Prof G Markets - Predictions for 2025

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Scott shares his predictions for the year ahead, including his picks for the top investment, technology, and media platform of 2025. He also forecasts what could become the standout IPO of the year. And for the first time ever, Scott ventures into uncharted territory with his prediction for the "chemical of the year." Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Today's number, 37 million. That's how many times a Propp G episode was downloaded in 2024. How do you know I have a podcast? I tell you. ["Trofimarkets"]

Welcome to Trofimarkets. That was the best I could come up with. I couldn't come up with something. That's good, we're just basking in the glory of it. It's pretty incredible, no? I was pretty happy with that number. Yeah, that's the way I think. I'm like, why wasn't it 38 million? Like it's Ed's fault.

I don't, I'm a glass half empty kind of guy. By the way, I think, I think Joe Rogan does that. I don't know, in about seven, eight minutes. Yeah, true. Well, you put it that way. We got some work to do. Yeah. That's why we've raised your salary from $7.75 to $7.85 an hour.

You're really bringing home the bacon here. That's right. Well, let's get to it, Scott. For our first episode of the year, we're going to walk through your predictions for 2025. So we'll cover your thoughts on what's in store for tech and markets and media. And we're also going to try to address some of the audience's questions and their comments from your predictions live stream that happened in December. Sound good? Yeah, that sounds great. Let's do it.

Let's jump in. So your first prediction here, a new duopoly is forming. Open AI and Nvidia will be the power couple of 2025. Give us your thoughts on the power couple of 2025. Give us your thoughts on the OpenVIDIA prediction. Well, just as there was Wintel, you have what is effectively somewhere between 88 and 90% of traffic to and the percentage of AI searches or queries powered by OpenAI and powered by Nvidia. And while there's a few players we talk about, whether it's Claude or we don't really talk about anyone in the chip market, although we talked about IBM, but that was quantum computing. These guys have more dominance, I would argue, than Wintel.

But this is the new duopoly of the age and what's so striking is these are fairly new companies. But between the two of them, they have, well, I guess Nvidia's about 3.2 trillion, they have about a $3.5 trillion market capitalization. Moving on to the future of AI, software as a service and service as a software. What did you mean by that? If you think about software as a service,

it's basically the cloud. And that is you run out the cloud to such that people can build applications on top of it. AI, I think, is the next iteration of AI is we got some of the infrastructure plays figured out or full body contact. We got the LLMs. I do think that this new technology is going to create a bunch of new unicorns around very specific applications where people build a thick layer of innovation

on top of the GPU, on top of an LLM, and offer sort of, for example, a specific application that leverages an LLM and a GPU to create a very specific niche form of AI that helps people, say, with backend compliance for the banking sector, or that figures out a way to offer certain types of personal injury law firms a specific type of AI that helps them write contracts more specifically.

I think there's going to be a bunch of niche applications specifically in the enterprise in the back office. I think it's going to create a bunch of kind of AI apps, if you will, or AI driven apps. I think there's real opportunity in travel. There's real opportunity in health, but they will be branded. They will use, you know, open AI

and Nvidia will benefit because they'll be built on top of them. But there'll be little niche applications that focus on specifics. Just think about how Craigslist kind of picked apart newspapers or classifieds. They went after the movies, then they went after car sales.

These applications will start kind of picking apart, if you will, various niche applications. So I called it services as a software. Moving on to your technology of 2025, which you have chosen is nuclear. Well, the stopgap or the friction and the growth of AI isn't, or at least the smartest people in AI or the biggest players don't feel that it's customers

or capital or even employees or human capital. It's the energy to power these queries, which are 10 times more energy consumptive than a similar query on Google. And it's, whether it's Altman trying to raise money or thinking about investing in nuclear startups or it's Bezos partnering with Constellation to reconnect or fire up Three Mile Island again,

which would have just been unthinkable only a few years ago. It's clear that they've figured out that the choke point here will be, we're going to run out of energy pretty quickly, and that we've got to bring new energy online. And even Metta just announced they've asked, they put out an RFP looking for somebody to show up and build them a giant nuclear power plant to power their business operations specifically, I would imagine. There their plans around AI. And for me, most roads, if not all roads,

lead to what is arguably, I believe, some of the most cleanest reliable energy, and that is nuclear. So I think nuclear is going to have a big year in 2025. We've got a listener question here from Steve, who asks, what are the best ways to invest in nuclear? I mean, I can just list a couple good nuclear energy stocks. Go ahead, Ed.

You probably know more about this than I do. Constellation Energy is a big name that we've been talking about. Vistra is a good name. It's another stock you can invest in investing in nuclear. Also, Entergy Corporation. I mean, there are a lot of nuclear energy stocks out there. Those are probably the biggest three three or probably the most promising.

But you know, we've also talked about how Big Tech is investing in their own nuclear operations. I feel like a very safe play. You're going to get some of the nuclear momentum if you just stay in Big Tech, to be honest. I mean, they're all investing in that anyway. What I would want to do, so I'm pretty sure all of the stocks you mentioned are up pretty massively in 2024. So word is out.

That's definitely right. And I would say if you're going to do this, try and find a fund that has a bunch of them. I just think it's dangerous to bet on any one of these because I think the run-up has been pretty violent here. What I think is more interesting is, I remember when we started talking about GLP-1 18 months ago and how it was going to be revolutionary. And then, you know, by the time that podcasters are onto an idea, the smart money has piled in about six months before that.

No, we're early. We're always early. We're early. And Nova Nordisk was up dramatically, as was Eli Lilly. But Mia Severio, our analyst,, she found little publicly traded companies that, for example, made syringes for semaglutides. So I think if you were a fund manager, if you're a consumer, don't spend your time on this shit, buy index funds, or if you're really fascinated by nuclear, there's probably a nuclear ETF that's likely to be a little bit more, I don't know,

diversified, if you will. But if you're a manager and you really wanna do some homework or you wanna take a little bit of your capital, I think what you wanna find is the materials or the basic boring companies that build stuffs, materials for nuclear. So I would imagine there's a certain type of paint resin that you gotta put on these reactors,

or there's a certain type of shelving or a certain type of composites or minerals, or some people are saying the play is in uranium now. So I think you're going to have to do more work and go further downstream and look at some of the materials and the suppliers or even the vendors that should benefit from an explosion in nuclear because word is out. Word is out. That's definitely right. I definitely wouldn't recommend it as if I were stock picking. Let's move on to your investment of 2025, which would be emerging markets. If you look at over the last 40 or 50 years, there's kind of eight to 15 year periods where the U S outperforms the rest of the world, and then the rest of the world outperforms the U S.

And it's basically all about flows of capital. And even if you're Argentina and you have good companies, everyone has been so negative on Argentina for so long that there's just flows of capital out. And basically about 5% of institutional money has gone into some of these emerging markets or BRICS. And it's usually around 8% or 9%. So there's been a massive flow out of capital. So even if the company is performing well, the flow of capital out of that market means there's just fewer people wanting to buy stocks. And you've seen these markets underperform the U.S. market substantially. And now the U.S. market represents 50 percent of total market capital of all stocks globally,

which is what you would call a cyclical high. And everyone from Goldman Sachs to JP Morgan have said, when stocks are this high, usually returns go down. And I believe that what we're gonna see is that after a 15-year bull market run for US stocks, we're gonna start to see the river or the flow of capital reverse, and we're gonna see more people go hunting

for cheaper stocks in emerging markets. Even for example, Argentina stocks have boomed the last few months under new leadership. I think that's likely going to infect Brazil. People are going to start looking at stocks in Brazil. Stocks there actually look quite cheap still. You can buy pretty solid companies there, including their biggest bank, their biggest iron ore producer for a P of about five. So I believe we're in a kind of a cyclical moment or a high in terms of capital flows into the US. In sum, I'm rotating out of US-centric investments

into other markets. I think the world X the US is gonna likely outperform the US over the next five to 10 years. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity in some of these beaten down markets. Emerging markets is such a weird term. It feels so outdated at this point. Yeah, non-US.

I don't know what to say. But then it's like there should be multiple different categories among emerging markets. I mean- It needs a brand. It needs a brand. Exactly. You said platform of 2025. I love this take is YouTube. Why is that? Well, when you think about streaming media, if you ask people, what's

the premier streaming video platform, they would say Netflix may be wrong. It's 8% share of total hours on streaming video. YouTube's 11% YouTube, I believe that's 50 billion in revenue. Netflix has 38. And if you look at the numbers and just the trends, YouTube's 11%. YouTube, I believe, has 50 billion in revenue, Netflix has 38. And if you look at the numbers and just the trends, YouTube continues to take share from almost everybody. And they have a paid offering. They also, I think, are the most elegant ad-supported medium.

What do I mean by that? Podcasts do host readovers. Those are kind of elegant and there's a skip button, so it's not quite as obtrusive or it's more palatable. But I find the ads on YouTube less obtrusive than any other ad supported media. When ads come on TV, I just can't even tolerate it. I'm like, oh shit, I'm somehow I ended up watching

Goodfellas on the TNT networker. And I'm like, that's it, I'm done. I'll see Joe Pesci get whacked next week or something. But the ads on YouTube, I think are really well done in terms of the skip now, because they say, okay, if you're not interested in this, you're not gonna watch full ads, you might as well skip now.

And also just in our business, it feels like overnight, whereas Apple and Spotify kind of controlled were the primary distribution mechanisms for podcasts, now it's YouTube. And we're scrambling to figure out a YouTube strategy. And what just struck me was Joe Rogan got 15 or 18 million downloads on traditional podcasts, listening devices, and he had 40 million or 50 million views on YouTube. So it strikes me that YouTube is just going from strength to strength.

Young people seem to be really intoxicated with YouTube, increasing their time on the platform. So it's got an exceptionally strong ad supported or more elegant ad supported business model. And I love ad supported mediums right now that are working because while more and more consumers are exiting the advertising ecosystem, the majority, the reason why our CPMs continue to go up pretty dramatically here at Profit.G Markets is that we attract a young wealthy male.

That is a great white rhino of advertising right now because those individuals are not watching ad supported mediums. They're not, they don't, most, most of them don't even have a TV. They're on Netflix and Spotify and YouTube and YouTube is the only place where you can reach them if you're Pepsi or you're a Warner Brothers launching, you know, a Marvel film. It's one of the few places you can still reach this group that is largely abandoned

ad supported media. So I'm just exceptionally bullish on the YouTube platform. I totally agree with that. And I'll just add one thing on. I think, as I've said before, I think one of the big strengths of YouTube is the comments section because of its ability to just facilitate socialization and interaction.

And there are many other features on YouTube that are about that. The idea of, you know, having a subscriber base and having live streaming functionality. I mean, YouTube is all about interaction. It's not just about watching the content. And what I will say is that the platforms I believe are going to succeed alongside YouTube are the ones that take notes from YouTube. And there is one platform that is doing that really well right now, and it's Spotify.

Spotify over the past few months has unveiled all of these new features that are definitely taken out of the YouTube playbook. They're now doing a comment section. They're incorporating video into the platform. We just saw this recently. They're letting us as the podcaster put out polls to interact with the audience. Spotify has gotten the memo. It's all about engagement and interaction because just watching and consuming is not interesting enough in 2025. I think the other thing I love about the comments is it's sort of like a reality check from

the audience. Like if I were to go on there on like CNN and just spew some bullshit that didn't make any sense, I would never hear any feedback from it. Who does that? That was not directed at you. You're incisive on CNN and people say that. But if I were to go on TV and just say a bunch of nonsense, I would never get the feedback I need to learn actually that didn't make any sense. And what's beautiful

about YouTube is every week we are held accountable by the audience. If we say something that is dumb or rude or aggressive or something that people don't like, they're going to tell us in the comments. And that's one of the things that I love about it. It keeps us honest. I agree. And you're right around consumer engagement. And I invested in a company called OpenWeb. And all it does is help these media platforms organize their comments such that they're less toxic and the better comments rise to the top. And it makes that entire, if you will, it's its own media. Comments are its own kind of media vehicle. It makes them advertiser friendly, and then they help monetize the comments

for media companies. Anyways, I think comments were sort of the last monetizable media in big tech. We'll be right back. We're back with ProfG Markets. Your media of 2025 is, no surprise here, podcasts. Take us through it. Podcasts are going to grow faster, a granite off a lower base than, than Metta or Alphabet, I believe in 2025.

And I think a big, the catalyst for that tsunami or the rivers reversing, uh, and the capital, the tsunami of capital, I think is going to go into podcasting is the election. I mean, politics are the ultimate in branding. You have a candidate, you have a product and they need to get 50.1% market share on a given day and the other person gets zero. It's winner take all. It's about messaging, it's about advertising in the right places. And one of the things we learned from Trump is cable news is dead and dumb.

Knocking on doors makes no fucking sense. It's all about flying into podcasts, straight into podcasts. And podcasts, MSNBC and cable news, average age of the viewers between 65 and 70, mostly female. I think it's hard to sell those people products unless it's opioid-induced constipation medications or restless legs or life alert or reverse mortgage. Whereas the average listener to a podcast is a 34 year old male who is more persuadable, who is in his mating years and makes stupid purchases, is buying a home, is forming a family. And whereas 15 years ago, one in 10 people had listened

to a podcast in the last 30 days, now it's one in two. So this is where the people are going. This is where people who you ordinarily can't reach via ad supported mediums are going. I mean, this isn't a proxy for advertising, but it's a proxy for influence. Since the election, all of these individuals who, you know, may or may not be running for president have reached out to me and want to know my views on

things and no, they don't. They want to come on our podcast and they're running for president or they're running for president or they're running for Senator. And they realize after watching Trump, I gotta be, the next kingmakers are going to be podcasts. And I think where we're gonna get a lot of that capital is from these local news stations

or local broadcast stations that have had this unnatural sugar high every two years from political spending, because campaigns are like, old people vote, they watch the local news. So these local news stations lose money 21 months every two years, and then for three months, they quintuple their ad rates and sell to the,

for local and statewide and federal races. I think that capital is about to transition. The water flowed out during the election and a tsunami is coming in of revenue into podcasting. I think you're gonna be the Rush Limbo of this next generation on the left. It's gonna be great. That's scary.

Which means we're gonna make a lot of money and you're gonna get a presidential medal of freedom. I like that. Yeah, and yeah, I don't, I don't, I wasn't a huge fan of Rush. But just in the spirit of transparency, I'm so, I've decided I was so freaked out by this election, I decided to take a break.

I'm like, okay, I've been traumatized by this thing and I'm sick of being coarse and being angry about it. I'm just gonna go dark on politics for a while. What? You do a politics podcast every week? Yeah, but that's friendly and nice. That's right, that makes no sense. That's me basically asking Jess Tarlov questions

cause she's actually knows what she's talking about as opposed to me, shit posting Trump. Okay, so you're just not gonna put your opinions out there. Yeah, it's different, but this medium is gonna, it's gonna be, unfortunately, is the definition. So kids, this doesn medium is gonna, it's gonna boom. Unfortunately, it's the definition. So kids, this doesn't mean go out and start a podcast. There's 1.6 million podcasts, 600,000 put out regular content. I think 400,000, 600,000 put out something every week.

I don't think, I think outside of the top two or 300, I don't think it's economically sustainable. Like the top 10 podcasts are responsible I don't think it's economically sustainable. Like the top 10 podcasts are responsible for a third of all downloads. I think the top 100 are responsible for two thirds. So I did the math. There were 2,800 people have been OARS men or OARS women at UCLA, at Road Crew. 10 went to the Olympics. have been oarsmen or oarswomen at UCLA, at road crew. 10 went to the Olympics.

So at 19, when I was on crew at UCLA, I was three times more likely to go to the Olympics than have a self-sustaining podcast. I love that. That's amazing. Generously 600 podcasts are self-sustaining economically. That's not to say don't do it. That's not to say it's not worth it.

McKinsey probably has 10 podcasts that, you know, highlight their commitment to green energy or whatever it is. Or it's fun or you enjoy it or you're building another business, fine. But if you're looking for an independent, self-sustaining business, this is right up there with the likelihood of high school players

gonna end up in the NBA. It is winner take all at this point. Next up on this list, we've got IPO of 2025, Sheehan. I looked at time on site times number of visitors to the site, to come up with an attention index and relative to its most recent round of public funding at $65 billion, it's the best value. And that is, if you look at traffic times the amount of time people spend on the site, it's, it's a great value compared to the market cap of other retailers relative to

their valuation and how much time people spend on their site. Also, the growth this year it's going to surpass, Amazon is the second biggest apparel retailer, next year it'll likely surpass Walmart and become the biggest apparel retailer in the world. It's also profitable, it's growing 23, it's growth sold to 23%, it's going public on the London Exchange, and if you look at the companies that have massively outperformed the market,

you can bifurcate them into two categories, capital intensive or IP intensive. So you have Nvidia's in design, they don't own any factories. Intel does. One does about $400,000 per employee, one does $2 million. If you look at Coca-Cola versus Monster, if you look at Marriott versus Airbnb, the IP intensive low capex company does three to four times the revenue per employee. And the same is true of Shein versus Zara or Inditex, which I think does about four or $500,000 per employee.

And Shein is doing 2 million. It does, you know, the average retailer does about a hundred styles a week. Fashion company, Fast Fashion does I think 700 a week and Shein does something like 7,000 a day. They own no warehouses, no factories, no trucks, no planes, no stores. It's just software using machine learning and AI to anticipate activity on the site

and then, excuse me, examine activity on the site and then anticipate and predict demand and then send out those orders to the best factory or best supplier and then put in motion all the transportation. So it's all software, there's no capbacks. And those are the companies that have overperformed. I think it's gonna get a lot of attention

because it's going public on the London Stock Exchange, which will hopefully kind of ignite a more abundant market, which has been the London Stock Exchange. Disclosure, I'm an investor here. But the reason I invested is I think that the IPO market's coming back. And despite all the valid concerns about fast fashion and Shein, I think that capitalism and greed will overwhelm any concerns. And this will be the IPO of 2025. Question from Doug, but what about tariffs, i.e. let's say Trump does impose tariffs, that seems like a potential risk for Sheehan. Well, first off, I think tariffs are not going to be nearly the boogie man people think they're going to be. I just don't see how...

I've said this, I think the moment inflation ticks up and someone says it's because of tariffs or the threat of tariffs, I think they go away. And to a certain extent, the bond market and inflation are the adult supervision now in politics. If Trump wants to run up the deficit and the bond market starts spiking, he's gonna roll back those plans. If you look at what happened with the, what was her name?

Truss. This Truss. Basically what kicked her out of office and what was the ruling party was the bond market. And the currency market had said, wait, okay, girlfriend, fine. If you want to have a plan that explodes the deficit, that's your business. But we're going to take interest rates up and your currency down. And overnight she was out of office.

And to a certain extent, I think the bond market is sort of the adult in the room with Trump. And that is, despite the fact that the Fed's been cutting rates, rates haven't come down a lot because the bond market is worried about potential deficits. The moment he gets anywhere near implementing a tariff on China, anywhere near the time zone of what he's talking about, you're going to see the bond market go up. You're gonna see people freak out about inflation. And the moment inflation ticks up month on month and people say it's because of the tariffs, they roll these things back.

And I believe that companies like Shien and Tmoo have such an incredible cost advantage. I mean, one of the cost advantages people don't talk about is because the shit's so cheap. You know what is the plague that the nightmare of retail returns. If you ship a couch to somebody and they return it, it's right then and there. Unprofitable. That transaction has gone from making money to losing money, taking shit back,

restocking it, the customer service, cleaning it, and then selling something again, it just makes turns everything bad. And the percentage of returns is a forward-looking indicator of the margins on the business. It's like churn for a software company. And these companies have almost zero returns because it's like, oh, I don't love it, it doesn't fit. Who cares?

It costs $11. So I think that A, the tariffs won't be nearly as bad as people think. And B, I think the margin, the tariffs won't be nearly as bad as people think, and B, I think the margin, the disparity in pricing and the value they offer is so dramatic that I think they could survive a tariff. They're talking about eliminating the loophole around $150 or less, they're not subject

to a certain excise tax or tariff. No doubt about it, that'll damage their profitability, but I think they have just such an enormous price disparity to play with, I think they're still gonna be fine. Next up, we have business trend of 2025, M&A. Why is that? Corporations have record profits. They're running out of growth,

and if they're in challenged industries, they wanna bulk up. You're just gonna see tons of M&A here. There's been, M&A has been largely more abundant because the Biden administration was enacting more FTC and DOJ reviews, which by the way, I think was the right thing to do, but you're going to have a much more M&A friendly head of the FTC and the DOJ now. And these companies have so much money on their balance sheets.

They're just going to go shopping. And if I were an investment bank, I would be staffing up my M&A group after just a deep freeze of the last several years. I think the bankers and the corporate development folks are like, oh my gosh, it's open season again. There's a lot of stuff out there that's been beaten up that's cheap that we can consolidate the back end, and we're not going to have to go through this, this,

you know, we're not going to have to pass chair con. So I think M&A is, is absolutely, uh, is going to boom. And you also predict that we're going to see the largest take private or buyout in history. Can you say more about that? Private equity firms have almost $3 trillion in capital that they need to deploy. Some big names have gotten beaten up so badly in the market that I think they're attractive.

Such as? My favorite targets for the biggest take private in history are Boeing, Intel, Nike, Target. These are giant carcasses kind of waiting, I think, to be taken private. I think they would benefit from being taken out of the limelight or the scrutiny of the public markets to make the requisite cost cutting they need to make or the changes or the investments they need to make. And there's so much money on the sidelines that you could see a club deal assemble the

kind of capital you would need to take one of these behemoths private. I think the biggest take private in history is going to happen in 2025. Stay with us. We're back with Profgy Markets. Let's move on to the tech movement of 2025, which is banning phones. Australia has banned social media for people under the age of 16. New Zealand and Lithuania, I think, are banning phones. States all over the United States are banning social media and phones and schools.

And the evidence is the following. Nobody regrets it. Test scores go up, student engagement goes up. And these tech companies try to make this bullshit argument like, oh, you're suppressing the free speech rights of a 13 year old. What? My favorite is you're suppressing the free speech rights of a 13 year old. Uh, what? My favorite is you're suppressing entrepreneurship.

Kids can't go online and they learn how to set off, get scrappy and make deals. And meanwhile, every tech executive, the one rule in their house is no one is allowed near these devices until they're 16. This is breaking out all over the world. And whatever I say, you know, I think academia is actually a wonderful career. And I just look at what professor Heid has accomplished in the last two years with his book, The Anxious Generation.

And he's so reasoned and thoughtful and bipartisan and shows up with so much work and is so measured. He's just having this, he's literally having a global impact on the mental health of teens around the world. And I actually, I think it's really, really inspiring, but you're gonna see phone bands and social media bands and age gating break out all over the world. Unfortunately, it's a little late for my kids,

one's 14, one's 17, but I think eight and 10-year-olds aren't going to have to deal with the same shit that we put up with for the last 15 years. Pete Slauson Question from Brian, would love to hear Scott's thoughts on how we can mobilize Gen X to provide mentoring services to Gen Z. Scott Slauson At the end of every one of my presentations, I talk about, you know, one of our big themes has been how young men are struggling. And I think one of the keys to happiness is that you have guardrails in the forms of relationships.

And I think that what really plagues young men in America right now is an absence of relationships. Women when they don't have a romantic relationship will pour that energy into the work or other relationships. They're much better at maintaining a social fabric. And I know this firsthand. If I wasn't in a relationship, I would very rarely go out. I don't like people.

I'm lazy. I would stay home and do edibles and watch Netflix all the time and probably die in a couple of years. But my partner forces me to be really social and engage and that's just really healthy. And I think that's the way it is for a lot of men. And I think young men, where they really come off the rails, is when they lose a male role model. And one of my big, I have the same six slides at the end of every presentation, and that is, I think that men need to take more responsibility for getting involved in the life of a young man or a boy that isn't theirs.

I think that's the ultimate expression of masculinity and success. You don't have to be a baller, you just have to be living a virtuous life or trying to. Because as a father of two boys, 14 and 17, it's striking how easy it is to add value. Know you should wear shoes if you're going to go to school, right? A young man the other day, I got into MIT, but I have a basketball scholarship to Joey Bagadone. It's you, and I'm thinking about taking it. No, go to MIT. Trust me on this.

Go to MIT, and then in 30 years, buy a basketball team. It's just kind of showing up and trying to be a good role model and listening and, you know, convincing them they have value because you're taking an interest in their life. And unfortunately, you know, Michael Jackson and the Catholic Church have fucked it up for all of us because there's huge suspicion and a cloud that surrounds you if you become interested in engaging in a young man or a boy's life, that isn't yours. People have weird suspicions around you, and it's really too bad.

In New York, there are three applicants for big sisters, or three times as many applicants for big sisters of New York as male applicants for big brothers. So what do we need to do? We need to create a zeitgeist in our society where a man who is doing well should feel a certain level or a certain obligation. There's a wonderful zeitgeist in the corporate community that if you're a successful woman, you have an obligation to mentor a younger woman in the organization. That zeitgeist is out there. They have all these mentoring programs. We need that same kind of cultural shift to say that a successful, good man needs to be involved in the life of a young man or a boy.

That just is part of our society. And the wonderful thing is, or the easy thing I should say is, they are, these young men and these boys are everywhere. You talk to a single mother you're working with, hey, would your son like to come with me to a ball game? I mean, they are just everywhere, these young men that especially single mothers are looking for men to engage in their lives, or even the sons of your friends, because sometimes, and this is a natural thing,

boys, teenage boys will listen to their dad's friends more than they'll listen to their dad. So I think we need a cultural shift. I think we need more organizations that pair people. And more than anything though, we need to get past this bullshit of believing that men who have fraternal and paternal love to give but don't have their own kids, or maybe they do, but they have more resources and more goodwill that somehow that isn't anything but wonderful. So I think this is an enormous unlock in America. We need to give these young men more role models and more relationships and also just

a recognition that you don't have to be an amazing dude. You just have to be a nice man trying to live a good life. And that brings us to our final prediction. And this is a first for the Proffesgy Predictions deck. We have a chemical of 2025 and that chemical is testosterone. Well, other than I'm sticking it in my ass every seven days. Um, I don't know if you noticed the hair on my eyeballs.

Oh my God. Brought to you by Blue Chewables. Let's get to why this is the chemical of 2025 versus hairy eyeballs and erections. Everyone thought this year was going to be, or this election was going to be a referendum on women's rights. It wasn't. It was a referendum, I believe, on young people not doing well, specifically young men. And if you look at the cohort that most aggressively shifted from blue to red, it was people

under the age of 30. And if you're not doing well, you're not doing well as your parents, which is, that's the first time that's happened in our nation's history. You don't want change. You don't even want disruption. You want chaos. I'm making as much money as my parents were my age. I don't have that. I don't have any prospects. Groceries have gone up. I can't afford my rent. I haven't had a raise and yeah, I don't have that. I don't have any prospects. Groceries have gone up. I can't afford my rent.

I haven't had a raise and yeah, I don't want to come. And incumbents are being kicked out everywhere around the world. It's a function of inflation and social media that convinces everyone to hate everyone else and hate the incumbents. But what did Trump do? He flew into the Manosphere. He said, he basically picked the highest tee podcast, whether it was Rogan or Theo Vaughn or- The Nelk Boys, Aiden Ross.

Flew right into it. MSNBC, seven-year-old woman, I don't give a shit. Fox, 140-year-old men, I don't care. I am flying straight into testosterone, or testosterone, excuse me. And granted, I'm the hammer that everything I see is a nail, but the second group that showed one of the biggest pivots from blue to red was 45 to 64 year old women.

And I believe that that's their mothers, but there's just no getting around it. It was a brilliant strategy. And so this is, I think this continues into this year. I think this is the year of testosterone. That does it for our predictions for 2025. We do have one last prediction here from one of our listeners. This is from Evan. His prediction for 2025,

Ed Elson creates own independent media network. Scott, your reactions to Evan's prediction. Well, sure. So there's also a prediction that, um, Profit.G Enterprises sues the shit out of Ed Elson. No, we've had such a good year in large part because of your efforts and the efforts of Claire and all of the other good folks at ProfG and I'm not going to remember all of them, so I'm not going to even try and list them all. But greatness is in the agency of others. And we have just had such a wonderful year. And it's also, it's super exciting. It's hard of a time I give you. I love the fact that we're creating more voices, especially young voices.

You're, what are you, 25? 25. I mean, think about how remarkable that is. When I was 22, you can't understand. You're gonna look back on this and you're gonna think, how on earth did I not only achieve this, but also get this opportunity. When I was 25, I was living at home with my mother,

trying to figure out if I should go to business school. And that was my accomplishment. Occasionally, I mean, I got, occasionally I would get like seven stamps on my subway card, or my subway restaurant card, that was my big kind of accomplishment. It was anyways, my point is I didn't, I hadn't gotten anywhere near your achievements at this age. And also our crew is so young.

And the fact that we can build a media company with so few people, it's just been exceptionally rewarding going back to these feelings of being paternal. One of the most rewarding things about 2024 for me was seeing all these young people in our organization do well and be able to pay them well because we're in the right place at the right time and we're executing well. But I'm encouraging everybody and I'm also trying to encourage myself to stop at the end of the year and take pause and reflect. On first and foremost, I don't have asked cancer yet. So that's, that's key. But also just how rewarding it is to work with so many talented young people who are building something. I'm really, I've had such a wonderful year.

So thanks to everyone at ProfG, yourself included, this has been so rewarding. And Catherine, my business partner here, we just consistently, we've built companies together and we're like, it's just so rewarding to build something that's of a similar or greater success than our other companies with like 90% less fucking brain damage and drama. It's coming. It's coming. Once the money comes in, the drama is coming too.

There you go. But thank you, Ed. You're an impressive young man. Thank you, Claire, the producer here. She's just done an amazing job. I feel so fortunate and blessed to be, people ask me, where do you get every information? I'm like, I have a bunch of muses called young people

I work with who inform me, update me, give me just a better view of the world. But yeah, I feel very fortunate to be in this seat and to be surrounded by so many talented young people. So it's, yeah. Thank you, Scott. It's just been an incredible year. I've loved it.

And I'm very excited for 2025. I think it's just gonna be incredible. I think we're gonna do amazing things. And I hope people keep listening and I hope they keep watching and I hope they tell their friends to listen to this podcast because I've said it to you before. But I'll say again, I think we've got the best podcast on the market and I hope the audience agrees. So I'm very excited for the year ahead.

Word. Word, son. Word, my little brother slash stepchild I inherited from my seventh marriage. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss, Mia Silverio is our research lead, Jessica Lang is our research associate, Drew Burrows is our technical director, and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Join us on Thursday for our conversation with Ramit Sethi, only on Profgy Markets. In kind reunion As the world turns And the drop flies In love, love, love, love