The Compound and Friends - ETFs Break $9 Trillion

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

On this week's episode of The Compound & Friends, Michael Batnick, Leanna Haakons, Tom Lydon, and Downtown Josh Brown discuss: global ETF assets hit $9 trillion, SPAC crackdown, IPO boom, Gensler's vision, El Salvador adopting Bitcoin, the post-pandemic office, sports cards, and more! This episode is brought to you by Rocket Dollar. Use referral code COMPOUND at rocketdollar.com/compound to get $50 off at sign up!   Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have my hat because it's raining and I walked through the rain from Penn Station to get here. So it's not a nice day. You come in on the train. How long does it take? I take the train in. It takes like 40 minutes. That's not the thing. The thing is from the train to here, you have to walk.

It's like I don't do subways. It's not a far walk. It's just not a pleasant walk. You walk through Herald Square, Times Square, all the things you don't want to walk through. So that's that's the thing for me. Hey, I know we're not going to talk a lot about sports, but I see Nugget with a Celtics shirt on from time to time. Is he a Celtics fan?

No, he's so Justin is into players. Okay. Individual players. Okay. He likes Tatum. He likes Tatum. He doesn't care what team he plays on. Okay, got players. Okay. Individual players. Okay. He likes Tatum. He likes Tatum. He doesn't care what team he plays on. Okay, gotcha. Okay.

I find the young kids, a lot of them are like that. The young boys don't care about teams the way we did. Gotcha. They do, but it's not as intense. Yeah. They fall in love with players on social media, and then no matter what team that player plays for, they're into it.

Is he a Knicks fan? Like, he's a Kawhi fan. Okay. So it doesn't matter what team Kawhi is on they're into it. Is he a Knicks fan? Like he's a Kawhi fan. Okay. So it doesn't matter what team Kawhi is on. Yeah. That's what he wants to do. So yeah, he's a Knicks fan. I mean, he has no choice.

Yeah. No, he's got no choice. How's your daughter doing? So she, when COVID hit, so she was at Boston Ballet as an apprentice. Oh, wow. And so she danced forever. But when it hit, she said i'm out so she and she was already in back in america in boston yeah so yeah she was at amsterdam for a couple years

dutch national then she was back in boston for a couple years and then this happened and she said i think i think that's it so she's a bu yeah so she's still in boston we're heading up this weekend what's she taking in school so she had a sports psychologist while she was in ballet which was really helpful they beat you up i mean not just your body but you know your noggin as well and she loved this woman and she said you know what i've been through it i think i can help people and it means something to her so you know anyway that's like this red hot of a discipline as there is like you think about with like uh the gymnast and osaka like a lot oh yeah like there's this huge awakening about like the central health the psychological impact of competing at that level yeah um i her, I said, you can practice on your parents.

Like, we're a mess. So that's great that she found what she wants to do. Yeah, yeah. And she's, through ballet, there's so much discipline. She laughs at the kids that aren't paying attention and stuff like that. It's been great. I was a ballerina, so I do, like, I can relate to that. I totally's been, it's been great. And we're really proud. I was a ballerina. So I do like,

I can relate to that. I totally understand. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah. So that's amazing that she was able to do that though, for the amount of years that she did it. You're going to laugh, but you've been to the Nutcracker before.

Yes. You know, Mother Ginger, the big lady, fat lady that comes out on stage. And there are little girls that are coming out from under who start dancing around. Okay.

I don't, but I'm sure I've seen her. I don't remember. All right. So I know we're not being recorded right now, so. We are. Wait, is that your daughter? That's me. No.

How? You had to fill in for yeah okay there's this guy who's a cop and he pulled me aside one day he said hey look um i got a promotion that's a good news the bad news is i gotta work some nights can you take my shift for three nights on the on the ballet and that the rest is history come on so i got you know i'm I'm- Was she in it with you? Yeah. She was in the show with you. She was in, so like playing- Oh, that's amazing.

Coaching the kids- I would have done that for my kid. And basketball and baseball, you know, it's a lot, but you don't get to do anything with your daughter that dances ballet, but I do. Dude is running for father of the year right now. Yeah, you're definitely unrecognizable. You won.

That's crazy. You won, you win father of the year, you're definitely unrecognizable. You won. That's crazy. You won. You win Father of the Year. You got it. Don't worry about it. Well, now she's out of this ballet company, and every year the Nutcracker comes up, and I see that they're tryouts. And I said to my wife, I said, I'm heading back. Get in on it.

I played this role. Did you have to move around, or you just had to kind of come out and. They put you on this metal thing and then there are two guys behind you. They kind of move you out there. Oh, they're working you. And then there are eight little girls that come out and they dance and you do the arms back and forth and stuff like that. Okay. All right.

Maybe you'll demonstrate that for us. So, you know, a lot of skill. I mean, you could learn. And I think it's coming up. They need people. What? You could jump in. Oh, yeah.

I'm not busy. So that actually makes perfect sense. What's the name of the character? Big Ginger? Mother Ginger. You can call her Big Ginger. That's fine. Josh, you can play Big Ginger.

I had so much fun. I grabbed the URL. I am literally a Big Ginger. That's fine. Josh, you can play Big Ginger. I had so much fun. I grabbed the URL. I am literally a Big Ginger. It's too much of a movie. That's a little too spot on. I don't know. Maybe after like half a bottle of this, I'll do it. So Tom's a ballerina

now. Your daughter was, right? No, but Tom too now. You must show him the photo. She got too much notoriety and i figured i've got i got certain skills i need to share and put her in her place exactly so so what else you doing while you're here uh so wealthy's tomorrow and then i mean wealthy tonight and then we're going up to um uh boston tomorrow so my goddodgers is getting married on Saturday. Going to see mom and dad.

They live on the sub-shore. So we'll get some time with them on Sunday and then back on Sunday night. It's a quick one. Yeah, I was down the Jersey Shore. Weather was great. Who sent this to you? Remember this? Yeah, who is that guy?

That's this guy. Do you know who that is? No. Cameron Pope? Yeah. What does he want? Nothing. He was just saying we're going to the wealthiest.

He won a few years ago. Do you ever win anything at the wealthiest? No. I'm a judge. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Tom, you know Cameron Pope? Name's familiar.

He won a few years ago in Josh. So what's the criteria? What's he do? What's he do? He was the CEO of the year. What does he do? Co-butler. Huh. It's a-butler. Huh.

It's a house cleaning service. Excellent. For RAs. House cleaning for RAs. What is the criteria that you judge on at the wealthies? Because you can't know all these companies. So the good thing is they have a lot of judges, like a dozen. And then they'll chop them up.

And they're in all different areas of finance. So I'll get things like mutual funds and then they'll chop them up and they're in all different areas of finance so i'll get things like mutual funds and etfs okay and all those categories okay and then we'll have a team of maybe three or four and we'll get them down to a certain number and then we'll push them out to the other judges and then they vote so it's we are there to kind of clean up the stuff that comes in that shouldn't be there so it's like it's like equally weighted yes let me ask you a question nobody wins that doesn't buy a table right oh no no no no no it's like the oscars same thing it's uh they they'll sell a table to anybody they'll sell they still have tables oh i know they try to sell me a table but

i'm saying if i don't buy a table i can't win anything no they won't call up and say you really should be there you really should buy a table they don't't win anything. No, they won't call up and say, you really should be there. You really should buy a table. They don't do that. Yeah, but it's implied. It's the implication. No, no, no. Because they want everyone, everyone who throws in a nomination, they want them to be there just for the suspense.

It's not a bad, it's a good night. Are there any new awards? I've been there all the time. I've been there twice. Best blockchain of the year? There are too many awards. Let's just say that. There are too many. There's a good night. Are there any new awards? I've been there. All the time. I've been there twice. Best blockchain of the year? There are too many awards. Let's just say that. There are too many.

There's a lot of awards. It goes on for a very long time. It goes on for a long period of time. Is it Gala or Gala? Gala. Gala? How do you pronounce it? I think people say like Gala apples.

What do they say? I've heard it pronounced. For the Met? What is it? The Met Gala. Gala. It's Gala. I've also heard Gala or Gala.

But I think Gala is the apple. Gala is the event. I like Honeycrisp apples. You're going next week. And I'm Canadian, so we say everything weird. The A. No, that's how I would say it. That's how I've heard it.

Met Gala. I didn't know the apples were pronounced differently. I didn't know the apples were pronounced differently. Just when he says it, it sounds like the apple. What did you say? Gala? Gala apple. The Met Gala.

Met Gala? Gala. Or it could be one of those things where it's either or. Well, the A is different on the West Coast to the East Coast to Canada. In Canada. I was called Liana my whole life in California and in Vancouver and I moved here and now my name is Leanna.

What do you call yourself? Leanna, but I like Leanna. It sounds royal. Do you want to roll with that today? Leanna? Do you have any preferences? Do you want to be Thomas? Titi? Yeah, I was thinking DJ Gold.

DJ Gold. Okay. I think we'll stay with Tom. Fellas, how we doing? Last minute preparation, setting up my Rubik's Cube. I appreciate that. Okay. It's the second one that really guts you.

Dang. The third one hits different. Oh, there's no third one? There we go. Welcome to The Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by me, Michael Batnick, and our castmates are solely our own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz

Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. in the securities discussed in this podcast. Today's show is brought to you by Rocket Dollar. It is not every day that you see a company and you say, wow, what a great idea. This is going to be huge. That was Ben and I's reaction after we spoke with Henry Yoshida a few weeks ago on Animal Spirits.

Henry is the founder and CEO of Rocket Dollar. So what this company does is they allow you to invest in alternative assets using tax-sheltered vehicles like an IRA. What is an alternative asset? It's anything that you cannot buy at TD Ameritrade or wherever your brokerage account is. So anything that's not a stock, that's not a bond. So for example, crypto or art or venture capital, anything. And the best part about Rocket Dollar is that you can bring your own deal. So if you have a buddy who's starting a venture fund or is investing in a real estate project

and wants some money that you want to give him, so if you've got just a Roth IRA lying around that's just investing in index funds and you've got enough of that, Rocket Dollar is the place for you. So visit RocketDollar.com to learn more. Oh my God, we're back. We're back. We took off last week. Did you miss doing the show last week?

Wait, was that last week or the week before? Yeah, we didn't have one last week. I said to John, I feel like it's been three weeks since we've done this. No, we did have one last week. Amelia was last week. Amelia was last week. I'm thinking we didn't have one last week. I said to John, I feel like it's been three weeks since we've done this. No, we did have one last week. Amelia was last week. Amelia was last week. I'm thinking we didn't have, what are your thoughts? You guys smoking weed before we start taping?

Is that what's going on? We didn't have, what are your thoughts? That's what it was. John and I were just speaking about that. This is a tough time of year. Like people are away. People are doing stuff. Today is August 37th.

All right, listen. Liana is back. She wants to be referred to as Liana, which sounds slightly more exotic. Not with my accent, but if a normal person says Liana. Yeah. Okay. She likes it. But you grew up as Liana.

Yeah. That's the West Coast way is Liana. Moved to New York. Now my name is Liana. And I sound like I'm South American. Liana's kind of badass. Yeah. It's like a little bit more exotic. She is very exotic. She's exotic. Thanks, guys. You're exotic. No, I'm South American. Yana's kind of badass. Yeah, I like it. It's like a little bit more exotic.

She is very exotic. She's exotic. Thanks, guys. You're exotic. No, I'm a slow. Mama Ginger. I'm exotic. I got an email today.

Hello, Michael Henry Batnick. Really? One of your best friends? Where do they steal your data from? Yeah. Tom Lydon is here. Tom, is this your first time? Maybe your last time even.

It's my virgin experience. We'll see if you have fun or not. But this is, I think it's your first time? Maybe your last time. It is. It's my virgin experience. We'll see if you have fun or not. But this is, I think it's your first time on the channel, period. Right? It is. You ever did any YouTube with us? Podcast? Nothing?

I wasn't allowed in the building. No. Okay. Well, you and I have done a ton of stuff together over the years. I've been at all your conferences. The first thing I want to ask you is what is your company called now? I feel like there have been a series of transactions and you keep getting richer,

but I, but I am now losing track of like where to email you. I think I'm three companies behind. It's ETF Ameritrade, right? No. Yeah. What are you?

No ETF trends and ETF database. Still my partner and I, Tom Hendrickson, a hundred percent doing that. Okay. But you just gave me two, but then your email address is a third name. It's ETF Flows.

Yeah, ETF Flows. So that was – I know. I know. That's the parent company of Trends and Database. And what you're referring to is we were just acquired by Alerian. Alerian has – Josh, hit the pause. Yeah, no, we're very proud of you.

Thanks. When I saw that news, I said, oh, my God, this guy is just – the train just keeps rolling for this guy. No, it's, it's, it's a really exciting partnership because now we have indexing capabilities and we get so much great information from trusted advisors that come to us on a regular basis, what they like, what they don't like, the relationship we have with issuers. And now we can kind of sit down with them and say, Hey,

you're really good in this area, but your lineup of ETFs might be a little softer. Say to who? Say to the ETF companies. Right. Because the advisors that, you know, when they want something, they want it now. And there are a lot of those big companies out there that want to continue to be competitive. So we're going through all the stuff and hopefully bringing the good stuff to the top. What is the combined company called? Is it ETF Flows or Will Be? Right now, we're part of Elarian Indexes. Okay. So it's not a sub-company. It's Elarian Indexes.

No. And ETF Trends and ETF Database. They have strong brands. You're going to leave those brands intact. We're going to leave them separate. Right. Okay. Got it. And Nodig is still around? He is. He's more handsome than ever, isn't he? I mean, the two of you guys, like you're ETF god. He's ETF king.

You guys just own the space. And Balchunas is like reporting on you guys. Yeah. He probably like every time you guys get re-bought out again, he's sitting there like, why aren't I the third amigo? Well, Nodig and I keep saying, we got to get Batnick on board and then we'll do Blue Man Group. Good luck. Me, you and Nodig?

Yeah. I'm in. And Tobias. Tobias, he has hair. He missed the joke. I got the joke. Wait. So we're going to start.

We're going to start where we should, which is global ETF assets hitting $9 trillion. Liana, do these numbers even surprise you anymore, given how closely you watch the industry? They don't surprise me. I mean, obviously, Tom is more the expert in the ETF space than I am, but I'm not surprised, especially in the last couple of years with the retail flows and Robinhood. It's not all meme traders.

There's a lot of millennials and Gen Zs that are just investing for the long term, and that's obviously what I advise by in my book and on Instagram and stuff. So they don't get a lot of attention. Do I own ETFs? Yeah, of course. I think probably 40% of my portfolio is ETFs. Yeah. But you're an alts girl at heart. Yeah. I mean, like business wise, doing business development and marketing for alts is where I started. But from a consumer and retail investor perspective, I think ETFs are amazing. You can do passive investing, active with the thematic plays, get exposure to some of those things that young investors might have thrown money at as a gamble. But you can go in on an ETF in robotics or cloud or whatever stuff you're

interested in, gaming, and get exposure to a whole bunch of different things. So I love ETFs, big fan. So young investors, obviously they're doing crypto and NFTs, but do you think when they're not telling their friends they're really doing ETFs? Is that what it is now? Like ETFs are supposed to be boring? We know they are. They are boring, so boring.

They're boring, but we also know like from Vanguard's flows, as much money went into Robinhood, like an equal amount or more went into ETFs. So, Balchun has tweeted this chart. I think this is from Sarah Vegas at Bloomberg. So, this is ETF flows by issuer. And look at Vanguard. This is 2021.

The pink line. With pink line. With four months to go, it's demolished all records. And this really did surprise me because I was talking with Ben about this. Wouldn't you think that advisors that were going to leave Merrill, they've probably already done it. Wouldn't you think the same thing with active to passive? How are people still

leaving active to go passive? How is there still so much money? Because it's not existing investment money. It's new money. You don't think that's just new money people are earning coming into the market? If I had to guess, I would say 30% new money. I'm making that up.

I sent you over the chart that Dave Nottig put together, and you guys might be able to throw that up. Is this it? No, the next one. There we go. Okay, so Dave's been doing this chart for 10 years, and this is mutual funds versus ETFs as far as catching up. Now, obviously, that's a hockey stick. But look at mutual funds. It's not going anywhere.

It's not going anywhere. And where's most of the money? Defined benefit funds. World case. World case. Tom, this is trillion? Yep. OK.

So $15 trillion in mutual funds has been the case? Forever. But wait. Hold on. Keep in mind, this chart is projecting at the 2030s. So you have to rewind a little bit. OK. But let's say since- This is happening. This wait, hold on. Keep in mind, this chart is projecting at the 2030s, so you have to rewind a little bit. Okay, but let's say

this is happening. This is going to happen. Since 17, mutual funds have been steady at $15 trillion. ETFs in that same period of time, it looks like, have gone from $3 trillion

to, what is that? What is the number we think it's going to go to? Is that $27 trillion? By 2030. And Dave's been, he's been on this for like seven or 10 years, and he's been right. The crazy thing there, when you look at the mutual fund money, that's been growing during times when the market's been really good. Just to be able to keep up, you have to have 20% appreciation in the market.

If I back out 401k assets, that mutual fund number is not going to look great. No. This also makes sense in terms of younger people being freelancers and gig workers. If you're creating your own portfolio that's not guided in a 401k plan with mutual funds, you're just going to buy ETFs. Right.

If it's an IRA and you're self-directed, like you're doing your own thing. That's what people are doing on E-Trade, Robinhood, people my age and younger. Do you find younger people are still participating fully in 401k plans? Up to the match point. Yeah. I mean, that's what's advisable.

Get the free money and then do the rest on your own. But you tell them to hit on the gas, right? Well, yeah. Again, up to the match point, get the free money and then go do your other investing through ETFs. So if you have a 4% match but you could could put up to 10% and you're saying 4%. Tom, hit the mic. Yeah, 4% because you'll probably, I mean, you're probably going to be paying more in fees in your 401k, of course, right?

So it makes more sense mathematically to put the rest of the money. If you want to do 10% of your income into your saving and investing, then do the rest of the six on your own somewhere else. The good thing in 401k plans, you do have a lot of index choices. It's not like they're all actively managed, the fees are lower, that type of thing. Better than they used to be. $150 billion in assets. How much of that is in 401ks?

90%. Is that one of the top five US active equity funds? It has to be, right? 75% of every dollar going into Fidelity funds goes into 401k plans. Yeah, that's what I would assume. And there's a very good reason why. The technology has not really caught up

to what's going on on the brokerage side. Like, so that it's harder to say to a 401k platform, my contribution this month is $1,000. Break that up into eight ETFs. The computer won't automatically do that for you. Like that's – I mean to me, that's what's keeping the 40-act funds alive. Do I have that right? You're right and you think, man, we could put a man on the moon in 1968.

Why can't we get ETFs? We could land a rocket intact. Elon Musk just land – or who did that? Bezos? We're like launching rockets and landing them and we can't have a 401K platform break the money up amongst ETFs. I find that fascinating. Do you think one side might be a little motivated? Correct.

There's one mutual fund that's active in the top 20. It's the American Growth Fund. It's almost $300 billion. That makes sense. That's the biggest one. That's Ed Jones Brokers knocking on doors. And that's Capital Group that's finally coming out with their own ETFs in February of next year. So the last holdout.

Well, Dimensional did last year. What about Robos? Do you guys know, Tom, do you know what the split is of money going into ETFs through RoboAdvisors? The amount of money in Robos? I think it's a drop in the bucket. It's small. They're all ETFs. But even if you include Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, Vanguard, it's not that small.

So, right. it's not that small. So, right. If you all in, is it what? 500 billion? Okay. So here's where it gets tricky. Like Wealthfront has the Wealthfront 500 and they're buying you individual stocks.

Like they're not necessarily defaulting into a Vanguard ETF. Well, once they get you in, they're going to start trying to move outside a core ETFs because there's a little bit more money in there for them, right? Yeah. Well, we know that. Well, it's like there were, there are the, the risk parity fund. Every time they do that, Jason's wide gets a new article to write. So we know they're going to do that. Uh, net flows so far this year have nearly eclipsed the 736 billion investors moved into ETFs last year. So if you thought last

year was the year of the individual investor coming into the market, this year is already bigger and it's early September. So did anyone expect this? Like from all the ETF strategists that you talked to? So the big difference is last year, there was more money going into fixed income ETFs than going into equity. And this year, it's a fraction of that amount, rightly so. And hopefully we'll talk about that as well. And it's not all about Cathie Wood. It's not all about thematics. It's about the same old consistent core, Michael. it's about the same old consistent core, Michael. You know, it's the vanguards of the world that continue to kill it with core positions. And advisors are continuing to add those to their clients.

As you talk about breakaway brokers that maybe had commissioned products, they're coming over and repositioning in ETFs. It does help though that the biggest positions in the most plain vanilla ETFs are the best stocks on earth. Like it helps that it's Microsoft, Google, Apple. Like these are – these five stocks are like 25 percent of the S&P.

Like it helps. That's a big thing. And you probably know when talking to investors, they're probably buying the S&P. And the S&P has been really tough to beat in the last 10 years, right? Well, and that's the – I think the difference between last year and this year is that last year it was all growth, at-home plays, and there was like specific things like the Cathie Wood stuff

that was working very well. But this year it's just sort of back to like what you were saying, market fundamentals and long-term investing, what works. And so it's kind of a little bit all over the map. Yeah.

So you talk about diversifying and you talk about the FAANG stocks that now are 25% in the S&P 500. The top 10 stocks in the NASDAQ 100 are 50 percent. Crazy, right? So we all want to be in those next FANG stocks. So with these thematics and Cathie Wood, it offers up that opportunity. But people aren't moving fast enough to diversify.

I mean do you think that the FANG stocks are going to be the leaders in the next 10 years? Are the equal weight funds benefiting from that phenomenon that people are looking for more diversification, but they still want an index approach? Price-wise, they look good. I'll tell you right now. I would just say this. If you're looking to diversify away from FANGs, you don't go to equal weight S&P, although it's a great product. How about this interesting? So you go to active? You go to Cathie Wood or you go to thematics, that disruptive technology space, because they're the new sectors, right?

Some of those will become the new fangs, but most of them won't. But you think about these technologies, the fact that EV, robotics, those are huge industries and they're going to continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Buying a technology, S&P 500, I'm sorry, a spider technology. XLK, you're not getting those stocks. You're not getting those.

So you know what's taking a ton of money? First Trust, they're all over the place. The QQEW, the NASDAQ 100 Equal Rate, that's the purple bar. Look at that chart. Taking in a ton of assets. It's $1.4 billion. The blue bar down there is Crane Shares,

the KARS. I'm sure you're familiar with that. The electric vehicle ETF, they have $270 million and they were basically up from zero. I put this chart global equity funds because this is crazy to me. So I'm just going to read the, where did this come from? This came from John Street Capital. John Street Capital wrote this for-

But was this his chart or we don't know? It came from Goldman Sachs, but this is from the everything bubble. He wrote that for FTX. All right. So as of early August, global equity funds have seen 605 billion of inflows year to date or 1.015 trillion annualized equating to $4 billion a day. Global equity funds had seen 727 billion of cumulative inflows over the last 25 years. So from 1996 to 2020, that's the cumulative 2021 is going to be 40% higher than the prior 25 years combined safe to say this is never going to happen again it's not going to be repeated next year no

stimulus from the federal government again it will let's hope savings rates cash like that's you know that's obviously i would say representative of why there's a lot of money going into the market i mean to me people that wouldn't have been involved prior to COVID. To me, we used to have these conversations, like, are the millennials ever going to invest? Remember all the content, like, they just hate stocks, or they just don't want to be investors, or they think it's too risky. That disappeared in one year,

and then has reversed to this extent. Well, I guess, yeah, when you have extra money in your pocket that the government gave you, maybe it's a good idea to start investing then. But obviously just like the interest around, I think that's why the meme stocks and everything that's gone on in the last year is great because at least it's getting people interested and they're opening accounts, making mistakes, losing a little bit of money, but they're in now. One of the things that I think kept people out was the lack of a place to experiment and look stupid without other people looking.

Like if your only option was like go on Schwab and try to learn all this terminology, it was probably like easier to just be like, I'll deal with it when I'm an adult. Like a 25-year-old saying, I'll deal with it when I grow up. And prior to that, your only option was the way I learned, which is call your dad's broker at Merrill and have him make you feel like an idiot for asking like the most basic questions. That's what I was doing in 1997. Is that how – that's how you started? Well, I was studying for my Series 7. Yeah. And I had like bar mitzvah money and I had to call Jerry at Merrill Lynch.

Jerry was at my fifth birthday party. So was he condescending? call Jerry at Merrill Lynch. Jerry was at my fifth birthday party. So I had to call Jerry. Was he condescending? Not on purpose, but it's like almost like by default when a 20-year-old wants to be taken seriously by a 50-year-old, like it's definitely going to be a condescending situation. When did you take the money away from Jerry

and do it yourself? Oh, I lost it when I took it to zero. Jerry didn't have to worry about it anymore. Neither did I. This was the dot-com bubble. That's the best money I ever lost, by the way. I think the two most influential investors for retail over the last 50 years are John Bogle and Dave Portnoy. I really do think that people being home with their Robinhood accounts, I think that he was hugely influential in getting people into the market.

I really do. So it's funny you mention that. I would say Ramp capital and Portnoy. I don't think young people know who Bogle is. We know who he is. I don't think the typical new investor knows. So you look at the money in ETFs, and we haven't had any rock stars. You know, in the mutual fund area, we had, what, Bill Miller, Peter Lynch.

There were a lot of rock stars. We have Cathie Wood. We have Cathie Wood, right? I'm going to interview her early November at Cheryl Penny's conference for Dynasty. If you could give me one question to ask her live in front of an audience of RIAs, what should I ask her? So the big thing I think is her research and her conviction because she does have a long-term timeframe. She has guts. And she just doesn't care.

The daily, the weekly, the monthly moves, she just doesn't care. It doesn't – we work with them really closely. So what's the question? Why are you so gully? Yeah. I don't understand how – Like how are you such a badass? How is your bear case on Tesla $2 trillion?

I'll ask her that. Isn't that what it was? I'll 100% – yeah. I think – That's the part about her that bothers you the most is a statement that is like obviously to me it's hyperbole. There's zero – But you're not taking it that way. No, it's not hyperbole.

To me, there's likebole. There's zero. But you're not taking it that way. No, it's not hyperbole. To me, there's like zero humility. And I think that's what rubs people the wrong way is if the base case is $3 trillion and the bulk case is $4 trillion, how is the bear case $2 trillion? Yeah, for Tesla's valuation. How could the bear case for Tesla be the biggest stock in the world? As we keep calling her on it, we'll eventually be right. I don't know. If ever. One other point is deflation.

She thinks we're in a deflationary mode. And when it- Because technology is deflationary. I think she's 100% right about that. Well, I've got her in four days at Salt for an interview. So give me a heads up if you- Oh, you're interviewing her- You can finalize a couple of questions for me.

Tell them. Hold on. You're interviewing her before me. I didn't even realize that. Don't take that question. She was the priority. I'm just kidding. No, no, no.

I'm saying you are talking to her before I'm talking to her. Exactly. Okay. I'll be at Salt, too, by the way. I know. You're not sticking around for that? I'm not. No.

Oh, it's going to be so good. Yeah. The Chainsmokers are performing Tuesday night. Finance is fun. I could see you being into Chainsmokers. I like Chainsmokers. Oh, yeah, I love it. They got some joints.

It's going to be a little marquee party of all the finance folks. Yeah, yeah. I actually saw them a couple months ago at the Fontainebleau in Miami. So what do they do? They press play on the laptop and then they go out back and scroll the book? They dance around a lot of bubbles and a lot of lights and people are up and, you know. Incredible musicians. It is.

It's going to be fun. What did you want to tell us about Target Date Funds? I'm fascinated by Target Date Funds. They are the most successful product that nobody has any respect for. Right. But I think you're talking about drift here. Well, you're so right. There's so much money in Target Date Funds.

And when we talked before about people putting money in their 401k, well, I don't know. I'm going to talk to a friend. And then you shoot yourself in the foot. Oh, the easy thing to do is just pick the target date. Well, the target date is for when you retire. And if you're retiring in 2030, right now, if you looked at that portfolio, it's half in bonds. Do you want to be half in bonds? And guess what? There's probably a good chance if you retire in 2030 at 65 or 70, you might live another 10, 20, 30 years. Do you really want to be half in bonds?

If you have a 2030 target date fund, how old are you? 58? Nine years. Nobody knows how this works? How about that? Well, 2030 is what? So you're retiring at 67. Nine years from now and you think you're retiring at what age?

67? Say 67. Is that what people would target a target date to? Why is 67? I don't even know what the age is. Wouldn't they probably do it like 59 and a half or whatever? Right now, you would be 59. You would be 59.

So you're saying, does it make sense to be 59 years old and half bonds? 100% it does not. Yeah. Is that what the target date funds currently look like? Yeah. Take a look at them. They don't change that glide path based on expected returns? Well, the whole idea –

Do you know that? I thought Vanguard did lean more into equities a few years ago. Some of them do, but they're not going to get penalized for being too conservative, right? Okay. Now you're saying 80-20 is the new 60-40. I 100% agree with you. The thing is though, you have to dance around that when you're explaining to people that are expecting a 60-40. Not dance around, not tell the truth, but you have to put a lot of emphasis on you just have no choice other than to accept more volatility. Like there's no choice. I'm sorry.

Like I can't pretend this isn't going to be more volatile. It definitely is. But what is your alternative? There really isn't one right now. Well, explaining that you lose money in bonds in rising rate environments. You lose money right now. Yeah, exactly. In a 10-year bond, unless you think the rate of the cost of the things that you buy is only rising by 1%, it's a guaranteed loser.

You're doing it for a reason beyond just the income. You're doing it for stability of the portfolio, but half? I think one of the best things to do, and I know we're talking about oldies, we'll get back to youngies in a second. I'm like, I don't talk about target date parties. You definitely don't. You don't need to. But if you sit down with a couple

that's retired in their 70s and you say, how are you feeling? Good. What are you doing? I'm traveling. Do you think you'll live another 10 years? Yeah. Do you think you'll live another 20 years? Yeah.

You know, my mother lived till 95. Great. Think of yourself as another 20 years? Yeah. You know, my mother lived till 95. Great. Think of yourself as having 20 years to invest. Are you really going to put that much money in bonds? Okay. You can't unless you continue to make money from some other source. I 100% agree with you. Well, the 2065 Vanguard is 90% stocks.

So that's like for somebody like me. Yeah. That's appropriate. Yeah. That's right. That's ambitious. No, I'm just kidding. Rooting for you.

It's funny though. There is still – like this conversation still happens even with millennials saying like, oh, people ask me. What percentage should I have in bonds? I'm like, well, I'm 100 percent in equities. Yeah. Equities in real estate. I don't really know why someone in their 20s or 30s would need exposure to bonds. Well, the robos build bond allocations in.

Some would say they're earning a little bit of extra income there for themselves. Yeah, that's why people will show me their allocation given to them by doing a robo questionnaire. And it says they're like 35% in bonds. I'm like, you're a 29-year-old female with a six-figure job in New York City. My robo account is 90% stocks. My biggest risk in all aspects of life is already the stock market. And I'm still going 90-10. Yeah.

Like the stock market affects literally everything about my life. Right. But like for my own, so I have money on my, on our liftoff platform, which is powered by Betterment, but I'm in, I'm in the 90-10 allocation at 44. I have no intention of using that money in the near term. If I change my mind, then I have to change that allocation. Like if I'm like I might buy a house, that's a different story, but I'm not. Yeah, I've told many young people that when they show me their allocation from a robo that I think that it's much too conservative for their age and their stage of their career and everything.

Let's do this ETS versus custom slash direct indexing. Just because I never talked to you about this, but I'm curious about your take. I genuinely think ETFs will be fine forever. I think it'll be a very similar situation as that ETF versus mutual fund chart. I think it's undeniable that custom and direct indexing are going to 10x.

Yeah. There's no way that doesn't happen from my perspective. It could 100x. It's tiny. It could 100x. It's so little right now. But it's for specific people, right? So if you're at Apple and you've got a bunch of stock, you've got a bunch of options, I mean not only –

Is that the only use case, concentrated position? No, no, no, no. I mean not only – Is that the only use case, concentrated position? No, no, no, no. But how many people out there who are working who are going to have equity positions in the company? Small, small. Yeah, yeah. Most of the wealthy people though will like be equity owners when they come to you in this society.

That's how we like it or hate it. We didn't build this society for somebody earning a salary to rise from the middle class to the upper class. It's almost impossible to do. You would have to be so frugal and have such a perfect investment track record of like picking great investments in real estate and stocks to do that. The reality is in wealth management, people coming to you, they were shareholders in a company that went public or SPAC or SPAC or their son invented something like that's just, that's just what's going on. You guys do this now, right? You do through campus. Big time. Right. And what's the number one use case? The typical person that you do it for. There's a few. One is somebody to your point says,

I work at Apple. My entire livelihood is with the company. I get paid in stock. You can't buy that person the cues. First of all, I don't need Apple. And I probably don't need four other companies that trade just like it. So that's an obvious one. Another one is, I've owned Disney for 20 years. I've got a very low cost basis, lock Disney, don't buy, don't sell, get rid of any companies that trade like Disney. And then there's people- Wait, but then they also gradually want to start taking gains there and offsetting that with losses, which the algorithm in a custom index program can do better than a person can do. So if somebody has a third of their portfolio because they sold a company or whatever in a particular stock. Well, we would recommend them that they get rid of it or they,

as soon as they can, keeping taxes front and center. So we could say to the algorithm, we want to pay, we could put in their tax bracket. We want to realize $50,000 in capital gains every year. Or we could say this is the amount of taxes that we want to pay every year. And the algorithm would come up with a glide path. Could we do that manually? Maybe, but it would be-

Not for a thousand accounts. It would be so suboptimal. Is that tax alpha worth it for the added cost for the active management of that versus just going index ETFs or index funds? The added cost is negligible. It's the- So Canvas- 20 basis points.

Canvas, what we use is 20 basis points. Actually, Canvas is O'Shaughnessy. They're giving the index. They're giving you the beta for nothing. They're not charging you on it. Not even. And how appreciative of the clients that they forget about it. Right.

Forget about it. They love it. Are they, do you, are they direct indexing around more so around concentrated positions? I assume like what you're talking about or are they also trying to do this for like the esg and other ethical reasons so we haven't even gotten to that but there's people that want to express what's the split do you think people that

are doing direct indexing for ethical reasons or for financial i think that's a west coast east coast split or or i should say coastal versus because i talked talk to RIAs that are in the Midwest. They don't have like a lot of people that are like, I need ESG, I need ESG. That's very much an LA, New York, Chicago, Miami phenomenon. I think it won't always be that way. I think the younger generation, ESG is going to become standard, which is not there yet. But to answer your question though that is a huge use case i press sign or authorize on all of these trading authorizations and and i would guess it's probably two out of ten yeah it's not it's just not that big yet it's gonna pick up it it's gonna grow

well in europe it's way bigger yeah and it'll it'll eventually be it'll become but here's the thing about esj with every passing year more and more companies become just more acceptable. Like pull out the oil companies who can never really be ESG. Everybody else seems to have their shit together. Like in the Fortune 500, they have women on boards. They have female CEOs. They had to. It didn't happen overnight.

They're representing all of the racial groups. They're like doing what they're supposed to be doing. So there are less companies that would be screened out of an ESG mandate situation, which means popular ESG strategies are looking increasingly already like the index. Right. Right. And then if you're someone that's like, look, I have a problem with for-profit prisons. I'll say, okay, don't worry about it. There's only one publicly traded for-profit prison, and it's so f***ing small that if we don't own it,

there will be no difference. So a lot of the ESG stuff with guns and prisons, these are tiny stocks. They are. So you're going to pay 2% for that difference? There are plenty of ETFs in the ESG space. Part of the problem, though, is every issuer defines ESG in their own way. John just wrote down F-bomb, minute, third.

You got me? I run a concentrated gun position for my own portfolio. Michael likes that return that everyone else is leaving on the sidelines. Michelle Solari wrote this thing about SPACs and it's centered around Stable Road Acquisition Corp, which is one of the most hilariously named SPACs of all time. So good.

Given what ended up happening, it was merging with Momentus and it ended up being like a space company and a train wreck. And she goes deep and I'm not going to try to recap everything that she's talking about. She goes deep with all this stuff with Chamath and some of the more popular SPAC issuers. I think it's likely that we've seen the peak and that that's just going to decelerate from here. It was fun while it lasted lasted it's a lot of fun yeah it was what did we learn did we learn anything or did we just have fun so the thing

is i was on with matt tuttle today who's got one of the spacks so there are three spacks out there okay and um what's his company what's his thing it it's uh it's spcx at SPAC and new issue ETF. And then there are two others. Defiance has one, SPAK. We follow that one. And then Morgan Creek. We have this on a chart? Yeah.

Okay. And then you've got Mark Yusko, who's got SPXZ. So Tuttle's the one at the top. And I was talking to him. I said, what did you do? It's better because it has IPOs in it. But when things started to slip. Did he go to cash?

He went to cash. Oh, he really did? He went to cash. So he's active? Yeah. Oh, shit. I don't know you could do that. It's like the cheat code.

I know. Wait. So is it rules-based or he's just like things are starting to slip? It's active. On average, he's got 88 holdings, but he's got the ability to go to cash. Wait, what's the ticker? SPAK is the only one that's passive. The other two are both active at around 1%.

What's the other one? The SPXZ and SPCX. And you know Mark Yusko? Yes. Yes. So he's got the SPXZ. Oh, that's a third issuer. That's a whole, that's Morgan Creek. And he's active too? He's active too. So, so look, I don't think this is

dead. Um, it's a way people are going public. It's a little, it's not my, you know, cup of tea. I like being able to know if I'm gonna invest in something what it's eventually going to invest in and then maybe wait you're crazy like that but could i but could i let me throw one thing out there were two main rationales for the spack boom that began in the spring of 20 one of them was you can't travel you can't do a road show yeah that was it okay you can do an ipo and not do a roadshow too. Right. Come on.

Like literally. We're all doing Zoom. Like we're Zooming everything. So why could – okay. So that's not a real thing. It was real for like five minutes. But the second thing was that there's less scrutiny. You could put numbers out.

You can communicate with – these fucking guys are getting arrested now for what they're saying. with this these guys getting arrested now for what they're saying that's not that's no longer a benefit that you could just say whatever you want versus uh an s1 filing and a real ipo you can't do trevor melton the nicola truck there's like five of them they're mostly they're mostly it works it really works they're all being investigated break break like like there are active investigations on like 10 of these many of them ev uh spax so that that uh logic that oh there's going to be more spax because it's just such an easier way to go public you could say whatever you want by the investigation sell the resolution but i'm just i'm just saying like if those were the two big rationales for why spax were a quote new asset class and now they're both off the table, then screw it.

Do a real IPO. Like why wouldn't you? You can do a real IPO. The SPAC process, if done the right way, works. It's been around for a long period of time. I mean – It just feels like though the advantages of it. A lot of them are trading below $10 now.

Correct. Actually, I think we should point out in that article it gave the returns for the windfalls of the sponsors for the SPACs is average of 958% returns. Oh, yeah, they do well. The early hedge fund investors in on the SPAC deals have made 40%, and the retail investors that got in after the SPAC are down 20% on average. That's about right. Time's running out for some of these guys, too. I know. SPAC are down 20% on average. That's asthma, right? Time's running out for some of these guys too, right? I really wanted to get in the fund. The institutional investors have a get out of jail free card.

If they don't want it, they can just be like, no, give me my money back. Right. The founder gets 20% of the company as their promote, like as their fee, versus the 10% that the investment banks were taking from an IPO. Yeah. I think a lot like the SoFi one, I'm in on that, which is down probably about 20%, like what the average is for 2021. That's a real company.

SoFi's a real company. But yeah, that's one that I believe is obviously a real company and has a long-term future. You would have bought that if it were an IPO though. Same thing with Opendoor. Like a lot of real companies went.

DraftKings? Yeah. But you would have bought this. If they were real IPOs. So here's the real problem is that in february we're at this peak of credulity you just believed everything everyone said sure and because it had been a year of everything just running up so february march all of a sudden these the average spac was trading at like a 30 40 premium yeah so it's cash and now

they're all at a 5% discount. I mean, you could fog a mirror, you can launch a SPAC. It's just one of those things. Yeah, Lindzen did one. That's what I knew. Was that the top? I mean, he had to have been within a week. Well, that's the crazy part of the valuations they were getting earlier this year. Like that

stable road acquisition went from a 1.2 billion valuation to 700 million after an $8 million SEC settlement with the founder. Hilarious. Hey, Howie needs an ETF. Howie does need an ETF. He never did one all these years. He's doing just fine.

Yeah, he's fine. I don't think he needs anything. I told him. I was on his podcast. I said, you need an ETF. What, did you just run around doing podcasts? Well, this was a while ago. He really regretted it.

I did his podcast once. I think I talked most of the time. He likes to do a lot of the talking. He likes to talk. He talks about manscaping on his podcast. It's enough. That's a lot. His podcast is not-

He's an investor, so it's not safe for me to- It's not completely random, but manscape, he's an investor. All right, so let's go back to IPOs. The pipeline is ready to burst, so I'm told, by Renaissance. They are the foremost authorities on ETFs. This is, I guess, Bill Smith, William Smith. IPO pipeline ready to burst heading into next week. Stampede of new filers in August.

Hosted a 10-plus year high for filings. We could see as many as 15 company launches after the long holiday weekend. Thought works, Dutch bros, brothers. Is that a coffee chain? I don't know what that is. Summer filings. Warby Parker.

That's a good chart. Which is, let me say, yeah. So, right, if you can just do IPOs and there's plenty of an audience for it, I just feel like we're going to get a little bit back to normal there. What do you think of the IPO ETF? Just compared to 10 years ago, we have only a third of the annual IPOs, right? Compared to when? 10 years ago. We had three times as many IPOs coming out every year as we do today.

It doesn't feel that way though. It doesn't. It doesn't. I mean it's starting to come back to life. But look, you get paid to stay private longer, right? There's more money available to stay private longer. That's not going to go back the other way. So what about investors being able to access private markets more?

Like is that something your clients are asking you? And if you had access to private markets more, is that something you're doing? What do you think for younger people? You must get asked because like all the hottest companies are still private. Well, I don't think that the young people get access to like pre-IPO opportunities,

private equity opportunities. They wish they did. Yeah, that's what I do with companies. So we're in that space for select clients. It's a really big trade-off. The payoff could be huge or it could not, depending on what level you get in prior to the IPO. The IPO could be a down round.

People forget. There have been high-profile tech companies that have come public below, right? Can you pick a one-off hand? There's some big ones. A down round into an IPO. We've been in a bull market for a decade, so it's been a while.

Right, but that's a thing that could happen. But then the second thing is you're trading liquidity. Yeah. Because you can't just flip it the day of, depending on the vehicle you use to get access to that pre-IPO company. So you have to be an investor. Yeah.

You know, this would be good for Ben. I think coming out of COVID, if give him something to do, he could do his own syndicate. Oh, yeah. Ben should start doing IPOs. All right. Let's keep going. This Gensler's vision thing, Gary Gensler is not going to be a hands-off securities and exchange commission chief. He's like looking at some of the things that have been in plain sight for years and kind of just like everyone was like, yeah, isn't that crazy? And he seems to want to really do something about it. I can't believe that they're still going after the payment for order flow thing. They might not be.

They might just be saying like we're looking at it, which is what they – that's their job. What are the big things he should be working on? What do you think? I think that they should be working on some guidance for investors for a Bitcoin ETF. I think that they're – I think that's top priority for the average citizen. Like so – Oh, that's interesting.

Like if you ask most investors, what would they say? They would say just give us a safe way to do this. Nate Karasi tweeted recently, the first Bitcoin filing was in 2013. The first Bitcoin ETF filing. Yeah, that's wild. What was the price of Bitcoin in 2013? I mean, it was 500. These poor guys have been pounding their head against the wall, you know, lining up around

the corner of the SEC. Lining up around the corner of the SEC. So lately, the guidance that Gensler is giving is futures-based 40 Act, right? Why? So that would fall under the purview of the CFTC? Correct. Correct. And 40 Act because he likes the overview of having a board. You've got an independent board of trustees to oversee it. It is a commodity. If we're saying it's digital gold and that's the primary use case

and that's what people are trading it for, that's what people are buying it for, I don't hate that approach. So some of these folks like Grayscale is going bonkers like after they've been at this for so long because they want to convert what they've already got in the marketplace

over to ETFs and that's not going to work in that structure. What, if it's – If it's a trust already? Right. You can't convert what they've already got because they own the physical holdings into that – Physical. Physical LMAO.

Yeah. Not really physical though. Yeah, yeah. But they own the actual. Right. Right. They own the underlying. Yeah.

It's just – it's not – Pardon the physical. Right, right. I got too much GLD in me. Yeah. Yeah. It's just – it's not – Pardon the physical. Right, right. I got too much GLD in me. Yeah. Right. So do you think then that it's not such a slam dunk for Osprey and Grayscale to take these existing publicly traded trusts and just say, OK, there's approval. We're ETFs now.

Because they seem to think they can do that. First of all, if Gensler gives them this future-based strategy and grants approval and it hits the marketplace, it's the right thing for something to come out because it's got to be a give and take. And I think, like you said, people are asking for it. If it's future-based, it's going to coordinate okay. There's going to be some bumps and bruises along the way. And then the next thing – Tom, where will the bumps and bruises in a futures-based Bitcoin ETF come from? The role? The role.

What if that gets all funky? The contracts are going to be really screwy. Well, the problem is there's not that many contracts out there. Right. And there's only three years of history of people trading them in Chicago. I just, what are we trying to protect investors from? If we can have a triple levered crude short ETF, why can't we have a Bitcoin ETF?

The horse is out of the barn, right? Like, you know, what are you going to do? I'll tell you, I'll give you the reason why from, I think, from their perspective. From their perspective, this is one of the most manipulated markets on the planet. It doesn't matter that it's decentralized. There are whales who have their way with the price,

at least in the short term. Well, we know that's true of stocks also. I understand what you're saying. The manipulation is in plain sight. There's a coordinated social media campaign being led by some of the most prominent voices in crypto to, quote, pump the price to celebrate el salvador i mean the manipulation is not they're not even pretending to not how is that

manipulation to say everyone should buy it bitcoin how is that they were saying everyone buy 30 dollars worth of bitcoin i get that it's not not like a mastermind behind the scenes like a penny stock. I'm just saying the manipulation is problematic for a regulator who's supposedly there to protect investors to just be like, yeah, sure, make products based on it. I hear that. But if they're trying to protect investors and get rid of some of these three-time levered ETFs. If there were a Bitcoin ETF, would people be doing less stupid shit in their Robinhood and Coinbase accounts? They'd still be doing it. They'd still be doing it.

But they're doing it anyway. Well, we know. I agree with that. Let me throw it out there. What if there were crypto, whether it be Bitcoin, Ethereum, where they were just using virgin coins. What does that mean? Coins that came directly from the miner. And they could validate that they came directly from the miner.

That they were never involved in trading anywhere else. It came directly from the miner. And then that could be in some type of ETF wrapper. It's like when you go to Tiffany and you're like, I don't want any conflict diamonds. I don't want any conflict coins. Fine. Whatever. If that would get it done, just get it done.

It's enough already. Didn't O'Leary tweet something about this? Yeah. But isn't this the most bullshitty thing on the planet? Well, so – I mean if Kevin said it, like I'm sure that he has the right intentions. If Kevin said it, like I'm sure that he has the right intentions. But it feels to me that there's no such thing as ecologically friendly Bitcoin because the miners are all over the world doing whatever they want.

I was at the Coinbase conference. O'Leary was there. I'm on the board for US Global. Frank Holmes, who is the chair. You know Frank. But he's also the CEO of Hive, which is a big crypto miner. And he's saying, hey, I think that people would pay up for virgin coins because they're clean. Who gives a shit? Well, we don't give a shit.

But if maybe the regulatory authorities would say, hey, this is a Bitcoin. Doesn't this just sound like a meme? Well, maybe that's part of the whole thing too is like this is not an ESG-friendly thing for them to regulate. Or they need to regulate it for it to become more ESG-friendly, which is the way the whole investing space is going. So how do they do all that? I don't know. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. How many fraudulent companies are publicly traded?

Probably hundreds. Yeah. They all came public. Yeah. But it's different than them. It's a different process. That's true. But it's different than them regulating a whole new type of currency. Right.

They're not funds. Do you feel like younger people would buy crypto if they were cleansed? I mean, either way, I'm going to buy Bitcoin. They're blessed. They go to put them on the offer. I feel better about it. Liana will buy a Bitcoin. They're blessed. They go to put them on the wall. Liana will buy any coin. Liana is only buying cleansed Bitcoin.

Is that about how you heard it here first? We're going to make sure that only the cleansed Bitcoins end up in your account. That whole thing sounds like bullshit to me, and if I hear an advisor talking about that to their client, I never gonna happen i'm gonna laugh so uh all right so do we think and i know people must ask you this all the time do we think we're even any closer to a bitcoin etf and are you surprised that clayton didn't just do it he seems to have cared way less about a great many things

and now he works for a crypto company anyway right and. And now he's in- Did Eric Peters hire him? I don't know. Okay. I think so. Yeah. I think he's involved with like a Bitcoin issuer. He's in line with the rest of them trying to make it happen. So with this futures-based application, 40 Act, a lot of people feel this is going to

come between now and the end of the year. Really? Yep. Okay. Is that in the price of Bitcoin, do you think? Might be. I don't know great answer i have no idea no clue yeah yeah i mean the whole el salvador thing i mean you look at it there are some people oh he's trying to pump it on the other hand you dig down into it and say, is there something there? Yeah. When are we all moving to El Salvador?

What if that works? Who is now like the head of the central bank in El Salvador? Is it Pomp? Is that someone on Twitter gets appointed to that position? So first of all, I'm just taking the other side for a second. You got 6 million people. You got a poor country. They're making $4,000 a year, right? The government buys $21 billion in Bitcoin and says, if you buy this

Chivo wallet, which sounds pretty cool, they'll give you 30 bucks. I don't hate that. And then all of a sudden you're educated. Like when did we first learn about investing? And empowered. Right? Yeah. uh but tom it sounds like the purpose of this is not for these people to become investors they want the money to be used in the economy well they're saying like i think one of the biggest use cases for it there and any country where there's a huge underbanked community like 70 percent of salvadorans being underbanked and unbanked completely is the remittances from other countries sending money back.

They're saying that that accounts for 24% of El Salvador's gross. And they pay very high fees on those remittances, right? Yeah. So this is going to, you know, it enables people to bank worldwide and they can have people send money back to them. So that's the use case. So I like that because that's a use case that doesn't involve like price target predictions and futures trading and leverage. That's just regular people getting access to –

Panama is looking at it. I mean I talk about Tyrone Ross all the time. Yeah. He'll be in New York in October. You guys got to get him. Bro, he'll be in El Salvador literally like advising the president. Oh, for sure. You wait and see. So this – I mean that's what he talks about in America, the unbanked community in

America for families and people to be able to send money to each other. And obviously this is a huge part of this country's actual GDP. So it makes sense. You just hope though that the next headline in two months isn't El Salvadorans lose 80 percent of their Chivo wallets because of gambling in Bitcoin versus whales in Japan. Like you just hope that's not where that's going. I doubt it will. If people start using it and it's a good use case, Panama jumps in. I was with Jan Van Eyck the other night and his head crypto guy on a plane to El Salvador.

He's going down there to check it out to see if people are using it. Better him than you. How many of the ATMs – because you know how it says they have the Chivo ATMs around El Salvador now. How many of them do they actually – did you know? I read about it, but I didn't look it up. How many people got the wallet? No, they have – I don't know how many people have the wallet, but they said they have the Chivo Bitcoin ATMs all over El Salvador. I saw McDonald's and stuff like all accepting Bitcoin in El Salvador.

There's probably like two McDonald's, but I thought that was cool. There was some coordination done with businesses to like make this actually work. Just the fees, the fees alone that are saved for families and people that are doing remittances around the world and even here domestically is amazing. The World Bank reports it was over half a trillion dollars in 2019 of global remittances. Yeah. That is so much money. But imagine the fees that these people are paying to get money around the world. The average fee for a transaction over 200 bucks is 7%.

It's massive. And who's taking that money? Like Western Union? 7%. And it happens right here domestically. For people that don't have bank accounts, someone's in the South, someone's in the Northeast, you got to send money to your aunt or whatever.

So I get it. I'm for the use case, obviously. But it's hard for somebody? How does somebody get educated to get a wallet, get set up, send the money? Like, that's not easy. Well, I assume that's what they're kind of doing. Well, the good thing is they all communicate on their phones, you know, just like a lot of third world countries. They're learning on Instagram the same way our kids are learning dances.

They're learning like what what is blockchain? What is Bitcoin? Have you ever sent somebody Bitcoin? No. Me either. No. But like for what? Like almost like here is Bitcoin instead of dollars?

Just in general. I guess people are doing that on Cash App and stuff I would imagine. Yeah, you can do that easily with Square. I'm sure you can, but I've never done it. Well, I would never send anybody crypto. I have no reason to do it. But we're also, we're a different

socioeconomic group here than a lot of the rest of the world or the rest of America. Have you lent any crypto to get the income? You're doing that shit, right? No, I tried. I couldn't figure it out.

I think I might have lost it. Oh, that's kind of cool. Yeah, I wouldn't say lending. I'm probably making donations somewhere without knowing it. Yeah, I tried Uniswap and – I'm putting things into MetaMask and then losing my password and then I open a new MetaMask. That's what I have going on. I don't know.

It's like my mom in Facebook. She's got five Facebook accounts. Wait, somebody is benefiting from this. No, I was just talking to Dylan about this. Every time I log into my MetaMask on a different computer, it tells me I have an invalid password. Every time I change my password, I write it down on my phone. So I different computer, it tells me I have an invalid password. And every time I change my password, I write it down on my phone. So I'm like, I know this isn't the right password. So Dylan

just sent me an article. There's something funky going on. You have to type your password literally like this. If you type it too fast, it doesn't read it. I'm like, this is supposed to be the future, and I have to peck on the keyboard? Yeah, don't you feel empowered by crypto? So what I'm basically doing is helping to burn more ETH.

I'm like part of the solution. You're a giver. You're just going to give up. I'm shrinking the amount of ETH available by f***ing losing mine. The ramps are so frustrating and inexpensive. I'm really trying to do my part. It does not lend itself to mass adoption today. Yeah, it doesn't feel like the future just yet. You guys are in our office. What do you think?

This is awesome. Is it nice being back, though? Is this cool? Look, you brought us tequila. Tell us about this tequila that we have. So, a bartender

in Jackson, Wyoming. My wife and I were in there in the fall. We like tequila like you guys. Wait till you see Buzz Batnick,

by the way. You're going to love this. I normally would wait till after the show, but. We're like, oh, what do you have and we're looking for that extra añejo he said you gotta taste this suerte which means how many

nights a week are you drinking tequila oh there's not a night there's not a night there's not right just a little bit do you remember going javier's with me and maybe mike uh where was that? Yeah, Newport. Newport? Oh. Yeah, we were in Newport. We saw – It was a rough night. Yeah. You're coming back though, right? What event were we there for? It was at the – was it the Island Hotel? Yeah, let me finish my water first.

Guzzle that. We saw Heather Dubrow there. Tom, pour Liana some of this suerte. You know what happened at that bar? Poor Liana, some of this suerte. You know what happened at that bar? Meb Faber challenged me to like a vodka tasting competition. Not competition.

He doesn't think that people could tell the difference between well vodka and Grey Goose. And I'm like, okay, how much do you want to lose tonight? I don't think it was a lot of money. You took him down? I mean, think about Well Vodka, what you drank in college when you had no money. That's very good, Tom. Thank you.

Is it good? Yeah. All right. This is really nice. I'm on steroids. Otherwise, I would be- I actually like this better than the one that Doug brought last time. Where did Doug bring us? It was a really nice one, wasn't it?

Doug brought the expensive one. But I like this better. But Svarte means luck. What's that called? but I like it better but but Suerte means luck what's that called

there's there's a guy in Denver hooks up with a guy in Mexico City and they know a guy in Jalisco

who makes it the old fashioned way and they all send each other Bitcoin that's it it's all Bitcoin dude this is your gentleman

you sent us six of these so shout out to Suerte I didn't bring you guys anything. Sorry. Oh, no, no, no. You get my presents. You brought your presents.

So we wanted to put this chart up, office utilization rates by metro area before everyone smashed. Oh, look at this. This is wild. This is nuts. I don't know if this ever goes back. Nope. To the baseline. Here's what I remember talking about, about Ben with this chart months ago.

Well, let's just say what it is. Okay. So we are looking at office utilization rates based on key card FOB data. So this is the NSA. I don't know where they got this data from. This is the 10 biggest cities. So I said that I think New York city will top out at like 70 to 80% of what it once was.

Right now, New York City is under 25%. Basically, nobody came back to work. So the starting point is February, 2020. So the drawdown was basically complete, right? It was basically down to zero almost. Yeah. So now it's back to 20%. I mean, that's-

Oh, today- Which is not admirable. I don't know if you noticed this today. Today was the first time that my train was – there was people on my train. Yeah, the lot had more cars in it. So maybe this is getting better. Guys, this is my first time back since pre-COVID, and it's quiet. Midtown's really, really quiet.

I feel like it's busy. You can't get a cup of coffee or a sandwich during the day. I got in at night, and I love Del Frisco's. And Del Frisco's historically has been packed. I walked down there. 49th and Avenue of the Americas. And there are four people at the bar. When I finished my steak, there was nobody there.

Because there's no corporate, there's no business lunches, there's no meetings. No. There's no post-meeting, whatever. But if you go to the outer part so the neighborhood the neighborhoods well i mean i don't want to say exactly where i live but i live very close here let me get a pen we'll link to your address on google maps gentlemen um but i feel you should have seen it before i feel like this is so busy now so i'm gonna tell frisco's you still gotta it's still hard to get a reservation But I feel you should have seen it before. I feel like this is so busy now. So, quick story.

I go to Del Frisco. It's still hard to get a reservation. Still? What, on a Saturday night, though? No, even during the week. Really? Wednesday on. Weekends, there's got to be nobody around, right?

I was in a packed restaurant on the Upper East Side on Saturday night. Not to brag. No, no, no. But I'm saying, I was at Elio's. It was like our favorite Italian. We came with a bunch of our friends. It was jamming. It was like there was no pandemic.

None of that glass shield shit. No masks. It's just – it looks back to normal. Around here, like Midtown on the weekend, there's a lot – it's a lot of tourists. I always stayed at the Royalton for 20 years down to 44th, right? 44th, yeah, yeah. And it's a little older than it was, but they'd always take care of me. And I left a big bag full of suits, shirts, workout stuff there.

It was there during the whole pandemic. Is it still in style? I was walking down 44th going up there, and this homeless guy is sitting in the corner. He's got my suit on. No. Are you kidding me? He didn't tie the tie the right way. I kind of helped him out a little bit. Is this a for real story? I told you I'm kind of gullible. No. Are you kidding me? He didn't tie the tie the right way. I kind of helped him out a little bit. Is this a for real story? I told you

I'm kind of gullible. They just opened up. I walked in. One of the bellmen were there. He goes, hey, Tom, how you doing? I got your bag. I'm like, I can't believe it. I thought that stuff. That would have been amazing. And the bellman is still there. Well, he just came back and I gave him a nice tip because

I thought all that stuff was gone. And he almost kissed me. So we're starting to see more of like stuff being back. But the office stuff and the office, I don't, I just don't see this office ever having as many people as it had. Commercial real estate is

so effed. Yeah. Big issues. Maybe the worst place you could be in real estate. You've got a lot of people here, though. Not really. I mean, we used to be full. This is a busier office than any of the offices I've been in. Yeah, because we're like- But you guys are young and vibey and- We're also like pandemic deniers.

We're like, we think the whole thing's a hoax. What's it with JP Morgan and Goldman saying, we've got to get everybody back? They're all there. Why? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Because they pay them so much money. Do they think they're not productive at home? They know they're not.

Do you think they're not productive? They're not productive at work either. Most of that, most of, most of, most jobs, let's all be very, very honest. Most jobs, there are bursts of tons of activity where you're so busy, you can't even think straight. And those punctuate these stretches of like one or two full days where you could like basically sit at your desk and zone. Like zone out. I got some heat on our last episode when I made a joke about bank employees.

What did you say? Being at home and not being productive because you weren't getting your refinancing done quickly. And I'm like, yeah, bank employees. Who knows what they're doing now? Anyone giving you heat, you let us know. We'll take care of it. And then I got some heat on Instagram because I need to be more opinionated in this room, apparently.

Really? No. All right. You're pretty opinionated today, I feel like. I mean, I'm not trying. Have some more of this tequila. We'll fix that. So what do you think?

Are people more productive at home or less productive at home? I think it's just the personality. It's personal. I've been doing it for eight years. More than half the people with our company today, we've hired in the last year and a half. I've never met them personally. And we have them spread around North America.

We're using Slack to communicate. That's us. I feel like I know when they go to the bathroom. They're so online with everything that's going on. Using Calamari for the check-ins? No, seriously. Do you know what that app is on. Using Calamari for the check-ins? So you know in the morning. No, seriously. Do you know what that app is on Slack?

No. Everybody has to check in. Everyone has to check out. Calamari will keep logs. You know what's funny? I kind of wouldn't want to do that. No, that's what I thought. I do it every day because it just-

I like it. It's routine. It just, it turns you on and it turns you off. And I do it every day and I didn't even notice it. It's like a digital time card, but everyone's doing it. Every single day. Hello, Michael. Welcome to work at even notice it. It's like a digital time card. So everyone's doing it. Every single day. Hello, Michael. Welcome to work at nine.

Bye, Michael. Have a great time. So what we do, we do this primarily to make sure that everybody's okay. You know, because everybody's remote. Yeah.

That's what we do. I mean, is it allowed? If somebody didn't check in in three, not kidding. If somebody didn't check in in three days, we'd be like,

we'd- Oh, yeah. Oh, actually, my parents get worried about me with that. They're like, you're alone. We'd say it.

It's a calamari for your parents to see that you're checking in. And I work for myself. Nobody would know if I was gone for a week. I hope the doorman knows. We know. I follow you on Instagram. We know. True.

If my stories on Instagram stop, you guys need to be worried about me. Please check in. That's your SOS. So you're back to travel for business? Like that's it? You're back on the road or no? It's not fun. I'll tell you.

This last trip, flying LA to Newark. Great flight. Land, 45 minutes to get to the gate. 45 to find a gate. Get off the plane, 45 minutes to get the luggage. Oh, they're understaffed on the tarmac. Everywhere. Hurts. Okay? I'm a gold. My name's not onstaffed on the tarmac. Everywhere. Hurts.

Okay. I'm a gold. My name's not on the board. I'm in line. 20 people in line. One guy. Yeah. I've seen that too.

I saw it in Miami in February. Delta said today that they see demand back to pre-variant levels in the next 30 days. That shocked me. That is shocking. That'll be mostly vacation though. Are they lying? No, because there are people like me who have pent up family trips that they just have to take. How was your trip?

It was great. No problem. Did you have no problems? No. Oh, your LA trip looked so nice. Yeah. I want to go to LA. I would do that once a month.

It was so easy. And everything was like we got into every restaurant. Like LA is not busy late August or whenever I went. Like that's a good time to go there. Were you in Santa Monica? For like five seconds. Oh, OK. That's not my – I can't.

That's where – where were you? I was in like Malibu, Beverly Hills. What's wrong with Santa Monica? Too crowded. It's too much like New York actually, don't you think? Like Santa Monica? Yeah. And the mall.

I'm talking about the mall and the shopping district. You live in California. He lives in Huntington Beach. All right. But look, if you're going to go back on the road as a business traveler, you're running out of places to go because they're canceling all the conferences. So at least in our industry. I was supposed to go to Austin at the end of this month for three conferences, American Banking Association, Marketing, FinCon, which is the financial media conference. That's the only one that's still on.

And then the Opal alternative events. I don't know if that one is still on. Salt is going. Salt is going. Yes, we love salt. When is that? On Monday to Wednesday next week. I will be hosting.

You have a big role you have a big role there tell everybody what you're doing i'm hosting the salt sideline report so guys like josh barry all the speakers after they come off the stage i'm going to do a little quickie interview with them so what are we going to do like i don't know we should do something fun i agree well i mean you want to be like josh what's your macro outlook you don't give a shit no okay but some people want that. They send me 18 questions. I'm like, oh, this is a four-minute interview.

You and I should do like a quick TikTok, and then I go on stage right after. Do you see a recession in the next 12 to 24 months? I do, in fact. That's a good question. Listen, you're going to talk to a lot of good people. Steve Cohen, maybe? Can you get him? Yeah, I've got all those guys on the list.

You have Ray Dalio? And Kathy. Ray Dalio. You have Kathy. Kevin. Okay. So you're tied in. Are you going to do audio interviews, video interviews?

It's all a video. So there's a setup for anyone that's going to be there at the pavilion on the fourth floor, like right next to the green room and stuff. Will you come to our conference in Miami and Fontainebleau? Of course I will. Right? There's a lot of conferences coming up. I don't even know about this. Am I invited? Will you come to our conference in Miami and Fontainebleau? Of course I will. There's a lot of conferences coming up. I don't even know about this.

You are. Exchange. I found out about it through you guys. ExchangeETF.com. We spoke about that. Yeah. No, we spoke with Matt about it. Was there somebody about that? Yeah.

That's how I found out about it last time I was here with you guys. Oh, this is with Matt and John. Yeah. Oh, I'll come. Yeah. I mean, if you want me. I'm not going to invite myself. We want all you guys.

Okay. Well, if you want Liana, you get Josh. Yeah. Right? Woo. Okay. All right. All right.

So we'll do that. And hopefully they're not canceled. No. Fingers crossed. February will be, by then, February will be fine. By then we'll be 85 percent vaccinated, I think. So I was going to do this whole thing with Live Nation, but who gives a shit? Let's skip to Soapbox.

I like Live Nation. I've got 80 percent up in the last – Are you invested in Live Nation? So am I. Yeah, yeah. So did you pay attention to what they said on TV yesterday, the president? No. Not Rapinoe, but the second guy down.

No. Eric Told. He said eight million people went to a Live Nation show in August. Is that bigger or smaller than you would have guessed? That's a lot of people. Yeah. The festival is named in here, the Lollapalooza and everything has been huge.

Governor's Ball is next week. My daughter's going. It's terrifying for me, by the way. How old is she is she young 15 yeah so apparently everybody's parents are letting their their daughters just like go she's vaccinated that's the last thing i'm worried about yeah this is that city field no parents i don't know what they're doing like sprinkles is not going to be up behind you know who like the headline actress the night she's going is like megan the style it's not going to be up behind the tree. You know who the headline act is the night she's going? It's like Megan Thee Stallion. It's not going to be like a tame situation.

She's not going to see the Beach Boys in Chicago, like the double bill. She's just going with a bunch of her friends. Dude, and they are all savages. Yeah. She has this group of seven girls. They call them the Salty Seven. Oh, my gosh. She's like 15 going on 21.

They think they're like 30. Yeah. And I'm not allowed to go. They think they're like 30. Yeah. So, and I'm not allowed to go. Can I shop around her? I do that. A hundred percent. We'll talk offline. So anyway, that's going on.

So he was on CNBC saying the cancellations are getting headlines, but it's only a 2% cancellation rate. So 98% of Live Nation shows are going through and the associated revenue is up 677% in the second quarter. So that's up from like no concerts. People are dying to go to events. I mean football games are sold out. Are you going to any shows? You got anything planned?

I know you're a music guy. So Jazz Fest in New Orleans, usually should be safe. Usually in April. Okay. Push to October. Just canceled. They canceled? Yeah, just canceled. So, I mean, that's fun.

It's got the bands that Barry and I like. Like Barry did a tweet last week about- Steely Dan? R.E.M. Is R.E.M. reuniting? No. Are they going to play Jazz Fest? I love Steely Dan.

I love R.E.M. Who doesn't love R.E.M.? I know. You'll never see them again. I'm going to see Nas in Queens on September 23rd. What are the chances that still happens? I think it'll happen. It'll happen.

Yeah. It'll happen. Your kids must just be like, my dad's the coolest. No, I'm not that cool. They don't know what Nas is, by the way. Really? Like your son doesn't know who that is? He's a 12.

His guy is Polo G. I don't even know who that is? He's a 12. Well, his guy is Polo G. I don't even know who that is. Right. So same. Well, I kind of do, but not as much as – not as much. What's the thing about sports cards? Are you a card guy? I figured you would be an NFT guy.

No. Well, I was just going to give a shout out to collectible cards. Look, you do the Masterworks thing, right? Yeah. You guys both do that. So you get a piece of something, which is nice. Did you ever collect cards? Dude, I got something to say about collectible, but you go first.

Yeah. Well, so first of all, growing up, for me, it was really cool to have them. And then my best friend from home actually moved out to California when I moved out, and we were roommates. We went back, got our cards. We started buying them again. Well, that was right at the top in the late 80s, early 90s. I was going to say that was like the 20s. Which cards did you have?

Like Mickey Mantle or was that before? Well, I did. I do have Mickey Mantles. I've actually got He was like Cal Ripken, right? Like that era. You're not Mickey Mantle old. That's like my dad. My dad has Mickey Mantle cards. No, I've got him.

Ken Griffey Jr. So now I brought it back in the last couple of years. What cards do you have? I've got Mickey Mantle rookie. I've got Jackie Robinson rookies. I've been buying up more good stuff lately, right? And my son kind of catalogs it for me me so it's something we can kind of do together okay and i feel like yeah they're gonna go up and down they've gone up in a big way and and i feel

like did you guys ever buy cards did you guys ever buy cards i was tons i was i was comic books yeah my brother was sports i had a ton of cards yeah i was spice girls stickers yeah what are you saying about collectible are you talking about the collectible, the app, the sports company or no? No. Well, I use that. I buy them on eBay, all that stuff. So people are going mental right now. Yeah.

I bought on collectible a Wilt Chamberlain, I think it was his high school uniform or maybe it was the 76ers. I can't remember. But I bought this in March. or maybe it was the 76ers. I can't remember. But I bought this in March. Six months later or however many months later it is,

shareholders were offered a buyout. Right. A 50-something percent premium from what we paid for it four months ago. And I, of course, was like, hell yeah. That's awesome. 50% in four, five, six months, whatever it is. Let's go. Why wouldn't you buy it yourself and own it? Like buy a card yourself and hold them.

Because this thing is like a million and a half bucks. Right. Understand. Why aren't you buying million dollar baseball? But Tom, listen to this. 82% of shareholders voted no. So they wanted to hold it. Said this buyout offer is not good enough.

Not good enough? 50% in five months? It's like Rally Road. That's happening all the time. Handbags. Are they still around? Oh, yeah. Cars and stuff like that.

I was in the 18%- Rally doesn't let the holders decide when to sell the car. Rally is actively managing the portfolio. They sell. No, no, no. So eventually if they sell something and an offer comes in, they'll go out to the holders. Oh, I thought it was the other way around. I thought they just say this is what's in the holder's best interest.

The way I understand it. Yeah, Josh, I have firsthand experience. I was telling Michael about the other day. What do you own at Raleigh? I had a Ford GT40. I had some shares of it. So you have a say in when they sell it? People voted to sell it for something like a 10% or 15% gain.

I was very mad. What are the points? It's like my favorite car. I wanted to hold it forever. They are so cool. Hey, so guys, I know we want to move on, but a couple things. I brought a couple things. I got a Patrick Ewing rookie for you, baby.

Oh, my God. More gifts. Oh, my God. Wait, is that real? Dude. That's real. Why are you the best human being on earth? Do you have a Patrick Young rookie for me?

So I want to say something. I love when you go deep and personal. When you talk about your mom, you talk about your kids. So I hate the Lakers. I'm a Celtics fan, and I moved to L.A. But how couldn't you love Kobe? And when you talked about naming your son Kobe, I thought it was the greatest thing.

And I've let you know a couple times when I love how you go deep. Are you trying to make me cry? What are you doing here? Oh, my God. Oh, Tom. Tom, you're going to get invited back for sure. Dude, are you kidding me? Let me see this.

I love you. I really do love you. This is incredible. So listen, Leanna, I just, I'll tell you, you are so dynamic and I watch your stuff and it's fantastic, So listen, Leanna, I just – I'll tell you. You are so dynamic and I watch your stuff and it's fantastic. But I didn't want to say, hey, here's a sports card. I picked something.

You brought a Spice Girls card? It wasn't a Spice Girls. But one of my favorite people as far as actresses is Kristen Wiig. She's so frigging funny and I loved her in Bridesmaids. And I thought you'd like her because she's really cheap like she picked that cheap restaurant where they got food boys name remember that yes and also that made melissa mccarthy take the dump in the sink remember yes so this is going to an interesting place i got you a signed one dollar bill from Kristen Wiig. Oh, my. Did she actually sign this? Yeah. Are you serious?

Uh-huh. This is so cool. Tom. Tom, you're an angel. So part of this is- She's a hustler. Oh, my God. We've talked about crypto. That's really cool.

And you talk about NFTs, okay? But these are things that you can hold. Real world. Real world. Real world. You can share with your family. You can share with your kids. And I'm just doing kind of a shout out to a little bit of old school.

Wait until you see the gifts that are sitting waiting for you for your next appearance here. Yeah. I know. I feel so, first of all, grateful. You're so awesome. Unreal. This is like unbelievable. This is epic because we're huge Knicks fans.

And I love it. Thank you so much. Tom. Thank you. It's great. I met Patrick Ewing at the airport. I don't remember this. My parents told me I was like five years old and I was crying and he said, what's the matter, Mike?

No. Really? While your parents were like, his name is Michael and he loves you. Dude, that Kobe card. Tom. All right. So let me ask you a question. So this is not going away the cards the nfts based on cards it's just is it just getting started or is it in the middle

like where where do you think this is it's good no matter what you're getting people investing right and some people are going to get absolutely screwed we know that yeah but that would happen whether they were trading online or trading in real life. You know, it was savings and loan stocks when I was little. So it was those types of things where that's where you learn. And there's nothing better than getting a good pop in the nose. You learn from that. And hopefully you'll learn that at an early age. Why won't they approve a baseball card ETF?

Like what is the big holdup here? Gensler is such a hater. Dude, you're the man. This is the best episode ever. This is the big holdup here? Gensler's such a hater. Dude, you're the man. This is the best episode ever. This is the best episode. You win. Who's on next week? Let's see if they want to top this.

Let's get into favorites. Liana, let's go to you first. What's your favorite thing this week? What do you got for us? Okay, so this is not a new thing, but I did an IGTV about The Slight Edge, which is a book by Jeff Olson. And if you guys are familiar with the 30-day million-dollar rule or the 30-day million-dollar case. What is that? Where you have to choose – if you were to choose between getting a penny on day one that doubles every day for 30 days or a million dollars the first day, what would you choose?

Well, I know the math. You know the answer? The compounding is so much better. So obviously – Where does it grow to? It grows to 9.7 million in 30 days. So obviously you're getting like 10x your money. What if somebody kills you before

day 15 when it's still $8? Then you have a big problem. I just love this book, The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. It's really just, it's such a good explanation in many different ways of like compounding your efforts and not giving up like anybody it's literally for anyone it's just a reminder that the money doesn't go over a million dollars until the 28th day so anything that you're doing in your life or putting

your effort toward whether that's compounding your your friends or compounding your investments or your effort at work whatever you you're doing, a startup, is any day could be your day 28. You just got to keep going. Stick to it. This is my most watched IGTV video I've ever done is about this. You did a post about how Warren Buffett made almost all of his money after age 65.

Yeah. Yeah. Like the compounding really didn't go into that like hockey stick. I mean he was always rich, but it didn't get like really crazy until the 90s when he was in his 60s. I love that about like being patient and stuff. But the flip side is like who wants to be a billionaire like when they just turned 67? Yeah, but I want a billion dollars now. Yeah, I want it today.

And that's why you got to get into NFTs. I'm going to stay with Instagram for mine. You guys know who this guy Queen's Flip is? No. Oh, my God. He's probably breaking the law in every video, but it is honestly the most enjoyable. And when he puts up a new video, it's the only thing I like Rush to watch. So it's all on Instagram, and he's basically the biggest troll on earth.

And he's friends with sort of like every famous rapper, but he runs up on these guys like while they're eating lunch or while they're working out. He just appears at their house in the gym in recording studio, rips his shirt off and tries to get a hug or whatever. He's just so out of control. But I can't – like I laugh so – Wait. What's his handle? Queens with a Z. Flip. His Z. Flip.

His name is Flip. So he just runs up to them like this and then he gets attacked? Like he'll run up on Jim Jones from Dipset like literally in the middle of the street or he ran up on Benzino in a hotel lobby, the guys with his wife, and he just will end up on the floor bleeding with his shirt off. It's just – I can't stop laughing. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. How often does he update?

Every day. Oh my God. How does he find these people every day? He has a network of informants telling him Cameron is getting his dry cleaning. Someone's going to shoot him. Oh dude, this is definitely ending in death. And when he's not running...

Is that Jake the Snake? Dude, play this one. Play this one. That's Ben Zeno, who's like an old school rapper. His daughter is actually a really famous rapper now. He just like runs up on this guy in a hotel lobby. He's trying to check in. Tries to hug him.

Like every one of these videos ends like, wait, wait. Now he tries to hug his wife and it doesn't go well. Watch it. Watch it. Watch this. Wait. Wait for it. Oh, my. my oh and the hair

so if I tell you that there are hundreds of these videos okay so this is my favorite thing right now on Instagram uh

Matrix 4 teaser I don't want to go deep on this because the whole trailer is coming probably on Friday so by the time people are listening

to this I'm all in on Matrix like I don't even care if people say this movie is a piece of shit. Like the critics, I'm still going to go. Are you as Matrix-y as I am? I liked it. It's not like my favorite sci-fi movie, but like I have no hate.

Are you in? Are you all in on Matrix? I love Matrix. You have to love Matrix. I mean I'm going to the theater for sure. No, now you can't go. It's coming out on HBO Max. That's a travesty.

No, it's not. It will be in the theaters. It deserves to be on HBO Max. That's a travesty. No, it's not. It'll be in the theaters. It deserves to be on HBO Max. But you can watch it on your couch. That should be illegal. But are you reeling on your couch while you are in the Matrix? Where would you be? I don't know.

Is anything real? Are you a Matrix person? No, I'm not a sci-fi person at all. All right. I'm reading The Contrarian, which is not a great title. It's a book about Peter Thiel. And what Brian Armstrong didn't do this week surprised me. The whole ethos is move fast and break things and f**k it.

Travis Kalanick doing whatever they want and we'll deal with the consequences. I'm shocked that they waited for the SEC to bless their earned product, their yielding product. And Peter Thiel at PayPal, he was the guy that started this whole thing of just do whatever you want, don't ask for questions beg for forgiveness like that don't ask permission don't ask permission for forgiveness yeah like that was that was him so um but that's coinbase's whole rep is that they're the crypto people that talk to the regulators like that was their whole rep was they hire as many lawyers as engineers

and that they are talking to the banks the banking regulators the tax people they all have tons of lawyers they have no choice it's so paypal they were they were the the ogs that broke all the rules and didn't wait for guidance and just did whatever they wanted and well that right because that's the story of really bitcoin period uh and and all of the offshoots in crypto that story of uber like uber was illegal in almost every jurisdiction it started doing business in. But then it became so useful to the consumers that you couldn't ban it. And I think a lot of young CEOs looked at that and said that's the way to do this. You get big before they can stop.

And by the time they notice you, they can't stop it. So I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying, I think there's a lot to that. Yeah. Also one more thing. I'm, I'm, I've like a Colonel brewing how we compare like markets today, valuations, et cetera. I think that the ability for companies to go viral has like changed fundamentals. And, um, for companies to go viral has like changed fundamentals. And what PayPal did early on was they were like a loss leader. They said, no, no, no, we're going to build a gigantic user base and the founder, the VCs will subsidize our losses. We'll get so big and we'll figure out a path to profitability. So all of these companies are now following that roadmap so that all these companies that are burning money, to make comparisons between these companies today that are trying to get to a billion users in 12 months and to compare – and so these are like big companies that are representative in the index and to compare this index today versus the index of the 1960s.

I just think it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. It so doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. It so doesn't make sense. It's a guaranteed money loser to value companies based on metrics that nobody else is paying attention to. So we could say, listen, you want to compare Kimberly-Clark today versus its valuation in the 60s and 70s? Sure, have at it. It makes sense. It's a consumer staple stock.

They're selling toilet paper today. They were selling toilet paper then. But to compare this index today versus the index 40 years ago, it's just a fool's errand. You look at what Warren Buffett owns, right? If you dig down the portfolio, it's not the Kimberly-Clarks. But he's known as a Kimberly-Clark guy, right? Kimberly-Clark and now Snowflake and Chinese battery companies. Apple is going to be the biggest winner ever, I think, in terms of market cap.

Yeah. Absolutely. Do we have any more likes? What did we miss? A couple of quick shout outs. Anthony Bourdain, I loved him. It was just when he got on CNN, it was just traveling, meeting strange people,

eating with them, strange food, having great nights. So much fun. I think he had more F-bombs than you did on CNN. I'm not sure. Is that a challenge? Yeah. But it was so sad losing him. And then I also watched – so Roadrunner's out, which is a documentary on his life,

which is really, really good. And then Joe Bell. Have you guys heard about this movie coming out? Okay. So. Oh, is that with DiCaprio or is that something else? No, it's Mark Wahlberg. So both of them are tied to mental health. Right. And one thing, you know, I'm not going to get on a bandwagon here, but a couple of years ago when COVID was going, we were like young entrepreneurial, boom, boom, boom, everything online. Dave Noddig comes in, right? And the guy says, guys, you're running fast. You've got some great

people. You got to slow down every once in a while. Make sure your people are okay. And my partner, Tom, and I, we feel like our heads are on straight, but you know what? You got to take a deep breath every once in a while and check in with people and make sure they're okay. Joe Bell is about this dad in the Midwest whose son is gay. And he's having trouble coming to grips with that. And most importantly, it's take a deep breath, understand what's going on, understand your family. Because in the movie, it doesn't necessarily end well, but you learn a lot. And I, after doing that, said, like, life's too short, you know.

And you guys are young. You get a lot going on. Hey, the money's going to come. And then I know you all will appreciate families and stuff. But, you know, I'm going to squeeze my kids a little extra harder when I get back just after watching this. Did you watch it on the airplane? I actually watched it in New Jersey. Where is this?

Where can you watch? It's on Amazon Prime. Where's Roadrunner? Amazon Prime. Roadrunner is the Tony Bourdain one? Yeah. Okay. It's great.

Yeah, I'll definitely watch that. I mean, look, that guy had the world by the balls, didn't he? Like it made no sense to anybody from the outside looking in, people that didn't know him. It made no sense, but people that did know him knew him in a way that wasn't always caught on camera. Yeah, everyone's always got something. We just have to be more sensitive to it.

Way to bring the ending of the podcast down. We really appreciate it. You got anything else? Do you have any tissues? Listen, I'm going to let that go because I'm looking at a Patrick Ewing card. And I have like a tear in my eye. And all this tequila. And I don't even know how to thank you guys so much for coming.

And Liana, it's been a pleasure as always. I'll see you next week. That's all. Absolutely. Where can people follow? So you're big on? 3773. I know you have a love hate

I have three doormen be careful I know you have a love hate with Instagram but that's like your best platform right now yes

at liana underscore h8wk the hawk okay did you have fun did you have fun today you learned a lot yeah okay we had tequila

during the episode today which I appreciate that's a new thing and I got I appreciate. That's a new thing. And I got a signed bill. That's a new thing. I'm going home with more money than I came with, and that's the goal in life. Now, which of your five companies should we follow you at? What's the best?

Your Twitter? Yeah, ETF Trends, ETF Database, or on Twitter, Tom Lydon. At Tom Lydon on Twitter. Okay. All right. We'll make sure there's links to everything. Special thanks to our friends, Tom and Liana, for coming through. Hope you guys had as much fun as we did.

Thanks, guys. That was a blast. All right. Shout to Duncan. Shout to John. Great job with the charts today, guys. Hey, everybody. If you're into podcasts, make sure you don't miss Animal Spirits.

Ben and Mike, every Monday, every Wednesday, my favorite podcast in all of finance. Make sure you check out clips from today's show on youtube.com slash the compound R W M. We'll see you next time. Tom, this is so ridiculous. So we'll do a little intermission and then we'll do the next six topics. Right. Does that sound good? Yeah, perfect.

You say, you're like, wait, is he? Monkey soup time for me.