off on this. You'll be delighted to know that the day after Circle went public, the Winklevoss twins filed their S1. Good, excellent choice. It's a huge opportunity. And you got to act now. So Gemini, not Google's Gemini AI, but Gemini, the crypto, is it a brokerage or an exchange? Okay. So they are, they're considered to be the gold standard in terms of compliance. That was always their thing. Like from 10 years ago, they said like, We're going to be the exchange that conforms to all the banking rules.

1:47:52And they did it. So that's an S1 that's out there that people can read. There's something called Bullish, which you probably know about. I don't. Peter Thiel backed this exchange called Bullish. And there's some pretty serious traditional markets people behind this. They have filed confidentially with the SEC. so we have not seen it yet um what they're saying their businesses or the risk factors and then there's something called falcon x which is a crypto focused prime brokerage its last round it looks like it was valued at 8 billion in 2022 i would imagine that's higher how much it's uh 8 billion i bet you i bet you it's not higher i bet you it's half that if I had to guess.

1:48:39With Bitcoin doubling from 2022, you think a prime brokerage aimed at hedge funds trading crypto is a lower valuation? I do. I'm not a table-pounding bet, but I would think so. 2022 is wild, dude. Valuations got really stupid. So supposedly, they're going to go public on the New York Stock Exchange this year. And then, all right, now you could pop that. We could just run through these other names quickly. People have heard of Kraken. They're talking about an IPO late 2025, early 26. Tron is already in the process of going public via a reverse merger on the NASDAQ, pure class. BitThumb, this is Korean.

1:49:22BitCub, Thailand. BitGo, which is a Custody Provider, ConsenSys, which is Ethereum infrastructure, Ledger, which people know is the wallet company, and they are talking about a Euronext slash US listing, Fireblocks, Chain Analysis, which is an analytics firm. People say that it's IPO ready. It's, I guess, like a morning star for crypto. Figure, which is lending. The regulators don't like that. and Animoca Brands, which is Web3 Gaming and Anchorage Digital, which is institutional custody. So look, if you're looking for what might be the next circle, none of these seem to be as big. Like I don't think they're as big a circle, like revenue-wise, it could be wrong.

1:50:13But some of these are going to get through because there's just obviously way too much demand. And special surprise, we're going to have Aaron Dillon on the show next week to get into some of the more likely candidates. I'm not buying any of these. Well. But I don't really buy IPOs anyway, so. Maybe Aaron will convince you otherwise. We'll do that next week. All right. So there have been a couple of articles written last week. Andy Jassy wrote a thousand words, clearing his throat, basically saying, like, we're using a ton of AI in our thing. I know, by the way, there's going to be less jobs. Like, it was a lot of vendors to be less jobs.

1:50:51So I want to share some charts with you that I felt were face blowers. And I want to get your reaction. Try not, please, John. It's been a while since I've had my face blown. Okay, well, prepare to be melted. So on YCharts, they have this nifty little feature that shows CapEx to revenue. And not surprisingly, Amazon went all the way up in its infancy, right? They were spending all their money basically on CapEx. And then the bubble burst, and they got more responsible. But it was grinding higher over time. And then it hit a major inflection point in 2020. And it's kind of unbelievable that they're now spending this much money relative to the revenue.

1:51:31Would you agree? Totally. I mean, it's only believable because everyone else is doing it. But yeah, it's wild. All right. So great segue to the next chart. So I also threw on Google, which is, I'm sorry, Microsoft, which is doing the same thing as Amazon. They're all in, right? They're just whatever it takes. And holy shit, Josh, look at Apple. You know the meme, hey, do something? Yeah, what is this even about? They're just not investing. For the people listening, the CapEx to revenue line for Amazon and Microsoft is straight up and to the right, like vertical at this point because… Microsoft to all-time highs.

1:52:07They've never invested this way before. Yeah, right. So they recognize that getting AI right is like basically the land grab for the next 20 years. If you don't get this right, you probably never have enough. If all these predictions come true about the impact of AI and you don't invest now, you're like out of the race is the mentality. And I'm not anyone to say yes or no. But look at Apple, dude. But Apple is like, now we're good. I don't know. It peaked 15 years ago. Yeah. With the iPhone, I guess. I mean, is this the kind of thing? So is this the kind of thing where one day Tim Cook calls everybody to the headquarters for like one of those Apple events and just like rips his shirt off?

1:52:58And he's like, this is it. We're going nuts. We're going to reverse this CapEx to revenue decline. And here's what we're doing. A, B, C, D. Dude, it's time to build. When that happens, that's not bearish. That's not bearish. No, I agree. $400 billion on their balance sheet in cash? Like, put it to work. Stop buying back shares. I don't understand. I don't understand how, if you're in technology, you could, like, look at all of your competitors in this race. They're the only one. And you're, like, raising your stock by that. The only way it makes sense is if they do buy. A perplexity or the like.

1:53:37It's the only way to make it make sense. It's not enough to buy, though. You need to build the infrastructure to make it actually do something for your customers. Okay, so here's the important part. So let's move to total employees. So Amazon was up until the right for the entire 21st century. And then they overhired and they're getting fit. They're slimming down, but it flatlined. And I'm going to say this. How about this? This line has peaked. I don't think that Amazon will ever have 3 million employees. In fact, I would bet a lot of money on that. And in fact, the next chart is evidence of what I'm saying.

1:54:13I think that this is going up and to the right. So now we're looking at revenue per employee. And Amazon and a lot of other companies are using AI as an excuse and a legitimate excuse to offset the revenue cost. They're investing all of this money into infrastructure and spend and build that on whatever. Now you are going to start hearing a lot about revenue per employee. And this number is going to go higher over time. I'm sure of it. I don't even know why charts had this. Revenue per employee, which looks like it bottomed out in 2022. Yep. Just after the hiring spree from the pandemic. Also, they're going to hire different types of employees.

1:54:55So a lot of that ramp up in employees to get to 2 million employees in Amazon is fulfillment center. And those are going to be robots. And overhiring. And they paid the price for that. In 2022, a lot of these big tech companies overhired for demand that they thought was permanent and it wasn't. and the stocks got killed, not just because of that. Jay Luther in the chat is saying, I think Bezos can still afford his wedding. Are you seeing this shit? He rented out the city of Venice. Like that's his venue. Did he get married yet? The wedding is now. It's like a one week long celebration. They just had a foam party on his$500 million yacht.

1:55:33What's a foam party? Like a party with foam? But like, what does that even mean? Foam party. Like the DJ and they spray foam all over everyone's t-shirts become see-through. Nice. Never been to a foam party? I've never been. I probably never will. All right. All right. Anyway, he had one. He had one of those. Great. Let's move on. It's late. All right. Dumbflation. Okay. This is a new one. We'll do this fast. Let's put, just, you got to watch the whole video. So just bear with me. John hit it. Hello, hello, hello. It's Vegas Police. And this is Harris in Las Vegas. And this is Dunkin' Donuts. And a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich is$13.99.

1:56:13Compared to the rest of the country where it is only$4.29. Not$13.99. And it's making a big difference in travel. Las Vegas used to be based on cheap food and cheap drinks. And then people would go over to the tables and they would gamble their money. But all of this has changed because Caesars Corporation borrowed$24 billion. And now we are dealing with a nightmare out here. And Las Vegas is failing because of the gross overcharging that is going on.

1:56:51you think it's slow because a sandwich is 14 do you think maybe that's why it's slow you think anybody at caesar's has maybe thought hey sandwiches are 14 that might slow people down you know a cup of coffee and a sandwich 23 with tax 24 that might slow things down here at caesar's you know what i'm saying i think these prices might slow people down a little bit here in las vegas ripping off all the customers i think that might slow things down all right all right i'm gonna take over uh that is of course my second favorite las vegas influencer vegas paulie c you know him i think i just started following him casino comp wallet he's He's literally the man.

1:57:41My favorite Vegas influencer is Joe Fami, as you know. But Vegas policy is. I'm going to try to hang out with this guy. I have to go in October for an event. Anyway, I call that dumbflation. So people are stupid, right? Just generally. Vegas tourists are stupider than average. But there's like a limit. And when you hit that limit, I just call that dumbflation. where it's like no one's buying any of this shit at this point. It's like you get to a point where it's just so insulting and so outrageous that it just, it screws up your regular business. This is the point he was trying to make. Caesars got into so much trouble in the financial crisis, debt-wise, they're still hurting from it.

1:58:27And they're forced to resort to stuff like that where the Dunkin' Donuts in the casino - It's gross. It has to, like, that's where you need to make it. You need to make$5 on an egg and cheese to pay your – but what that does is it slows down the gaming. It slows down the foot traffic. People don't want to go places where they get treated that way. How dumb do you have to be to gouge somebody so badly in a Dunkin' Donuts that they decide not to play Blackjack Bear? So the definition for me, and I just invented this, dumbflation is when you do things that are so gross and outrageous that they jeopardize the real business that you're in.

1:59:06And this is like a pretty good example of that. So you could probably come up with examples. One last thing on this. I think McDonald's and Starbucks did the same thing. Not quite as egregious, but like people were like, all right, it's too much. Yeah, pump the brakes. John, put this page up. This is New York Magazine this week. They did an entire Hamptons issue. So all the towns, Watermill, Bridgehampton, Southampton, Easthampton, Hampton, Bays, Amagansett, Sagaponic. What's on there? What are they showing? It's so great. Like it's a great feature because they tell you who lives in each place, what the vibe is like, what the best restaurant is.

1:59:45But there's almost the entire article. And it's a whole issue on the Hamptons because, let's face it, the reader of New York magazine is in the Hamptons for the summer. The whole issue is people complaining about prices and everywhere you look is dumbflation starting with a hundred thousand dollars to rent a house for, for a month. Yeah. And then like a hundred dollar lobster rolls. I'm sorry. You can't go to Vegas. You can't go to Hamptons to complain about prices. Like just don't be poor in the Hamptons. Yeah. Stop. Just, you know, it's not for you. It's not, I would, I don't even, I do the Hamptons once a year.

2:00:20I walk around like an idiot. it i sit in a mediocre restaurant that people flip flipping out over oh my god you have to try that dumplings opinion it sucks the whole experience sucks where the dumplings anywhere anywhere even like really good new york restaurants they open an outpost in the hamptons it's terrible yeah but people they don't care they want to be seen there it's a whole thing and it's not my thing but dumflation when people in the hamptons are complaining about dumbflation, you know it's like really a phenomenon. I like it. I like it. Okay. I'm going to make the case for a company, for a stock that I bought two weeks ago.

2:01:01And I want to thank Steve Straza for putting this on my radar. It's not a stock that I followed. It's not a company that I'm particularly interested in. But the stock looked great. Before I pitch it and the company is Celsius Holdings, I just want to make the point, something that's very important. I think the most important thing that traders, not necessarily investors, although investors can't ignore this, you have to understand what type of market environment we are in. And right now, we are in the kind of we're back market. In fact, let me not say kind of. We are back because today you have the Q's hitting an all-time high.

2:01:42We spoke about Circle. We spoke a lot about CoreWeave. Chamath is doing SPACs. You have IPOs. The IPO window is wide open. Polymarket just filed. Wealthfront just filed. It's all happening. ARK. We haven't spoken about it. Kathy, in a while. The ARK. I think I have a chart on this. John, chart on, please. Look at ARK. This is how it starts. Breaking the f*** out. I don't even know what she owns anymore. I think it's still Tesla, Roku. Here's another one. Another one. From Lukawa and Sherwood. The Retail Favorites Index. This is from Goldman. So it's proprietary. I can't see exactly what's inside.

2:02:15All-time high. It's been a minute, okay? So, so, so, so, so, so, so. Chart off, please. I want to see the viewers. If you are in a name that is acting lethargic, it's not working, it's not going up when the market does, there is something wrong. Like, your stock should be working right now. And so, okay. So the case for Celsius, I guess the fundamental case, is that they are gaining share. Chart on, please. Look at this chart from Alex Morris. They are gaining share. This is the energy drink, to be clear. This is the energy drink. I'm not a consumer of it, but whatever. They are gaining share bigly from Red Bull, who's flat, from Monster, who is flat to down.

2:03:02These are the two behemoths, okay? And look at the portfolio of Celsius. Came out of nowhere, all right? So Monster growth. So I don't know exactly. In fact, I don't know at all what happened in 2024 and 2025. The stock got annihilated. Chart on. It fell 78%. Why? I don't particularly care. Honestly, I just don't care. For me, this is a technical trade. And look at the technicals. So you've got an RSI of 69, which, you know, that's very, very nice. You've got just a breakout of all breakouts. And I am in the name. And if it rolls, I will sell it. But as long as it keeps going up, I'm going to ride this baby.

2:03:41I think the nugget drinks this stuff. I got to talk to him about it. Because I don't know from energy drinks. Not from it. I like this pitch. I'm going to take this and do some homework. And if the stock works, I'm going to take credit for it. I have a mystery chart for you. And then we'll get out of here. All right. You should get this in one guess. Hold on. Let me. I'm working on half a screen. I'm not being terribly fair to you. Okay. That's fine. No. Hold on. Hold on. I'm working on half a screen. So let me big this up, okay? Let me blow this up. All right. All right. I'm gazing at it. Okay.

2:04:14All right. This should be easy, right? So for the listener, it's a one-year chart, and there are no price. There's no Y-axis with prices. Oh, I know what this is. Oh, I was going to give you more, but by all means, solve the puzzle. Okay. Well, maybe I don't. Is it crude oil? Holy shit, you're good. Look at you. Look at you. Dude, I am very good at this. You gorgeous son of a bitch. This is crude oil futures. I just thought this was like an incredible moment in you don't know shit history, which is my favorite. Like I like to learn how little I know. You know that about me. I think it's hilarious how little everyone knows.

2:04:59This is a great moment in you don't know shit history. You have Israel and Iran for the first time ever trade, literally trading full arsenals worth of missiles and bombs. You have threats of the Strait of Hormuz being closed. And the price of crude reacts to that by falling 12 % in a couple of days. And I just think that's a magnificent reminder to shut up always. And buy Uber. Well, when geopolitics are in the - Yeah, certainly. Just shut up. Do yourself a huge favor. Have your preconceived notion. I always do. And then share it with literally nobody. I always do. And I should take my own advice.

2:05:41All right. That's it for us. This has been an amazing show. I want to remind you guys we have new summer merchandise on the Compound Shop. It's idontshop.com. Thank you, guys. Oh, man. Look at what an amazing job Nicole and Daniel and everyone are doing on the designs. The Animal Spirits shirt. If you're an Animal Spirits fan, that's a no-brainer. the compound towel is all the way lit. People are loving the towel. And of course, we have the new Series 777 Las Vegas-themed shirt in two colorways. I believe that's bone and black. So check out idonshot.com. All new episode of Animal Spirits Tomorrow with Michael and Ben.

2:06:23They were together today in Chicago. Looks like that background, it looks like you're about to do improv or something. Dude, look at the soul shit. That's our office in Chicago. I mean, how beautiful is this? Sick. Wish I were there with you guys. Not really, but like sort of. And at the end of the week, it's an all new Compound and Friends, of course. Thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll talk to you soon.

2:06:50Whether you're just getting started as an investor or you're managing a multi-million dollar portfolio, Ritholtz Wealth Management has the solution for you. It all starts with building the right financial plan. To speak with a certified financial planner today, visit RitholtzWealth.com. Don't forget to check us out at YouTube.com slash the compound RWM. Make sure to leave a rating and review on your favorite podcasting app. If you love investing podcasts, check out Michael and Ben every Wednesday morning on Animal Spirits. Thanks for listening.

2:07:28Thank you.