Rich Habits Podcast - Public Launches Prediction Markets, Meta's Muse Charm, & $2T of Debt

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Leif Abraham sits down with Robert and Austin to talk about Public's newest asset class, prediction markets.Read more here: ⁠https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/public-launches-ai-agents-fo...r-prediction-markets-302888505.html⁠✅ Ready to start investing? Open a brokerage account on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Public.com/richhabits⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!---📝 Use Granola during your next meeting, completely free, ⁠click here:⁠ ⁠http://granola.ai/HABITS⁠---🤖 VCX: the public ticker for private tech -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here or visit https://getvcx.com/ to learn more! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---🚀 Invest alongside Robert and Austin and 1,100+ other members inside the Rich Habits Network, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠🏆 Wall Street Favorites⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is LIVE! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to see what Wall Street is buying before everyone else.---🧿 Protect your family with term life insurance from Suriance! Get a $1M+ policy for $50 or less per month. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---‼️ Have feedback to share? Please let us a comment on Spotify! We're excited to mold these new weekly episodes to be exactly what our listeners want.---⚡️ Sign up for the Rich Habits Newsletter and never miss a market-moving headline again, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---⭐ Download our FREE Financial Planner –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Download our FREE Budgeting Template –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Earn 3.8% on your savings with a High-Yield Cash Account –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Automatically buy stock where you shop with Grifin –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Protect your family with term life insurance from Suriance –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⭐ Use code “Spotify” for 15% off our 4-module video course –⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---📬 Inquire about working together – christian@witz.vc---This content is sponsored by NEOS Investments. The creator is compensated by NEOS to discuss NEOS ETFs. This content is for informational purposes only, and is not personalized investment, tax, or legal advice, and does not constitute an offer to buy or sell any security. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Before investing, carefully review the NEOS ETFs prospectus at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠neosfunds.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 You're tuning in to the Rich Habits Radar, our Friday episode of the Rich Habits podcast where every Friday morning we're coming at you with the biggest headlines impacting you and your money. This episode is brought to you by VCX, the public ticker for private tech. My name's Austin Hank Witts. I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croke. And the three things sitting at the top of our Rich Habits Radar this week include public.com announcing prediction markets on their platform, specifically the ability for their AI agents to use the information derived. from these prediction markets to make informed decisions with your money. Yes, very interesting and more on that later.
Starting point is 00:00:37 We'll also be talking about Meta's new Muse AI agent that has gone incredibly viral and the new little charm keychain that was just announced, as well as the $2 trillion ticking time bomb that is debt on U.S. apartments. Robert, let's dig into our first story. Definitely. I'm super excited about this because public just announced AI agents for prediction markets, and it's really, really cool. So Public, the investing platform we've partnered with for years now,
Starting point is 00:01:05 just announced something that's a genuine first for retail brokerage. AI agents that can trade prediction markets on your behalf and use those markets as a live signal to trigger trades anywhere in your portfolio. Public already calls itself the world's first agentic brokerage, and this launch is them
Starting point is 00:01:24 leaning all the way into that narrative. Members, now as of time, today have access to prediction markets across nine different categories on the platform. Cryptocurrency, commodities, climate, economics, corporate events, markets, indices, tech and science, and politics and elections. But the real story isn't that public added prediction markets because plenty of platforms have already done that. The real story about this is what they are doing with these AI agents on top of the prediction markets. Yeah, this is so cool because we've been talking about public for years and today, as of today, members can trade these events directly the way you'd expect.
Starting point is 00:02:05 But they can also hand the reins to an AI agent and say in plain English what they want to happen when the probability crosses a certain threshold. Life Abraham, Publix's co-CEO and co-founder, put it this way. Quote, prediction markets give those agents a new input, real world events. So members can trade a position on the event directly or use the market's data, as the signal that triggers a trade anywhere else in their portfolio. And the examples that public put out in their press release, which will have linked in the show notes below, are worth sitting with for a second
Starting point is 00:02:39 because they show exactly how far this can actually go. So here's three examples they gave out in the press release. The first example is, if the probability of FDA approval for a healthcare stock in my portfolio crosses 75%, automatically execute a $5,000 market buy for that ticker symbol. The second example they gave is, if the probability of at least three rate cuts this year rises by 10 percentage points in a single day, alert me and summarize my exposure to bank stocks. And the third example they gave was if the probability of a Q3 earnings miss rises above 60% for any stock I own, buy in the money put options spending no more than $2,500 per position.
Starting point is 00:03:24 And the cool thing is it's not a chatbot answering questions about the market. It's an autonomous agent sitting on top of a live prediction market feed, watching probabilities in real time, and executing actual trades, dollar amounts, and all the second a condition is met. No open app, no manually checking the odds, no logging in at 2 a.m. because you're worried about a Fed decision, all automated. And notice what public deliberately left out. They specifically built this around events that move markets, rate decisions, earnings, FDA approvals, elections and explicitly excluded sports and entertainment betting. So this is not a gambling product wearing a fintech costume. It's positioned as a genuine portfolio risk tool dressed up as a prediction market.
Starting point is 00:04:12 So Austin, this is really, really cool stuff. I hope everyone is taking notes. Break this down for us. What does this mean for you and your money? Yeah, I think it's awesome. I mean, we all know public as this platform where you can have different asset classes. they've got equities, they've got crypto, they've got bonds, they've got treasuries, they've got, you know, option contracts, generated assets, AI agents, and now we've got prediction markets and the AI agents can use
Starting point is 00:04:40 the prediction markets like public.com is the best broker out there, full stop. Now, what I think is interesting here is that prediction markets now stop being a side courtesy and start becoming the actual input on how your portfolio behaves automatically and continuously without you having to be the watching the screen every single moment. For years, prediction markets have been around. We know Polymarket and Kalshi, and they've been treated as a novelty for political traders or people who want to bet on election outcomes, but public just reposition the category entirely and sort of is reframing it now as market infrastructure, which means you have this live probability feed that can trigger real trades inside of a real brokerage account. So the winners here are less about the single
Starting point is 00:05:24 tickers and more about the trend. The trend is that public is strengthening its position in the increasingly crowded agentic brokerage race. And if this resonates with its members, I would expect to see Robin Hood, Charles Schwab, and several others begin to start sniffing around the prediction market integrations of their own within the next, I don't know, three, six, nine, 12 months. Kalshi and Polymarket, which are two of the largest prediction market operators, also benefit from a major brokerage, effectively validating the category as a serious financial infrastructure rather than being this like, you know, gray area of y'all make some bets on, you know,
Starting point is 00:05:59 whatever the election outcome is going to be. So I think public is absolutely trailblazing what it means to have a holistic portfolio, not just in different asset classes, not just with prediction markets, which have been around for a while, but to be able to take the information, the probability insight of that event contract saying, wait a second, the Fed might raise interest rates. That now is a higher odd happening. than it was last week, what does this actually mean for my portfolio? What does AI tell me this could mean? And what trade should I be thinking about if this type of outcome actually occurs?
Starting point is 00:06:35 Without, and again, we've kind of been, we had an episode about this, Robert. We talked about how to use prediction markets in your own portfolio. We got some flack on it because y'all thought we were talking about gambling. We're not. And public just validated our episode back from March, essentially, which was us saying, hey, prediction markets tell you what is the chance of something happening. And yeah, the chance of that thing could be a sports game or some sort of like bet on a TV show. But it could also mean an election outcome. It could also mean the Federal Reserve. It can mean, you know, Tesla deliveries. It can mean so many different things for you and your money. And that episode now just got super validated by public that said, yeah, those probabilities are
Starting point is 00:07:12 important. Let's now also put an AI agent on top of it to make sure that they've got their eyes. And it's really cool, Robert. I'm pumped. Yeah, we've talked about this for a few years now that these prediction market data points are really, really important. But let's talk about the risk that go along with it because automation can cut both ways. Let's say an agent executing a $5,000 buy, the instant a probability crosses 75% is powerful when you're right about the setup. And it's just as fast at compounding a mistake if the market data driving that probability is thin, manipulated, or just wrong. So prediction markets, especially in a less liquid category, can move on small volume.
Starting point is 00:07:54 Handing a trading agent explicit dollar amount authority based on that data is a new kind of risk. Most retailers have never had to think about before. We love the tools, but we also want to make sure you understand the risk. 100%. And, you know, we've seen this trend, Robert, from a lot of finance companies. First, it was the robo advisor, automating your allocation to different index funds. And then it was the AI chat assistant answering your questions about, you know, how is my portfolio structured? What should I think about these investments? Now it's AI agents
Starting point is 00:08:26 executing real trades off of real time event probabilities. So whether or not you personally use this specific feature, it's a preview of where every major brokerage is headed in my humble opinion. And it's worth understanding and doing some research on before it becomes the default, not just a cool thing that public.com does. Like, this is going to be the future. And you have to understand where all this is going or you're going to get left behind, which is why you listen to the rich habits radar in what we have on these weekly episodes. So to break all of this down, we are joined by Life, co-founder and co-CEO of Public. Life, welcome back to the show. Hey, guys, go to see you. Really glad you're here, man. Thanks so much for taking time today. Let's start with the
Starting point is 00:09:08 prediction markets themselves. We've watched this category of prediction markets explode over the last couple of years, but Public is taking a pretty deliberate approach on the prediction markets themselves. You're not offering sports or entertainment. You're focusing specifically on events that could impact the financial markets. One, why did you decide to draw that line? And two, what role do you think prediction markets should play for investors? Yeah. The instrument of an event contract and like the use case of that, I would argue, has been stretched over the last few years, right? And that's why you see it being used for sports and entertainment things and all these kinds of things because, you know, in theory, it's just an instrument and you can
Starting point is 00:09:53 in theory, use it for a lot of different things. Now, obviously, we're, like, public as a platform where people put the life savings into, they grow their wealth in it, et cetera. And even though there might be a category of, like, entertainment finance, you know, let's call it, we think that should be arms linked from your portfolio and your life savings, you know? But nevertheless, there are, to your point, like, there are some really good use case. for certain event contracts, aka prediction markets, that can actually help you kind of maneuver the markets a little bit, you know? And that's exactly what we're kind of focus on, right?
Starting point is 00:10:30 So like the high level principle for us is, you know, basically events that move the markets, so things that could have an impact on your portfolio, and then you can either just trade those, or you can also just use the data and like the, you know, kind of live event probabilities and those signals to, you know, do other things in your portfolio that might not be related to actually trading those markets.
Starting point is 00:10:51 It might be related to something completely different, you know, that you're doing your portfolio. Yeah, like just taking the insights from the probabilities of an event contract resolving to a yes, right? Just taking that insight and saying, wait a second, that's interesting. How might this impact the rest of my portfolio if it actually did happen? Exactly. And like an example is we're also showing the events on. stock pages now, right? And if there's one use case that we very much believe in, it's this use case of dissecting a company in its performance and its KPIs. And, you know, a lot of companies are
Starting point is 00:11:30 these like big behemoths now, they have multiple businesses and so on, you know, or also, I'm sure most people who are sort of active in their, like, like in their portfolio had this moment happen once where, you know, you have a trade in mind on an earnings call or something, you had your thesis, you've done your research, you've done the work, you were right on what your thesis and your work was, and the stocks tanked anyway because of something weird the CEO said on the call or because, you know, the outlook was different than the analysts expected or whatever. And so now, you know, what creation markets can do is you can dissect company performance into specific KPIs, and if you basically want to be like, oh, I have a very bit understanding of,
Starting point is 00:12:15 you know, the model Y delivery numbers, because I. I'm in the business, I'm forecasting this myself, whatever it might be, you can place a trade just on that as well. And those are the aspects of that are quite interesting because then if you go to, you know, things like the Apple stock page, you're going to have to trade those events contracts, but you can at least even in the context of a stock, for example, see, hey, what does the prediction market? What do the event, you know, a contract say around the probability of, you know, a European antitrust case to, you know, be won or lost, for example, you know. and it might give you some understanding of like why the stock is priced a certain way and things like that. Yeah, we've taken and talked about this for so long that we look at prediction markets because we're not gamblers. And we look at this information as just another way to gain an edge on a thesis. And you guys have blown that out of the water by making it so specific to what moves the markets because we don't care about entertainment and gambling.
Starting point is 00:13:13 And I think that's very, very important because there's been this debate over weather, prediction markets are primarily another form of gambling or whether they're a legitimate source of this information we all want those edges from. And if a market says there's a 70% probability of three Fed rate cuts this year, for example, that becomes a real-time signal of what tens of thousands of people collectively believe is going to happen. And so from your purview, how should investors interpret those probabilities and what makes prediction market data useful alongside more traditional things
Starting point is 00:13:50 like analysts estimates, economic forecasts, or these market implied expectations. Break that down for our listeners. Yeah, I mean, the general thesis behind the data that prediction markets generate is the sense of that the minute someone puts their real money, their own money behind it, would become more objective.
Starting point is 00:14:11 right suddenly your political opinion or whatever it might be does not matter because it only matters to you you know what do i believe is going to happen and so i can put my own kind of opinion a little bit out of the window and it becomes much more a much more rational kind of activity than from those people who participate and because of that rational you know kind of analysis that everyone applies because it's literally just about putting my own money to work and see if i win or lose so to say that that basically creates a cleaner outcome than for example running a general poll
Starting point is 00:14:45 where you just call a bunch of people and they will just express their opinion because they have nothing to lose as a study on the other end. That is the general theory there. Now I would always see caveat that doesn't mean that if you see a market
Starting point is 00:15:01 with an 80% probability that will definitely turn out to be that way. There's many examples of prediction markets completely flipping, you know, around at some point. But it is, again, it is one data point that you can take into account. And I think specifically you made the example of just like general public market analysts, you know. I would always argue that a lot of public market analysts are actually quite biased, right?
Starting point is 00:15:29 Like if you're the bank who is IPOing a certain company, you know, there's a reason that banker or like that that bank will likely be, you know, out first on the first six earnings quarter to the company to be able to ask a question to set the tone and have a very nice lowball question be like oh congrats such a great quarter you know because there's other financial centers that the bank had and whatnot to like you know make sure that this is all fine and good and you're getting like a nice little you know kind of off landing into the public markets and things like that right so like there are biases in these things you know uh in the like old systems and um even just by like having more of a wisdom of the crowd and blending it down versus a room of three analysts at Citibank or whatever that might be,
Starting point is 00:16:13 you know, already also I think makes the data potentially a little bit more useful because it is this more crowd wisdom, you know, blended pool than just, you know, a few guys in a conference room somewhere. Well, definitely, and I think what this does is it levels the playing field for the retail investor giving them more tools to work with. But it also, I'm going to trust data more if people are putting their money where their mouths are. And I think that's one of the key factors here is that people are actually betting on the data themselves. So that's why I think prediction market data is so important when you're making these decisions.
Starting point is 00:16:49 So I really, really like that answer. Yeah, I completely agree, right? Because I remember back, you know, we're having midterms are coming up now, but I remember the most recent presidential election. I feel like a lot of headlines were saying one thing, but then you log into some of these prediction markets and you see a completely different side of the story. And that side of the story is what actually came true. And so I agree with you life that, you know, when people put their money where their mouth is, that to me is a real signal versus the noise of headlines and, you know, talking heads on the internet. Now, speaking of some of the signal here, walk me through the actual mechanics because in your press release,
Starting point is 00:17:24 you gave this example of like an FDA approval, right? If probability crosses 75% of this FDA approval for this specific stock, auto execute a buy of $2,000, $5,000, whatever it might be, where is that probability data actually coming from? How thick is the liquidity behind that probability? And then even like what happens if maybe the market itself gets too thin or maybe manipulated right before triggers are created there with the trade? Like really walk our listeners through what's happening behind the scenes here? Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:57 And it obviously very much depends contract by contract. Because think of the prediction markets as similar. Like I have a float on a stock where it's like the amount of people trading a certain amount of money the exact same thing happens with an event contract of course and so the more popular contract the more people participate you know in theory
Starting point is 00:18:15 the better and more substantial the data behind it should be right and if you have less people participate then the data becomes thin up and you know in theory I would argue you should likely trust it less you know or believe the data less and that is obviously very
Starting point is 00:18:32 true to these markets as well right then hence also why the more they mature I think the better they will become, you know, because the more people have participated, the better the data actually should end up being. But hence also why, you know, often when you look at these charts on any kind of prediction market, you always see that volume number in the lower left of like of the chart. And I think there's actually a quite important number because it gives you a little bit of like a specific, you know, value that you can kind of learn from a little bit of like,
Starting point is 00:19:02 okay, you know, at which volume numbers, you know, do I feel like I will, you know, I believe the data becomes, like, starts to become substantial and so on. That's still subjective, of course, you know. But I think those things can help a lot in terms of like how, you know, seriously should take the like current kind of standing of that chart. Another example you gave that I want to talk about here too was around interest rates. And I want to make sure I understand this. I can properly, you know, educate everyone within the Rich Habits Network. And that is,
Starting point is 00:19:37 I can tell an agent that at the probability of at least three rate cuts this year rises by 10 percentage points in one day, alert me and summarize my exposure to bank stocks. I love that example because the agent isn't necessarily trading the prediction market at all. It's using the information from the prediction market to help me manage the rest of my portfolio. So walk us through how far can you take this idea? And could we eventually have hundreds or thousands of these real-time signals being monitored across all of our portfolios using these tools? Yeah. And the answer is that can happen today. And the general thing is that thing about it as you have, it's it is one more data source that you can plug into potentially making an order
Starting point is 00:20:29 or any other action. It doesn't even mean you have to make a trade. You can use these data points and connect them to your agents, not even connect them and just like and have an agent kind of use them to add things to your watch list, to send you an alert. You know, so it doesn't have to lead to a trade at all times, right? And so there's even just a sense of if you want to get a better feeling around a certain topic in the markets,
Starting point is 00:20:52 you can have agents kind of serve you alerts, you know, on these signals all the time, just you develop a little bit of a better kind of understanding, and feeling on these things, you know. And then you can layer it as, you know, narrowly and deeply as you want, right? So you could be that, hey, I want to look at the dot plot, but I also want to look at the probability of the events contract, you know, and, you know, if both of those together equal X, you know, only then I want to do this and that with my treasuries, you know?
Starting point is 00:21:21 And so you can really nerd out about the stuff and go really deep and build very complex things. Obviously, the more complex you build something, the less likely something will come out of it, you know, because you're kind of going very deep in your if this and that stack a little bit in a little equation there. But, yeah, but like you can go as deep and wide as you can and you can set up as many as you like, you know? So.
Starting point is 00:21:46 Robert, before we ask Life our next question, I need to talk about a tool that we started using to help run our business. And we love this tool. It's called granola, like the snack bar. Yes. Granola. Granola is an AI-powered notepad that makes your meeting notes actually useful. It captures what happens in your meetings and turns it into clean, structured notes with decisions and action items pulled out and made easy to find. Let's get one thing straight. It transforms messy meeting calls into something you can actually reference weeks later, which has always been a problem.
Starting point is 00:22:22 So your notes become searchable, organized, and the key term here is actionable. So for example, Austin, Christian, and myself have a weekly call about the podcast, the network, our social media, everything. And we started using granola for these calls a few weeks ago. And it has been a game changer for us. 100%. Robert, you know, because we find ourselves searching for specific action items. And then we connect granola to Claude's MCP. And it takes those action items that we talk.
Starting point is 00:22:52 about during the weekly stand-up call we have here, and it actually does the action items for us. Our productivity as a small business here with the podcast has genuinely improved so much since we started using granola. It's really hard to put into words just how capable this product is, especially for someone who isn't an AI power user, but instead an everyday W-2 employee, trying to be a better note-taker or an entrepreneur looking to be more efficient in their business. Once you try it on a first meeting, it's hard to go without. You can try it totally free. Go to granola.a.ai front slash habits and try it on your next call.
Starting point is 00:23:32 Austin, let's get back to the episode. I'm curious from your perspective, life, how do you think about like the guardrails here to make sure that investors understand the difference between using this like, you know, prediction market signal with the probabilities versus treating it as like a crystal ball? because I feel to your point earlier, you know, heading into 2026, you can go on any of the prediction market websites back in January and February and the number one most popular outcome for interest rates in 2006 were three rate cuts. That is obviously not happening.
Starting point is 00:24:07 So it's like depending on the time and the day and the quarter and the month, right, it's like just using about this stuff as a way of information and better, you know, I just want to get your perspective on like holistically thinking about a portfolio versus versus crystal ball, predict the markets, let me get fancy here and really start making some aggressive predictions. A hundred percent. And that's exactly what I mean when we started this conversation earlier of people should look at this as a data point, not the data point.
Starting point is 00:24:38 And there's enough examples out there where a market completely flips. And I think what you're springing up with the interest rate cuts is a great example, right? Like that has changed. Maybe that's something that changed more gradually than just from one day to the next. next, but it has definitely changed, right? And so, you know, no one can predict the future. As much as the word predict and prediction might be in this name of this, you know, of this instrument now, but no one can.
Starting point is 00:25:06 And everyone's got to be cautious on, you know, not taking it as, you know, a truth-telling machine, you know, they should take it as a signal. And it's a signal, you know, which means you should likely have multiple signals that you looking at before I make your own decisions and stuff, as you always should in any other investment in any other asset class as well. 100% man. So zooming out, you guys, you know, we love working with public and you guys build incredible tools. And this feels like another bigger piece, a bigger idea that you've been building towards with public to become an agentic brokerage. And for everyone watching and listening, historically a brokerage basically
Starting point is 00:25:49 gives you the access to the markets and then waits for you to tell it what to do. But now we're talking about software that can monitor markets, understand your portfolio, watch outside signals, and potentially take action for you. So where does this ultimately go? Let's think in the future a little bit here. What does a brokerage account look like in three to five years from now with these AI agents becoming as powerful as you expect? If you look at what it does right now and then that will bring me to what it does in the future.
Starting point is 00:26:21 Right now, what agents are fantastic at is taking a kernel of an idea or an idea and turning it into action. I would not say that it is fantastic yet at giving you ideas. And we're getting there, you know, but I would say right now it's really good at you have a fairly specific understanding of what you want to do. or you're picking something from the marketplace even if you have like an agent marketplace, right? And then you put that into action and it executes as like a deterministic workflow where you have a very clear understanding of what it does,
Starting point is 00:26:57 you know exactly what's going to do, and that's it, right? So when you say agents, people's minds go to, oh, let me prompt, make me a lot of money, don't make mistakes. And that's obviously not how it works, you know. It is much more about automating strategies. But to automate a strategy, you've got to know what the strategy is. in the first place.
Starting point is 00:27:15 And currently we're still in the spot where it's really powerful if you know what the strategy is in the first place. And so that's what's really good. Now where it's always going to go is that it has all the context in your portfolio. You might not feed it the whole strategy, but you might feed it, you know, behavior. You might feed it interests, you know, around your portfolio, you know, themes that you're interested in, you know, industry that you're interested in, you know, specific things you might understand well events that you care about earnings calls you know macro events etc and then it will
Starting point is 00:27:50 take all that input and it will essentially serve you things you know it doesn't mean it will automatically trade for you all the time because then you're going into like full on you know you have your you know AI advisor who like takes over your account I think it's going to take some time to really get there but in this in between state between you're having already your different strategy and the AI just running with it. You have this in-between state of it understanding a bunch of different things about you and then serving you proactively
Starting point is 00:28:24 things to consider in your portfolio, things to change in your portfolio, etc. One thing that is running right now is quite popular. One thing that people use agents in public for right now is just taxors harvesting, which a little bit is like a not-as-intelligent version of what I'm just describing, you know, because to do tax loss harvesting, you've got to know, okay, here's a position in my portfolio
Starting point is 00:28:47 that I'm currently down on. I want to harvest those losses. And so I'm going to take that cash and put it into something similar that doesn't count as like a wash sale. And, you know, and then three months later, I might revert that trade back, you know? And so on. And that is always something that an agent is great at just automating. And so, you know, tax loss, like a portfolio, why tax on harvesting agent is something a lot of people are doing. And I would say there's a good example for like a kernel of how this is going to look like, right? I want to like linger on this a little bit longer because it's cool. I mean, not every day do we get the opportunity to kind of dig into the brains of people who are building a brokerage platform that's used by millions and millions and millions and millions of people, right?
Starting point is 00:29:36 So like talk to us more from your perspective, too, about like the prediction markets. five years, three years, two years from now, how big do you think prediction markets are going to become within the broader financial ecosystem? And do you think maybe there's use cases in three, four, five years from now that is popular that perhaps investors aren't even thinking about today? Do you think those use cases are going to come from these objective AI agents that are figuring out new ways to use these prediction markets? I think you're going to see the most growth in like securities based prediction markets. with things around publicly traded assets. So in that instance, it's not like the Model Y delivery example.
Starting point is 00:30:15 The Model Y delivery is a contract that happens today, but I think you're going to get deeper into more KPIs around companies and so on. And you can basically think about like any custom company KPI that exists around the company, you will have a market around. And number one, I'm saying this because it's, you know, kind of public knowledge
Starting point is 00:30:33 that between the SEC and the CFTC, again, CFC regulates the actual, futures contracts of rent contracts and the SEC regulates the securities so there has to be collaboration in order to expand these types of markets, the types of contracts more like it's probably acknowledged that
Starting point is 00:30:50 that collaboration is happening and so you are going to see your growth in more of these contracts to go live. That by itself I think will start to do two things. Number one as you have more ways
Starting point is 00:31:06 to trade you're going to have more trades happen, more people participate but number two, I think you want to see institutions to get into it or more into it because again there are some really interesting trades you can make there
Starting point is 00:31:22 and if you know one one use case people always talk about about is like hedging and I would always argue if you want to truly hedge for real it's a quite sophisticated thing to do because you also have to think about the pricing of the contract and you know you're a time decayed
Starting point is 00:31:38 and like, you know, when does it expire and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And I would say that, like, the most normal retail investors, like, they don't necessarily have the capacity or the, you know, sophistication to truly do that. Maybe together with the I agents, it gets a little easier, you know, but it's still a quite sophisticated thing if you, like, truly want to hedge well. For institutions, they do that all their long. It's their business, right? They literally call hedge funds in most cases.
Starting point is 00:32:04 And so, you know, and so, you know, and so I think. there's going to be a whole kind of, you know, market popping up terms of volume even just, you know, of, of more institutions, you know, using these instruments in their day to day as well. And so that combination, I think, is going to start to, you know, likely going to lead to something where the non-sports entertainment markets, which is the stuff that we have on public, I would assume we'll have more volumes in the, you know, medium term future than the sports kind of sports trading. sports betting markets have right now. That makes a lot of sense. And I guess my final like question and more of just a statement I want to get your reaction to is, you know, Public is one of these platforms that allows you to build a multi-asset portfolio. Now we have this, you know, another asset class here of prediction markets. What's next? I can't even think of another asset class out there that you guys don't already have some sort of exposure to. I mean, the corporate bonds, we have the treasuries,
Starting point is 00:33:02 we've got cryptocurrency, we've got, you know, option contracts, equities. And now, prediction markets. I mean, you guys have absolutely everything. Is there something else around there that you guys are excited about? A few things we could always ask about. One is real estate. And the second is pre-IPO company exposure. Something is going to happen on each of these, for sure. And then on the more active trading side, your actual futures, which we don't have yet, for example, you know, you have like a whole game of like perpetuals coming up now, you know, as well, which is a whole other category in some regard. This is all on the much more active trading side,
Starting point is 00:33:39 much more risky things. But I think the main thing we hear the most about of people wanting to get more exposure to is real estate and pre-IPO companies. Well, when y'all launch those two, come back on the show and talk about it, my friend. Yeah, I definitely think that is a great direction. You know, you think about the Rich Habits Network
Starting point is 00:33:59 and all the pre-IPO investing we do and there's a huge appetite for it. And because public, is so incredibly trusted. I think it's a great direction for the future, for everything you guys are doing. But Life, thank you so much for joining us. For me, I think the biggest takeaway
Starting point is 00:34:15 is that prediction markets don't necessarily have to be a standalone bet. You said it's a data point, not the data point. I really like that because it's just another tool people can use to really be better retail investors. And I really like that. And when you combine that information with AI agents, that can actually continually monitor everything you're doing.
Starting point is 00:34:40 You start to get a glimpse of what investing could look like in this agentic world. So, life, congrats on the launch. We always love having you on. And thanks for coming back. Thanks. Good. See you guys. You too, man.
Starting point is 00:34:50 Thanks so much. Man, I love it when Life, Yonick, the whole public team. Steven Sykes, right? We've done live streams with him inside the Rich Habits Network. The whole public team, we're just so grateful to have them in our corner and be able to get some behind-the-scenes action here. and bring that to our audience inside the rich habits podcast and the rich habits network. Yeah, they definitely have the coolest tools and he is just, they're just always bringing the heat for our audience and I love it. But Austin, before we jump into our next story, support from this show comes from VCX, the public ticker for private tech.
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Starting point is 00:36:26 prospectus at getvcx.com. This is a paid sponsorship. So our next story, I think, is pretty interesting because Meta just came out this week with some really interesting hardware. And Shopify is giving in the thumbs up, the green flag, the Let's Keep Going. So, Robert, let's jump into that story. Yeah, definitely. This is an exciting one that I've been following closely. And Mark Zuckerberg spent Wednesday night at Meta Connect, proving that Muse, which is Meta's two-week-old AI agent, isn't just a chatbot buried in an app anymore.
Starting point is 00:37:02 it's becoming the operating layer for every piece of hardware meta makes. And just days later, Shopify agreed to let it start spending your money. So let's start with what Mark Zuckerberg actually showed us on stage. He was actually wearing a shirt that said, building is my love language, which, hey, listen, I'm here for it. As a shareholder, I hope you feel that way, Mark. He announced that Muse is coming to Mehta's smart glasses with full hands-free activation, which means a wake word, and then the agent completely takes over.
Starting point is 00:37:34 He live demoed it on stage, asking Muse through his glasses to book time on his calendar with their chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, and it worked. Alongside that, Meta unveiled the Muse charm, a keychain-sized device built specifically to talk to your Muse agent, shipping just in time for the holidays. Meta also announced audio-only smart glasses with no camera at all, which is a direct response. to the privacy backlash they've got with their camera equipped glasses, plus a new Rayban meta collaboration with Blackpinks Lisa, which is a hologram video calling type thing that goes on with the Rayband display glasses.
Starting point is 00:38:13 It's like a photorealistic version of your face on a call. Kind of cool. Maybe don't want Austin hologram, but who knows? And they also talked about a new VR headset glass vibe coming out, spring of 2007, get this, Robert, for only $1,300. If you've not yet seen Mark's post about this on Instagram, you should definitely go check it out. These VR glasses are sick.
Starting point is 00:38:36 Metaverse talk, that's gone. Zuckerberg said, we made the decision to folk a little bit less on the Metaverse, and we're going in on those AI agents. Well, I feel like he's back on track, and so is meta. And Muse is already the number one app in the app store two weeks after launch, and meta's not stopping at glasses. New partnerships announced onstage,
Starting point is 00:38:58 including Walmart, Sephora, Best Buy, and Gap, letting Muse act as a shopping agent across their catalogs. So, wow, this is going to be incredible to see how this unfolds. And in a detail that tells you how nervous the retail world already is about this, Amazon reportedly blocked Muse from completing purchases on its site over the weekend, saying it wasn't authorized to do so. Now, here's the pivot that makes this bigger than just a product keynote.
Starting point is 00:39:26 Two days before Connect, Shopify's CEO, called it an easy and delightful way to shop and checkout with Muse. Meta's chief AI officer Alexander Wang framed it from the other side. Quote, I want to give our Musers access to a wide range of stores to find the absolute perfect products, which tells me Muse won't just recommend a product anymore. It'll complete the purchase on Shopify Rails without you even touching a checkout page, which is kind of crazy, Robert. That is so crazy.
Starting point is 00:39:58 and I'm excited about it though, and Wall Street already reacted. Shopify's shares closed up 7.3% the day the partnership was announced. And Deutsche Bank analysts called it another proof point that leading AI platforms are integrating with Shopify's commerce infrastructure, arguing it actually reinforces Shopify's moat, its structured product catalog, merchant relationships, and shop pay checkout infrastructure, rather than getting disintermediated by A.A.
Starting point is 00:40:28 agents, which was the bare case going into this year. Meanwhile, Meadow's own stock is up 30% in September alone on pace for its best month since July of 2013. All of you listening right now, remember, we talked about the lawsuit with Mehta. I think it was early August. Meta was trading. Let's look it up, Robert, because we got the receipts, and I think it's fun to do stuff like this. We do have the receipts. So Meta stock back in August, everyone was crying about it being at 550, $560, $570 a share because of this big lawsuit hanging over it. Now it's at $776 a share, 40% return here in real time, up 40% in the last four weeks from those August lows. And I don't know if you guys remember this, but Robert and I, we sat on screen, we said, listen, I'm buying
Starting point is 00:41:19 meta at $500, $550, $600 a share because it's going to be $1,000 a share stock by the end of the decade, Mark Zuckerberg never bet against the Zuck. And guess what? It's up 40% in the last four weeks. This is why you listen to the Rich Habits radar in the Rich Habits podcast. You're a part of the Rich Habits Network. You take notes. You take action. You're a part of it, baby. You're in the game. So, Robert, what does all of this mean for our listeners and their money? For me, this is meta, stitching together three years of scattered, expensive bets that went awry. You know, you've got the rayband glasses, the Quest headsets, an in-house AI model into a single distribution funnel with Muse as the front door. And it's not staying inside Meta's walls by plugging into
Starting point is 00:42:06 ShopPay. Muse gets instant access to Shopify's entire merchant network without Meta having to build its own commerce infrastructure from scratch, which I think is brilliant and good for them and good for us for being ahead of this. So winners, meta, obviously. The stock's already telling you the market likes this. Shopify benefits twice over, both from the direct integration and from Deutsche Bank's
Starting point is 00:42:31 read that this actually validates rather than threatens its core business. So Bulls should watch, shop here, the named retail partners, Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora Gap, get a new AI driven sales channel essentially for free. And Invidia
Starting point is 00:42:46 and the broader AI infrastructure chain keeps benefiting as more compute gets thrown at agent products racing to ship before the holidays. So for me, it's all rainbows and unicorns here. So much good stuff is happening around this launch and this new product. Yeah, the rainbows and unicorns, though, come to an end with Amazon. Yep. Especially as Amazon's like, hey, I'm the largest e-commerce platform on the earth. And they were like, you're not going to use my site, which means muse shopping ambitions
Starting point is 00:43:14 are currently capped by whoever's willing to let them in. Walmart, Best Buy, Shopify. like they're all saying yeah like I I want muse on our website because you're going to help us make more sales and you know all that cool goodwill and everything that's great but Amazon I mean they've got Alexa right like Amazon's like we're just going to build our own agent and then we're going to do our own thing so it makes sense why Amazon's kind of pushing back a little bit here on on the muse AI agent that meta has built but listen Robert it comes down to we talked about this on our live stream a couple weeks ago a couple months ago even inside the rich habits network which is At the moment, tokens for AI agents, let's say it's at 100, right? Like, let's just say that's like the unit for how many tokens are being used right now by AI agents. By 2030, that 100 is going to turn into like 2000. Like the amount of tokens these AI agents are going to use in the next two, three, four, five years will 20x. And you have to be on the right side of that trade.
Starting point is 00:44:11 And we've talked about this for so long now. And it's not just, you know, because Robert, I want to like really talk about this. For the last three years, it's all been who's got the best model. Who can build the best large language model? And that's been OpenAI. It's been anthropic. It's been some of these open source things. That was the race.
Starting point is 00:44:29 The race was finished. When Open AI came out with ChatGPT6, Astra, it's smarter than like 99.999% of humans. Like, we've got the smart brain, right? We've got the superintelligence. Now the race is the inference. How quickly can we take that smart information and disseminate that information to an AI agent, to a chatbot, to the application layer of the AI trading, get that smart AI information over to people who need to use it to do tasks, like these muse agents,
Starting point is 00:45:01 like the grok bots, like the, you know, Alexa, I'm sure in the future is going to use, the inference of how quickly those tokens can move and how quickly that information and intelligence can move from the actual large LLM into the application layer. That, in my opinion, is where all this is going, which is why I'm excited about Cerebrus. They've got the fastest tokens per second with their GPUs. I'm excited for the neoclouds like fluid stack and nebius and maybe even the bloom energies of the world as more data centers get built out. It's not all about who's got the best model. It's how quickly can these tokens get the model information disseminated to the application layer and who's going to benefit when it's 20 times more tokens getting spent on an annualized basis
Starting point is 00:45:44 because everyone now has a cute little meta-muse keychain on their backpack and says, hey, Muse, or to meet Chipotle. Yeah, you're 100% right because we look at it. Remove friction, increase efficiency, more profits. That's the move. And that's what we're seeing here where everyone is going. And another big takeaway, too, is we've moved away from AI agents just answering questions to AI agents holding your credit card, making transactions, and doing
Starting point is 00:46:14 the things you wanted to do. And meta didn't just launch a chat bot upgrade this week. It launched the checkout button of the future and got one of the largest commerce platforms in the world to hand it the keys within two weeks of release. We're talking about Shopify here. So whoever controls that checkout moment controls a generally new layer of retail. And right now that's meta and Shopify moving super fast. Robert, we've talked a ton about AI agents and AI agents and AI agents in this episode. Let's flip it to the other side. Let's talk about real estate. Let's talk a little bit about, you know, tangible. For years now, apartment buildings, they've been the safest bet in commercial real estate and now they're the sector with the biggest debt problem in the country.
Starting point is 00:47:02 And the bill on that debt is coming due whether landlords are ready for it or not. So let's talk about with this $2 trillion ticking time bomb we alluded to in the intro. Apartment land. landlords owe more than $1.8 trillion in debt over the next decade, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the most of any commercial real estate sector. $757 billion of that comes due between now and 2008, right? That's a two-year shot clock. Nearly 300 billion of that matures in 2026 alone. On top of that is a record $310 billion that were due in 2025, the highest
Starting point is 00:47:44 single year total the Mortgage Bankers Association has ever tracked. Another $223 billion is due in 2007 and the loans that these landlords took out back in 2020 and 2021 when rates were around 2, 3, 4 percent, now have to get refinanced at 6 percent, 7 percent, maybe even higher, depending on what the 10-year yield does. Austin, let's rewind of how this happened because we have to think back that during the pandemic, office towers emptied out, hotels went quiet, and senior housing shut down, but apartment rents were surging double digits nationwide. So multifamily became one safe harbor in real estate and investors just piled in. Newark's Mike Wolfson called it, quote, a sense of relative euphoria. And new construction flooded Sunbelt cities like Phoenix, Denver,
Starting point is 00:48:39 Atlanta, Austin, faster than people showed up to fill those units. In City View CEO, Sean Burton put it bluntly, quote, the chickens are coming home to roost, and they're coming after their money and all of that debt that likely won't be able to be paid for. And here's where it turns from a landlord problem to a, wow, that might impact my portfolio problem. The delinquency rate on these multifamily loans
Starting point is 00:49:06 are packaged into commercial mortgage-backed securities, That delinquency rate has jumped from 1% back in October of 2023 to 7.1% right now. The sharpest increase of any property type, according to Morgan Stanley. Trump says about 3% of this year's maturing loans that can't be extended are already in distress, which is the highest level in five years. Apartment values are down 3.5% in the past month alone and set more than 20% off their peak in 2022. This is why, Austin, we talk about diversification. And if you look right now, the casualties are already public.
Starting point is 00:49:47 Blackstone defaulted in June on a $90 million, Aries real estate loan tied to a Dallas apartment building it bought at the top of the market in 2021. And Dallas-based syndicator S2 Capital has racked up $400 million in defaults across its Sun Belt portfolio. and CEO Scott Everett dissolved the fund, told investors they won't get their money back, is now being personally sued by lenders and just listed his own house for $45 million. Bob Hart of True America summed it up as, quote, no one is spared here. We're seeing a lot of times up situations. Even the merger activity tells the story.
Starting point is 00:50:30 Avalon Bay and Equity Residential agreed in May to a $69 billion combination, partly to lean less on the expensive debt that is bringing them all down as we speak. So, Austin, a lot of numbers there, a lot of scary things happening. What does this mean for you and your money? Well, you know, before we get into that, I think what could be really interesting to talk about for you, Robert, is, does this feel like 2008 but for commercial real estate for apartments? I mean, I've seen some interviews. You know, Carlton Dennis did an interview with a really interesting individual.
Starting point is 00:51:05 His name is slipping me, but he was saying, listen, it's 2008 right now when it comes to commercial real estate, apartments, you know, office buildings, everything, and he's buying them up, pennies on the dollar. I wasn't old enough in 2008 to take advantage of any real estate investing. You certainly were. I know you did a lot of real estate investing in 2008. Does this, is this feel the same but just like a different part of real estate to you? It does. It definitely feels the same. It's not single family homes. It's commercial. And I think, and I see it right here in downtown St. Pete every day, they are building buildings, apartment buildings, faster than they can put them together. And I just don't see, especially
Starting point is 00:51:42 at the rate of rents here in downtown St. Pete, how they're going to fill them. And I think the bigger red flag here, and I see it all the time and the deals I look at, is how many of these deals run out of money or get their financing yanked and they're sitting still. There's two within a two-block radius of me right now that are either framed or the land is ready. and they had to stop the project because all of this funding is drying up or it's so expensive that a project that penciled two years ago
Starting point is 00:52:14 or three years ago no longer pencils because the debt is so expensive. Yeah, I think the debt being expensive is what is important to call out because I see here in our notes, City View is buying foreclosed properties directly from lenders at a 40% discount. We heard from Burton
Starting point is 00:52:33 and he says his firm is calling it some of the best buying opportunities I've seen in my entire career. But that is buying those opportunities with cash on hand and spending real cash because you can't borrow it right now because it's 7, 8, 9% depending on what you're actually looking for. So, you know, big takeaway from me here is that this is what happens when an entire asset class gets built on the assumption that ZERP, right, zero interest rate policy rates are going to be permanent. Everyone went out in 2020 and 2021 and they were like, oh, cool, yeah, we got 2% rates or whatever it might be.
Starting point is 00:53:09 You know, now that was on a floating note and those rates floated in the wrong direction. And it's very, very interesting to see this take place. But the part that kind of makes me mad, though, Robert, is like, it's hard to invest in commercial real estate if you're just a normal person. I mean, we're hearing from like co-star and we're hearing from, you know, city view and like some of these big banks and big people saying, yeah, we're buying this. stuff but raise your hand if you don't have 400 million to go buy some commercial thing like so it's kind of it's got that that that part is the frustrating part for me and I think a lot of our audience members so maybe I'll do some homework this weekend and we'll figure out what publicly traded reits might be taken the best advantage of this or you know is this something that funrises doing behind the scenes that
Starting point is 00:53:52 maybe we don't know we can get ben Miller back on the podcast to talk about but it's like if this really is 2008 all over again but for commercial real estate and people are buying stuff 40% off of what it was in 2022. Could be a really cool opportunity depending on where you have your money part. Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like where everyone, these large companies are missing the mark because they've stayed true to their thesis of building these buildings is not enough people are looking at the real sectors of real estate that will thrive in the next five to 10 years. And that is affordable apartments and affordable housing. I think everyone is still off the mark, building all these fancy buildings with bigger units with stainless steel appliances,
Starting point is 00:54:37 when in fact I think they'd be way smarter if they brought the square footages down to eight, nine hundred a square foot, had something that's just pretty basic, but in a good location. So people could actually afford to live because it's a trickle effect. These people are so strapped and their debt to income ratios are so maxed out. Because if they want to live near their job, it's just really expensive. in most cities. So I think people are missing the boat there and also retirement home facilities as well, elder care facilities. There's a lot of ways these companies could pivot instead of building these giant apartment buildings that people can't afford. And so now they're all backed into a corner
Starting point is 00:55:20 because how do they get out of what they've already done with this high interest debt? Everybody, thanks so much for joining us on this week's episode of the Rich Habich Radar. Congratulations again to public unlaunching prediction markets and of course their AI agents ability to use the information from those prediction markets to make informed decisions with your money. If you like this type of coverage by myself and Robert, please consider joining us inside the Rich Habits Network and join us for those Tuesday night live streams, two hour long live streams talking about the markets, I mean, you like this coverage about everything we're talking about. This is only a taste of what's inside of those live streams. It's two hours of coverage and answering,
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