Prof G Markets - What the Falling Dollar Means for America

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Scott and Ed unpack RFK Jr.’s push to make it harder, and pricier, for pharma companies to advertise directly to consumers, a move that could be the final blow to the broadcast industrial complex. Next, they explore the IPO market’s rebound and why, despite the buzz, it's a trap for retail investors. Finally, they break down the dollar’s decline since Trump took office, and why gold’s rise as a safe-haven asset isn’t enough to win them over. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter  Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on InstagramFollow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's sleepaway camp season. It's never been the case that the majority of American children went to summer camps. But summer camps came to assume a really important place in American popular culture. If most of us didn't go to camp, why are we so obsessed with it? That's this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes every Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts. Today's number 20,000.

That's how many people visit the Mona Lisa every day. True story. My ex boss reminds me of the Mona Lisa in that I wouldn't mind coming home and finding him hanging in my living room. That's good. What happens if you cut off one of Mona Lisa's ears? She's the mono Lisa. All right. Ed, how are you?

I'm doing well, Scott. I'm exhausted. This daily stuff is really taking it out of me. No, it's like you got a real job. Yeah. It's gotta be tough for you. No more like, oh Ed, where's Ed? Oh, so you went to Princeton,

which means he gets to walk his dog in the bark and make like 18 grand a year. Okay, yeah, poor you. No more free coffee at the co-working space. I think the tough part about hiring people right out of college is they just have absolutely no fucking clue about the real world. But anyways, I'm happy you're happy.

What have you been up to? I'm very happy. You got to number two, then we are in business podcast, then we dropped to number five. So we got to number one. We did get to number one. That's exciting. Good for you. Good for you.

So ask me what the mood is like here in Cannes on my observations, Ed. What is the mood like in Cannes right now, Scott? Well, Ed. I'm, I'm, I'm seriously, I'm shocked how optimistic it is. I, I'm, you know, I'm a catastrophist. I can't stand the current administration. I thought I'd come here and people would be freaked out and not wanting to spend money and worried about tariffs.

It feels frothier and more optimistic than I've seen it in a while. And people want to do deals, they want to spend money. I've had three meetings, no joke, about people who want to figure out a way to partner with us, which is like, okay, show me the Benjamins. So that's good. I'm shocked by that. The other thing I've noticed is there's definitely, I won't call it anti-American sentiment,

but less optimistic or less benign American sentiment. And that is I've been on a few panels, and in each panel, someone has kind of come at me in sort of a funny way about being American, like we gave you fucking democracy or something. And then the whole crowd erupts in cheers, like beat up on the American. And I get it, we deserve it.

And I'd have to remind everybody, okay, I live in London. I think we've taken for granted how positive people have felt about us up until, I don't know, about 130 days ago. Was it tangibly different from Trump's first term? I feel like that was sort of the joke among the Europeans in the first term too, is, oh, look at what a mess America is.

I'm not trying to downplay what's happening, but I feel like that was kind of, I would have imagined that would be the vibe at Cannes in say 2017. I think that people are like, okay, you made a mistake, but when you make a mistake twice, it's not a mistake, it's your values. So I think people are sort of not sympathetic to,

wow, this was a lot of moons lining up in a really weird direction. This is America deciding, okay, he's a convicted felon. He denied the election. He lies consistently and you decided you'd know all that, but you decided to reelect him. So I think people are freaked out. This isn't an accident.

This is a pattern that just represents our values. By the way, I've had two friends text me saying that they're seeing you everywhere. Two of my friends who are at Cannes. What are you doing? You're just gallivanting all over the place? That means your friend's hanging out at bars. That's right.

They're seeing me everywhere? Yeah, I go. And they keep on saying, do I go say hi to Scott Geller? I'm like, yes. Yeah, I go. And they keep on saying, do I go say hi to Scott Geller? I'm like, yes. Yeah, I like when people say hi. Yeah, exactly.

Up and down, I've done, I don't know, three or four speaking gigs, a live pod. You're definitely going to come here next year, although I can't be with you because I'll freak out at how much people like you. I won't be able to handle it. But people literally do come up to me. They used to ask me, where's Kara? Now they ask me, where's Ed?

That's very nice of you, but I don't believe you. No, I'm being very serious. I'm 100% sincere. You're the son everybody wants. Seriously, you're the son everybody hopes marries their daughter. That's very kind. I think you guys, we're going to bring it. Claire's going to come.

You're going to come. It's going to be great. Claire's going to come, you're going to come, it's going to be great. Claire's going to take over Cannes. It's going to be unbelievable. She's going to own Cannes. She took over St. Barts very quickly and very easily. Did she? Well, it's very similar here. It's even more expensive.

Anyways, enough of that get to the headlines, Ed. Now is the time to cry. I hope you have plenty of the well at home. RFK Jr. is pushing to make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise to consumers. Since an outright ban could trigger legal challenges, the administration is weighing two alternatives. Requiring more detailed side effect disclosures in ads, or taking away the industry's ability to write off ad spending as a business expense on their taxes. The strategies would likely impact the $10 billion that is spent annually on pharmaceutical advertising.

Pharmaceutical stocks including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca all fell on this news. So Scott, this is something that RFK Jr. has been pushing for a long time. He originally was pitching an outright ban on pharmaceutical ads on TV. That was when he was running for president. That was part of his original pitch. So now it looks like he's slightly rolling that back. The plan now is basically we're going to make it more difficult through these disclosures and more expensive through these tax changes for pharmaceutical companies to advertise on TV. Any initial reactions to this news?

Well, it's a tough one because there's been a lot of innovation. I don't know if you've heard, but there's a new pharmaceutical that treats depression in lesbians. It's called tricoxagone. I told that on Pivot. See, I can get away with it on Pivot because there's, because Kara can respond. If Kara laughs, it gives everyone... No, it's worse if you direct that to the lesbian. Well, actually, no, better yet.

The joke for, the joke that's more appropriate for this podcast is it's a needy drug called mycoxaflopin. Get it, mycoxaflopin? Yeah, I got it, I got it. If I'm not laughing in hysterics, it doesn't mean I didn't get it. Like, I don't, I mean, let me go to, distinctive whether it's a good or a bad idea,

this will literally probably be the last nail in the broadcast industrial complex. If you watch any ad supported television other than sports, it's basically a lesson, a manifesto on how much it sucks to get old. And you sit there and when you get to my age, you get inundated, you run by and you see, oh, Goodfellas, I'll watch Goodfellas

or Shawshank Redemption. Anytime I see it on, I start watching it. Commercial comes on and I'm like, wow, maybe I do have restless legs. You start thinking, these commercials convince you, all these like semi-attractive, ethnically ambiguous people that supposedly are very, very sick telling you, oh, do you have, you know, telling you what you have

and you're like, oh my God, maybe I do have toe fungus. I mean. Well, they play on a swing in the sunshine. They love barbecues.. They love barbecues. These people love barbecues. And I'm convinced, OK, maybe it's the barbecue that's giving you dermatitis or whatever it is you have.

But I don't see how this could stand up to legal scrutiny. Because if you can't restrict political speech, how can you restrict speech around pharmaceuticals? And I imagine the pharmaceutical industry is going to make the argument that we have raised awareness. I would know that, so I have a story around this. I had minor surgery about two and a half years ago and they gave me OxyContin and I was excited to try it.

I'd never tried Oxy and I thought, oh, I like drugs. And I took it and boy, did daddy like me on Oxy. I really felt good. And I found out also I'm daddy like me on Oxy. I really felt good. And I found out also, I'm a great dancer on OxyContin. Anyway, so I started taking this shit and then all of a sudden I started feeling like kind of crappy and really looking forward to the next Oxy and really kind of just bloated and sick.

And I'm like, oh my God, I'm addicted to Oxy. I'm addicted to OxyContin. I'm right out of that movie, Dope Sick. And I called my God, I'm addicted to Oxy. I'm addicted to Oxycontin. I'm right out of that movie, Dope Sick. And I called my doctor and I said, I think I'm addicted to Oxy. You gotta take me off it. And he's like, describe your symptoms.

And he goes, when's the last time you had a bowel movement? And I'm like, seven days ago. And he's like, dude, you're constipated. You're not addicted to opiates. I did not know that opioid induced constipation was a thing, but it is a thing. And if you watch commercials or TV long enough, you're going to find out that there's a treatment for it. And the reason I'm telling this very inappropriate, weird story, that it's like a prophylactic, there's no chance anyone's ever going to want to date me again, Ed, but is that these companies will argue

that they're raising awareness about treatments, of conditions that can help people's lives. But at the same time, is the direct-to-consumer branding of pharmaceuticals that's been taken out of experts' or doctors' hands worth the additional cost of these branded pharmaceuticals? Should we not be, A, going to generics and B, leaning on our doctors for discerning, as opposed to an ad in the middle of a football game?

What are the right treatments for this kind of stuff? What are your thoughts? Well, I think the legal context there that you mentioned is important. And it is why we can't just do an outright ban, because America is, there are only two developed countries in the world that allow for pharmaceuticals to be advertised on TV and it's New Zealand and America. Everywhere else in Canada, in the UK, in the EU, it's not allowed. And the reason it's permitted here and not in other countries is because, as you mentioned, free speech, because of the First Amendment. And basically the First Amendment in America has just a way

broader protection on free speech than in other countries, which extends to commercial speech. And this has been litigated in American courts many times. And basically what the court consistently finds is that commercial speech in America is just highly, highly protected. And that's not true in other countries where the government can ban those kinds of ads on the basis of things that the government deems really important. You know, over medication or misinformation or price gouging or increasing healthcare costs, all the things that we care about and that we don't like,

that's something that these governments can protect against because their free speech laws are less extensive and they don't apply as stringently to commercial speech. So that is why we can't just ban it. And that's why it's kind of stupid that the presidential campaign, he was saying, I'm going to ban it. And now he's in here, he can't ban it. But to his credit, he can take other measures, which is he can probably

fashion a legal argument as to why you need to make those disclosures that are already kind of freaky at the end of those ads and make them way more detailed and way more scary. And I think that's probably a good idea. But you also mentioned the effect that this has on the traditional TV industry. And I'm glad you mentioned that because this is a huge business for TV. The pharmaceutical industry spends $10 billion per year on ads. And that makes up roughly 10% of all TV advertising. So this is a huge deal. So it's one, going to be a problem for the cable and broadcast networks.

But two, it's also going to be a problem for the pharmaceutical companies, because the reason they spend all this money on these TV ads is it actually is massively impactful on their top line. And there was this study from out of USC, areas of the country with higher pharmaceutical ad exposure experience a 6% increase in prescription drug utilization, with 70% of that increase coming from new prescriptions. Meanwhile, according to the same study, one third of drug expenditure increases can be linked to the prevalence of pharmaceutical ads.

So the pharma companies have done the math and they've realized like these ads make us a ton of money. We're spending a lot on restless legs and these barbecue ads on Fox, but ultimately it's a really great thing for us. So I think the RFK's plan is clearly the economics of advertising, they make a whole lot of sense to pharmaceutical companies right now. And his plan is, I'm just going to try to make the economics make a lot less sense. I'm pretty happy with that, because as we discussed,

I'm not very happy with the state of the healthcare industry in America right now. So to me, that is a decent plan. I'm wondering if you would agree. Do you think that this will have much of an effect on the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry? Some of the data you read has kind of swayed me towards the side of thinking this is actually a good idea

because if you look at the nations that don't allow it, it's no accident that of the G7 nations, it sounds like six of the seven don't allow this, and the average cost of healthcare is $6,500 a year per capita, and it's $13,000 here. And some of that is, despite the fact that I think about 90% of the drugs prescribed are generics, they make all of their money in the 10% that are branded that they overcharge for. Humira and Ozempic, they charge quadruple in the US what they charge anywhere else. Some of that is their ability to brand and create consumer pool and awareness.

In addition to the industry, Big Pharma spent about $300 million on lobbying in the US. My guess is if it's like any other lobbying effort, they're getting billions back in unearned margin. So just the fact that we do it in other nations with half the cost of healthcare, don't do it, lends me to believe that we probably shouldn't allow it. This is another problem with

the externalities of free speech where we say, okay, money is political speech, so money really is a problem. Citizens united. And that is you have the weaponization of government by the deepest pockets, by corporations essentially. And there's regulatory capture where these companies make it such that Medicare can't negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies and consumers end up spending just a shit ton,

you know, double for their healthcare for worse outcomes. So I like this just based on, okay, something's wrong here. There's probably is one of the many reasons why we are overspending that, that lobbying, that additional margin, that money they're spending on ads is extraordinary. But again, I'm, as someone who's focused on media, I just think this is like, oh my God, the TV industry just can't catch a break.

Then the big winners here, I would think, would be direct response platforms, specifically Alphabet and Meta. I was just going to ask you that. Yeah. The pharmaceutical companies will come up with content marketing and figure out ways to salt content that says, okay, I have migraines. Well, this is a treatment for those migraines

and a lot of content farms. I don't know if it includes they can't advertise on digital platforms, but this to me seems like a gift to Alphabet and Meta. I was just going to point that out. I mean, traditional ad revenue is going to decline 3% in 2025. And so you think, I mean, yeah, if Big Pharma makes up 10% of TV ad revenue and the ad revenue is already in decline,

then it's just going to crush TV. But to your point, and this is the part that I don't think people are recognizing, I don't think people are recognizing, I don't think that means suddenly the advertising just disappears. I think it means it's going to find itself somewhere else. You've got digital ad sales, which are forecast to grow 8% next year. Maybe this just means suddenly we're going to be seeing all of these ads on Instagram now.

I mean, maybe it won't have as great of an effect because the consumer on Instagram and on YouTube is younger. But as we have been increasingly seeing, old people are migrating to those platforms too. But it does seem, it almost seems scarier because I barely watch TV, so I don't really see them. And then when I do turn on the TV, I'm like, oh my God, these ads are crazy. These are so strange.

Oh, they're insane. The notion just real quick, the notion that he's gonna demand even more disclosures. I mean, they basically say, if you begin bleeding from your eye sockets, call your doctor immediately. And my favorite around the ED drugs is, if you have an erection for longer than six hours,

seek help. And I'm like, six hours? So if you have a heart on for five hours, you're all good. But if it goes six, you're in trouble. And what happens if like, what's running through your mind at five hours and 50 minutes when you still have wood, like, okay, in 10

minutes, I got to go to the emergency room. And that disclosures are so it's literally, they're insane. They're like, if your heart stops, stop taking this medication. Or if you begin convulsing and foaming at the mouth, seek medical attention. Yeah. Meanwhile, the guy's smiling while he flips the burger on the grill. Yeah.

We'll be right back after the break for a look at the IPO market. If you're enjoying the show so far, be sure to give Proffgy Market a follow wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from the Fundrise Flagship Fund. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios, but it's also historically been complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise Flagship Real Estate Fund. Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10. 4700 single-family rental homes spread

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Learn more at AuraRing.com. Oh, excuse me. Why are you walking so close behind me? Calm. Uh, excuse me. Why are you walking so close behind me? Well you're a tall guy. You throw a decent shadow when I'm walking in it to keep out of this bright sun. It hurts my eyes. Okay, well you know at Specsavers, you can get two pairs of glasses from $149 and oh,

you'll like this. One can be a pair of prescription sunglasses. Sounds great. Where's the nearest store? Not far come on. Let's hurry then to my count one two one two one two visit specsavers.ca for details We're back with ProfG Markets We're back with ProfG Markets. After three tough years for new listings, 2025 was expected to be the IPO comeback year and momentum does now seem to be building. In the last month, crypto firm Circle surged 168% on its debut, breaking the record for the biggest first day jump by an IPO valued at $1 billion or more.

Shares of fintech company Chime rose 37% in its market debut and space and defense technology company Voyager ended its first day of trading up more than 80%. Newly public stocks are now seeing their strongest first day performances in more than three years. Meanwhile, there are several other highly anticipated IPOs that are gearing up to go public including Klarna, Gemini and Cerebris. So Scott, the IPO market, I don't think it's necessarily heating up, but I think we could maybe say it's warming up. We've seen IPO's raised $25 billion year to date. That's up from $18 billion

in the same period last year. Again, not an explosion, not the explosion people were predicting, but an increase. But I think what is probably more significant is how well some of these IPOs have been received. Circle probably being the best example, up 168% on its very first day. And so I think what people are saying is there was a concern that there wasn't enough demand in the IPO market and that some of these IPOs would fall flat. But that is not what's happening. Of the companies that are going public, we are seeing some serious pops. So your initial reactions to what's happening in the IPO market right now?

Essentially an IPO is now a financing event, or it's traditionally, excuse me, been a financing event where at some point when Alphabet or it's traditionally, excuse me, been a financing event, where at some point when Alphabet or Google went public, they needed to raise, you know, a billion dollars and the private markets, the venture capital market wasn't big enough, the pools weren't that deep, so they went public. It was still a great company, still growing. And since then, I think the stock is up, you know, 120 fold. So retail investors got to participate in that.

Oftentimes now, the IPO is kind of the last station to try and get an up round from retail investors who aren't that savvy because the private investors, if they still see juice and growth in the company, think, you don't need to access the public markets. We want to keep it for ourselves and exercise our pro rata rights and do more and more rounds and management can get liquid or get liquidity by selling in secondary markets. So a lot of the boxes that were checked by the IPO market or public markets can be checked in the private markets.

So sometimes the public markets are just sort of a last stop on the retail dumb investor train, like who will give us an up mark here? Well, maybe retail investors. When you have a company double in value, the kind of the knee-jerk responses, well, they just incurred unnecessary dilution. If they sell 10% of the company for $100 million, valued at a billion, and the stock doubles,

you think, well, you shouldn't have taken a 10% dilution. You should have priced it correctly, and you only would have incurred a 5% dilution. And what a lot of these companies and their bankers are telling them to do, because their bankers wanna hand out goodies to their best institutional clients who pay their fees, is the bankers will say no, price it really aggressively

such that you get a big first day pop and the 5% or 3% additional dilution is worth the global branding. You only get to go public once or most companies only get to go public once. And I had never heard of Circle, and now everyone in the financial community has heard of Circle, and for the next seven months,

we're gonna be talking about how the top IPO of the year, in terms of first day pop, was this company called Circle. And it also just creates momentum and positive momentum for the company. So a lot of these companies have been convinced by their bankers to price the IPO well below the number. Now, having said that, it's not like retail investors make money here because the first trade that the retail investor gets to trade at is post the pop, right?

It's the first trade. It's the institutional clients of the bankers, the underwriters, taking the public that get to participate. So it's a bit of a rigged game. So I got to invest in the IPO of Airbnb. I know those guys. I'm an informal advisor, so I got allocation in the IPO. It priced at 60 or 68.

First trade was at 160 bucks. People were really excited about Airbnb. It's a great company, great management. It's now I think at 120 or 130. So if you were a retail investor that bought on the opening trade at 160 bucks, you're actually down. So unless you have access, you're an institutional investor, the IPO market hasn't been great because one, it's a bit of a rig game for the insiders and the friends

of the underwriters, and two, a lot of the juice has already been squeezed in the private markets because VCs and late stage private investors want to capture those gains for themselves in the private market. I agree with all of that. You had a great take yesterday and that was talk a little bit about the company or the type of companies that are going public in this market. What I'm seeing is, yes, the IPO market is coming back

and we are seeing a lot more IPOs. I think we've seen more IPOs so far this year than we had all of last year. By the way, interestingly, what's happening is we're seeing more IPOs, but per IPO, the amount of money that they're actually raising is a lot less than last year. My view is I look at all these companies that are going public, I don't want to invest in any of them. I think what is happening is that the companies that are going public are quite frankly mostly the unimpressive companies.

And let's just go through the list of the companies we're talking about here. So, Circle. This is a crypto company. It's specifically a stablecoin company. And basically what that means is they issue this stablecoin called the USDC coin and it's specifically a stable coin company. And basically what that means is they issue this stable coin called the USDC coin, and it's a cryptocurrency that is pegged to the US dollar. And the reason that you do that is to make trading and buying and selling different crypto assets easier. So if that sounds like an oxymoron to you, it is. I mean, the whole point of crypto was to

not rely on the dollar. But what the industry is realizing is that all these other crypto assets are so unstable and so volatile that the only way you can really transact is to create a fake US dollar to lean on the stability and the security of the US government. So to me, this is like the epitome of reinventing the wheel. This is the crypto industry solution to the volatility of the assets that they created. They are simply going back to the US government to borrow more credibility. So that is how Circle makes money.

Specifically, they just buy treasuries. That's what generates 99% of the revenue. And it's also what backs the USDC coin. That's what makes it pegs to the dollar. And they just earn money on the interest. So in other words, the hottest new company in the IPO market is basically a shell company that holds US Treasuries. You look at some of the other companies that have gone public.

This company CoreWeave, which is this cloud platform. It was another very splashy IPO. People were pretty hyped about it, seemed like a great company until people started to realize that this company is almost entirely dependent on Nvidia and the support that it gets from Nvidia. I'll just quote a report from Moffat Nathanson, which said, quote, CoreWeave exists because Nvidia wants it to exist. And the reality is for CoreWeave is they're making revenue, but a lot of it is because they're first in line for all of Nvidia's GPUs. Why? Because Nvidia is one of their biggest investors.

Nvidia owns 5% of the company. So another big IPO, big splash, but without Nvidia, the company wouldn't really function. And then you just look at the other companies that are in the pipeline, Klarna, which is a buy now, pay later company. As we discussed, buy now, pay later is just a rebrand of credit. They're saying, oh, we're different from credit, no.

Buy now, pay later, that's literally the definition of credit. And what they have found is that in the past year, they're seeing a 20% rise in losses due to credit defaults because young people are increasingly using Klarna and then they're just not paying the money back because they probably just don't have the money. And they're using BNPL to go buy the Coachella tickets.

They think that they're just gonna be able to pay it over time and then they realize, oh, I don't have the money, they're just default. So that's another problem. Another company going public, Gemini, that's the crypto company that was founded by the Winklevoss twins. They were sued a couple of years ago by the New York attorney general for defrauding customers. So I just, I look at all of these companies, I'm like, that's a shitty company, that's shitty company, that's shitty company. They're all, they have a very SPAC feel to them. And it's almost as if IPOs in 2025 are SPACs in 2021. And it's a shame because there are a lot of companies that I would love to invest in.

But to your point, they are all still private. I mean, I think of SpaceX and OpenAI and ByteDance, Stripe, Databricks, all the other AI companies, Anthropic, a ton of incredible high quality, high value companies in there that I would love to invest in if they were to IPO, but they're not going public because I think to your point, they already have the money in the private markets. Going public is kind of a headache. So why not just continue to raise the money in your venture rounds? And then you just keep raising to infinity. I mean, that's why we keep seeing these

series EFGH rounds. This wasn't really possible 20 years ago. So then the dynamic is what are the companies that are left over? It's these companies that probably the VCs didn't really want to invest in. It's these companies that only need VCs didn't really want to invest in. It's these companies that only need to raise a little bit of money that have these kind of precarious business models. And ultimately you got the great companies that are for the wealthy investors, institutional investors, accredited investors, and then all the shitty companies are being thrown over to the retail investors, which is just not a great dynamic in my view.

Yeah. It feels as if also some of it is a bit of a Trump trade, and that is Trump has fully embraced not only fully embraced crypto, but has totally neutered any regulatory efforts around it. So a company like Circle or Gemini, it's now clear sailing. They don't have to worry about the DOJ coming for them or shutting them down, right? And I do believe there's an uptick in crypto, you know, Bitcoin's hitting, you know, highs. So it feels like there's a little bit of a Trumpian feel to the

companies that are getting out. And all of these companies have sort of this new age Pepsi feel to them. You know, they're kind of newish, you know, I don't know if you call it Web 3, I don't know what you would call this, financial services 2.0. Yeah, call it Web 3. I mean, that's what they called it a couple of years ago until people called bullshit on that time. Then AI is Web 3.

Yeah, and then they figured out AI was actually Web 3. Also, your point is a really interesting one, and that is the highest quality firms are not in a hurry to go public. I'd love to see the IPO market come back. I think it's a shame that more people don't have more access to participate in the upside of these companies. And you're right, the best companies are sort of on the sidelines right now. Does that concern you? I mean, it concerns me. I've talked about it before, but I feel that there is increasingly less opportunity for regular retail investors to engage in genuinely transformative wealth building.

They can get in on the crypto, but if you just do any of the analysis, most people are losing money on the crypto. I believe the same thing is going to happen with these IPOs. I look at the companies that are going public, I get why they're having these pops. They're kind of these sexy fun companies. But if you just look at the underlying business fundamentals, I don't think these are going to be good long term investments. I mean, Circle, Chime. Chime is basically like a banking app for people who make less than $100,000, but the

whole thing is basically predicated on this legal provision that caps interchange fees for big banks. So they need to stay small to be a real business. So they're not going to have genuine growth here. And then all of the real growth is happening in Silicon Valley. And how, where's the mobility gone? Like how are regular people supposed to be getting rich here if you can't invest in SpaceX or open AI. The response from the industry would be that the, that a lot of people who you

wouldn't expect, whether it's teachers or firemen vis-a-vis their pensions, end up investing indirectly because a lot of VCs take money from these large institutional investors. So if you're a teacher in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Public Teachers Fund invests in Tier 1 VCs so they would say, actually these people get to participate. The problem is, or I would argue, is that the fees and the friction basically scooped two and 20, and it goes to a very small number of mostly white dudes from Stanford or Harvard who are 40% of all venture capitalists and probably responsible for 70%, 80% of the capital allocated. So again, more and more wealth, you know, via sequestering or lack of access,

goes to a smaller and smaller group of people. So I think a really robust public market, I think the number of publicly traded companies has been cut in half in the last 20 or 30 years, either through M&A or just not that many IPOs. And it begs the question of, well, is there too much regulation? Do you need to make it less expensive to go public? And I think actually there's a good argument there, but this isn't, you need, I think you need a strong IPO market. One of the things about the London exchange, it's basically dying.

The LSE, something like 60 or 70% of the companies that have gone public in the last 10 years are trading below their offering price. Nobody wants to go public on the LSE. I mean, it's just a really robust, deep pools of capital, financial markets, and the ability for people to participate in the upside. Like the people who bought at the IPO of Meta and Alphabet and Netflix have made a shit ton of money. And the key is, and this is to your point, is where does someone like you buy into an IPO? You know, if all the pop is on the first trade or all of the juice has been squeezed in the private market, again, those people are institutions, venture capitalists,

and high net worth individuals. So the place where the guy or gal on Main Street used to get upside appreciation and wealth, you know, basically institutions have come in and said, no, and wealth, you know, basically institutions have come in and said, no, you know, the little guy's margin or upside is my opportunity. So the question is, what do we do about it? Is at a certain point, is a company forced to go public? Should there be a certain amount of low fee investment? I don't know how you get around, I don't know how you solve this problem. Or you just change the accredited investor rules.

I mean, the fact, I mean, the rules are literally right now. And I think this is being reviewed in Congress and it will probably change, but it's, the rules have been that you need to be worth, have a net worth of a million dollars or you need to have made $200,000 for two consecutive years. Which is crazy that we're basically just like, you're only allowed to engage in

this wealth building if you're rich. That's basically what the law says. And there's, there are other ways to do it where you can take a test and, and, and go through those motions. But the fact that that's literally the law. It's like only, only rich people are smart enough to invest in open AI. That's crazy. It's just funny that the SEC thinks that they need

to protect people from SpaceX, but they should be free to buy cum rocket. Exactly. It's just sort of, there's definitely some inconsistency here. So I don't have a solution, but I empathize with your view. We'll be right back after the break with a look at the dollars decline. If you're enjoying the show so far, hit follow and leave

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Visit sofi.com slash profgpod and see your options in minutes. In 2001, Lindsay met a man named Carlo. About a week later, they went on a date. And almost 15 years after that, she found out Carlo had been keeping a secret. Did you just go through every single moment of your relationship trying to see if you picked up on anything or... Yeah, I didn't sleep for days. I ran over things again and again in my head. And part of me didn't really still believe it. It took quite a while to sink in.

I'm Phoebe Judge. Listen right now on Criminal, wherever you get your podcasts. The Trump Organization launched a wireless carrier this week, which is weird, but even weirder is the phone, which is supposedly $500, made in the United States and coming in September. And I am here to tell you, I don't believe any of it. This week on The Vergecast, we talk about what is going on with Trump Mobile and the T1 phone, plus what this all says about how we might buy phones in the future. All that, plus our review of the Nintendo Switch 2 and lots more on The Vergecast, wherever

you get podcasts. We're back with ProfG Markets. Since President Trump took office, the dollar has dropped more than 10% against the Euro, the pound and the Swiss franc, and it's down across every other major currency. Tariffs, tax cuts and mounting political pressure on the Fed are rattling global investor confidence and weighing on the world's largest reserve currency. It recently hit a three-year low and is on pace for its worst first half of a year in decades. Okay, before we get into this, our producer Claire spoke with our friend Robert Armstrong. Robert is the US financial commentator at the the Financial Times and he laid the groundwork for us here.

So let's have a listen and then we'll get your reaction, Scott. Okay, two facts to discuss. First off, the dollar has weakened against the basket of global currencies, that matters. Second fact, it has happened at the same time as the yield on US treasury bonds has risen, which means the same thing as the price on US treasury bonds has gone down. Usually those two travel together. When the treasury bond goes up, the yield goes up. It offers more reward to investors. So people buy dollars to grab that yield.

And that drives the dollar up with the treasury yield, but that hasn't happened. And that is the main thing that is kind of scared. So that looks like, even though US treasuries are offering higher yields, people don't want to own them, which suggests that people are spooked about America, either because the budget is out of control or the president is unpredictable or whatever. So the question is out there in the air. Now, counterpoint. Where are you going to go? I'm just covering the basics here. The counterpoint is where you're going to go. There is not a good obvious alternative globally to

having the dollar as your reserve currency as your main trade currency, etc, etc. The dollar is big. It is liquid. It has had a bad year, but historically, it is quite safe. So where are you going to go? And how do you think the administration is singing about the dollar slide? Because Trump made a lot of noise last year, insisting that the dollar remain the world's reserve currency. He seems kind of quiet on it now though.

So do you have any thoughts on that? Every president likes to use the word strong about all American things. And likewise, this president likes to say the word strong near the word dollar. However, he also talked a lot and his administration talked a lot early on about having a weaker dollar or what amounts to the same thing, other currencies be stronger so that the trade

balance will change. As a matter of economics, my guess is that he is wrong that the weaker dollar will solve the trade and bounce. There are stronger forces at play. But whether I'm right about that or not, I don't think the administration wanted to weaken the dollar by showing the world that it was an unreliable partner in various ways. Are there any sort of flashing red lights we should look out for if things get worse?

I think the big worry here is another step up in US treasury yields, probably precipitated by the world really thinking that the US deficit has gotten out of control. I don't think that's likely necessarily, but it's possible. And it seems like the biggest major risk on the field of play right now. And what's your outlook? Last time you spoke with Scott Ned, you said luckily for the US, bureaucracy moves very slowly and this is a drip, drip process. How are you feeling about it now?

I mean, I think the drip, drip right now is continuing. The dollar has been strong the last couple of days, but I think there is no question. When I talked about the drip-drip, what I was talking about is the people who manage big global money make decisions very slowly. These are insurance companies, these are pension funds, and so on. There will not be a coordinated giant global flight from the dollar. But I think there's evidence again at the margin that things are changing. And in finance, the margin matters. A lot there.

Just to reiterate the data here, Scott. So the dollar is down 10% since Trump came into office on pace for its worst first half of the year in decades. Morgan Stanley projects will keep falling. Goldman says it's 15% overvalued. Most interesting data point to me, Bank of America released a survey on Tuesday. They found that global fund managers

are more underweight the dollar today than at any point in the past 20 years. And this all goes back to what we've been talking about around this rotation out of the US. We thought that we were seeing it with the stock market, but kind of beneath the surface, what's been happening is the dollar has been declining, slowly but surely.

Your reaction, Scott. Yeah, so, I mean, it's like any other asset. If there's more sellers than buyers reflecting confidence or lack thereof in any asset, its price is gonna go up or down. And basically when the dollar goes up or goes down in value, basically its decline of 10% on what is the reserve currency of the world says that people are essentially, there's more sellers of US assets converting into other currencies than there are buyers of US assets converting into dollars. And even though treasuries are offering people more or have to offer people more of a premium

because our treasuries, the full faith and credit of the United States is seen as riskier than it was before we started putting in plans for tax bills that would increase our deficit by $3.5 trillion. So we have to offer more. And even though that logically should bring in more money, T-bills are one asset class. What we're seeing is that in these surveys is that at a P of 25 or 26, the S and P stocks are US companies aren't as attractive and are no longer kind of the default investment

for global institutional managers. And they're giving looks at other assets and other asset classes outside of the U.S., which means many of them are probably selling down U.S. stocks or assets and then converting those dollars into euros or yen or to reals as they start to look at European, Asian, and Latin American assets. So that's, you know, that it is what it is. Now the dollar is granted it's down 10%, but it's not historically weak.

I remember coming to the UK when I was running L2 once. And I think the pound was like at a buck 60 or a buck 70. So, and it's gone from when I first moved to the UK, it was a buck 28. Liz trust showed up and it went to like a dollar 12. I thought before I moved into my UK, it was a buck 28. Liz Trust showed up and it went to like a dollar 12. I thought before I moved into my house, it was down 15%. Then I think last week it peaked at about 35 and I think it's down to a dollar 34. But I mean, what's the lesson here? One, you could argue that A, this connotes a weakening in confidence and capital inflows.

And we've been talking for a long time about how the rivers of capital are going to reverse flow for the first time in 17 years. I think there's some evidence of that. So this is, this is people selling us assets to buy non-us assets. It's I see it as just that simple. And then there's currency traders who hedge their exposure by buying certain currencies, but I don't know how much that actually moves the real power here or the real catalyst for movement up or down in currencies.

I would think simply put would be how attractive those assets are in that country and people converting into those currencies. And so I don't, I think this is super interesting. The fact that we have yields going up as the dollar goes down is basically something that blows my mind from macro economics back when I was in second year in business school. That's not supposed to happen. But I think what we forget is treasuries are only one asset class. If people are selling down their Apple and they're buying Siemens or Toyota, that's another

asset class that's being traded out of dollars into euros and yen. Yeah. And by the way, the other asset class that we should probably mention, which is definitely riding some tailwinds off of this is gold, which just overtook the euro as the second largest reserve asset in the world. It's been a phenomenal run for gold. Uh, price of gold is up 30% year to date. Prices have doubled since late 2022. That's wild. It's a normal run for gold. Price of gold is up 30% year to date.

Prices have doubled since late 2022. That's wild. It is pretty insane what's happening here with gold. And it's kind of establishing itself once again as the safe haven asset. I've talked on this podcast. I don't, I just don't love gold as an investment. I kind of landed in the Warren Buffett frame of things.

But there's no denying that's kind of where people are going. They are moving out of treasuries. They're getting out of dollars. They're repatriating those dollars into currencies to buy their own assets or to buy up a bunch of gold. At least that's what we're seeing from the central banks. So, I don't know, any reactions to what's going on with gold here? Are you thinking about gold? Are you getting into gold? People are looking for a safe haven. And it used to be the ultimate safe

haven was treasuries. And now people think, no, I like this safe haven more. So people look at stocks, they think they're overvalued. They look at assets are overvalued despite risk in the market. So where do I go? I can go into Bitcoin, which has accelerated or I can go into gold. And if you compare gold, people have always said that a lot of people say Bitcoin maximalists will say the Bitcoin is digital gold. Well, gold actually has some utility and they would argue, yeah, but the supply of gold is increasing faster than the supply of Bitcoin or what have you, but

gold still does have utility, it has aspirational value. At the same time, it's very difficult to transport $10 million of gold, you know, should they start rounding up, you know, bald guys for whatever reason, like it's easier for us to piece out with a, you know, to shove a, you know, cold storage hardware wallet up our ass and piece out to Milan than it would be for us to, you know, put 10 gold bars in Claire's backpack and ask her to inconspicuously and get on Alitalia. So, but at the same time, gold has real utility. Yeah.

So I think it's interesting. I've never ever considered investing in gold. Nor have I. I think just in terms of like what's happening with the dollar here, down 10% since it took office, I think it's important your point, which is like, historically it's not that bad. Like, I don't think that we have a doom loop situation on our hands at all. But I think it's probably worth just explaining what that is and why people are so concerned about it.

I think the big concern here, if the dollar were to continue to slide, is just what it would do to our debt and our borrowing costs. And that's kind of what Robert was hinting at there when he was talking about, I'm looking at the yield on the treasury. Because the thing you have to remember, foreign nations hold a huge amount of our debt. It's around 30%. And if you have a weak dollar and the dollar continues to fall,

basically that means that all of those foreign governments are going to take a loss, an even greater loss when they convert those holdings into their own currency, when they repatriate. So I think the concern is that foreign debt holders get spooked out by what's happening to the dollar. They see it sinking, sinking, sinking. They suddenly start realizing, oh my gosh, this is our loss right now because we're so deep into treasuries. And so they start pulling out to prevent or stem any further losses. And that would be the concern because if we do that, then suddenly our borrowing costs go up even more. And we've got this $29 trillion debt pile.

That's when the death spiral begins, that's when the doom loop happens. So I think that's why people are like, you're seeing articles written about this, oh my gosh, the dollar's down. That's the end game, that's what would happen if it got really bad. My view on this is, I don't think we're anywhere near that,

and I think it's helpful to hear you say that you went to London, you went with L2 to the UK and it was a completely different situation. The dollar was even weaker than it is now. But I feel like that's the end game that people are worried about. It's never a bad idea to have a little bit of your assets exposed to different asset classes. So taking a little bit of money and putting it in gold, I wouldn't do it when I was your age, but for someone like me, it probably makes sense to have a little bit of So taking a little bit of money and putting it in gold, I wouldn't do it when I was your age, but for someone like me, it probably makes sense

to have a little bit of gold, a little bit of Bitcoin, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And I got exposure to gold because I started an 18-karat gold butt plug business. But Ed, I was sued by Tesla. It ends up they have IP protection on expensive stuff for assholes. So I was put out of business by Tesla. Oh, that's good. So that what I've learned from that is I don't think you were

listening to anything I was saying because you were formulating your joke. Nothing. I was so ready to tell that joke. I have no idea what you said. Where are we? I was looking at your face. You seemed interested. You seemed concentrated. No, no, no. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Oh, okay. Well, we got as much insight out of you on this episode as we were going to get. We got a good mix of jokes and insight. That's what we're looking for.

Let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see the personal consumption expenditures index for May, and we'll also see earnings from FedEx and Nike. Scott, do you have any predictions for this week? consumption expenditures index for May. And we'll also see earnings from FedEx and Nike. Scott, do you have any predictions for this week? So I love Netflix, but I think Netflix stock is gonna come under pressure over the next year. It's had an incredible run. It's an amazing company, great management,

but I was blown away by the data that you shared yesterday. And that is that if you look at share of streaming or video consumption, it's 13% share for YouTube, 8% for Netflix at number two, and Disney's at number three at 5%. And what I found fascinating was that on a gross dollar volume level, YouTube is actually spending almost as much on content as Netflix. It's just going out to people who are doing videos on dog grooming or, you know, Turkish cooking in their revenue program. Like Neil Mohan, the head of YouTube, has a revenue share program. And all of these Hollywood gaffers and union and production and reality TV producers crying into TikTok, I get it. But essentially what's happening is there's a transfer of wealth

from the traditional creators to, or the old time creators working for, you know, Paramount and Warner Brothers and Netflix to the creator economy, these individuals. And it just struck me that this asset-like business model is just such a superior model because it cuts out all of the means of production costs and says if you have cameras, I mean, your iPhone is probably as good as a 50 or $100,000 camera 20 years ago, right? A Panavision camera. And so when I think of the just the power of YouTube and TikTok, I think YouTube and TikTok are about to do to Netflix what Netflix did to Comcast and to Fox. And I'm just struck by this asset light model

where they are able to create content that people seem increasingly interested in consuming, which says to me that ByteDance and YouTube will continue to grow their share possibly at the expense, not only of broadcast and of cable and other streamers, but at the cost of the juggernaut in the space Netflix. So my prediction is that we're gonna start to see pressure on Netflix stock at the hands of this asset light,

YouTube and TikTok model. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producers are Alison Weiss stock model. I'm Raffi Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the markets. Reunion as the world turns And the blood flies