Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Bill Ackman on His Investing Playbook, His Bullish and Bearish Bets, and What Could Trigger the Next 2008

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

Bill Ackman built one of the most closely watched hedge funds on Wall Street; when he speaks, markets move. Literally. Today, he joins Nicole to break down the opportunities he’s seeing in the market, which companies are in his portfolio, and what could trigger the next 2008.  Bill walks Nicole through his investing playbook, the biggest mistake new investors make, and whether we’re in an AI bubble. Then, Nicole and Bill play a rapid-fire round of Bullish or Bearish where Bill gives his takes on gold, Bitcoin, Chipotle, Starbucks, T-bills, Trump, and Mamdani. Bill also gets personal about his inheritance plans for his four daughters, what he actually thinks makes someone successful in business, and whether he would run for office. Check out Nicole's financial literacy course⁠ ⁠The Money School⁠⁠  Find a Financial Advisor or Financial Coach from Nicole's company⁠ ⁠Private Wealth Collective⁠⁠  Watch video clips from the pod on⁠ ⁠Money Rehab's Instagram⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠Nicole Lapin's Instagram⁠⁠  ⁠Follow Bill Ackman⁠ on X Learn about ⁠Pershing Square⁠ Here's what Nicole covers with Bill: 00:00 Are You Ready for Some Money Rehab? 01:14 Bill Ackman on the State of the Economy Right Now 03:00 Who Wins the AI Race: OpenAI vs. Anthropic vs. SpaceX 04:31 Why a Great Business Is Like a Bond 05:56 Is the Stock Market Too Expensive Right Now? 07:01 Where to Put Your First $1,0000 7:39 Inside Pershing Square's 12-15 Stock Portfolio 09:22 Democratizing Hedge Funds with PSUS 10:39 Buying Stocks at a Discount 11:18 Apple's Innovation Problem and Life After the iPhone 12:33 The Best Advice for New Investors 14:06 Are We in an AI Bubble? 16:46 Predicting the Future and the Next Financial Crisis 17:52 Why You Should Never Borrow Against Your Stocks 19:20 Carl Icahn's Billion-Dollar Leverage Cautionary Tale 20:16 The Worst Investing Advice He's Ever Heard 23:00 Fixing the Retirement Crisis 25:48 Bullish or Bearish: Gold, Bitcoin, Chipotle, Starbucks, Trump and Mamdani 33:30 What It's Like When Your Tweets Move Markets 35:15 Would Ackman Ever Run for Mayor of NYC? 38:01 The World He Wants for His Four Daughters (and His Inheritance Plan) 42:25 The Real Formula for Success in Business 44:21 Bill Ackman's Tip You Can Take Straight to the Bank All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Always do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making any financial decisions or investments.

The key to being successful long-term investors, being able to survive those kind of challenging market periods when everyone else is panicking. In fact, you want to have money to invest when others are panicking. Bill Ackman doesn't just manage a portfolio. As the founder of Pershing Square, he has built one of the most closely watched hedge funds on Wall Street. When this guy tweets, he literally moves markets. Today, he tells me the biggest tip for investors. Invest in something that you believe will withstand the test of time. The value of business is the present value of the business.

is the present value of the cash it generates over its life. The macroeconomic risks he's worried about. I think the biggest risk to markets is that there are a lot of very levered players in the market and we're at risk to some kind of extrinsic shock and that stocks to go down a lot. And which company will win the AI race? Some people are afraid of AI. I think it's going to be very destructive jobs and so on. I think it will be a big driver of economic growth, big driver of job growth,

but you have to learn how to use the tools. I'm Nicole Lapin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary time. understand. It's time for some money rehab. Bill Ackman, welcome to money rehab. Thanks for having me. So the economy feeling funky, but to be fair, it always feels a little bit funky. I don't think there's ever been a time it hasn't. What's your overall take on what's going on in the economy and markets right now? So I think it's an unusual time in history. I think the big story is really AI. AI is driving an enormous amount of entrepreneurship. It's giving access to, you know, intelligence, to a very broad group of people, you know, at very low cost.

You know, Google is basically free. And then you have this massive infrastructure built in connection with AI. So you have, you know, some of the largest companies in the world competing to build the model for superintelligence. And they need access to compute and data. And we're seeing a land rush as people are literally acquiring land, building data centers, filling them with GPUs, memory. and enabling this technology that's transforming the world.

And I think it's going to have that enormous impact on all of us. You know, some people are afraid of AI. I think it's going to be, you know, very destructive jobs and so on. I think it will be actually a big driver of economic growth, big driver of job growth, but you have to learn how to use the tools. But I think the big story is really AI. Yes, we have a war going on and wrong. That I think will resolve itself.

I don't think it's going to go on for years. I think we'll resolve itself one way or another. in a way that won't be too impactful on the U.S. And then I think you're seeing, you know, companies are actually doing quite well for the most part. But it is a bit of a bifurcated economy where some of the kind of lower income people are challenged with inflation. And, you know, that's a major concern. So it's not all roses, I would say. It's definitely not.

It never is. So with Open AI Anthropics, SpaceX, all going public, who do you think the winner is going to be? You know, Anthropics seems to be the leader in terms of frontier models and building a business that apparently turned profitable recently. That's pretty impressive. What concerns me about Open AI is, you know, kind of a prediction of very significant losses for the foreseeable future. And also, I think the open source models are getting so good. And, you know, the people will have access to either lower costs or free models that will enable them to answer most of the important questions or solve the problems that they need. So I'm less of a believer in betting on. the frontier model company. You know, SpaceX is a very interesting business. You know, the Starlink franchise is enormously profitable and a near monopoly on kind of global satellite telephony. You know, their space franchise is incredible. And they have an amazing, you know, position in terms of data infrastructure. You want to rent 100,000 GPUs, but the only place you can do that. Today is SpaceX, and they're earning very high returns on those assets. And then they have their own AI models

they launched a new one recently. So it's an incredible collection of assets run by, you know, the most talented technologist, entrepreneur of our generation. And I think the only question is just price at a trillion, wherever it is, six or seven, there's less upside than if you could buy it for half that price. But, you know, I wouldn't, the word is never to bet against you lie. So, you know, I think that SpaceX will be an incredibly important company

over the next whatever period of time. Now, it's not in the Persian Square portfolio, because it doesn't have the degree of predictability that we're looking for. We like businesses that sort of today, when you think about a business, a business, people think about stocks and bonds, right? Bonds, you get paid a coupon, you know, an interest rate, you know, a couple times a year.

And, you know, if it's a fixed rate bond, you're going to get your six or seven percent for sure. And at the end of the life of the bond, you're going to get your principal as long as it's a credit-worthy company. A business is a bit like a bond as well, except the coupon, the interest payment is not known. You have to estimate what it's going to be. And the interest payment, a way to think about it,

the way we think about companies, is we think about the earnings as to sort of the yield on the business. So people talk about PE, right? Stocks trading into PE, well, if you flip over the PE, it's a 5% earnings yield. One way to think about it is you're investing in a company that's generating a 5% return on your investment today. And the question is,

is that 5% yield going to grow over time? or is someone going to come up with a business that disrupts it and the company's going to disappear? And so, you know, stocks are riskier than bonds because there isn't the same degree of certainty about their future. But if you narrow down the universe of companies you invest into these really predictable, you know, businesses where their market position is, we believe, so dominant, you can earn well in excess of bond-like returns without taking a ton of risk. So is market too expensive right now? You know, I would say in spots. I think it's hard to generalize about the market.

You know, people look at the stock market and say, okay, today, the PE today might be 21 or something like this. And the average P.E. the market might be 17. So they can say, look, on the margin, looks over value. But, you know, the value of a market is a function of what the earnings going to be in the future. And earnings are, have continued to significantly exceed expectations. And earnings are growing at a faster rate that historically. And, you know, a big percentage of the market is represented by, you know, kind of the biggest companies. and those companies, whether the Nvidia's, the Microsofts, the Googles, the Alphabets of the world are much higher quality businesses growing much more quickly than, you know, if you look back 20 years ago, what the top six or seven companies were back then.

So I think it's a higher quality collection of companies that deserves to trade at a higher multiple. And to my point, you know, the, you know, if Microsoft and Amazon and meta are, you know, cheap stocks, which we believe they are, you know, you could argue the market's not expensive at all. So if somebody had a thousand bucks to invest right now, where should they put it? I would find a handful of businesses that don't use a lot of leverage. You want companies that don't use a lot of financial leverage. They're businesses that you like and admire that make good decisions over time. And a business where you believe if the stock market were to shut for 10 years,

you'd still be happy to own it 10 years from now. Don't invest in kind of what seems to the most exciting now. invest in something that you believe will withstand the test of time because the value of business is the present value of the cash generates over its life. And you have to be able to predict it's going to be around a long time. I'd love to see how that's reflected in Pershing's portfolio right now. You guys keep it to 12 to 15 investments. Why do you keep it so tight and what are you excited about right now? Sure. So our approach is to find what we believe to be the best businesses in the world, businesses that will survive the test of time, businesses that will survive the disruption of

AI will be beneficiaries. At a minimum, you know, will be either neutral or beneficiaries of AI. And so our portfolio, you know, is comprised in some cases of companies we've always wanted to own, but weren't cheap until more recently. I put Amazon on that list, meta on that list, Uber on that list, Microsoft, you know, businesses that we've always admired were always too expensive. And a lot of money in the markets is flowing toward kind of the new, new thing, you know, stocks, you know, semiconductor stocks or memory or, you know, places where people have recently made money. And we focus on where we're going to earn a high compound return of the next three, four, or five years. And that's enabled us to fill a portfolio with these very high quality

we call durable compounders. What's up with Brookfield, though? Yeah, Brookfield really fits the model as well. We like companies that have, that are sort of not particularly capital intensive, that are earned kind of royalty-like returns. Or, if they have a degree of capital intensity, they can earn very high returns of the money they invest. Brookfield's in the business of asset management. They're very good at it, really private equity, real estate, infrastructure, a lot of the energy, power-related businesses. And so as more and more capital is going in to build data centers, etc., that's a feel where Brookfield is going to be a very successful participant. And they manage other people's money and are a royalty and a fee on that

capital. And that's a very good business. I mean, there's years that you've delivered some crazy 50 plus percent returns, which is incredible. Hedge funds are out of reach for a lot of people, of course. You created PSUS to democratize hedge fund access. Do you think more hedge funds should do that, or is it to, by nature, risky and volatile for retail investors? It depends what you do. I think what we do is actually relatively low risk.

We buy very high-quality companies. We own them for the long term. We get pretty deeply involved in those companies and help them be successful. So we'll occasionally join boards, but we'll always, I would say, have management's year, to the extent we have ideas that can help with business, you know, be successful. The vehicle we manage PSUS is a, you can think of it as a hedge fund, but it's one of the only publicly traded hedge funds. It happens to be available at this very moment at a very attractive price. So, you know, if you like Microsoft, let's see, Microsoft right now is trading at, let's

pull it up the ticker. You know, Microsoft today is trading at $387. Well, if you want to buy it at $310, well, you just buy PSUS because PSUS is trading at a 22% discount. to the value of its asset. So it's a publicly traded fund that trades in the stock market, and it trades based on supply and demand for the shares in the short term. The assets we own are worth almost 50 dollars a share, and the stock's about a 22% discount. That price. So you guys got it at a better price, but you got a ton of it, right? You recently bought two billion of Microsoft and then sold some alphabet to free that up. Are you still bullish on alphabet, or are you just more bullish on Microsoft? Two things matter to us. Business quality, long-term growth,

durability, kind of the overall quality of the business, and then the price. And we try to buy it a price that offers a very attractive return over time. And occasionally in business we own, gets to a price where the go-forward return is less than our kind of threshold. And we sold Google, not because we didn't think it was an amazing business, but rather because the price got to a level where we felt the go-forward return was lower than what could be achieved by redeploying the capital into Microsoft. What company now do you think is like Apple in the 80s? Apple has not been the most innovative company in the last decade. It's still an amazing business.

But I don't even remember which iPhone I have. And I don't think it's materially better than the iPhone I had a few versions ago. You don't have the newest iPhone, Bill? I believe I do, but is it iPhone 17? I don't even know which one it is, is my point. But the one I had before, actually a few iPhones ago was better because the battery life was better than the one I have now. You know, some people are making the argument that this, notion of walking around a phone, you know, five or ten years from now, you're not going to

walk around the phone anymore. You're just going to be connected. And you don't have to carry this device that you can lose or people can steal. You'll just have some, I don't know, a little pin on your shirt that will pick up, you know, all of your, answer all your questions. Or maybe even in your brain. Yeah. Actually, we've, it's an area that I've been spending some time on recently. There are a number of companies working on kind of brain, you know, computer interfaces and it's it's going to be amazing for people with brain injuries and people who've lost vision and eventually I think it will be I think you're right I think you'll maybe you'll wear a hat and the hat will be your connection to the internet yeah more like what is going to see the most

exponential growth you know people were complaining that a lot of these companies are staying private for a long time but now we're seeing them go public so if a new investor is listening what's the best advice you would give to new investors. I think you get into trouble when you try to make money really quickly. You know, so options and leverage and very speculative type businesses, you know, when you start with a relatively small amount of capital, I remember when I had a few thousand dollars with investment capital, you know, you want to kind of make money quickly. I think one of the important things to understand is the power of company. You know, Berkshire Hathaway stock was like $48 a share, you know, in the 1970s.

60s. You know, you've made, you've become a millionaire investing with Warren just buying a share kind of back then, but it didn't happen overnight. You know, so the key is buying businesses that you believe will compound at a high rate over a long period of time. And, you know, the consumer, you know, often has insights before Wall Street. I mean, Tesla, the company was appreciated. The big shareholders were retail investors because institutions didn't understand how great Tesla was as a as a company, as a car. So look for those experiences, products in your life run by companies or built by companies that you admire, and that's a good place to start. And then read the end report, see what they say about their business. And then think about it. Is this a business that you

believe can withstand competition? Or is it, you know, by concern, you asked me before about some of the AI companies or Anthropic has the lead now, you know, at a certain point in time, Open AI was the leading company and then Google was a leading frontier model company and you know there are a lot of very talented people running private you know i just saw a startup where they raised a couple hundred million dollars in their first in their seed round at a two billion dollar valuation and that was just an idea and their second round is going to be five billion and they're far from having a product or a service or a dollar revenue but you know there's an enormous amount of capital out there looking for the next Anthropic.

And so that's going to be a very competitive space. So I'd rather own, go back to the Uber example. You know, almost everyone's had experience with the service of Uber. And I think it's an amazing service. And the stock is very cheap today because people believe that, you know, the Tesla, you know, taxi, if you will, is going to disrupt Uber. And, you know, I think the consumer is going to go to the Uber platform to order their car as opposed to, you know, the Tesla app

because you want, you know, you want the lowest cost car that's going to get you from place A to B in the shortest period of time. So, you know, look for a business that you, that where are you spending your time? And, you know, Amazon, I order from Amazon. Every time I learn about a new book,

you know, going to the pharmacy in New York City has got to be about the worst experience, right? All the stuff's hidden behind plastic and you have to call a salesperson to open a, a thing to get a razor blade. Okay. Meanwhile, you go on Amazon and get it delivered in two hours. And who can compete with that?

Right. So think about great dominant business where the probability of competition is extremely low. But the frothiness that you mentioned with the startups and these crazy valuations, does that concern you? Do you think we're headed toward an AI crisis or are we in a bubble? By the way, this particular company, which I looked at, the investors are probably the most sophisticated investors in AI companies with the most experience. And they're the ones setting the valuations at such, you know, super high kind of levels.

Look, I think in private markets, there's more risk of a quote-unquote evaluations being massively above, perhaps where they should be. But you're also seeing businesses that are able to go from zero. I mean, look at Anthropic. It went from zero to, you know, many tens of billions in revenue in a very short period of time. This is a never-before seen phenomenon. So if companies can scale that quickly, then you can justify much higher private market values. Some of the money moves you made during 2008 made people wonder if you could possibly see the future, Bill.

So if that is at all true, what are some of the opportunities you're predicting now? Seeing the future is very often just studying the present and looking for examples in history. in 2008, really before 2008, was several years before 2008. We saw a number of companies doing stuff we thought was crazy, which is there were these businesses called bond insurers,

and they had AAA ratings, which means, you know, as good as the government in terms of creditworthiness, and they were guaranteeing very risky mortgages and collecting money and reporting big profits. And we said this is not sustainable.

And that was not so much predicting the future, but identifying something now that just seemed wrong. And we knew eventually that when, that would, if you will, that will blow up. In terms of predicting the future, you know, markets are going to be volatile. There'll be some upcoming panic about markets. I don't know exactly what the catalyst is going to be. There is a ton of speculation.

You know, there's a huge amount of leverage being used by professional investors, by retail investors. My biggest piece of advice to your audience is don't bar money against stocks because that's how you get wiped out. And betting on sports is not a great unless you've got some real edge. I think a lot of the younger generation is wasting a lot of money betting on sports. Maybe it's fun, but don't bet money that you need to live on. So no prediction markets, it sounds like.

Unless you have a huge edge. I guess if you know a ton about a certain space and that gives you an edge and the market's mispricing that edge, fine. But why wouldn't you suggest borrowing against your portfolio so you wouldn't have to sell your equities? The problem is that stocks can trade at any price in the short term. and when you borrow against your equity portfolio, you can get a margin call. And what that means is, you know, if you're living off your brokerage account and you've got, you know, 50 cents leverage against the dollar portfolio, you know, the stock market goes down 20% or your portfolio goes down 20, 30%.

You have to post more collateral. They can sell you out. And the key to being a successful long-term investor is being able to survive those kind of challenging market periods when everyone else is panicking. you want to have money to invest when others are panicking. You know, we've made a big chunk of our profits over the last, you know, 20-odd years have come from times where the market was blowing up. And we had, we had hedged that risk and we had capital to deploy both in 2009, 08-09 and during COVID. Because this is a very sexy thing people talk about online. They say rich people bargains their assets instead of selling them.

Rich people come a lot less rich when they do that sometimes. Coral icon very famously. was very highly levered against his own stock. And then the stock got crushed. And he went from $20 billion net width to three or four. So rich people can lose a lot of money using margin leverage. I mean, I guess if you can use margin leverage, if you use $0.5 against your dollar, maybe you're okay.

But if you use $0.40, you start putting yourself in a risky position. So it sounds like you're a long-term bullish, like Warren, and just boring stuff. Maybe it's boring to you. But I don't think maybe volatility is exciting to people. I like businesses where I know they're going to be here 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now. That's how you make a fortune over the long term. I'm bullish on boring all the way.

So aside from not borrowing against your portfolio, what's the worst advice you've heard for new investors? I don't like this trend of one-day options. It's just gambling. I mean, no one knows whether their stock's going to go up or down. over the course of the day, unless you're trading on inside information. So it just seems like a crazy game. So what do you think is the next crisis? Is there a next 2008? I mean, I think there are there are always things to worry about, right? So one thing to worry about is, you know, we've been spending more money than we've been taking in as a government, as a country, right? So we've got a

deficit and we've been financing that deficit by issuing threshold bonds. And so we've got, whatever, 34 trillion or something like this of national debt. And we have to issue that debt at a time when lots of other companies that used to be buying in their stock are now issuing a lot of debt and need more capital because of this massive AI infrastructure kind of boom. So there's a huge demand for credit at a time when the government itself is also, you know, issuing more and more of its own bonds. And the risk there is that, you know, all that supply needs to be absorbed by investors, and that can cause rates to go up. So one risk to markets is rates going up. Another risk is you have a lot of the very, as I talked about, levered players in the market,

which means that if there's some kind of event that comes from that field that shocks people and they panic and they sell, you can see it cascading, you know, as people, other sellers have to sell because they borrow money. I think the biggest risk to markets is that there are a lot of very levered players in the market and we're at risk to some kind of extrinsic shock. And that could have stocks to go down a lot. Now, if you have an unlevered portfolio with very high quality businesses and you don't need the money tomorrow, that's fine. A good opportunity for you to buy more. If you've got a margin debt, you're going to get wiped down or you're going to have to sell at the bottom, which is what you don't want to do. So the key, going back to the

To my hero, you know, Mr. Buffett, his key was just longevity. He's 95. And he set up Berkshire Hathaway in a way that he would never get a article or the equivalent. So it could compound not every year. Like you mentioned, we've had a couple of really amazing years. Probably a third of the time we've been up north of 30, 40 percent for the year. But we've had a handful of, you know, down years. This year we're down, you know, slightly.

but that's okay. You don't need to make money every year. You just need to persist and own businesses that can compound at high rates. And you wake up five years, ten years from now and you'll have a lot of money. The other key for building wealth over time is spending less. And it's hard to do that. You know, foregoing the short-term experience or pleasure, you know, planning for the long-term, you know, that requires some restraint. Well, that's why I think a lot of people are talking about a loom.

retirement crisis. And I know that you advocate for people without employer sponsored plans like 401Ks to be able to get access to retirement savings options. I mean, usually the debate is centered around the fact that we move from defined benefit. So pensions that have gone by the way of the Dodo Bird or the Blackberry, I suppose, to define contribution plans like a 401k or an IRA. So can you explain this like I'm five years old? What kind of plan actually fixes this problem? limit. I think, you know, the issue for the country, which the president is taking steps to fix is, you know, call it 60% of the workforce. Their employer provides some kind of tax advantaged way to save money, typically a 401K plan. And the ideal one is where you have to

opt out. So you're, you're kind of forced in or pushed in, nudged in, to take 5% of your income, whatever the number and invest it in a tax exempt plan that can grow over time and invest in the stock market the biggest opportunity a young investor has is time because the power of compounding your money multiplies over a long periods of time but you have to start early and you know it's hard to start investing when you're young because this is the time when you you know you want to be buying things clothes a house paying rent but you know setting aside the discipline to invest money and have to grow tax-free and a Roth IRA or one of these accounts is the most powerful way to save for your retirement. Now, the problem is, I say, 60% of the country workforce has these kind of

programs. 40%, you know, you're an Uber driver, maybe a restaurant, you know, with a waitress, etc., and your company doesn't give you a 401k plan. You don't have a easy way to start saving for your future. And the president just made law where these kind of Trump savings, accounts, very similar to what government employees have where you can start with $1,000 for savings. And then, you know, each year you contribute and invest the money in the market and will grow over time. Wages have not grown at the same. Wages grow at a much slower rate than stocks over a long period of time. And so you want to, it's very important that every American owns kind of a piece of the stock market if you want to be in a good position by the time.

time you retire. Okay. So with that said, can we play a game called bullish or bearish? Okay. Gold. No opinion. You don't own gold. I know. Well, I bought jewelry from my wife. So I guess the family owns some gold. I don't personally actually own any gold. I have a platinum engagement ring. But other than that, I have no medals to my name. I guess you could say this. My dad bought gold many, many years ago, probably in the 1970s and held it, you know, He said, I always want some percentage of my assets gold. It was not a very good investment. But when it reached a little over 4,000, maybe the last period,

I convinced mom to sell that gold that dad had put aside. It wasn't a huge amount of money. But I guess you could say I was not that. I'd rather own businesses that can compound value than gold. But I like jewelry. So you're bullish on buying your wife jewelry. Jewelry. It's a very, very good advice to all husbands.

out there. But not like GLD. You're not owning an ETF that tracks the price of gold. I don't really have a view. I don't know whether gold is going up or down. I just, I don't think of it as a great investment asset, even though it's done actually quite well. It's just not my thing. The problem is it's, it's an asset that's only worth what people tell you that prepared to pay for it. And it doesn't pay you any yield in the meantime. Whereas every other asset that I invest in is one that generates some form of yield. It generates earnings or pays a dividend or it's rent. Or it's rent. from a building, whereas gold is just as I view as a speculative asset. So I don't find it. I don't think it's an investment. I think it's a speculation. Okay. Longly did answer. I like it. So you don't pay

attention to silver or copper or anything. I sort of am aware of it that, you know, copper, you know, even gold are inputs to various industrial processes that affect the cost of things. So, you know, I'm aware, but it's not something I'm betting on. Now, if we were investing in a company where the cost of metal was an important input, I would be spending more time worrying about it. Okay, what about what some people call digital gold Bitcoin? You know, I don't own any Bitcoin. None? None. It's very analogous, I would say, to gold.

You know, I think Mr. Satoshi, I think it's a genius. You know, I'd like to believe that if I read the original paper, I thought it was a genius and Bitcoin was 20 cents, I would have bought some. But I can't claim to have done that. I would have, let's put it this way. Out of admiration for the, the construct of Bitcoin, I think it's cool. But I don't know whether it's worth $50,000, $70,000, $5,000, I have no idea. The beauty of investing is you don't need to have an opinion or even knowledge about every investment class.

You just have to know what you know and know what you don't know. I don't know Bitcoin. I don't know gold. So I don't touch it either. So no crypto whatsoever. I've invested in some venture capital funds that invest in companies where blockchain crypto are part of their business model. So I'm intrigued technologically, but the speculating on various kinds of coins is not my thing. How about Chipotle?

One of our more successful investments, we bought Chipotle at a time when we had a major food safety crisis and we helped recruit Brian Nicol to the company, did an amazing job. you know, the Brian went to Starbucks and, you know, running a, you know, the next generation of talent has had a more challenging time with the company. But I think they, you know, I think they're long-term well positioned, but I don't have a, I'm not particularly bullish bear to the current churner price. Okay. So speaking of Brian, how about Starbucks? I think you've got an incredibly talented CEO running the company. But, you know, I feel like, you know, Starbucks pushed the price of their product at a pretty high rate over a very long period of time. And I don't know, you know, the consumer, I don't think there's much room to increase price. I think the experience

kind of deteriorated over time. I think Brian's trying to bring it back. Okay. How about T-bills? You know, Treasury bills are where you put your money, but you need to keep your money safe. But I would, again, rather own really high-quality companies for a long term than T-bos. Okay. I think I'm going to get you on this one. How about Trump? I like the president. And I think he's done a lot of things right. You know, it's a job where it's very easy to criticize person kind of running the country. But, you know, I decided to support him relatively earlier on.

And I'm happy I did. And I think he's vastly better than what the alternative is. And I think he's done a lot of really good things. So I'm optimistic about the last couple of years of start. And I think, you know, I like a president, doesn't have to worry about getting reelected. Because I think they can make the right decision. without regard to politics. So I think I'm bullish on his last two and a half years.

So bullish, it sounds like, ish. All right, Mum Donnie. Barish. I'm not a fan. Look, he's very smart, very charismatic, very good of politics. But I think the decisions he's making it very bad for New York. I think he's scaring away discouraging. You know, you saw the whole video, I'm sure, with Ken Griffin's apartment.

And, you know, Ken Griffin is a massive drug. of New York City economic value, about to make a massive investment in New York City. And he has this, you know, major presence in Miami. And now he's increasing the presence of Miami and diminishing the presence in New York. That's a disaster. I mean, all the various things that Mondami wants to pay for require revenues from the likes of people like Ken Griffith. So if you scare away Ken Griffin, we're discouraged the Ken Griffins of the world from being in New York City. It's a disaster for New York.

And, you know, the mayor talked about balancing this year's budget, the highest budget ever $125 billion budget for the city. And it wasn't balanced at all. You know, he managed to get $8 billion from the state. He deferred pension payments. And I just think there's enormous waste and fraud. You know, I don't think the country or New York City has a revenue problem. You know, New York City is spending way more per resident than probably any other city in the world and getting less for it. we have an efficiency and a waste problem.

And now, on the positive side, Ondami started something, a doge-like savings effort. So hopefully that goes somewhere. But he recently, I don't think he's done a lot to help bring the city together. You know, there's a, he recently came out with a map of, I don't know if you saw the map of all the, you know, various immigrant populations in New York. And he left off little Italy.

And he put in a bunch of, you know, groups that, I would say I haven't been here nearly as long as the Italian population. It's just not a great way to build community in New York City. So I've been, he's what I was concerned about when he was running for office. Could he scare you out of New York? I guess potentially, you know, I've got various reasons to be here. I have a daughter who's at a major medical event and I'm working on her recovery and her friends are all here. So I wouldn't pull her out of New York.

That's my principle more than anything else, you know. But, you know, it's not so hard to spend time. The winters in New York are not the best. So Miami starts to sound pretty appealing. And the more people that leave sophisticated towns like New York City go to Miami, invest in the city, help build out the cultural infrastructure, et cetera, the more interesting a place like Miami becomes. And, you know, DeSantis has done a pretty amazing job running that state. You have not been shy about any other thoughts about this on Twitter in particular. And when you tweet, people listen, what does it feel like to have your posts move markets? You know what? I think it's pretty cool to push a button and send a message to 2.5 million people.

And I think on the margin, you can move opinion. And I think that's both a responsibility and opportunity. I suffer from only being able to speak the truth. You may not like what I have to say. But, you know, I think I've been out there on a number of issues that, that everyone wanted to talk about but was afraid to, whether it was the DEI or what was going on at university campuses or some of the post-October 7 stuff or anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism or, you know, we can make a list of various issues.

It's great to be one of the great things about our country is that you can say what you think. Now, a lot of people, you know, would like to say what they think, but their fear of losing a job, perhaps losing a friend, discourage his free speech. But I think the world's a better place if people share the views and if you disagree with me, I read the comments.

I read the best arguments against what I have to say. And, you know, I learn. Does the heat get to you? Do you change your mind based on those comments? If someone convinces me, I'm wrong, absolutely. And, you know, the environment at Pershing Square, we design an environment where people are strongly encouraged to, you know,

to push back in particular against me if they think I'm wrong. one of the best ways to advance, if you will, at Pershing Square, is to prove that I'm wrong and identify problems and risks early. So you have no fear? I don't really have fear, but, you know, it's a crazy world. So, you know, important to stay safe. Obviously, you're not happy with status quo, especially, you know, in New York. There was some speculation that you would run for mayor. Is there a truth to that? Would you run? Is it something I could do? Someday, I would say possibly, but I think I'll, I could achieve a lot more by helping a very talented person do that job, get elected and do that job and then being otherwise helpful.

We're about to announce a major New York City related project. I think it'll be very good for New York in the kind of healthcare science area. So we're going to, you know, try to do our best to help New York City. I hope Medanai can be a better mayor, but ideologically, I don't think, I don't think socialism is the answer. You know, the socialist and the Marxist experiment has killed millions of people, literally killed millions of people. No, that's not to say that the points he makes about, you know, apartment affordability, rents, etc., he's entirely right. but the way to solve that problem, you know, by freezing rents on half the renters, you're driving up rents on the other half. You know, there are buildings in New York that are comprised of rent-stabilized units

and where most people got a two-year rent freeze and free market units where those people, their rents had to go up in order for the landlord to cover their, you know, costs that are inflated because half his rent roll, you know, is fixed for the next two years. I mean, that seems like an entirely unfair system. and that kind of activity discourages development. And the way you bring rents down is you increase the supply. And Mondami is not doing really anything to increase the supply of new units. It's doing the opposite.

It's discouraging. Developers are risk takers. And they're the last dollar in. And they're not going to risk their capital. They believe it's a friendly environment for landlords. And New York has become a very unfriendly environment for landlords. Okay, so we'll keep an eye out to see if Mayor Ackman campaign comes out in the future. But for now, what are you watching for with the midterms?

Obviously, this is very important election. You know, it would be more difficult for the president to get things done. Obviously, if House and Senate tipped the other direction, you know, kind of a tragedy. Lindsey Graham passed away. I don't think his seat is at risk of, you know, switching. But he was a very important fixture in the Senate. And, you know, I don't want to see the DSA continue to get more, you know, presence of the Congress. I think that's really, really bad for a boom out.

What generally are you hoping for the world that your children, for daughters, will inherit? Love the world where everyone can live happy life, you know, access to high quality health care, opportunity for a job to, for they can earn or make a reasonable life. living, have their own home, and advance their family. So each generation can make progress versus the previous one. You know, love to have a world where there's, we're not fighting a war in Europe or in the Middle East. We're, you know, 18, 20 year old, 22 year old. Mostly men and some women are giving up their lives. It's just, you know, the whole Russian-Ukraine war is a tragedy.

And, you know, many, many thousands of Ukrainians have died. and the Russian toll is significantly larger. And these are, you know, my nephew went to school with young, young Russian guy that, you know, so far hasn't been stripped it into the Russian army, but, you know, it's like a death toll. So I'd love a world without war. And where, you know, where AI, you know, creates this massive abundance. And I think that's very possible. Love a world without discrimination, all of the obvious, you know, things that people want.

But I think there's a lot of misguided thinking about how we get to that world. And it's not with the ideology of AOC or Mendami. You know, the whole capitalist democratic system that built this country is an amazing system. It's imperfect. But, you know, one that people are advocating for, you know, the Roe Khan is the world. I think it's going to be, it ends up being a disaster. Well, speaking of inheritance, too, brand new mom of an 18-month-old daughter. What's your strategy or how do you think about

actual inheritance for your kids? You know, I think it's a super complicated thing. You know, I was, I feel fortunate in that, you know, my dad was a successful commercial mortgage broker, you know, made a very good living. There was a brief moment in my childhood where my dad was a bit of nervous because he was a bit of an entrepreneur and didn't make money for a year or two and had dwindling savings, but generally lit the life of being kind of financially secure. But he told Bill, you're never going to inherit anything for me. So you've got to make it on your own. And I think that was motivational for me. But I was always an entrepreneur. I've worked hard to create the opportunity for my kids to pursue whatever it is that they're passionate about. And I probably

don't want them to select something. Do I want my daughter to be a corporate lawyer so that she can make a living? That's not what she really wants to do. So what matters to me is they find kind of fulfilling great careers. But on the margin, I want to help. them be able to live in New York City if that's where they want to live. And today, you'd be able to live in New York City. You know, as where Mondami's correct, it's to become incredibly expensive unless you're a corporate lawyer or an investment banker or really successful entrepreneur. And there's no guarantee that your child's going to be one of those things. So it's all I'm going to help them. So leave them enough to live, but not too much so that they never have to work. I think you get a lot of

gratification and pursuing and building a career and, you know, being the best at whatever it is that you do. I don't think it matters that much what it is, but I do think having a career is important. But, you know, I would also say, I think we've diminished moms in this generation and way different from when my mom was kind of raising us as kids. I think that's an incredibly worthy and important thing. You can manage being a mom and having a career, but I think it's okay if you just want to be super mom, if that economically works for your family. And that's, by the way, not easy.

Okay, anyone who thinks that's easy is entirely wrong. And educating the next generation where a lot of that education is coming from the experiences they have at home where, you know, with a parent at home, makes a huge difference. I think it's incredibly important. You know, I respect someone who's made the decision. I'm just going to talk about the next 15 years to my kids. I think that's an amazing thing if you can do it.

Yeah. And the worth of that, the child care, the cooking, the driving, all of that, of course, adds up. I know that firsthand. What have you found as the formula over the years that you think makes someone successful in whatever business they go into? I think what makes someone successful are really basic things. showing up on time for work, going the extra mile, doing what you say you're going to do, under-promising over-delivering. If you go to work in some industry, you know, you study up so you become the expert in that industry, you know, more than your colleagues. You'll kind of

rise above that you'll be noticed. I remember when I took one of my first jobs in real estate, I went to the McGraw-Hill bookstore on 50th and 6th Avenue. And at lunch every day, I would read books about real estate. And that gave me kind of an edge versus my peers and knowing stuff that other people took years of experience to learn. So amazing thing about AI, you can just have your AI teach you, you know, everything you need to know about a particular career and that kind of composition. So I think doing extra work, you know, everything you need to know, you can learn by reading and today you can learn by your AI teaching you. And so I think, you know, I don't think, in my experience, it's not the person with the highest IQ that turns out to be the most successful person in business.

It's usually the person who people like, people trust, it works harder, you know, maybe a little more creative, never gives up. It's all of those kind of life skill character things or what matter. And you can have all those things tomorrow. You can't choose to have a higher IQ, but you can choose to learn more about, whatever your field is, not anyone else by just doing the work. You can work harder. You can, you know, being honest is just a decision.

So all of the character qualities you need, you can have tomorrow. You can have to decide. We end all of our episodes, Bill, by asking our guests for a final tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. You have a really popular lecture. I watched some of it again last night.

Many say it's better than an MBA. It's 44 minutes. Talk about a lemonade stand and you teach people about business. If you could distill it, what's the most important part of that? It's 44 minutes. Maybe you could do it in four. One, start investing early.

Put aside a little bit of money each month and invest it in the market. If you don't have time to pick stocks, invest in in the next month. If you have time to pick stocks, invest in a company that is dominant in its industry. It's the best company in its industry, a company that doesn't use a lot of financial leverage. And a business that you believe will be a much bigger business, 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. and a business that's unlikely to be disrupted by, you know, a couple of women in a garage from just left Stanford University with some idea. And if you do that and you persist at that,

you'll have a lot more money 10, 20, 30 years from now. The key is to have a long term view. That's where you can have a competitive advantage because the vast majority of investors are very short-term. And the long-term player can be the big winner. It's also much more tax-efficient. the government for now only taxes you when you sell. So all of those gains that you build up over time

compound without you're having to share any of the problems from the government. And if you can open an IRA or a Trump account and Trump savings account, then your money can compound tax-free over time, which is very important. Yeah, avoid paying taxes as much as you can. You're bearish on short-term capital gains,

bullish on long-term cap gains. Yeah.