Prof G Markets - Takeaways from the Second Debate + Does the US Need a Sovereign Wealth Fund?

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

Scott and Ed open the show by discussing recent inflation data, Oracle’s earnings, Wall Street’s decision to curb working hours for young bankers, and Open AI’s newest model. Then Scott shares his reactions to the President debate and breaks down business learnings from Kamala Harris’ performance. Ed predicts which stocks he thinks will benefit most from the Presidential race. Finally, Scott and Ed discuss a proposed sovereign wealth fund and explain why it seems unnecessary for the U.S. to have one. 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

Join Capital Group CEO Mike Gitlin on the Capital Ideas Podcast. In unscripted conversations with investment professionals, you'll hear real stories about successes and lessons learned, informed by decades of experience. It's your look inside one of the world's most experienced active investment managers. Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact.

If you struggle just to get your customers to notice you, Constant Contact has what you need to grab their attention. Constant Contact's award-winning marketing platform offers all the automation, integration, and reporting tools that get your marketing running seamlessly. Thank you. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Today's number, 790.

That's how many islands are in Scotland, 130 of which are inhabited. Ed, in Scotland, if you buy a three-year-old whiskey, you can call it scotch. Any younger than that? It's just bad parenting, Ed. Ed, I'm in Scotland. I'm in Scotland. I couldn't tell from the haunted house behind you. You got to tell everyone where exactly you are in Scotland and why you're there and what the occasion is.

I'll go in reverse order. I'm turning 50 and the naked, I look 49 and 7'8". I am here. And 100 of my closest friends are showing up. By the way, you came in at 102. So you just missed the list. Just missed it. Just missed it.

You just missed the list. I'm outside of Aberdeen at a place called the Five Farms. And no joke, we've taken over a hotel. We've been planning this for two years. And basically my entire life is flying in over the course of the next 24 hours. This isn't airing till Monday. So it's almost sort of, I don't know, I'm worried that I'm hexing it. Anyways, I'm here celebrating a nice moment in life. I never thought I'd get here. I never thought I'd be here. I never thought I'd be here at this point. So I'm very, very happy to be here. That's probably the alcohol speaking,

but I'm actually, I am actually very happy to be here. Any anxiety? It's funny you even ask that. Better be fun. Better be fun. I've been thinking a lot about that. I do have anxiety. I'm already sort of just hoping it goes really well and that everyone else has a nice time. It's really when I was your age, Ed, I didn't have enough anxiety. I almost got kicked out of UCLA three times. I was on academic probation. And then if you get less than a 2.0 the next semester or quarter, you go subject to dismissal. I was subject to dismissal. I was on academic probation, I think four or five times. I was subject to dismissal two or three times. And I just wasn't worried about it. I just didn't care. I'm like, I'll just take an easy econ class and get a B and everything will be fine. And I should have been more worried about my life back then. From the age of 30 to 40, I think I had exactly the right amount of anxiety. And anxiety is a key attribute or trait for survival. You're supposed to be anxious about shit because there are things that can kill you. And then from about the age of 40, 45 on, I've been too anxious.

I don't, and unfortunately I get anxious the day after I drink alcohol. So I'm pretty much anxious kind of five, six days a week. But yeah, now I worry about fucking everything. I worry about my kids. I worry about business. I don't worry that much about you guys. No, I do. Do you much about you guys. I couldn't tell. No,

I do. Do you feel like you're an anxious person? Well, I think hosting is a very anxious thing because you're inviting a bunch of people. They're taking time out of their day, in this case, their entire weekend to come and celebrate you. So you kind of, there's all this pressure to get everyone to have a good time. I'm a terrible host because I get anxious. I'm always checking in on people, making sure they're having a good time. And then I think I become annoying. I think the best hosts are the one who can do all the work, get anxious beforehand, and then just totally let go, have a good time, let people do what they want to do. Don't be too controlling. Those are the best hosts. And I am not one of them. Jesus Christ. Don't be so fucking

mature. Like when did this happen to you? Seriously. No, that's good advice. Mostly my answer for that is good beer and edibles. Yeah, exactly. That's a good idea. I want to get through. I want to get everybody here.

I want Saturday night. I want the speeches to go well. I want everyone to feel welcome and loved. And then I'm just going to let loose. So I'm not going to drink because I get very emotional when I drink, and I'll just be walking around sobbing all the time, which kind of brings the whole vibe down. Yeah, I'm real happy to be here. Anyways, enough of that shit. Get to the news. Get to the news, Ed. What's going on? Let's start with our weekly review of MarketVitals. The S&P 500 rose, the dollar was flat, Bitcoin climbed, and the yield on 10-year treasuries hit a 52-week low. Shifting to the headlines. The Consumer Price Index increased just 2.5%

from a year earlier and eased slightly from July. That is its lowest level in three years. And in other economic news, median household income rose 4% in 2023 to more than $80,000. That's the first increase since 2019. Oracle's revenue came in higher than expected, rising 7% year over year. Cloud services became the company's largest business with revenue up 21% from a year earlier and shares rose 15% to a record high. Wall Street is limiting the amount of hours that young bankers can work. JP Morgan announced it will cap hours for junior investment bankers at 80 hours a week. Bank of America already had a cap in place, but it has a new timekeeping tool that will more closely track the hours its junior bankers work.

And finally, OpenAI is releasing a new AI model known internally as Strawberry, which is trained to spend more time coming up with an answer before it responds to a prompt. The new model will be able to solve multi-step math and coding problems. Scott, your reactions, starting with the inflation and economic data. So inflation, the consumer price index, just two and a half percent down from, I think, 2.8 or 2.9 last quarter. It's almost at its target, 2%. And then household income rising 4%. I mean, basically you have the Goldilocks economy. Now, the psychological problem that happens is one, social media loves shitposting and there's a certain gravitas and intellectual, I don't know, vibe you get when

you're a pessimist. And people just love to shitpost our government. And also people credit their own grit and character for their household income increasing. But when diapers go up in price or oil goes up or gas goes up in price, they blame whoever's in office. But this is about as strong as economy as you could point to anywhere in the world. The problem is, I would argue, is that we don't distribute it equally. Just as that technology philosopher said, was it William Gibson or someone else, said that the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prosperity is here. An unbelievable economy is here. It's just not evenly distributed. And I think of what—I mean, we're writing a post decrease divorce rates, would be to raise minimum wage to $25 an hour instead of building a gigantic apparatus, which all these government programs are, which tend to be somewhat inefficient, instead of a thick layer of unions, which are trying to protect workers whose intentions are noble but are very inefficient and sometimes corrupt. Just put more money in the pockets of Americans with a minimum wage of 25 bucks during a period where employment is this strong. Do you know what percentage of American households, Ed, make less than $75,000 a year? I'm going to guess 20%.

Get this, 50%. Half of American households make less than $75,000 a year. What would raising minimum wage to $25 an hour do for them? Anyways, a bit of a tangent, but I'm very happy about CPI only being dropping to 2.5%. What are your thoughts? Yeah, just on that point. So, I mean, one thing we should point out is that that household income number is inflation adjusted. So, it is somewhat meaningful. There is one statistic that was in that same report that came from the Census Bureau, and that was that the poverty rate in America fell, but the number is quite staggering. It fell from 11.5% to 11.1%. So that means that there are 37 million people in America who are still living in poverty. And to your point, I think we spend a lot of time analyzing a lot of

technicalities in the markets, and we should be doing that. We think about the yield curve and interest rates and PE ratios, et cetera, et cetera, and there's value doing that. We think about the yield curve and interest rates and PE ratios, et cetera, et cetera. And there's value to that. But I think there is also value in keeping the big picture front of mind. And the big picture is that one in 10 Americans cannot afford basic necessities to live. So I would hope that it also reminds us that while, yes, we are doing pretty well on a relative basis when we look at other countries, if you look at just America from an our riches, we do, in my view, a pretty shit, poor job of distributing and allocating resources, despite the fact that we just have so much of it. Now let's talk about Oracle's earnings. You kind of own this, Ed. Talk about

Oracle. Well, one segue that we could use here is that you know you're talking about wealth inequality income inequality larry ellison who is the founder of oracle added 14 billion dollars to his net worth in one day after these earnings he is now the fifth richest person in the world he is ahead of bill gates his net net worth is, wait for it, $168 billion. It's just staggering. We can get into a conversation about that, but I think we've already covered the inequality part. Let's talk about the Oracle earnings themselves.

Earlier this year, I said I was bullish on Oracle. My thesis here was that Oracle is kind of the fourth musketeer when it comes to cloud computing. The options are basically Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Oracle. And my view was that Oracle is a really attractive company for AI companies, especially AI startups, because Oracle is the only one that isn't actively developing its own LLMs. So if you're an AI company and you want to compete with the likes of Microsoft, who's developing Copilot and working with OpenAI and ChatGPT,

or Google with Gemini, you probably don't want to be also paying them to keep your lights on. You'd probably rather go with a compute provider who you ultimately won't be competing with. In this case, that would be Oracle. And I think we are seeing this play out. If we look at the actual earnings here, revenue growth was up 7%, which is fine, not great.

Cloud revenue was up 21%, which is very strong. But the most important number here was the remaining performance obligations, which is basically code for booked revenue that is going to come in the next 12 months. that number was up 52%. So they are clearly partnering with a lot more companies who want to get their computing power. Morgan Stanley is now estimating that AI revenue will increase from 15% of Oracle's total cloud revenue to more than half by 2027. So that's why Oracle's at an all-time high. The stock's up 50% year-to-date. I think it's essentially emerging as one of the AI juggernauts. Well, you called it. You sort of said this was the big AI company that no one's talking about. And I would say probably Larry Ellison and maybe Reed Hastings are the least talked about CEOs who have been the biggest players in the world of tech. By the way, if you ever want to go to a great hotel in Palm Springs,

which I know you're thinking about, Larry Ellison, this is what people worth $160 billion do or whatever he's worth, he has a winter home out there that's spectacular. He built this world-class golf course and spa, and obviously it kind of sits fallow, so he turned it into a hotel. He also owns an island in Hawaii. I don't know if you've seen this, but he owns the island of Lanai. I think it's the largest private island in the world. And I think he's built a Four Seasons on there too. I've stayed on Lanai when I'm back in my previous life. I used to go there with my ex-wife and we'd stay at the Lodge of Kuali and we'd go to Lanai.

Hold me, Ed. Hold me. Anyways, stay at the Sensei. Look, they're doing an amazing job. The stock's trading at a forward PE ratio of 25. Microsoft and Amazon trade at 32, which kind of connotes that there might be some additional juice here in terms of the stock. Oracle and Nike are the two stocks I have in my NYU savings or 401k or whatever it is. When I started there, they had some matching programs. So I listened to the future, Scott, and I started maxing it out. And I went into Nike, which is literally shit to bed, and Oracle, which is good to hear is doing really well.

Should we talk about limiting the number of hours young bankers work? Please, I am so excited to get your take on this. What do you think of it? I'm of two minds here. So I was part of, my first job out of college was at Morgan Stanley. And I have never worked with a larger concentration of assholes. These were just like not nice people. And it defined the term abused children's syndrome.

And that was when I was young and in finance, they all fucking hated their jobs. I mean, sorry, there's like one or two people who are big deal makers and love it. But for the most part, they were really smart people who are overachievers, who got jobs in investment banks. And by the time they were 30, they were making back then, you know, three or $500,000, which is a lot of money. And they just couldn't leave. Most jobs are usually one of two things. They're either very interesting, but a lot of pressure, a lot of stress, or they're incredibly boring, right? But easy, not a lot of stress. And investment banking was this unique combination of a job that was incredibly mind-numbingly boring with a massive amount of pressure placed on it.

I remember being at the printer. This is, I'm dating myself, and we would have to, this is the person printing the S1. And there was this company called Bowen and all these other things. And they would take me to football games or out to dinners. And they always had like hot people who would want to take you to a baseball game such that you would spend $120,000 printing the prospectus of the IPO Morgan Stanley was taking out at their printer. And my job was to go to the printer and spend all night proofing the prospectus. First, I proof it forward, then backwards, because literally it was cause for you to be terminated, i.e. fired, if base rental payments on page 68 of the prospectus had an apostrophe and base rental payments on page 136 did not. And I worked probably, I don't know, 60 to 80 hours a week

and some weeks 100 hours. I remember there were some times where I would go in on like a Thursday and basically would just go kind you know, kind of 60 hours straight. And you weren't allowed to leave as an analyst, you know, the most junior person. You had to be there before anybody else and you couldn't leave until everyone senior to you left, even if you didn't have work to do. I had a chair thrown at me. What'd you do wrong? Do you remember? I think I remember. It was the Orange County Transportation Authority. We're issuing bonds and we had no chance of getting the business, but we had to get it out and we didn't get it out in time. And so this VP, his name rhymes with Stephen Dworkin, C above asshole, came into the office and threw a chair and or threw a chair at me, whatever. I probably deserved it. But like, that's the kind of shit you would just, if someone threw furniture at an employee in this day and age, they'd be fired.

Now, having said that, this notion that somehow, if you genuinely believe, Jamie Dimon or anybody else, that these people shouldn't be working that hard, then institute a culture where you compensate and reward the managers based on feedback from the junior employees that they're providing some semblance of balance. Because the notion that you're somehow going to electronically track how many hours people are working is just bullshit. And also, I used to go in on a regular basis on a Tuesday morning and then leave on a Wednesday night. I would work 36 hours straight. Why? I immediately summed up, having gotten in at Morgan Stanley, where I didn't deserve to get a job offer, but I did, that I wasn't as well-skilled, well-educated as the other people. Not because UCLA wasn't a fantastic education, but because UCLA was the kind of place, because it was a public school and it had classes with

400 people, where you could hide and not work. And I was one of those people. So I showed up to Morgan Stanley woefully underskilled, and I knew it. The other 87 analysts were just better than me. So I thought, okay, what are my advantages? And you always want to ask this as a young person, what are your advantages? My advantage was that I didn't have a girlfriend. I didn't have many friends at that point living in LA. I was living at home with my mom. I didn't have any dogs, any hobbies. And I was also quite fit and very disciplined where I could take a lot of pain. So I said, I know I'm going to show these folks and I'm here to play. And at least once a week, I'm going to work the night through. And this was the kind of culture that rewarded that.

So if you are really serious about having bankers or young bankers work less, it's pretty simple. Hire more fucking junior bankers so there's more bandwidth and create a compensation system for their bosses that changes the culture such that it's like, no, we were going to make you a VP, but we're not because the word is everyone in your group is, especially the junior people, are working fucking 80 hours a week. And we don't reward that here. We punish it. I do believe that there are companies that position themselves in the marketplace and people where they say, okay, this was the implicit deal at Morgan Stanley. It's still the implicit deal, I think, at Goldman, maybe less so now.

We own your ass. You have no life. All your relationships, they're going to suffer. Your health, probably going to suffer too. Oh, you love New York? Well, guess what? You're not going to experience much of it over the next few years because you're going to experience the bowels of Goldman or Morgan. And guess what? In exchange for that, we're going to get you further, faster economically and professionally than you would anywhere else in the world. And guess what? In exchange for that, we're going to get you further, faster economically and professionally than you would anywhere else in the world. And you know what? I signed up for that. That's what I wanted. And a lot of young people want that. So anything that risks health, okay, that's a whole other ball of wax. But there is an entire generation, including myself,

of young people who say, you know what? I will give you everything in exchange. I want more. I'm surprised you're not more harsh on the junior analysts and junior bankers who have been complaining about this, who are saying how terrible it is. The hours are so long that we're struggling with our mental health. I mean, this is why this is all happening is because people my age are complaining about it. And you mentioned that point that when you went into banking as an analyst, that's what you signed up for. You knew what you were signing up for and you came to play. And so the idea that you have people who are experiencing what is regular in banking, people my age who are saying that this is too much, they can't handle it.

You have decided by going into banking that you want to be a millionaire, likely a multi-multi millionaire. That's something that you have decided you want for yourself. You've also decided that you want to make close to $200,000 in your first year out of college per year. These are things that you want. And if you want these things, be clear that you should be willing to work yourself so hard that you start to struggle mentally and physically. That's the game that you're signing up for. And if you don't like it, then go do something else. I think that's fine. But the idea that you would complain having gotten yourself into that position, knowing what the stakes are, knowing how difficult it is to build wealth in America,

yeah, you're going to have a pretty shitty week. You're going to lose some sleep. Two things. One, I agree with you. And two, I don't want to ever hear you bitch about anything about this company. No, like at some point, the difference here, the only thing I will caveat this with is that in order for the American economy to grow, we've needed to bring in women. And it also makes sense that women should be afforded the same economic opportunities as men. Where that culture doesn't work is when women start using their ovaries. And that is when you create a culture of people expected to work 60 to 80 hours a week, what you're essentially saying is no one's allowed to have kids here. So while I can see that type of culture for the young analysts,

it's unhealthy to create, I think, that type of culture with people as they start to think about starting families. Because distinctive all the bullshit around the modern man, women disproportionately shoulder the responsibilities with children. So unless we create a work environment where we respect the fact that the species needs to procreate, we want to create corporate America an opportunity for women been chewed up between men and women until women have kids, and then they drop way down. So I buy that all hands, Hunger Games culture. You don't like it, go somewhere else. We're going to pay a shit ton of money. We own your house. And I appreciate your perspective on it. I think things change when people get older, though, when they start thinking about families. Because if you're going to expect people to work 80 hours a week, what you're saying is we don't want mothers here.

100%. And that's a problem. Let's finish out with this new model that has been released by OpenAI, known internally as Strawberry, known now publicly as O1. Any thoughts on this new, very powerful reasoning model from OpenAI? I love the fact they're saying that we have a model that's going to take longer to figure shit out. It's like when you press on something online and it spins a wheel like, oh, it's thinking or it's finding new deals right now. It's searching for the best deal on the web. And it has a guy with a magnifying glass and he's searching.

It's like it gives you this emotional feeling that someone else is working for you. I would just like to know, do they need to slow that thing down? Are they trying to pretend that this is being more thoughtful? I don't know. What are your thoughts? Well, I think that is the question. And no one's really been able to try it yet apart from internally. So I think we should try it out. But just a few stats that they have listed. They put GPT-4 and this new one, O1, this new reasoning model, they put them up against each

other to do the qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad. GPT-4 got 13% of the problems right. This new one got 83% of the problems right. They also had it do a jailbreaking test. GPT-4 scored a 22 on a scale of 0 to 100. And the new O1 model scored an 84. So it does seem like this new model, it's more mathematics-minded, is just incredibly powerful.

Look, I just get the sense that as technology becomes more about frictionless flow and network effects and agility, that if you have the ability to get out ahead in front, establish leadership, and then have access to cheaper capital, they can raise tens of millions of dollars. No one can keep up with them right now. They have a great team. They have access. They can raise tens of millions of dollars. No one can keep up with them right now. They have a great team. They have a great leader in Sam Altman. You know, this just, it does feel like, like I said, it feels like they're running away with it.

And we've been saying this for a while. We'll be right back after the break with a look at how the debate moved the markets. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank.

Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings. And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize?

What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim and we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their

next great idea. Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Support for this show comes from Indeed. If you need to hire, you may need Indeed. Indeed is a matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data. And a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now

and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. We're back with Profiteer Markets. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump faced off in what will likely be their only debate, and the verdict from the markets was clear. Harris won. Bitcoin started to slide as soon as the debate began and was down 4% by the morning. Trump media stock tanked 15% when the market opened

and ended the day at an all-time low. Meanwhile, solar stocks rose with the potential Harris presidency boding well for clean energy. Scott, this is basically the opposite of what happened in the July debate when the markets were signaling that a Trump presidency was basically certain. What are your takeaways from the markets reaction this time around? Well, look, I'm busy this weekend, but if you want, we can hang out next weekend and do transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison this weekend. And my mom said I could bring a friend. And then we're going to eat Leia. I was just about to say, everyone should know Leia and Gangster are safe.

They're safe. I saw an illegal immigrant putting honey glaze on their fur, and I figured out something's wrong here. I mean, watching her, you know, the debate started at 2 a.m. London time. And by 3.15, I'm like, I'm out. She's won. It doesn't matter. She could throw up on herself the next 15 minutes. What will be more interesting or as interesting is what industries do well or poorly based on the fact that she's maintained her momentum.

And I think as we've talked about, you have the alternative energy ETFs went up, Bitcoin went a little bit down. His stock was off 13% or 15%, Donald Trump Media, meaning that basically the shareholders of that company think the likelihood he's going to become president is down by 13% or 15%. But I thought it was fascinating. I'm obviously not a big Trump fan, so I was really happy with it, but it'll be interesting to see what stocks... I mean, so far, it's hard to read a lot from the market. What are your thoughts, Ed? I think she did an incredible job. I mean, it was obvious that she was far more prepared than he was. I mean, he doesn't prepare, but the amount of prep that clearly went into this, the amount that she had her talking points ready, she had clearly practiced a lot and it really came through. Two things that I noticed about her that I thought were really impressive. One was her facial expression when he was talking.

She clearly knew exactly what facial expressions to pull and it just, it framed everything he was saying. It made it look so much more ridiculous when she would sort of smirk and smile um and laugh at everything he was saying i thought that was really impressive the other thing i thought was really impressive was the handshake that she went in for at the very beginning total power move total power move just walking in there and being assertive and also respectful and also direct. And I'm wondering if maybe you have any insights or any learnings on ways that that can be beneficial to you, to an individual in the business world. Has there ever been a time perhaps where, you know,

being assertive with your body language, with your physical body language in a business setting has perhaps benefited you or you've seen that play out? My first boss, Carter Cordner, actually, you know, as I was shitposting everyone to Morgan Stanley, actually a lovely guy who took a real interest in me. He taught me, he said, when you go into a meeting, he said, unless everyone's already, unless you're late, walk around, go to them, and shake their hand and introduce yourself. And I wouldn't have done that naturally as a 22-year-old. I would kind of sit high or waited for someone to introduce myself.

He said, no, go around the table and walk to everyone and say, hi, I'm Scott Galloway, and shake their hand. I mean, that kind of reminded me of that. She went over to them. I thought it was fantastic. And something I tell my boys, anytime they meet somebody, they walk up, they square their hips, they square their shoulders, they make eye contact, they shake their hand and they introduce themselves and say, it's nice to meet you how many parents comment on it. It's like, as a kid or as a young professional, and I didn't get this, get the easy stuff right. The difference in your brand when there's an 8 o'clock meeting and you show up at 7.55 versus 8.05, it's just get the easy stuff right. For 10 minutes, you set a different tone about your own brand. Going back to Trump media stock, which fell to a record low, a lot of that is, of course, because of the debate. But then there's also a little wrinkle, which is that the lockup period expires next week. And what that means is that the early investors, as this was a direct listing,

the early investors will finally be able to sell their shares. And one of those early investors, as this was a direct listing, the early investors will finally be able to sell their shares. And one of those early investors, of course, includes Trump. So just a prediction question for you. Come September 19th, do you think Trump will sell? It's a tough one. I don't think so because the brand on the first possible moment that he sold, if he does, could take the stock down so far so fast that he ends up hurting himself. If I were him, I'd put in a planned sale program. And this is what a lot of CEOs do. They say, all right, I have a ton of stock. Every 90 days, I'm going to sell X number of shares. And what that does is it takes out the interpretation by the hecklers, right? Oh, she sold a bunch of shares. That must mean she doesn't like it. And she didn't sell shares this quarter, so she must be feeling bullish. If you just say, I'm putting in place a planned sale program, and I'm going to sell 400,000 shares every 90 days, that doesn't spook the market. It'd be interesting to

know what the other sellers are, but here's the thing. If you own this stock, unless you believe he's going to win and that this has in fact become a tracking stock and that he'll figure out a way in sort of a kleptocratic fashion to support the company, this company has zero value. This company has negative value. It's not growing. Its user base is flat to down. I think it does single digit millions of dollars and it's losing hundreds of millions. I mean, it's not a company. And so if you have a lot of people trying to run through a crowded door here, it could be a real problem. Now, the moment everyone, what I have found though, generally though with stocks is when everyone's freaked out about the lockup

period expiring on that day, a lot of times the stock goes up because what you're talking about, the fear you're talking about is reflected in the stock right now. And so if in fact, there aren't a bunch of whatever it's called, form fives, or I forget what it's called when you have to sell stock as an insider, if not as many of them, everyone's going to be watching this, if not as many of them are selling and the expectation of massive sales has already been built into a stock that's off, I don't know, 40% in the last 30 days or something, or 60% in the last three months, then the stock may go up. In other words, I'd be very careful trying to play around this, but what I'm fairly confident saying is this stock will be less than a dollar at some point in the next 12 months if he is not reelected. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. I think

what's interesting also is the timeline here, because he sort of needs to time this. I mean, supposedly he needs the cash, right? Because he's got all these lawsuits. So you'd think that he's probably going to time this based on whether or not he becomes president because if he becomes president, he pardons himself and the lawsuits go away. He's not necessarily going to need the cash.

So it really is all hinging on that. And I think if he loses, he's going to then need to really time it correctly because, you know, the stock is probably going to plummet at that point, but he's going to need the liquidity, but only in the situation where he doesn't win the presidency. So it's a very interesting situation. He's probably the first, he is the first person in history to be in a situation like that. Just as we wrap up here, I just want to point out, as we try to relate this to markets, I mean, who is this going to benefit? I mean, the takeaway really here is

the race is on. That didn't feel like the case a few months ago, but clearly it is now. That's what the predicted markets are showing is that we have an extremely tight race and who is that going to benefit? It's going to benefit advertisers. So I think we should be keeping an eye on all the broadcasting stocks. So Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers, Comcast, I think we'll see huge earnings from them in the next quarter. And then also, we should be thinking about the local stocks, local broadcasting. So, you know, Gannett, Nexstar, Tegna, I think these are stocks that are going to see a big bump, a big run up in the next few months or so, because we're going to see a huge

amount of advertising in the districts that matter. We'll be right back after the break with a look at sovereign wealth funds. Thank you. for a change. It's time for Grammarly. Grammarly's AI ensures your team gets their points across the first time, eliminating misunderstandings and streamlining collaboration. It goes beyond basic grammar to help tailor writing to specific audiences, whether that means adding an executive summary, fine-tuning tone, or cutting out jargon in just one click. Plus, it surfaces relevant information as employees type, so they don't waste time digging through documents. Four out of five professionals say Grammarly's AI boosts buy-in and moves work forward. It integrates seamlessly with over 500,000 apps and websites.

It's implemented in just days, and it's IT-approved. Join the 70,000 teams and 30 million people who trust Grammarly to elevate their communication. Visit grammarly.com slash enterprise to learn more. Grammarly. Enterprise ready AI. Your business is ready for launch, but what's the most important thing to do before those doors open? Is it getting more social media followers? Or is it actually legitimizing and protecting the business you've been busy building? Make it official with LegalZoom. protect your business all in one place. Setting up your business properly and remaining compliant are the things you want to get right from the get-go. And LegalZoom saves you from wasting hours making sense of the legal stuff. And if you need some hands-on help, their network of experienced attorneys from around the country has your back.

Launch, run, and protect your business to make it official today at LegalZoom.com. And use promo code VoxBiz to get 10% off any LegalZoom Business Formation product, excluding subscriptions and renewals. Expires December 31st, 2024. Get everything you need from setup to success at LegalZoom.com. And use promo code VoxBiz. LegalZoom.com and use promo code VoxBiz. LegalZoom.com and use promo code VoxBiz. LegalZoom provides access to independent attorneys and self-service tools.

LegalZoom is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice, except we're authorized through its subsidiary law firm, LZ Legal Services, LLC. Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. In business, disruption brings not only challenges, but opportunities. As artificial intelligence powers pivotal moments of change, Alex Partners is the consulting firm chief executives can rely on. Alex Partners is dedicated to making sure your company knows what really matters when it comes to AI. As part of their 2024 Tech Sector Report, Alex Partners spoke with nearly 350 tech executives from across North America and Europe to dig deeper into how tech companies are responding

to these changing headwinds. And in their 2024 Digital Disruption Report, Alex Partners found that 88% of executives report seeing potential for growth from digital disruption, with 37% seeing significant or even extremely high positive impact on revenue growth. You can read both reports and learn how to convert digital disruption into revenue growth at www.alexpartners.com slash box. That's www.alexpartners.com slash V-O-X. In the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get

straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters. We're back with Profit Markets. Former President Trump recently said that if elected, he would like to create a sovereign wealth fund for the United States. After that speech, the White House also revealed they were already working on a proposal for the exact same thing. Sovereign wealth funds are state-owned investment funds, and they're typically used in economies that rely mainly on resource extraction, such as Saudi Arabia and Norway. While there's currently no national sovereign wealth fund in the U.S., there are several state-level funds like Alaska's Permanent Fund. Scott, what are your thoughts on a U.S. sovereign wealth fund, and do you think this is a good idea?

So sovereign wealth funds have a layer on top of them where they have an objective outside of just straight ROI. So the biggest funds or the funds that every hedge fund manager in the world is going, you know, hat in hand to are in the Gulf, Adia, PIF. And generally speaking, the jig is sort of up there. And that is those funds, those sovereign wealth funds have the objective of trying to transition their economies back away from a fossil fuels economy to tourism, services, education. And now when you go there, they're mostly only willing to fund companies that are going to bring business or find other capital to bring business into the region. They're no longer about, oh, you're a Korean national born in Japan. We're going to give you

$100 billion to go play in traffic and invest in U.S. startups. I think those days are over. In general, the best marketing in the world is tobacco companies. A company whose primary product is death, disease, and disability that figures out a way to sell a product at 96 points of margin and create these very aspirational brands, that's the best marketing in the world. The second best marketing in the world by sector has been the financial services sector that has convinced you that they can outperform the S&P because they have these old guys and suspenders and all these models and people from the smartest schools and wealthy people like to believe they should have access to something different. in these funds. And if you added up all hedge funds, all mutual funds, all alternative investments, I mean, this is an enormous industry. Everyone on CNBC, they have underperformed the S&P by the amount of their fees. So what you're basically doing is buying the S&P, but giving some guy with that's highly credentialed and highly aggressive an unbelievable living. And the

same is true here. These funds, as your data shows, have underperformed the larger market. Now, they say they can justify it because they say, if we're Alaska, we're the Norwegian Wealth Fund, we want to increase influence around the world, or we want to bring more jobs to Alaska, fine. That's a secondary objective. The reason I'm not a fan of this in the U.S. is that we don't really need this. We have more capital formation than any country in the world by a factor of 5, 10, or 100. We don't need, I don't think, to try and aggregate capital to have influence through capital. We do it through the dollar. We do it through sanctions. You know, if we say to a country, we're shutting you off and you can no longer do

business in dollars, you know, two-thirds of the world has trouble doing business with them. So we kind of have, unless we decided we were building a sovereign wealth fund to try and, I don't know, I don't know what objective they'd even place on it. But to me, generally speaking, when you get the government involved in something, you're going to pay an inefficiency or an administration tax. So I just, I feel like this is redundant and not really needed. This feels to me like more of a chess beating kind of fun thing to talk about. It doesn't, I don't see the rationale here. And it also isn't clear at all how you'd fund this thing because, I mean, the characteristic of a sovereign wealth fund, I mean, what makes it different from any other pile of money that's in the government's jurisdiction? One of the differences is that it's separate from the central bank and it's separate from your finance ministry. So in our case, that's the treasury. you fund it is it comes from an unusual excess or surplus of assets. So in Ireland, for example, which we've discussed before, Ireland is a tax haven for big tech companies. It collects huge amounts of tax revenue from companies like Google and Apple and Microsoft. And therefore, they run a budget surplus. They're

at around $10 billion in budget surplus in 2024. Saudi Arabia, another example, they're just a giant oil farm, so they can sell a shit ton of oil, and they have all of this excess asset. They have a budget surplus of around $30 billion. So, you know, that's the way that other countries fund their sovereign wealth funds. It's that you have a lot of money left over. So my question for Harris and for Trump and for the White House, where the fuck is our money? We don't have any excess money. I mean, we've been running a trade deficit since the 70s.

We fund our entire economy with debt. How are you going to pay for this? There is no money left over. There's nothing really left to sell. So, I mean, I was confused and looked into this question. How are they going to fund it? Biden and Harris don't have an answer, or at least they haven't stated it. Trump's answer, he says that we're going to fund it with tariffs, that his tariff plan is going to reverse the deficit. And then once we are running on a surplus, because of his tariffs, we're going to be able to create the U.S. sovereign wealth fund. So my read is similar to yours. It feels like this is mostly a bunch of posturing, and it seems as if

both sides here seem to think that a U.S. sovereign wealth fund basically just sounds cool. So the only time Democrats and Republicans agree, the only thing that passed for bipartisanship is they both come together. Republicans want to cut taxes and spend more on defense. Democrats want to raise taxes and spend more on social services. So they come together and say, I know, let's cut taxes and spend more money. The only thing that they cooperate together on is reckless spending the results and unbelievable deficits on your generation. Whenever Harris and Trump agree on anything, it's the stupidest fucking idea. It's like a tell. No tax on tips. Okay, only 2% of Americans make tips. The majority of them don't pay any federal income tax. And you want the waiter to get a tax cut, but not the dishwasher. This is just fucking stupid.

So this strikes me similar to Congress that if Harris and Trump agree on something, it means it's a really bad idea. And this will go to my prediction, something else they agree on is also a really bad idea. Ooh, I my prediction at i'm teasing it people can't wait people on the edge of their seat i can't wait just skip ahead if you're listening final question say we did create a u.s sovereign wealth fund it's called u.s ventures who would be the general partner? I'd like to see Britney Spears. I mean, why not? I mean, let's be honest.

Not any of these people have any fucking idea what they're doing. Britney Spears and Coco the monkey. I'd like to, and they just throw darts. Yeah. Or we find those dogs that can smell bladder cancer and urine and say to them, all right, can you pick a stock? It wouldn't make any fucking difference. As long as they're diversified. Shit, I don't know. Who would you want to run this thing?

I'm pretty convinced by you. Let's go Britney Spears. Maybe throw Peter Thiel in there. Yeah. Well, Peter Thiel had a fund. And it did really well until it didn't. He was in the hedge fund business. I forget the of it it had some like well he's also found his funds so clarion yeah no clarion it was called clarion or clarion he had well the founder's fund

is in his wheelhouse the guy is a great investor at in terms of vc but he had a fund that invested in publicly traded stocks and it did really well i think this was back in the aughts and then it did really not well. And I think David Hasselhoff, I would like David Hasselhoff to run the US stock fund. And the guy who was the lead singer from Flock of Seagulls, I'd like to get him involved.

I'd like to get him involved. It doesn't matter, Ed. Let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see US retail sales and housing starts for August, and all eyes will be on the Federal Reserve as it delivers its interest rate decision for September. Scott, finally, you can tell us our prediction. Okay, as we reference, anytime Trump and Harris agree on something, it's a ridiculously stupid idea. They both agree that the acquisition of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel should be blocked.

So let's talk a little bit about U.S. Steel. This is basically a shadow of itself, a former icon. It was, at the turn of the 20th century, one of the most important companies in the world. It became the most valuable company in the world for a hot minute. It was the first company to ever reach a billion dollars in revenue. By the end of World War II, it employed a third of a million people. Now, U.S. Steel employs 20,000 people, 4,000 in Pennsylvania, very strongly union. 5% of the global U.S. Steel market is controlled by Japan, 4% is U.S., and China's like 50 or 60. China's basically just run away with the steel market. And the US is no longer competitive in steel for a variety of reasons. Probably most specifically, we decimated Japan and Germany's infrastructure, but the one advantage of that was that they got to build from the ground up and

think about innovation, and they're just better at it. And then China came in with an emerging steel industry, and it's just blown by everybody. But it's been politicized. You know, U.S. steel, right? This is pure jingoist nationalist bullshit. Japan, there's some sort of security risk. So they're saying, oh, no, we can't sell it to Japan. Japan is more American than many states right now. Japan is an unbelievably strong ally. They're great with technology. They produce steel more efficiently than we do. This is a lifeline for U.S. steel, a company that is now worth a whopping $8 billion, right? So NVIDIA loses 30 U.S. steels in one day last week, but we're worried about the Japanese coming for U.S. steel. This is such bullshit. So my prediction is the following. I don't think this thing is going to go through. And of course, the unions have said, raised their hand and said, we're uncomfortable with this. Okay, great. You should join the Writers Guild to make sure that you fuck over your constituents with a bunch of posturing that results in layoffs. And that's what's going to happen here. This acquisition is going to be blocked for purely political reasons. You're going to see layoffs and you're going to see U.S. Steel stock, which is at $35, sub $20 within 12 months. In addition, the more mendacious part of this is that if you're a small company, a business, a big business, what you want is your stocks to go up because there is the possibility of an international company coming in and acquiring your company. When we start coming up with bullshit nationalist reasons why companies can't buy American companies that pose no security threat whatsoever, it reduces the price, the takeover premium of every company that has strategic value to international players. This is just so fucking stupid. It makes my hair stand on end. So my prediction, this is not going to go through for purely political nationalist reasons. And U.S. Steel stock is going to be below 25, 20 bucks a share in 12 months. And those 20,000 precious employees at U.S. Steel are going to

be more like 10 or 12,000 because U.S. Steel is going to have no choice without a big brother subscale to start closing plants. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Our executive producer is Catherine Dillon. Mia Silverio is our research lead and Drew Burrus is our technical director. Thank you for listening to ProfitGMarkets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Join us on Thursday for our conversation

with Chris Anderson, only on ProfitGMarkets. You held me In kind Reunion As the world turns And the dove flies In love, love, love, love Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic.

It's not always easy to harness the power and potential of AI. For all the talk around its revolutionary potential, a lot of AI systems feel like they're designed for specific tasks performed by a select few. Well, Claude, by Anthropic, is AI for everyone. The latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, offers groundbreaking intelligence at an everyday price. Claude Sonnet can generate code, help with writing, and reason through hard problems better than any model before. You can discover how Claude Sonnet can generate code, help with writing, and reason through hard problems better than any model before. You can discover how Claude can transform your business at anthropic.com slash Claude. and you're making content that no one sees, and it takes forever to build a campaign?

Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers.