ETF Edge - Low P/E Picks, Mixed Media & Tesla's ‘Monster Year’ Ahead 12/15/25

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

The low P/E stocks our strategist says will benefit from the rotation. It’s ‘Game of Thrones’  for the media stocks, and Wedbush’s Dan Ives says 2026 will be a ‘Monster Year’ for Tesla. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The ETF Edge podcast is sponsored by InvescoQQQ. Let's rethink possibility. Investco Distributors, Inc. Welcome to ETF Edge, the podcast. If you're looking to learn the latest insights on all things, exchange traded funds, you're in the right place. Every week we're bringing you compelling interviews, thoughtful market analysis, and breaking down what it all means for investors.

I'm your host, Dominic Chu. Barron Capital, known for its mutual funds and long-term investing philosophy, is launching a suite of actively managed ETFs today. Here's the first part of my conversation with Ron Barron and Michael Barron from Barron Capital. All right, so maybe we'll start with the news, gentlemen first, and Michael, I'll turn to you for that. Five new ETFs actively managed, but they're not typically what we think of as actively managed

in terms of maybe some of the levered funds that are out there, defined outcome. These are actively managed from a portfolio, perspective based upon your fundamental views of the portfolio companies. So why ETFs for Barron Capital? Sure. There's a lot there. Let's unpack that. In terms of why ETFs, nothing at Barron Capital is changing in terms of our investment philosophy or investment process. This is purely an extension of what we've been doing in terms of managing commingled portfolios for growth equity investors. We've become known as the preeminent growth equity manager based on our performance.

over the past 43 years. But we have a mission in terms of changing lives for our clients. And in order to do that, we need to expand beyond a singular focus on the mutual fund. We spent the past year and a half, two years really understanding ETFs, understanding if we can deliver our investment philosophy and process in that wrapper. And today I'm excited to say we feel that we can and have. Clients know us, they like us, they want to utilize us, but there were things that were missing, whether it be,

about operational efficiency, tax efficiency, transparency, and interday liquidity. And we feel that we can offer our same investment philosophy and process in this wrapper and deliver on those various factors. Now, Ron, same was the word that the key word that I kind of got there from Michael's response. These ETFs are not different than what you guys have always done with your core portfolios. Same process. Same process. So take us through why or what the investing philosophy.

the is for you guys and why it translates well into both the mutual fund and an ETF format. Michael talked about how we're trying to change people's lives. That's the mission we have. The mission is not to make as much money as we can, as fast as we can, and go do something else. We love what we do. It's almost a hobby.

I guess it is a hobby. So all the things we do are based upon being long-term investors in businesses. That's how we have chosen to change lives. And we have been successful that our record is the best of any mutual fund company in the United States. So 97, 98% of our assets beat the market. 60% are in the top 5% of funds. And Barron Partners Fund is the number one fund

in the United States since 2003. And so the reason. The reason for that is that we made $57 billion in profits so far, and I think that over the next, starting with $100 million in 1992, and we're hoping that we can make five times that over the next 10 years. So, again, if you take a look at the track record, it's one of the reasons why people are attracted to the barren capital type products. Ron, I guess maybe the follow-up to that is, do you feel as though? the investment philosophy that you've evolved over the course of the last few decades still maintains that same kind of momentum power in terms of investing for the future. And how exactly have you evolved your investing philosophy over the years

to identify the star companies of then, and then more recently some of the star companies like Tesla and SpaceX these days? Well, we're investing in what companies are going to become, not what they are at this moment in time. And so we have to, if you want to rely upon other people's advice, you will never outperform, you'll be the same as everyone else. And so what we do is we do our own research. We have 212 people at Baren Capital, 45 are analysts and portfolio managers.

Portfolio manager actually senior analysts. And what we do is we visit companies every day. Companies come to visit us every day. We talk to them every evening, every morning, every day. and we try to learn about their businesses. What I've described it as is that we take a company and we rip it apart in our heads and we try to understand and then put it back together again.

And we try to find out and understand about what it is that makes that company distinct and different than others and gives it an advantage that other people can duplicate. For example, in SpaceX, that what they distinguish is them and they're about to go public again in, I guess, in next June, is my guess.

And what's different about SpaceX is they've been able to have a rocket that can use over and over and over again. No one else has been able to do that. So other people would use a rocket one time and could cost $100 million. Right now, of course, it's maybe $10 million to get to space. It will cost this very soon a million dollars. If Elon thinks it's going to cost less to go to space

than it will to go from New York to London. So it's an amazing revolution, and nobody can catch us. So because of that low cost of space, what that is enabled is to have 10,000 satellites providing Starlink services to every inch of this planet. So basically, you can now get broadband anywhere because of Starlink. Netjets, I've been trying to get NetJets to use Starlink for five years, and they had to get this regulation.

But basically the head of net jets sent me a note, I guess, two or three days ago, and said, because of, I've been doing this five years, because of you and several others, we've now, we're now installing net jets on our planes, on 600 planes, 50 a month. And we would go places and you would lose communication. You can't do it. On net jets, when you have a Starlink, you'll be able to do this everywhere. So one business that has distinguished us in Starlink, in SpaceX, is Starlink.

10,000 satellites are going to be much more. There's 8 billion people on the planet. 3 billion don't have the Internet. We're going to give it to them. That's number one. Number two, they've just announced fairly recently that we're now going to go and build data centers in space. All you read about now is data standards, how expensive they are, three or four or five years to build,

cost several billion dollars, four or five billion dollars to build, and shortage of energy, shortage of land, permitting, and what we're going to do now is we're going to put them in space. So now cooling is a huge cost, put them in space, no more cooling costs.

Put them in space, no more electricity costs. So basically, you're running it for power for free and cooling for free, which are enormous expenses, And one of the companies that we've invested in as well, another Elon company, is XAI. And what they're going to do is use these satellites that they have, this network going to be a million satellites, a million. Now we have 10,000. So now it can be a million.

We're providing this data center in space. And XAI is going to be a main beneficiary of that to provide services like chatGBT, but better. Now, Michael, all of these investing ideas come about because of a rigorous research process. And you guys are fundamental stock pickers. I mean, that's a generic term. But in essence, what you do is you do a good amount of analysis. You have teams of research analysts and portfolio managers trying to hunt for these opportunities. How exactly does the research methodology at Barron Capital lead you to some of these things?

as somebody who's learned from Ron and who's progressed through the ranks, through the analyst stage, and through to where you are right now, what exactly then do you look for in terms of what makes a good investment? Yeah, there's a lot that makes a good investment. And what's different, it's what makes a good investment to barren capital. We have a team around 45 investment professionals constantly searching for what is a baron capital type investment. What's a baron capital type investment in not just technology and growth

where people will assume, but what makes a barren capital investment in financials and in health care and real estate? We want to have a diverse portfolio and different ideas really understanding these different companies, like he was mentioning, tearing them down to their essence and rebuilding them, making sure they make sense, having different points of view, asking different types of questions, understanding who the management teams are, what makes them, where they've had success in the past, where they've had failures in the past, where their motivations are in the future, and then packaging it together to construct a portfolio that we can now deliver in an ETF. You were asking earlier, you know, what makes these different than other ETFs out there?

There's a ton of ETFs. There are now more ETFs today than in publicly traded companies. How does this stand out? We feel that there's been this mismat. There's been not enough of true fundamental stockpapers, people that build foundational portfolios for long-term investors. And that's what we're trying to deliver by finding these research, ideas, packed them in the portfolio, and now structuring it in an ETF format. You mentioned, Ron, people. It's a continuing theme among many of the

advancements that you have engaged in over the years. People is an important aspect, because people are the ones with the ideas, people are the ones implementing these types of business models and plans. What exactly is the secret for you on finding the people that you think are the ones that you want to invest in? You're trying to judge people's intellect, passion, leadership skills, knowledge about industries, unique ownership of a business. You know, we want to be in the same boat that they're in. And thinking about the individuals who are running those businesses, whether they're

running them to benefit themselves or to benefit all the investors as well as society in general. So we're trying to understand the personalities. You know, where do they live? What do their children go to school? Do they work? What's their lifestyle like? How long have people been tenured at their business? How come? So we're trying to understand all the different aspects about how business operates and one of the weaknesses and strengths and be very thoughtful about, you know, nothing straight up. And when you see things that are straight up, and it's the same increase every quarter from a year ago, what most likely you found is a scam. And so what we're trying to find are companies with open-ended opportunities. I was writing in

one of my quarterly reports that Cliff Greenberg and I had a client a long time ago. It was Fred Stein, and he used to talk about dimension. as an element that separated out one business from another, you'd say the same thing for individuals. But there's something special about them that you can just say, boy, that's someone who I would like to bet on. That's someone who I trust. That's someone who I believe is going to run a business in the best interest of the executives who work at that company and individuals who work at that company as well as for the society they're serving with the products and services they offer. Ron, one of those people that have fulfilled and checked many of the boxes that you just mentioned

is one that you've been closely associated with for the past decade plus at this point, and that's Elon Musk. 15 years. 15 years now. Elon Musk, specifically with regard to investments, as you point out in Tesla, SpaceX, which is now the biggest holding that you have. You mentioned you invest in XAI as well. The Elon Musk story is an interesting one because,

He has become one of the people that has been maybe the figurehead of American technological innovation over the course of the last 20 years. What exactly is it about Elon Musk that first drew you to investing in him as a person and then the companies that he manages? He's brilliant. That's obvious. And when we first met him, in 2010 when he was going public, we thought we'd like to invest. with him, but I thought it was unlikely. We thought it was unlikely he was going to be successful where he's doing a couple of thousand cars a year, and he thought that he could do 20 million cars a year. That didn't seem reasonable. But we continued to, after meeting went for a couple or three hours the first time, we continued to follow him, visit him, talk with him regularly,

and the executives who worked in his company. In 2014, when it became obvious, is that his cars were meeting very strong demand. We invested between 2014 and $16, $400 million. And we made about $8 billion in that so far. And then 2017, we were following SpaceX all along. In fact, when I was in the 1960s, I worked in the United States Patent Office. I chose to work there instead of going to Vietnam. I had a draft-exempt job.

sounded like a better deal to me. So when I was there, my art was chemical, was chemicals. I was a chemical graduate in college. And so I was the person who in the 1960s gave patents for all the coatings that went on nose cones that wouldn't burn up when they came back to Earth. Anyway, so 2017, they started doing research in the 60s.

And 2017, we began to invest in Tesla, in SpaceX, And we've invested about a billion and a half so far, and that's no worth about $10 billion. And we think that it's likely they could go public next summer sometime. And the valuation has been reported in the press. It could be a trillion and a half dollar valuation. Right now it's $800 billion a week ago, it was $400 billion.

So how come? What separates him apart? What separates them apart, you know, we're, I attended a board meeting, and they asked me to come to New York to meet with a number of board members about, I don't know, a few weeks ago. And we were talking about Elon and how young people

they are just dying to work there. And so they get, they hire, they have about 120,000 people and maybe 30,000 hires a year. And to get 30,000 people, there are several million people apply for 30,000 jobs a year, several million. And then the chairman of Tesla was telling me that they come there, we were asking about what do they come here for. And he goes into his meetings.

So take 30 or 40 young people or senior people in any one discipline that they're working on, whether it's software, whether it's hardware, takes them into a room. and for a couple hours and goes around and talks to everyone and asks some questions about what they're doing and keeps getting deeper and deep, initially it's general, and deeper and deeper and deeper,

and then at the end of the meeting, the people walk out of that room, especially if they're first-time engineers, they walk out of the room and they're shaking their heads and say, can you believe we've learned? Can you believe what we've just heard? I am so glad I survived that meeting. So basically, the people who work there are saying they come there because they want to work with this person.

Now, of course, early on, if you're investing in Tesla, it's a great risk when you're relying upon one person like that. But now when you have 120, 130,000 people and the business is growing exponentially, no longer linearly, then what happens is as you get larger and larger and larger, the risk of one person diminishes. and what you've invested in is a company with a culture. And the culture is what we've tried to discover this first principles is all about. What you're trying to discover is what's been instilled in these people that he gives responsibility to talented people

and talented people with unleashes them. And if you got a better idea than what I thought was the best idea, show it to me. And if you can prove that it works, even though I just invested $20 or $30 or $50 million in another way to do it, If you show me something better, we'll throw that out and start all over again. And so he's not afraid to fail.

And basically, that's what he does over and over again. So you're looking for personality traits among these people in whom we're investing that make it likely they're going to be successful in our opinion. If I could just follow up. You mentioned that you anticipate, you think your best guess in your words, is that SpaceX goes public sometime in the summer of next year. You said maybe June earlier on. I just think of June 28th because that's his birthday.

Okay, there you go. I like that. I like that there's a target. We can kind of coalesce around that. So in your opinion, that's when it happens. They've said it to their shareholders. Now, you have a valuation as well. What do you think the valuation will be for SpaceX as it approaches kind of that

anticipated target for an IPO date? Well, it's $800 billion now. And the press has speculated that it's going to be twice that amount. next summer. This happens to be of our investments right now, it's our largest investment. We have about $10 billion invested in that, in SpaceX, about $5 billion invested in Tesla at market. So Tesla right now is selling in $460, $470, $480, something like that. Our cost is $12. And I think we're going to make, in Tesla, I think we're going to make five times their money again over the next 10 years.

maybe more. And then in SpaceX, I think, I've been wrong so far about how much we're going to make. So my number is here, and Elon's number is here. So we'll see. But I wouldn't bet on me. You would not bet on you, but I think a lot of people are right now. A lot of people are right now. Best ideas is something that Ron just mentioned, kind of this idea of challenging what could be and coming up with an alternative. hey, what's the better idea? When it comes to Barron Capital's portfolios, as somebody who's running some of that money right now, where do you think those best ideas are gravitating towards these days? It seems everything is about AI and technology. But when you kind of dig a little bit deeper,

are there certain parts of the market thematically speaking that are catching your eye a little bit more these days as a portfolio manager for Barron Capital's funds? Yeah. We feel like we need to have a different. diversified portfolio. Yes, AI is in everyone's top of the, you know, tip of the tongue. And that's what's worked over the past few years. So much of the market has been left behind, especially companies, small mid-cap companies left behind, were just launched that first, SMID, small mid-cap growth portfolio. Great valuations, especially they should be working as interest rates come down. But there's more to it. It's companies that are investing in themselves,

have been extremely penalized. Investors don't like to invest. They don't like to invest, penalize short-term earnings, have that hit as earnings come in, and that multiple also comes in, so it's a double whammy. We love that because we're able to find those companies, understand what they're able to achieve, invest in them in at great valuations, and see that through to the lifecycle. Two companies come to mind that had been investing themselves are now realizing it. Guidewire is one of them. Guidewire has shifted everyone from on-prem, software to the cloud. That's come to fruition. More companies are signing in, not only signing in, but taking on more modules. Idex, same kind of thing. This is a company Pet Diagnostic

system. They develop more tests. It took them a little while to develop the test. They launched one this past year. We think they're going to launch another one next year. You're seeing more usage and earnings increasing and valuations increasing as well. But there's still a lot of companies in our portfolio that are investing in themselves and penalize. So right now it's a great time to be investing in those businesses and letting them come to fruition if you're a long-term equity investor. Gotcha. And a follow-up to that, there are five ETFs being launched right now.

Any aspirations for expanding that family of funds? And what exactly would you look at potentially to expand those offerings? Sure. We have five as of today. I want to get these five right. That is, as our focus, is getting these five right before doing the next wave. I do anticipate us doing more. But let's get these right and then take it from there.

Ron, did you ever think in your life that you'd be sitting there, a storied Wall Street career, did you ever think you'd be at the top of the podium, ringing the bell, the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and launching a listed product? at the NYSE. Just what kind of a feeling was that for you? And in terms of just your perspective on how it's affected you as a person and your family overall? Well, you said you're a Jersey boy. I'm not a Jersey guy. I'm a California guy.

But I married a Jersey girl, though. Okay. And so you've been to Asbury Park. I have. And that's where I grew up. And so think about the boardwalk in Asbury Park and Convention Hall on the ocean. and that's my background. And then getting to be on the New York Stock Exchange, a listed company, it's sort of unbelievable. It's the way I think about it.

Unbelievable. My life has been unbelievable. What exactly do you think that next chapter will be for you? For me, I don't see it as being an next chapter. I just keep the same thing. So I think that over the next 10 years, I expect our business to be much larger than it is right now. As I said before, I thought that we were going to make five times again. So we made 57 billion in profits to now over 40 years.

I think we're going to make 250 billion in profits in the next 10 years. So I'm excited about that. on behalf of the employees at Baren Capital, and on behalf of our investors. And, you know, one of the, and there's so many companies that are interesting right now, that have been left behind with everyone focusing on technology. One of my good friends is the chairman and founder of MSCI.

I love MSCI, I love Henry Fernandez. And he says that one of the characteristics that we have that's rare is that we're able to see what isn't yet present. And MSCI, you know, so our cost in MSCI, we invested in it when he founded, he escaped from Nicaragua when there was a coup, came to America, penniless, started MSCI at Morgan Stanley, go to public in 2008, he said, we were responsible for allowing him to do that, for enabling him to do that, that came public at $10 or $12 a share, went to, or maybe $15, went to $30, the market crashed, went back to $15. We kept buying, and now it's $600. And I think the opportunity for MSCI,

they were buying in their own shares, and he's been buying shares as well personally, which is he says he's trying to keep up to us. I'm trying to keep up to him. MSC. And I was, there's another one, fact set, that we've been. been investor in for a long time, we weren't able to invest in Bloomberg. This is like Bloomberg, you know, it was a way that we could invest. So we've been an investor in, I don't know, 10 or 15 or 20 years, and we made, you know, multiples of our money. And the stock is down this year. And what I think is really interesting, do we have a couple more minutes? Absolutely, please.

So there has been a change in management. And a young business. man who was brought up in India on a farm, impoverished, went to the top IT school in India, went to the top engineering school in India, was a consultant for, and got a job as a consultant from McKinsey and Company, then came in the financial crisis in New York when he was 33 years old. He was brought to New York with whatever kind of card you get. And he was advising Geithner and all the people to prevent the whole economy of crashing. He's 33 years old from crashing. And then he gets recruited by Morgan Stanley, by J.P. Morgan, rather.

And he's one of the top, there's thousands of employees there. He's one of the top ten people who's being considered to succeed Jamie Diamond. and he makes it into top 10. And then he doesn't, he's not going to be the successor. He says, okay, I'm leaving. Where does he leave? He goes to Faxet. And where Faxette had a new search, and he's now the new CEO,

and I've been telling Michael, say, Michael, think about if you have a company that is this really cool company with great opportunities, like a Bloomberg, but I think young and up and coming, and you have a guy like this, a killer guy is 51 years old, and they're 52 years old, and think about you put Jamie Diamond at 51 or 52 years old in charge his company.

That's what just happened. So basically you find companies like this, you find people like this who run these business say, I have to invest with that person. So we came out of, you know, the stock isn't half this year. So basically we, because of, you know, a number of different things that aren't continuing, And so we're very excited about that.

But across the board, whether it's hotels, whether it's real estate, whether it's financial companies, whether it's consumer products companies, you can find them everywhere. And so that's what's really exciting to me right now, that we have this portfolio of very exciting, super fast-growing companies that are risky. Then you have 30 or 40% of our portfolio.

Then you have 50% or 55% in these good solid, double-digit growth companies, and then you have 10 or 15% in companies that are penalizing current earnings to become much larger in the future. And those are companies at the last 10 or 15% where nobody wants to invest in those companies until it's obvious about what the company's going to produce. We invest in those companies for a portion of portfolio, which is one of the reasons we performed so well for so long. I could go on for hours, literally, Ron, with you and Michael here talking about investment philosophy and ideas. I wish we had more time, but please come back and see us again soon. We'd love to have you back, Ron, Michael. Thank you for having us.

Thank you for your ETF, Edge, inclusion in your program. We appreciate it. Thank you very much, Ron and Michael as well. Now it's time to round out the conversation with some thoughtful analysis and perspective to help you better understand ETFs with our Markets 102 portion of the podcast. Ron and Michael Barron both continue with us now for a podcast bonus. Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here with us on ETF Edge, the podcast. Thanks for having us. All right, Ron, maybe I'll start with you on this. We just talked at length about launching ETFs.

We talked at length about your investing philosophies. This is also about you looking at the future of barren capital. You've now installed your son's Michael and David as co-presidents of the firm. What exactly is your philosophy with regards to how barren capital continues into the future? I need to make sure that we have a very strong balance sheet, which we do, and that our reputation is very strong and unsullied, which it is, and that a track record continues. So as I mentioned before in our prior conversation, that our goal was not just to make as much money as we could as quick as we could, but rather to build something that's lasting.

And build something that's lasting means that it's a repeatable process. It's a repeatable process if you invest only in great people at Bering Capital as well as the companies in which we're investing, and long term. And I often analogize and say that if you're a business in those factories and you happen to have a bad year, you don't burn down the factory. And And so for Barron Capital, we can just invest every single year in new analysts and keep them and train them, hire them and train them, and keep them for long term. And if we had layoffs, what that would mean is that the same thing is burning down your factory, our factories are people.

So basically, we at Barron Capital are willing in times are tough, and they always will be tough times, we take the hit in profitability. And the people who work with us, they can be convinced and they should be convinced and they are convinced that their jobs are not at risk because the market doesn't do well for a while. So in the history of our firm, since 1982 when we started it, there's never been a single layoff, not one. And basically, people have been fired because they haven't been doing what we expect them

to do, not very many, but people have been fired, but we have never had a layoff. If you look at all the other financial firms, that is highly unusual. And then when you look at the tenure of the people who work at Baren Capital, you see, one after another after another said, boy, I've been here 20 years, I've been here 30 years. I just hit a million dollars in my IRA account, just one after another after another. So it's an idea about making people who work for us, whether you're a secretary or a I guess you can't use that word in my assistance, or a trader or a lawyer, a young lawyer,

or not just the analysts to make money here. Everyone at the firm, just like a SpaceX and Tesla, everyone participates as investors. Everyone participates with this phantom equity at Baren Capital. Everyone gets to benefit if the firm does well. Michael, you've been one of those people, you alongside your brother, are now co-presidents of Barron Capital.

You know, David is not here with us right now. I'm sure he has his own individual thoughts, but you are with us right now. David has the flu, unfortunately. There you go. Maybe take us through a little bit about what it's been like to kind of learn the business, so to speak, from somebody like Ron, your father, and what exactly have been some of the biggest lessons that you've taken away, maybe from the technical investing standpoint, but also from a philosophical or people standpoint as well.

Yeah. I joined the business in 2004, so a little over 20 years at this point. But really my education on investing and our style investing occurred long before that, the kitchen table, the dining room table. What makes a barren capital type investment? And to my dad's credit, it wasn't finance, which most people view as boring and dull. It was fun and interesting. It was what makes one company special different. How is this company going to grow? And more importantly, it makes it. it unique and special, why can't someone else do what they're doing? So our education in terms of our style and investing has started at an incredibly young age and an incredibly long period of time. And we're talking earlier about, you know, this expansion into ETFs. The thing that's interesting about this business that we're not going to change, we love being a boutique asset manager, doing one thing extraordinarily well, and that will continue to be the case. It was the case for the last 40 years will continue to be the case for the next 40 years. Additionally, my dad's done an incredible job.

It's not just him as being an investor in training me and my brother, let's say, on how to be investors, but it's the team of the people that he brought around him. It's 45 investment professionals and the investment team. It's 215 throughout the organization, all buying in to the idea of what is a barren capital-type investment. And the sale that he made to me, I was working for about a year elsewhere, he said, you've got to come. come to Barron Capital because you're not going to learn from me, but you're going to learn from Cliff Greenberg and Andrew Peck and the other investment professionals here about how to ask questions, what makes something interesting, get the executives in the room and question them,

really understand that business. And I think that's really what sets us apart and what will continue set us apart going forward. Michael, if I could follow up on that, this is also a firm that's going to continue long after Ron is no longer managing the money or the firm per se. When you look at that, there's another big one in the news these days, and that's Warren Buffett, who's kind of transitioning out of his role at Berkshire Hathaway, is turning over the reins to a new set of management members and a new committee over there. When you look at your particular role within Barron Capital, what exactly do you think you are going to be able to do on yours and David's end to evolve Barron Capital beyond what Ron has kind of. have built. There's going to be certain things you'll focus on as core principles and investing. And there's other things that you're going to have to do to kind of evolve with the times. Do you anticipate that being something that you have to focus a lot more on as not just a money

manager, but a manager of the company as well? Sure. As you mentioned, you know, we, the business is going to outlast the founder. I anticipate Baren Capital outlasting me. We're building a business that can withstand cycles, no matter what's going to come in various cycles. There's good markets, there's bad markets. We have a very strong business that can last. In terms of how do we evolve, it's, like I was saying earlier, the core stays the same. It's how do we bring that to more and more people, whether it's in ETFs, whether it's in U.S.

internationally, whether it's CITs for retirement plans. A big focus of the business going forward is our mission is to change lives. The only way to change lives is to give our strategy. to clients in a structure that makes most sense for them. And Ron, one final question to you, sir, before we let you go. What has you the most excited about the coming, say, three to five years when it comes to the investing landscape, what you're doing with your own investing philosophies, and how you think it differs from when you first started in the business? Well, when I first started, then I was living on commissions.

As an analyst in 1970s, I did research and sold it to mutual funds, hedge funds, family offices for commissions. And when stocks increased, when Nike increased, doubled or tripled, I would call my clients told them to sell it and buy McDonald's. When McDonald's increased, I would tell them two or three times, told him to sell McDonald's and buy Disney. It was one after another. And then after 10 years, I looked back and I said, man, if I had just had faith and kept those investments,

then it would have been, it could have been wealthy. And it could have been successful. And so the idea was that I learned initially that you become successful by owning a business, not by buying and selling stocks, owning a business, not by buying and selling stocks. And it's always been in my head. My dad was an engineer for the Army, and it was a big deal when I was 13, and he made $10,000 a year and become middle class.

I would ask him a long time. Are we middle class yet? He said, and when I was 13, yes. You could just see how proud he was. But the people who became very successful were the people who owned the motels, who owned the restaurants, who owned the law practices, who owned the rides on the boardwalk.

So owning things. And that's been in my head for a long time, owning something. And also thinking about inflation, about everything in my life. When I was in college, it was $2,500 a year. It's now $80,000 a year. So it's all about inflation. So everyone's going to tell you, well, it's not really inflation. It's inflation.

So the value of your money keeps going down. So I don't invest in commodity, I don't invest in Bitcoin and something go up and down like that. I want to invest. We want to invest in something that's growing. So what's going to change in the future? That's not going to change. We're going to invest in maybe some of the ideas of businesses that have opportunities to grow faster. I mean, who would have expected cars to be able to drive by themselves?

Who would have been able to think about there are going to be data centers in space? or who would have thought that going to Mars is going to be important? Who thought that? And so I know one person who did. And so initially you say, well, I don't know. Electric cars, I don't know. But the idea is that you find spectacular people and you identify them as you have since you've been in kindergarten.

Since you're in kindergarten, you know who you trust, who you like, who you want to be a friend. And it's that way your whole life. And it's all about, you know, trying to help other people. not with expecting to get anything in return, but just because that's what you feel like doing, and it makes you feel good. And so you know the kind of people who you like,

and you try to associate with them, and you learn from them, and it's unbelievably interesting for me as an 82-year-old executive to be able to go to my office every day and to work with my sons and to work with people who are younger and new people coming in all the time,

and to walk around my office every day and you can feel the excitement that's there. So what's going to change? I hope the excitement doesn't change. I don't think it will. I think that my son, it's a family business we have, Barron Capital. Family businesses, there's a lot of companies in which we've invested that are family businesses. Family businesses are run differently than businesses are publicly owned. They're trying to maximize profits so the shareholders will give them a higher valuation.

We don't care about that. This is, we're not buying anything, we're not selling anything. We own a business that's going to be providing service to people for a really long time and helping change their lives. Well, I want to thank you both, Ron Barron, Michael Barron, for sharing some of your knowledge and insights with us. I could go on forever with this. So please, Ron, Michael, come back and see us again soon. Thank you for much. Thank you for listening. Join us again next week or head over to etfedge.cmc.com. Thanks for listening.

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