Morning Brew Daily - Bullish or Bearish: The Biggest Headlines for 2024

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Episode 235: Toby, Neal and Kyle all get together to look ahead to the rest of 2024 and explain what they are bullish or bearish on. Topics include; the Apple Vision Pro, electric vehicles, IPOs, big food vs big pharma, movie theaters, and much more! Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Kyle Heggie. Today, we are taking the gloves off with another edition of Bullish or Barish. Apple's VR headset, Big Snack versus Big Pharma in the viral Stanley Cup. You name it. We're going to debate it.

It's Monday, January 15th. Let's ride. Today is Martin Luther King Day and the brew offices are closed, but we are still around to bring you a special edition episode. And it's made even more special by the fact that we are joined in the studio by Mr. Kyle. Hagee himself. I am honored to be here today to moderate this great intellectual debate between the two titans of the podcasting worlds, myself and Neil, and I guess Toby is also here as well. Here, here. So we mentioned at the beginning of the show, this is a bullish or bearish episode. We did it last year. Kyle is going to introduce topics that we think will be major storylines in

2024. And Toby and I, maybe Kyle later on, will weigh in with our scalding hot tapes. Yes, and I will physically separate you too. If it comes to that, I've been, obviously, as you can tell, hit in the gym in 2024. So I think I can pull it off. Are you already? We are ready. But first, real quick, before we jump into the show, a quick word from our sponsor, VIM. We are super grateful for VEM for making this show possible.

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My cyber is very secure. But, okay, let's move on to Bullish or Bearish. And for those listening, bowl is good, bear is bad, and I promise no animals were harmed during the taping of this podcast. So let's get into our first one. Apple stock is up 389% over the past five years. The Blue Bubble grade has bullied Android users. You have Tim Cook, the goat of supply chain at the helm.

Apple feels quite untouchable, but they have a big new product coming out this year, the Apple Vision Pro. And this is their biggest product launch in nearly a decade, this VR headset, the Vision Pro, which is going to be released in just a few weeks on February 2nd. No company has yet to crack the code of getting people to wear these devices in any significant. number. So can Apple's magic touch finally make the Metaverse happen? Are you bullish or bearish on the Applevision Pro? And Toby, I'm going to go to you first. I think Apple, I am very bullish on this. I think Apple is one of the only companies out there that's truly made an advancement when it comes to interacting with our computers in a different way. Their spatial computing is very cool. They are blending your environment with a computer in a way

that meta or anyone else hasn't. They stripped away those clunky, awkward controllers that you have to hold in your hands. And I think being able to interact with the device with your hands free is a great and needed innovation. And I'm very bullish also on the entertainment experience, being able to essentially enter a theater in the space of your own home. You have two 4K TVs for each eyeball in this. So I think the spatial theater experience is going to be great.

And then also finally, it's got the most robust app developer community. You need apps on these devices to make it. cool. And Apple has just has this years and years of developer community that you can't replicate overnight. So those are three reasons for me. One, two, three. That's a strong bowl argument. That was a lot of corporate jargon. I got to say, that was a lot of corporate jargon for to pitch to consumers who really care about only one thing. And that is the price, which we haven't touched on yet. This thing is going to cost $3,500. That's about the same as a Herman Miller couch. You can't even sit on this thing.

But to be serious, I think this, you know, I think Apple really has not articulated a use case, a really killer app for headsets. And I don't think meta has either. I don't think anyone who's trying to release any VR or Metaverse product has been able to pitch this compellingly to consumers. Apple can whip out the coolest technology in the world. It can be, you know, maybe comfortable to wear. but if the content is not good, if there is no reason for using this, then I don't think consumers are going to bite, especially with this price tag. Meanwhile, Meta's Oculus Quest, the lowest price one is now at $500. So say I'm a consumer who wants to kind of dip into this world a little bit,

see what it's all about. Why would I knock? The meta is a very good product for what it is. I'm sure the Apple one is a little bit better technologically, but I'm not going to spend $3,500 on it just as a regular dude. He wants the Herman Miller couch. That's what I heard from this actually. Hell yeah. But yeah. I mean, you're going to need a comfortable couch if you buy this too. So now we're talking 7K for the all-in package. It's quite expensive. I'm already sensing some tension. We have a bowl and a bear. What do you think? You're in the room.

I am bearish because I think 2024 is the year of in real life experiences. I think the last thing we want is to like go deeper into a virtual setting. I think we actually now want to be interacting with people in real life. Not like Toby sitting sitting at home alone with his

Applevision Pro. I got my 2, 4K movie theaters on my eyes now. Kyle, you have more friends than us. We get it, okay? Okay, the debate is already starting off on a good foot. I like the tension that is brewing. We're going to go to our next one. And so for this next category, we're actually going to go to Wall Street,

aka the public markets. And I think the era of SPACs is over, thankfully. And people are looking to the normal IPO process in 2024. That is what everyone is talking about. Is the IPO market going to pop? I'm going to list off actually some private companies that are slated to go public this year. And I actually want to hear your thoughts generally about the public market, but then if you have any hot takes on these companies as well. So the five names we have our eye on are Reddit, which is the popular forum website, Stripe, the payments juggernaut, Panera of charged lemonade fame, skims the brainchild of Kim Kardashian.

And Sheehan, the clothing store your Gen Z sister can't stop talking about. Neil, you're up first, bullish, and then any companies you're looking at in Partial. Yeah, so one company that I think I'm bullish on, and we should caveat this by saying we are not investment pros. I have a lawyer in my ear saying that. But just more broadly, skims. I think Kim Kardashian is an absolute force. The power of influencer-led brands is only increasing. This company started 40 years ago, and it's already valued at $400 billion.

It grew sales 50% from in 2022. Sales were $500 million. Then it went up to $750 million. The big announcement recently was that it was getting into men's, men's underwear. This market is ripe for disruption. At the top of the men's underwear business is Haynes, and second is Fruit of the Loom. I can't imagine more dinosaur companies that are ripe for disruption from someone like Kim Kardashian. So I'm pretty bullish on skims getting into the menswear game.

I'm looking at a company like Lulu Lemon, which was really focused on women, just focused. on yoga wear. I just made that up, but it sounds right. That has done a very graceful and lucrative job of getting into the men's market. Now, every dude I know is wearing Lulu Lemon pants and loves them. I think Skims can do that and even more. I have Lulu Lemon on right now, and what I'm hearing is a Skim sponsorship. Let's get some Skims. Skims underwear. Neil, I agree with you on Skims. You did say it's valued at $400 billion. It's currently valued at $4 billion. I said $4 billion. You said 400. And as much as we want to be bullish on this. He's inflating his take. I don't think we can actually justify a

$400 billion evaluation for skims. My company that I'm most bullish on is actually Panera, and it comes down to actually my bullishness on Kava as well. Kava had one of the best IPOs of last year, the fast, casual Mediterranean chain, and it's a loss-making franchise. It only has 260 stores. Panera has over 2,000. And I don't think a lot of people knew this, actually. I certainly didn't, is that Panera was actually a public company once before, before it was taken private once again in 2017. And during that time, it was a hundred-bagger. If you invested $10,000 when it went public in mid-1999, you would have turned that investment into a million dollars. This was once a stock that a lot of people loved, and I think it's going to be a stock that

people love again in the new year. Have you tried to charge lemonade? I've not tried to charge lemonade, and I will not. It is tough to bet on a restaurant company, especially a fast-coucats. one when so many people are working from home. I think Panera really kind of, you know, it did well, but I think that was during an era when a lot of people were going there for lunch from the office. So I don't know, restaurant margins are very low. There's a lot of competition in this space. I don't know what differentiates Panera from any other fast casual restaurant when you have

Chipotle has made it same in Mexican, Kava, Mediterranean. There are a bunch of other more compelling options, I think, than Panera. but maybe I'm just disconnected from the real people. It's the bread, Panera, Red. Is there one of those companies that you are bearish on, well, other than Panera, I guess, but any of the names we haven't mentioned so far? I don't think I'm particularly bearish. I know you're bearish on Reddit.

I'm a little bearish on Reddit because it just seems like a worse version of all the other social media platforms that have already gone public. It's got a smaller user base. That user base is less kind of amiable to being monetized, like Reddit community. communities are very, very protective and they don't like ads popping up here and there. So I just don't think it's got the scale that you need for a social media company to really pop in today's day and age. Also, there's just this tensions with the community that happened around this public IPO process. So that's the one name that I'm a little bearish on going into 2024.

I love the takes. I think in general, I am bullish just on IPOs in 2024. I think they are going to pop, and it's so fun. Like, I love when people go to the New York Stock Exchange and get to ring the belt. Yeah. So I want a lot of bell ringing in 2024. Okay, next one. We are moving on to what I consider to be the biggest matchup of 2024.

No, I'm not talking about the presidential election. I'm talking about Big Food versus Big Pharma. Big food has been dominating American life since the invention of the Cheez-It, pumping us full of processed sugar and red dye 5. In the other corner, we have Big Pharma with well-known hits that will help with anything from pneumonia to allergies. but Big Pharma has a new trick up its sleeve. Ozempic, Wagovi, and other GLP1 drugs appear to be the next blockbusters for the pharma industry with their ability to induce remarkable weight loss.

So the Octagon is set for this high-stakes showdown between Big Pharma and Big Snack, which is going to emerge to Victor? Toby, what's your take? I got my money on the Big Snack industry. It's just really hard to kill. It's kind of like a chameleon. It adapts to whatever trend is in when low-fat was. It made low-fat snacks when high-fat yogurts came back in the style.

It adapted to that as well. Nestle's CEO has already said that they're working on a number of different health aids targeted at people who use OZemPEC, stuff like supplements that support weight loss, vitamins, minerals, other nutrients that you might be missing in your weight loss journey. And then Mondalas said it's already expanding its portion control snacks, which are those individual wrapped snacks that are 200 calories or less. So I think that if any industry out there can adapt and survive in a new environment where something else is trendy, I think it's a snack industry.

It's just very hard to kill. They might. I mean, I don't think it's going anywhere, obviously, but I think that they are on the defensive, on the back foot. Like you said, they're going to have to make all these changes. And that's because of these miraculous drugs that appear to be coming onto the market that are turning into, they're going to be the best-selling drugs of all time. I think that's pretty much a certainty.

For me, I think Big Farm is going to win this battle because I just look at where the money is going. The money investors are on my side last year. Novo Nordisk, the maker of Wiggovi Leapfrog, leapfrogged Nestle as the second most valuable company in Europe. And then it went on to top LVMH as the most valuable company in Europe. So if you're just looking at it, X's and O's. You see Wagoe Novo Nordisk, it's more valuable than Nestle now. I think that's pretty much as binary as we can make this, that Big Pharma is beating Big Snack. I will say, though, if you want to follow the money, there was a lot of money in the Big Snack

industry last year. We had that Mega Merger, Smuckers acquired Hostess for $4.6 billion. I don't really know if a move like that is made if they don't see a future where they can adapt to this new landscape. And speaking of price, by the way, that's one of my bearish arguments against Hosempic, against Wagovi. The average retail price of these drugs is just, it's a good. extremely, extremely high steel.

They all will run you. Wagovi, OZempec, Monjaro, will all run you over $1,000 a month. And so that's just pretty prohibitively expensive. You might say that price will eventually come down, but I think that's going to kind of dent the widespread adoption that so many people are forecasting. If we're doing the ESPN pregame of this matchup,

there is an X factor here. What is the X factor? The X factor is whether insurance will cover this. That is the X factor. anyone can agree with that. The intangibles. The intangibles. Will insurance show up today's game? I think there is a decent chance that it could because there are more studies that are coming out that these drugs do much more than just do weight loss. I mean, there was one huge recent study about Wagovi that says it reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes by 20% in adults

with heart disease and obesity. When you look at something like that, that makes it much more compelling for insurers to cover this. Yeah, I've even heard people are like going to the gym more on it. seems to be this like miracle drug. They can't quite figure out, but good things are happening to people. I do think this is like the most American matchup of all time, because there's two things Americans love, a quick fix, which is like, oh, a drug I take that loses weight and a tasty little snack at the end of the day. So I don't know which one is going to break first. This is, I think, the matchup to watch going into 2024. Let's move on now to our next topic of bullish bearish, and that is electric vehicles. So for a long time now, electric vehicles have kind of been

the prince that was promised, this technology that was going to usher in a greener future, one lithium ion battery at a time. I think Tesla appears to be the king here, but you actually have a ton of players getting into the space, Fisker, Rivian, and Lucid, and even the kind of big automakers, the legacy companies. But recently, the pace of adoption has slowed, and these legacy automakers I just referenced have actually started to scale back their production plans of EV. So, Neil, you're up first for this one. Are you bullish or bearish on the future of electric vehicles? I'm bullish only because the U.S. government, which is the most powerful economic force in the entire world, along with pretty much every other government, wants this to happen.

They're going to make it happen. There's going to be incentives. There's going to be subsidies. They have these targets that they want to hit. I mean, the Biden administration has effectively mandated that two-thirds of all new vehicles will be electric by 2032. And as we've seen for centuries, private industry is going to have to bend under the will of the government because this is the biggest customer. They can make change. They put their thumb on the scale.

And they can choose winners and losers. They're choosing EVs to be winners here. I don't know how long it's going to take. A lot of the adoption has taken a lot longer than we expected. But I think ultimately, we're all going to be driving electric vehicles someday. It's a strong econ take talking about the power of the government and aligning incentives. I like the argument. I know.

I mean, I'm actually not bullish on that particular argument because you can't really sway consumer habits if consumers don't like the product that's being created. That being said, I do think the products being created are kind of meeting consumer expectations more and more. And one big part of that, I think, because I'm actually long-term bullish on electric vehicles as well, it's because the unified charging network in the U.S. is going to be huge. That's constantly been one of the greatest sources of anxiety and one of the big, biggest reasons why you wouldn't purchase an electric car because you're not sure if you're going to get stranded on a highway.

You can't take those long road trips because there just hasn't been this robust charging system, but I think GM and Ford, they just jumped on the Tesla charging network. So finally, we're getting to this standard that makes people feel more confident, which will be huge. That in the price of electric vehicles has been the two hang-ups for people, and I think we're slowly getting over those humps. Doing research for the show is looking into range anxiety, which is this, why everyone says they don't want an electric vehicle.

It's actually a myth that people drive long distances in the United States. The average U.S. driver traveled about 40 miles a day, and 93% of U.S. trips were less than 30 miles. So everyone maybe just has this vision of them going on this long road trip, very romantic, when in actuality, they don't need a car that goes more than 50 miles per charge, then they can come home and charge it back up. I blame the Rascal Flats. They put life is a highway.

with our brains, and everyone thinks they're doing cross-country road ships, yeah. The government's going to ban Rascal Flats as well. That's, I can get behind. One bearish argument, though, is that hybrids potentially could be the way to go. Remember, Toyota was the one legacy carmaker that didn't go all in on EVs. Ford and GM, they built all these new factories, and now they're kind of grappling with this glut of supply of some of their electric vehicles. Toyota said, listen, we're going to ease our way into it.

We're going to still keep producing our hybrid vehicles, and their preises are selling like hotcakes. It can't even keep them on the lot. So that's, I don't know if it's a bull or a bearish argument, but I do think hybrids have a bigger role to play in the coming years than anyone gives them credit for. And one reason I think we're not seeing as fast adoption as we expected is, I don't think we realize that people don't just buy a new car every year, like it's the next iPhone. I mean, these people have their cars for years. And currently, the average age of passenger cars and light trucks in the U.S. is a, it's just hit a record of 12. point five years. They're old. I noticed how you didn't say Google pixel there by the way.

He said new iPhones. You can't even help it. He's a green bubble guy. He can't even help it. Good point, Neil. Sorry to bring up the pixel point. But before we jump into the next part of our show, let's take a quick break. So US movie theaters had a huge 2023, largely thanks to Super Mario Bros and the famed Barbenheimer. But despite posting a 30% gain from 2022, box office revenues is we're actually still 15% below the average of the last three pre-pandemic years. And rumor hazard inflation is already exacerbating the already outrageous popcorn prices. Someone's got to bring these popcorn prices down. But the question on everyone's mind is, are theaters ever going to return to their pre-COVID glory days?

So are you bullish or bearish on the future of movie theaters, Toby? And you already had a Vision Pro take. So I'm curious how that's going to integrate here. I got lots of takes. I am bearish on movie theaters because of two things. One, the decline of Marvel. The Disney Marvel machine has been the box off pretty much ever since Iron Man came out in 2008. But Cracks have started to emerge this year.

Warner Bros. overtook it as the top grossing studio at the box office. So when you got your biggest player, the player that puts the team on its back every year struggling, I think it's bad for the industry as a whole. The other thing I think is bad for the industry as a whole is the rise of sequels again. This past year of movies was such a breath of fresh air because we finally escaped from this horror of sequel after sequel. We got Barbie, which was original. We got Super Mario Bros., which was regional. Oppenheimer. These weren't spinoffs or sequels, and finally people reacted. They showed at the box offices that they loved this kind of new and original content.

And then you look ahead at the slate for 2024. We got Joker 2, Dune 2, Sonic 3, Gladiator 2, Bad Boys 4, Deadpool 3, Ghostbusters 4, Kong Poop Panda 4. You just go down the list and we're back in sequel hell again. How did this happen? I can't wait to see all of those. He's a sequel guy. Okay, Neil, I'll hand it off to you. No, I actually don't like sequels. But I am bullish long-term on movie theaters because of one specific moment in time. In 2020, Warner Brothers, we were at the height of the pandemic. Warner Brothers makes this very drastic decision to release all of its movies in theaters and on streaming at the same time. This was a huge deal because everyone was like, all right, this is the end of movie theaters.

For the first time ever, we are going to be releasing movies in theaters and on streaming at the same time. This was a sign that companies were pushing everything they had into streaming. They were letting theaters go. What happened a year later? Warner Brothers reversed that decision, and they went back to movie theaters. After all that, that was the moment where if movie theaters were going to die, they could have died and they didn't.

So I'm bullish on the long term of movie theaters because people, it was before COVID too. Everyone was like movie theaters are dead with TV. There's the era of prestige TV and quality content is going to TV. And yet movie theaters didn't die. COVID, movie theaters didn't die. And now I think we're seeing a rebound. It's only going to continue. But it really depends on the content.

I think that's what. If the content's good, people will go to movie theaters. If they're Super Mario Brothers, if there's the Barbies of the world, there's the Oppenheimer's of the world, then people are going to go to movies. But if the content sucks, if there's like Dune 7, I don't want to shout out Dune, but Ghostbuster 7. You're excited for Beverly Hills Cop 4? Because that's coming too.

I can keep going to. This is my question to you, and I think this puts it in a stark reality, and it might change your answer. If you're so bullish on movie theaters, that means you're buying stock in AMC? See? I don't think you would. It is true that AMC stock just has plunged to a record low. And the AMC is kind of...

The litmus test for the movie. So if you're bullish on movies, movie theaters, but you're not bullish on AMC, there's some, there's some tension there. I knew that would put him in a mental pretzel right there. I had that one in the back pocket. Maybe I will buy. Oh, no. Not financial advisors.

No. But what I will say is I think we're seeing new models and new arrangements for them, like what Taylor Swift did. She inked a very, like a very unique distribution channel by sidestepping major studios with AMC. Another data point is that IMAX just had its. second biggest year ever, it brought in over $1 billion. You have new venues appearing like the sphere in Las Vegas, which is showing this movie,

this very immersive movie about nature. So I think maybe movie theaters won't look like they will now, and maybe AMC will continue to follow, which is why I'm not sure I would buy the stock. But I think this industry is just very resilient. It's been declared dead so many times before, and America just can't get enough of the movies. The lawyers are telling me, to remind everyone, this is not funny. financial advice. We thought short sellers were just people under 5 foot 10. So don't listen to us for financial advice. I'm bullish on movie theaters because I do think in real life experiences. You have friends. We get it, Kyle. All right. The goal for 20204 is to get Toby and Neil some friends. All right. We're going to move on to our last big question here in Bolisher Barish. And that is the year 2024, which is an Olympic year, right? So July is going to roll around. The world's eyes are going to turn towards the host city, Paris for another showing of athletic. prowess. However, pretty much every economic study that's ever been done on the Olympics

suggests that the financial burden placed on the cities or the countries often outweighs the economic activity it generates. So cities like aren't really trying to get the Olympics maybe as much as they were anymore. And viewership numbers declined precipitously in 2021's COVID-impacted addition. And I think the question on everyone's mind is like, do people even care about the Olympics anymore? Neil, bullish or bearish? I think the only metric that matters here is viewership that that shows interest right are people tuning in do people care about what's going on at the olympics and the trend is just going in the in the wrong direction an average of 11.4 million viewers watch the Beijing Olympics on NBC universal platforms each night that was down

a lot from the 19.8 million viewers for the Pyong chang games in 2018 the summer Olympics in Tokyo also had similarly miserable numbers that was the smallest audience since NBC University began covering the summer games in 1988. I think this is the only metric that matters. And so therefore, I'm bearish. I am relatively romantic about the Olympics, as I'm sure a lot of people know. I think this is a bounce back year because everything just becomes more normal. 2021 is obviously going to be a blip when it comes to viewership numbers when it comes

to the Olympics as a whole just because of everything that was going on in the will. And I'm just bullish because I think we got some storylines back. the peak of the Olympics was the Usain Bolt years when there was just these larger than life, Michael Phelps characters that were just dominating storylines and they brought you out. And I think we're on the verge of kind of that next generation. You got Noah Lyles from the U.S. is the next great American sprinting hope who could challenge some of Usain Bolt's records. Simone Biles will be back again.

Katie Ledecki is still there. Elliot Kipchogi has competition on the marathon. So I think there's all these strands of intrigue that will pull people back in. And again, this is taking a more romantic sporting perspective, but it is an entertainment spectacle, and I think we have the ingredients for it to be entertaining again this year. You're putting your heart over your head. I am putting my heart because it's a romantic thing. And I'm also bullish on the new sports, I will say, because that is another chance to increase kind of viewership. The big ones are cricket and flag football.

I think those are the two with the most global impact. Getting NFL players or getting that football audience interested in the Olympics is huge. and then cricket. We went through the top Wikipedia articles earlier this year. Everyone is searching for cricket. It's one of the, if not the biggest sport in the world behind soccer. And so I think cricket and flag football are two big boosts for the Olympics. I'm not writing off the Olympics, and I hope it turns itself around.

But really, this is a story business, as Toby was saying. They need to reliably churn out very compelling stories. People care about the athletes way more than they care about the competitions. And I think in the past few decades, the Olympics has not reliably been able to churn out these stories that makes people care, that makes people watch. We all remember Michael Phelps in 2008. I mean, that was some of the most compelling, interesting television that I've ever watched. I have goosebumps just thinking about it right now. But that has just not been consistently delivered over the past few years.

Let's hope that this was just a COVID thing, the bubble, the weird stuff that was going on in the world. and we'll get back on track with 2024. But it is true that people don't want to live in cities that host the Olympics. Like half of Paris says this is- The one thing Paris does not like is tourists. And they're going to get them anyway. Now they're getting even more, you mean, half of the population of Paris said that the Olympics was a bad thing, not even just a neutral thing.

They said it was a bad thing. So you're going to see a lot more backlash locally to government spending billions of dollars on Olympic venues. I hope Toby's right. He's romantic, too. Deep down, you can tell he's romantic, too. We're all romantic, too. Neil did, like, the stats argument, and Toby went straight from the heart.

Straight from the heart, maybe. I'm bullish, and it's not necessarily a prediction, but I'm trying to manifest it, because I do think the Olympics are so special, particularly now where things feel very, like, polarized and not unified. I do think it's an awesome thing where we can bring countries together. We can, like, share in different cultural experiences, honor these great athletes from all of the world. So I'm hoping it's good, and Neil is wrong.

Kyle forgot that it's a competition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think we're all coming together for a sing-along. I think we're all hanging out, sing-along, exactly. All right, there's only so much we can cover in detail, but there is so many stories coming up in 2024. So we're going to move to a rapid fire round. I'm going to give you some topics,

and we need short answers, bullish or bearers, on these topics. Are you all ready to go for the rapid fire round? Let's do it. Okay, and Toby, we're going to start with you. First rapid topic round, Stanley. The Stanley Cups, I am so bearish. on these things. Trends come and go. They do not stick around. I'm out on Stanley. I think the same way, especially in this market. Hydroflask, Yeti, now Gene, they all come and go. They all come and go.

I think Stanley is just going to be another flash on the pan. Wow. Shots fired at Stanley. I am bullish on Stanley, mainly because it reminds me of flat Stanley, which I did in like third grade, which was the best thing ever. So I'm bullish on Stanley. All right. Rapid Fire round, or topic number two, Cosmix. So I should say, Cosmix is this new coffee-oriented smaller concept for McDonald's that it's starting to roll out.

Yeah, and I'll go first. I could not be more bearish on this. I read a review of people who actually tried the drinks, and they just said the drinks were discussing, you can't be big if people don't like your drinks, so I'm bearish. I didn't see that review. Otherwise, I'd be very bullish because I think this is

following in the vein of these quick stop coffee shops that you see a lot over the West and the Midwest, you don't see much here in the East, but the Dutch Bros of the world with super-suggery drinks, you know what I'm talking about. I think those are very popular, and as people just buy more iced coffee, that's like the biggest thing. It's like the biggest driver in the U.S. food industry right now is ice coffee. I think this is going to be a winner for McDonald's. I like the bullish argument. As a Midwest expert, the Midwest is going to love this. Yeah. I'm bullish with Grimmis. They're going back-to-back. That's my belief.

Toby, spend more time with people. Toby, you've got to get around the country. Road trips, yeah. All right. A rapid fire topic number three. And Neil will start with you, the cyber truck. Yeah, I mean, there's no question the cyber truck is going to be very polarizing. There's going to be people who hate it. But I think there will be enough people who want it parked in their driveway, just kind of like they want a Lamborghini or another kind of very flashy car to as a way of showing their status and saying, yeah, like, I'm behind Elon.

I'm rich. I want to show off my wealth. And by all accounts, this truck is pretty freaking cool, like, technically to drive. So I'm bullish. I think it's going to be bigger than initial expectations. I'm bullish because I'm reading the Elon Musk biography right now, and I'm getting wrapped up in the whole mythos of it all. But setting my heart aside, I'm a little bearish just on the production side of things

because there's already been some cracks showing in terms of, this is a very difficult material to work with. It's made out of stainless steel, which you just don't make cards out of. So I do think there's going to be some production hitches, and it won't get widespread adoption anytime soon. I'm bullish just for the peer intellectual argument of it looks cool. You think it looks cool? I think it looks really cool. It just looks very futuristic. It's not like anything else out there. Okay, next topic, Neil, will go back to you as well. Do you think the S&P is going up or down in 2024? I think the AI boom is going to continue this year. So I'll say the S&P 500 goes up.

You're going to see companies report. It's all going to be about our companies making money from AI. I mean, that is when Nvidia reports earnings, if they show that companies are actually paying for their graphics processing units for data centers, I think that is just going to drive stock prices higher. And we just talked about last week how OpenAI released a GPT store to increase subscriptions. for it's $20 a month plan. So this is not like the metaverse bubble of a few years ago. This is people spending actual money on AI. And I think if companies, like big tech companies, really, the SB 500, we're really talking

about seven companies, the magnificent seven. These companies can show that companies are spending with them on AI products, then the SMP 500 will continue to go up, even as the Fed reduces interest rates, too. I'm going to double-click on that last point, you said, and say that it goes down because the Fed does not get inflation under control. We don't reach that 2% milestone. I think that is a bigger deal than any AI boom. So this is against my personality. Well, what's wrong with what's going to happen with inflation?

The snack industry is going to get too big, and the snack prices are going to keep going up. I'm going to piece together all my arguments. Too many people are going to buy the Vision Pro headset. So I'm saying S&P 500 goes down. Jerome Powell might be the X factor on this one. I think it's going up because I'm going to channel my Warren Buffett. Don't bet against America. There you go.

All right. Up next, and Toby will go to you on this one. Taylor and Travis, and I don't think I even need to say the last names here. I think you're getting married. So I guess I'm as bullish as possible. These two are getting married. They're lovebirds. You see it in their eyes.

You see it in the way they act. Bullish, long term, on Tay and Trave. I have also bullish. I've seen sparks fly. All right, we know love when we see it here. I'm bullish as well. I just don't want to piss off the swifties. All right.

Last question of bullish or bearish. This is more of a prediction. Who is going to be your 2024 Super Bowl champions? This is not gambling advice either. You go first, Neil. I'm looking at all the matches right now. I really haven't put a lot of thought into this. Let's go with the Browns.

Wow. Joe Flacco is going on the Cinderella run of a lifetime. He's bringing in Cleveland a championship. The Flacco Renaissance. The Flacknaissance. The Flackenissance. I'm sticking with the AFC too,

go with the Buffalo Bills, Josh Allen's a freak. Oh, if you're saying that, then I'm going to say the Ravens. I thought you were going to say the Ravens. No, you could say the Ravens. I think the Ravens are going to win. Neil gets two picks somehow.

The Ravens are very good. The Ravens are very good. We have to wrap it up there. Hope you all have a relaxing. day off. If you have the day off, Kyle, such a pleasure to have you, moderate and sometimes give your opinions. Can't believe I won the second bullish or bearish episode too. We'll see about that. All right, Toby, what is our swing thought of the day? Our swing thought of the day. It's Barton Luther King Day today, so our thought comes from MLK,

and that is life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others? A good thought to remember for the entirety of the year, but especially today. Love that. We always love from you as well, so don't hesitate to write in with any feedback to our email Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Miliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Bellas and Raymond Loo are associate producers. Eugenwa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. How could you not be bullish on hair and makeup? Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil and Kyle. Let's run it back tomorrow.