The Compound and Friends - The Next Circle IPO, Ric Edelman on Crypto Allocations, Novo Nordisk vs Hims, Dumbflation

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

On this TCAF Tuesday, Josh Brown sits down with Ric Edelman, Founder of Edelman Financial Engines to discuss: how far Bitcoin has come, the correct Bitcoin allocation, Tokenization, Stablecoins, and much more! Then at 01:03:40 hear an all-new episode of What Are Your Thoughts with ⁠⁠⁠Downtown Josh Brown⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠! This episode is sponsored by Public. Find out more at: http://public.com/WAYT   Sign up for ⁠⁠⁠The Compound Newsletter⁠⁠⁠ and never miss out! Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-compound-media/⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@thecompoundnews⁠⁠⁠ All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA & SIPC. Public Investing offers a High-Yield Cash Account where funds from this account are automatically deposited into partner banks where they earn interest and are eligible for FDIC insurance; Public Investing is not a bank. Cryptocurrency trading services are offered by Bakkt Crypto Solutions, LLC (NMLS ID 1890144), which is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the NYSDFS. Cryptocurrency is highly speculative, involves a high degree of risk, and has the potential for loss of the entire amount of an investment. Cryptocurrency holdings are not protected by the FDIC or SIPC. *Rate as of 3/5/25. APY is variable and subject to change. **Terms and Conditions apply. Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Josh Brown are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. 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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the compound and friends. I am your host, downtown Josh Brown. Great to be with you. Tonight's show is brought to us by Public. Invest in almost anything, everything, stocks, bonds, options, crypto and more. Plus, you can still put your cash to work with their high yield cash account currently yielding 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky outdated platform behind.

Public was designed this century. The experience is clean and intuitive. Find out more at public.com slash W A Y T paid for by public investing full disclosures in podcast description. This is a big show. We had Rick Edelman in studio. We talked about Rick's new white paper, which for the first time ever, he's laying out his recommended allocation to digital assets, crypto, not all Bitcoin, by the way, I'll let him explain. It's anywhere from 10 to 40%, depending on who you are and where you are on your journey. And the premise is not just crypto is great, but longevity is going to require you to take more risk than you

may have thought. He says if you're alive by 2030, there's a substantial chance that you'll make it to 100 years old. He thinks we're about to see a wave of disease cures unlike anything we've seen in a really long time. All of the leading causes of death being neutralized by the power of AI enabled drug discovery, hence the need to be more equity and digital asset heavy in our asset allocations. It's a really fascinating conversation. At least I was fascinated by what I learned from Rick and I think you will be as well. After that, it's an all new edition of What Are Your Thoughts with Michael Batnick and I. Michael and I get into the Hims and Hers versus Novo Nordisk explosion that took place this week. We did

a really big thing on the launch of Tesla's Robbo taxi and the Uber and Waymo partnership going live in Atlanta, which happened today. We go deep in some of the next IPOs that potentially could do what Circle just did. For those unaware, Circle, which is a provider of stable coins, had a 168% first day pop. And then it went on to, I don't know, double from there over the last just few days. So of course, everyone is saying, who's the next crypto infrastructure provider coming

public? I want in. So we look at some of the candidates. We do some stuff on AI related layoffs coming to Amazon, dumbflation, which is something I just made up and got a mystery chart and Michael makes the case for a stock that I really don't know anything about. So it's an action packed show. I'm so glad that you're with us. And without any further interruption, I'll send you right into the program. Boys make it happen. Welcome to the compound and friends.

All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnick and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Red Holtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of RIDHOLT's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Pay attention. This is going to be one of the most provocative pieces of asset allocation advice you'll hear all year.

I'm super excited to introduce you to my guest today on Live from the Compound. His name, you need no introduction, but you're going to get one anyway. Rick Edelman. Rick is the founder of Edelman Financial Engines, an RIA with $300 billion plus in AUM. Rick is a New York Times bestselling author and is the founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. Rick's been here before.

Rick, so nice to have you back. Always a pleasure, Josh. How's that for an intro? Oh, I loved it. I mean, that was as if I wrote it. All right, you have a white paper out. Nobody has seen this yet, my understanding is. It's coming out today or?

Brand new today. Brand new today, all right. I read it over the weekend. Thank you for that. And I kind of, I know the way you write and I kind of expected some hyperbole and this did not disappoint. The paper is called The Death of 6040 and Why Your Crypto Allocation Should Be 10 to 40%. I want to give people the background before we dive into the paper

itself. Sure. There's a very short list of people from the traditional wealth management, financial planning industry that have been bullish on crypto since triple digits. You're in that group. I think it's like you, Matt Hogan, Tyrone Ross, there's probably four or five other names, but that's it. You've been, I guess at this point, you could consider yourself to be crypto native.

Tell us a little bit about that background before we dive into what you're proposing today. Sure. Well, as you know, I'm an RAA first, having created EFE, but I'm always focused on what's next, what's coming to anticipate what our clients are going to need. And that's what most of my books are all about, not just what you should do today, but what you should plan for in the future. You think big and on long timelines. I try to.

In 2012, I was introduced to Bitcoin. And like everybody else, I wasn't looking for it. It came to me. And my first reaction was the same as everybody. Huh, what? Digital money? Made no sense. But the people who were talking about it with me

were really smart. And I figured if they get it and I don't, there must be a there there. So I need to figure this out to understand what they know. The people themselves were too smart to dismiss it out of hand. Correct. And that's what I find most do

when they first hear about Bitcoin. They wave it off as either a fad or a fraud. If it isn't tulip bulbs, it's a beanie baby. And they just ignore it. And if you're not intellectually curious, you shouldn't be managing other people's money. So I've always been curious. And so I delved into it in 2013 to figure out what is this? Is it real? Should I care? And I concluded pretty quickly two things. Number

one, crypto blockchain technology is transformative, will alter commerce on a global scale. Second, those of us in the traditional financial services industry don't know that because we didn't invent it. It came outside of Wall Street. And so I created DACFP, the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, in 2015 as a crypto education company. We don't manage money, we're not endorsing Bitcoin. We're simply trying to help you understand what is it and why should you care

and what role does it play in your financial planning practice, if any? And so I first started investing in Bitcoin when it was about 700 bucks. Yeah. And have never sold, been investing ever since in it and other aspects of crypto. In fairness to the people who dismissed it early on, the original idea behind crypto

was not as a portfolio allocation because it's an investable instrument. The original idea was not was not as a portfolio allocation because it's an investable instrument. The original idea was not crypto, it was cryptocurrency. And I think that's the part that number one has not been fulfilled. And number two is where people got off because they said, I have a visa, I have dollars, I don't see what problem this solves. Now we think of it more as, no, actually, this is an investment in the network itself. And it's probably best thought of as a replacement for something like gold.

And that, I think, is a big thing that's changed, Bitcoin specifically. I would agree with you. It has matured and developed and expanded in ways that were never anticipated in 2009 when it first came into the marketplace. And you weren't crazy back in 2012 or 2017 or 2022 not to have invested. In fact, my white paper back in January was on the six biggest myths

that are preventing people from investing today. And myth number one is, I don't want to admit I was wrong in not investing. You weren't wrong. It's a big one. Yeah, you weren't wrong. You were smart. You were prudent.

You were a professional. That's why you didn't buy it. It was uncertain. It was untested. We didn't know what the government reaction was going to be. We didn't know if it would become technologically obsolete. And it was wildly volatile.

You were smart not to buy it back then. You were prudent. But that was then. Today is totally different. As you noted, Josh, the circumstances, the environment, the technology, the institutional and government adoption radically different. And that is why you need a fresh new look. You and I had a conversation at the bottom of the last crypto winter in Austin at your DACFP event. Right. And I remember being on stage with you. And this is around the time where the political

witch hunt is in full flame. They are literally arresting people, charging people, hunting people internationally. Sam Bankman Freed's fraud had just unraveled. Celebrities were being served lawsuits for appearing in Super Bowl commercials for various crypto websites. And it really felt like those were the most pitch black times for the asset class, if you will. And you were fairly steadfast. I was coming from the perspective of I'm a fiduciary and I'm regulated and whatever my opinions are on crypto, the government has different opinions and I'm a fiduciary and I'm regulated and whatever my opinions are on crypto, the government

has different opinions and I'm staying out of the fight. We went from that moment, I think within a year, to there was a guy running for office who wants to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve. It was one of the biggest about faces societ societally, societally, I've ever seen for an investable asset. You see it that way? Very much so. And yet back then, when you and I were on stage together,

there was no certainty that that was going to happen. No. Which is another reason why you were prudent not to engage. It was also incredibly cumbersome and difficult, inconvenient, and a little scary to engage because there was no established method within the securities regulated environment to do that.

And so you aren't crazy to stay on the sidelines. I'm the one who was probably crazy by boldly going as early as I did. But today it's radically different. Today we have ETFs that invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum. We have buffer ETFs, yield ETFs. We have options trading, a massive options market. We have endowments, pension funds, institutional investors, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds.

You also have record highs, which helps everyone and everything. Isn't that notorious? We all love to buy at the high and sell at the low. Go figure. Right. So the wins that are backs. The Trump administration has reversed

all of the Biden era prohibitions that existed. That Gary Gensler is out at the SEC. We have now every political appointee of Trump, a strong crypto supporter from the secretary of the Treasury, labor, commerce, the head of the SBA, the head of OCC, CFTC, SEC, FDIC, all of them strong crypto supporters. Everybody in Congress, majority of both parties are strong crypto supporters, including the key chairs of the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, the Agriculture Committee and the Digital Asset Subcommittees. This is why you're seeing massive movement toward acceptance and engagement.

And now for the first time, banks and brokerage firms are allowed to trade custody and engage in Bitcoin and crypto the way they do every other asset class. There are guidelines now. When prior it was here's the existing security law, go figure it out for yourself. And if you don't dot one I, we're coming for you. And that's over. The poster child of how bad it was, was when the Department of Labor in 2022 said that any 401k plan sponsor that dares offer Bitcoin in their plan, we're going to investigate

you and take appropriate action. Scared the bejeebers out of everybody in the cave. They put a bank out of business. Signature bank was clearing or custodying crypto and they knocked it over. They wouldn't even allow banks to open bank accounts of crypto companies. That's right.

And so they- They knocked over a bank for custodying a crypto business. Not the crypto itself, just the dollars that the bank was earning. Almost like the concern with federal Banking rules and cannabis they they kind of like it was the same. Yeah, okay Um, I want to ask you one more question about the past and then we'll get to the present in the future It seems to me that this could have gone either way

The Democrats could have been the leading proponents politically of crypto when you think about the angle of we need remittances that aren't so expensive for people who are trying to send money back home. That's obviously a Democrat issue. We need to bank the unbanked. Of course, that would be bread and butter, a Democrat issue. But I think the combination of Elizabeth Warren being basically a no on anything that looks like innovation and maybe some alignment between very online people on Twitter who are libertarian

being also in the most vocally pro crypto camp, just kind of kept the Democrats in a stance where they were pushing it away. They wanted nothing to do with it, but it didn't have to go that way. The Republicans embraced it. Number one, they saw the money there, and they saw that that money could be, if channeled properly through political action committees,

could be very powerful to unseat incumbents as it did in, for example, Ohio. They also saw that it was of a piece with just deregulating finance in general. And I think for whatever reason, it was on the fence and it fell over into being a Republican technology, a Republican idea. Do you see it the same way that it was almost one but it ended up being the other? Yeah, I do, Josh.

As always, you're right on top of all of this. There were two major issues philosophically. First, Elizabeth Warren and her ilk hate loss of control. They wanna be able to put their thumb on commerce, generally speaking. Decentralizing makes it harder Very much. to have your hands on every speaking. And. Decentralizing makes it harder. Very much. To have your hands on every transaction.

Exactly. Okay. The second issue is that remember that Donald Trump in 2017 said that he thought Bitcoin was only good for scams and frauds. He was opposed to crypto, but you fast forward to this past election season in 2024. And he recognized two things and you cited one of them. last election season in 2024. And he recognized two things and you cited one of them. Number one, he recognized that the crypto community

had amassed $200 million in PAC money that they were distributing to pro crypto candidates. Up for grabs. Up for grabs. Biden wasn't grabbing it, Kamala Harris wasn't grabbing it. So Trump decided to. Second is that 60 million US adults, in other words, voters,

personally own Bitcoin. Is that a third of the adults in the country? Yeah, and Biden and Harris were threatening to render Bitcoin worthless. And that said to those 60 million adults, we're going to confiscate your money. Yeah, guess what? I'm not an independent anymore. These people want to ruin my life, and these people are open-minded. So Trump... I think I know who I want to ruin my life and these people are open-minded. So Trump... I think I know who I want to align with.

Trump goes to the Bitcoin conference in the summer of 24 and announces, I want to make the United States the crypto capital of the planet. Ta-da! He gets the crypto vote and he gets the crypto PAC money. And that significantly helped in his movement toward the election. Yeah, there's this big shock like why did Gen Z, why did young males, young white males who ordinarily would be up for grabs in every district, in every region. Well, it turns out they really like crypto.

And they found the same thing, by the way, with every race, young men of every race are highly interested in crypto. And the Democrats were just like seeding that vote. There were 59 Senate and House races where crypto was a major political issue. And the pro crypto candidate won in 57 of the 59. Wow.

Including Ohio that you mentioned, Bernie Moreno, who I had as keynoting at my crypto conference this year that you did two years ago. Bernie Moreno unseeded Sherrod Brown, who was the powerful chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. He had been in Congress 18 years. And Bernie Marino, who was a crypto entrepreneur, who's one of the most impactful in the blockchain field, unseated him. Right. And this was one of, I think, one of the unsung biggest motivators to get people out to vote

who probably had never voted before. But you said something really important that is worth elaborating, and you use the word remittances. Because even today, what a lot of advisors say to me is, I get it, I understand the hype, I hear all this stuff, but... There's no use case. Why do we need it? What's the big deal? These are people who are very comfortable living middle class, upper class lives. They've never had the need to send money somewhere.

And that's the whole point is that as an American, we really don't need crypto if you think about it because we have a banking system. Look, we all love to hate banks, but it works pretty darn well. We get our paychecks direct deposited. We're on automatic bill pay. We know the money is there. It's not going to get lost or absconded by the government, it might get eroded by inflation horribly,

but we all just shrug at that one. That's true in the United States, but it isn't true for a billion people around the world, where they have corrupt governments that nationalize bank accounts, where you have unstable currencies with massive inflation like Argentina, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, El Salvador.

That people forced into money laundering activities because they're afraid of what their government will do inflation like Argentina, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, El Salvador. And people forced into money laundering activities because they're afraid of what their government will do to the value of their assets. Or even the people, as you said, who are unbanked or underbanked, a billion according to the UN. In fact, FDIC says 7% of US households, 20 million households, don't have enough money to open a bank account because of the minimum deposits or the fees associated. And if you don't have a bank account you're excluded from the financial services industry. Good luck getting a

job if you don't have a bank account to have direct deposit. Good luck being able to pay your bills or even store your money safely other than under your mattress. So crypto is important for the 7 billion people around the world who aren't lucky enough to live in a first world nation. So this is one of the reasons why I think the greatest innovation of the entire crypto revolution so far. Yes, of course, Bitcoin is the most exciting thing to happen and people have made a ton of money. But stable coins really are the answer to what you were just discussing.

Somebody asked me to explain a stable coin probably four years ago. I'm explaining it to elderly Jewish grandparents, people that they don't need to understand this. It's fine. But they wanted to, they were curious. The idea of a dollar being worth a dollar all over the world, no matter where you go,

it's not an anti-US dollar idea, it's actually a pro-US dollar idea. And the way I put it to them is that their parents probably arrived on Ellis Island with just the garments on their back and sewn into the lining of a jacket would be a few diamonds or some gold. Whatever they could carry but needed to carry secretly to literally establish a new life here. This is the way stablecoins, this is the revolution that we could see. You've got refugee populations all over the world. You've got people forced not only to leave their country,

but leave their part of the country, go to another part of the country, transporting wealth while you're literally fleeing for your life. If there's a digital solution that you can upload everything you own into the cloud, arrive somewhere else, get yourself settled, and then download that wealth back to yourself, it seems very 2025. And you don't even need a bank account. You don't even need a smartphone.

An ordinary cell phone is all you need to do this. And it allows you to send money home to mama who's still in the old country after you immigrate to the United States for economic opportunity. And about $1.2 trillion is moved every year from one country to another by immigrants sending money back home to mama.

And mama doesn't need a bank account. She doesn't need to live anywhere near a bank. And this is transformative on a global scale. Okay, so your white paper, I'm going to, I'm going to, should I quote from you? I want you to tell the story, but let me like give people the, let's not bury the lead. The traditional 60-40 stock bond allocation model is dead. Oh no, not that again. This is due to unprecedented rates of longevity brought about by remarkable advances

in exponential technologies. After 39 years in the financial services field, I'm announcing for the first time the correct crypto allocation. Conservative investors should now have 10% of their assets in crypto. Moderate should have 25%. And you say aggressive clients, I'm reading that as younger or more willing to bear risk, should allocate 40% of their investments to crypto.

Is that scientific? Is that ballpark? Like how do you come up with that number? I'll call it a little bit of ballpark, but there is some science behind it. There are some MPT statistics that support all of this. The fundamental thing is that, and yes, we've been hearing for a couple of years now,

60-40 is dead. I take a little bit of a different approach by putting the longevity curve on it. We are still, most advisors, using the 60-40 model as the base case, and as the client reaches their 70s, they're radically reducing the 60. Yeah, 80% bonds, 20% stocks, and then falling from there.

We've been doing that since I got in this business in the 1980s. This is so out of date because we're living longer than ever. 90% of all the people in world history, whoever made it to age 90, are alive right now. Odds are really good, according to the scientists who study this stuff, that if you're alive in 2030, that's just four and a half years from now, if you're alive in 2030, odds are high, you'll live to age 100 or beyond. If that proves true.

Stocks will not be enough. Exactly. And bonds will certainly lose ground to inflation. So we need allocations of 70-30, 80-20, and well into your 80s, not simply into your 60s. So we need to have a much more equity allocation. Crypto is the ultimate of all equities. And when you look at the development of this technology

and you compare it to the expectations that the world has for the growth and development of the S&P 500, or tech stocks, or other market sectors, everybody that I have encountered is in pretty strong agreement. Crypto will outperform other market sectors, everybody that I have encountered is in pretty strong agreement. Crypto will outperform other market sectors for the next decade. Now, where does the crypto allocation comes from?

Directly out of stocks or not necessarily? Yes, in other words, if you're going to increase your equity allocation to 80%, then half of that ought to be crypto-based, and the other half should be more typical equities. I want to show somebody the first of several graphics that come from your white paper. John, can you put projected 2030 market size on screen? So what you're doing here is talking about exponential technology in general and you categorize Bitcoin and tokenization as being in this exponential technology bucket. I know I know I know your work well enough to tell people when Rick talks about exponential technology

He's not talking about fang stocks. He's talking he's not talking about social media and cell phones. He's talking about literally life-changing technologies that will change the curve of how long people live Change the way we live our lives change the curve of how long people live, change the way we live our lives, change the way we transport things. So in this list, you've got for people listening, obviously robotics, wearables, big data, cybersecurity, blockchain, Internet of Things, Metaverse. Each of those technologies is five trillion or smaller projected 2030 market size.

But then you've got two outliers. You've got tokenization, which you think is a $16 trillion exponential technology market and Bitcoin at 19 trillion. These aren't revenue numbers, these are asset. This is the market cap. So this is the amount of money invested in these things. Yeah, this is about what the value of these industries are going to be. So how do you calculate?

Because some of these things, like multiple of these technologies, would all fall under one umbrella for certain companies. Wearables and robotics, for example, come to mind. So how do you tease out these dollar amounts? Where do these numbers come from? The tokenization projection comes from both McKinsey and from the Boston Consulting Group. Tokenization is in its infancy today and everybody in the financial services sector is racing to develop and expand the tokenization marketplace. I posted on LinkedIn about a

month ago, got 40,000 hits when I said that ETFs won't exist by the end of the decade. They'll all be replaced by tokenization. Tokenization is the new thing in asset management. We know how ETFs have revolutionized the money management industry compared to mutual funds. We know how mutual funds did it to individual securities and tokens are going to be the thing that out does ETFs. Walk me through that. So SPY probably has 300 billion in it or something like that, right? Yeah.

Okay, so that's the largest ETF. It's the most plain vanilla. It's the S&P 500. It trades every day. Liquid is water. How does tokenization improve that product? It's not liquid as water. That's part of the problem.

Okay. Is that you- Is a bid ask spread of two cents? There's not liquid as water. That's part of the problem. Okay. Is that you- Is it a bid ask spread of two cents? There's a significant bid ask spread. When you add it up for over time, that is a significant spread. You also have a far higher cost, even though it's what, five bits.

It's a far higher cost than needs to be. You also have significant friction because of the intermediary functionality of this. You have to take your money, give it to a broker, put it in a brokerage account. That brokerage account has to deal with counterparty. The whole process takes a while. And worst of all, you can only do this

Monday through Friday, 9.30 to four, except for holidays. That's changing too, but yeah. Slowly, and the whole settlement process of T plus one, we're going to T plus immediate. We're going to a frictionless environment. Instant settlement. Totally instantaneous, totally transparent, We're going to T plus immediate. We're going to a frictionless environment. It's the settlement. Totally instantaneous, totally transparent, no intermediary, and most important, total

safety from a cybersecurity perspective. We've seen the hacks of everybody with the exception of the Bitcoin blockchain. These decentralized blockchains are far safer from a cybersecurity perspective than any other technology developed. The transparency is better than anything we have seen. The ability to be inclusive is better than anything because of the demonetization that occurs and the democratization that arises allowing anybody to engage in fractionalized shares is why we're going to take current shares of stocks and ETFs of stocks and turn

them into tokens of stocks. Which will happen first. Individual companies' stocks become tokenized or baskets like ETFs. Both are already underway. You already see crypto companies that are providing this opportunity already in its infancy, but it goes beyond stocks.

You're gonna be able to see tokenization of real estate first. The first tokenized project was in 2018, a condo here in Manhattan. The St. Regis and Aspen was tokenized. Major buildings in Dubai are being tokenized because the global real estate market is three times bigger than the global stock market. Does tokenizing a piece of real estate turn it into a de facto security? Absolutely. And that's part of the good news because we take a highly expensive illiquid asset and we now make it liquid and

Demonetized because nobody can afford except pension funds and insurance companies. Let's take the let's take the Aspen example walk us through this So what whose resort is this st. Regis? St. Regis. Okay, so I don't know let's hypothetically say it's a St. Regis? St. Regis. Okay, so I don't know, let's hypothetically say it's a hundred million dollar facility. Yeah, turn into a token of 10 bucks a piece. Okay, so now somebody that wants to be a resident there and own a piece of the property

can buy it in smaller increments via tokenization. They do not have to sign paperwork and become a k1 right LP of whatever private equity firm controls it Now all of a sudden it can trade somebody owns it they could sell it somebody new can come in Is that tied at all to having a residence there? No, we're not at all. First of all, it's a hotel so you're just an investor, okay, you're just an investor and Being an investor, you know, I remember when Wrigley Gums sent chewing gum to all their shareholders every year. If you go to the St. Regis and you own one of these tokens,

they'll give you a discount on the room. Now you own this, what do you get? Is there a cash flow that's paid through in a tokenized way or do you just own effectively equity in the property that you can sell at hopefully a higher price? You own equity in the property and what some of these tokens are doing are sending what are called airdrops, which is essentially a dividend, uh, where you get more, you know, in-kind payments. So you get more tokens.

Exactly. Uh, is that dilutive or is that coming from someone else? No, it's not dilutive because, um, you're getting, well, you could argue it's dilutive in the same way a stock dividend that's paid in kind. Exactly, you could argue that. It is taxable. There's some debate in tax circles as to you pay the tax on a receipt or do you pay the tax when you sell it.

It's an example where the IRS has to create more regs of clarity in the crypto space. But let me give you a more fundamental example of how transformative this is. Because yeah, we can do this to the IBM building. we can do it to the Sears Tower, we can do it to name your big building where individual investors are excluded because they don't have the money to engage. Now if you demonetize by offering $10 tokens on a billion dollar building, everybody can

participate. Turn it into your house. We know that for most Americans, their home is their biggest asset. When they reach retirement, it's an illiquid asset, they need more income in retirement, they don't want to sell the house, they don't want to reverse mortgage. We certainly don't want that. So they can now tokenize that million dollar house into a million tokens of a dollar each, selling them off as they choose to generate income. Now why would somebody, I understand the reason to sell it, you're creating liquidity without losing the house. Right. Why would somebody

buy a tokenized interest in my house? For the same reason you would make any real estate investment. We know that institutional investors own 30% of all the residential real estate in Denver and in Phoenix and a lot of other major cities. They recognize that they can generate growth from appreciation.

They can also generate tax benefits from being a real estate investor. They also can when that property gets rented turn it into rental income. So the same reason applies. In other words, you're not doing this as an investor for anything unusual. It's simply becoming available. So we're tokenizing exotic cars. They have no vote. They have no say. So if I have a home that is listed at two million dollars and I decide I'm going gonna paint the whole thing black, and I'm gonna, I don't know, put spikes on the roof,

and I'm gonna allow, I don't know, like all manner of disruption to the value of the home, you the token holder have no say. That's what makes it, separates it from shareholder votes in a corporation with the board of directors. Unless, you're right, unless that home is being tokenized via a Dow a decentralized autonomous organ in that case the homeowner is part of that decision yes in that case everyone who owns a token has a vote okay gotcha all right so tokenization you think

is going to be as big as the market value in Bitcoin. I'll give you a simple example. Look at Franklin Templeton, which is leading the way in tokenization, and BlackRock, which is doing this as well. Larry Fink's letter last week, his annual shareholder letter, cited tokenization as the next major thing. In other words, instead of having 15 or 20 asset classes that we currently use to build a portfolio, you're going to have 15,000 asset classes.

Everything will be tokenized, from comic books and rare coins to artwork, exotic cars, old wines. Everything you can think of that is a real world asset will have a token associated with it, creating astonishing opportunities for portfolio customization. So this would be part of that, let's say hypothetical, 40% allocation into crypto. Correct. It's not all Bitcoin and ETH. Correct. There would be tokenized real estate

would fill a slot, let's say, hypothetically. As well as the companies that are making all this happen. So companies like Coinbase, which are the crypto exchanges where you'll trade, companies that are providing the crypto tokenization that facilitate the development of these real world assets into digital tokens. Companies like the digital banks the crypto tokenization that facilitate the development of these real world assets into digital tokens.

Companies like the digital banks that are allowing you to hold the assets. Companies like Circle, which has just gone public, a major stable coin company. So you would throw those equities into the crypto bucket? Correct. Okay. And they're getting big? Yes. And the whole point being you want diversification in crypto the same way you want diversification

in equities. So let's talk Circle for a moment. Came public about a week and a half ago. You want diversification in crypto the same way you want diversification in equities. So let's talk circle for a moment. Came public about a week and a half ago. Seventh largest IPO of all time. Only raised a billion dollars. I guess I shouldn't say only. That would have been unthinkable two years ago that a crypto company was going to raise

a billion dollars on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ. But they did. The stock, I think, has quadrupled since coming public. Obviously what that demonstrates is massive institutional demand for companies that have figured out a way to become a cornerstone of the crypto ecosystem. Undeniable. You don't have to buy it. You don't like the valuation. What you can't deny is that other people do. Exactly right. And you have to understand why that is and why Congress is passing as its first crypto bill a genius act a stable coin bill yeah it's the low-hanging fruit because everybody

even Elizabeth Warren has to admit that stable coins matter because they strengthen and support the dollar rather than compete with it and this is why the Treasury Department loves state we affirm the importance of the that they we have formed the the centricity of the dollar in the global financial system by pegging their value to the dollar. When you buy, when you take your dollar, turn it into a stablecoin, they take that and put it into a USD bill. Very specifically, part of the Genius Act precludes stablecoins themselves from paying

interest because they don't want this new technology to immediately render the banking system. Let's just call it redundant for now. Which is why BlackRock and Franklin both created on chain money market funds that look an awful lot like stable coins, except they do pay yield. And they don't call them stable coins. They don't call them stable coins. They call them on chain money market funds. You don't buy them in a brokerage account. They they don't call them stable coins. They don't call them stable coins. They call them on-chain money market funds.

You don't buy them in a brokerage account. They're an online app on your phone. They are cheaper and therefore higher yielding and they're safer, they're immediate, they're 24-7-365 and they've already, between the two of them, amassed nearly $3 trillion. Are they investing in the same traditional money market instruments that

a money market mutual fund would? Yes. Okay, so they're buying treasuries, treasuries, commercial paper. Okay. Are they rated? Do the ratings agencies even look at these or not yet? I haven't noticed, but if they do get rated, they would be rated AAA like all the other money market funds. Okay. One of the things about Circle that's come up since the success of its share price is how reliant the company is on the continued partnership with Coinbase. It's the house stablecoin at Coinbase. The problem is it pays Coinbase a ton of money in what we refer to as distribution costs. And paradoxically, the more money that comes into Circle via Coinbase accounts, the higher those payments go,

but not in a proportional way. And this is, I think, at the heart of the bear case on Circle, but maybe there's more to the story that I don't understand. I know, I'll even expand on that point. Everybody's paying attention to the Bitcoin ETFs with a hundred billion dollars in assets. Almost all of them custody their Bitcoin at Coinbase. They all pay Coinbase fees. The funny thing is Coinbase is making much more money on these ETFs than any of the ETF sponsors are.

In custody fees. Exactly. Okay. And we've centralized because of that Coinbase is a centralized crypto exchange. We've centralized a decentralized technology, which the crypto maximalists saying, this is nuts. Why are we doing this? This wasn't what Satoshi had in mind. Wait, hold on. Coinbase is making all the money and Coinbase's top shareholder is BlackRock, second shareholders Vanguard. What did we

do? And it's trading in the S&P. Right. Let's put this Tether graphic up, John. I thought this was an interesting slide. You're saying this explains why Tether, the largest stable coin, generated 13 billion in EBITDA in 2024. Nobody knows that, by the way. More profit than dozens of America's largest corporations. So take that 13 billion in cash flow that Tether generated. That's more money than McDonald's, John Deere, BlackRock, GE, Salesforce, Target, Ford, Abbot Labs, Delta, IBM,

Charles Schwab. Can that be true? Think about this. I'm going to give you money. Yeah. You're going to manage it for me for free. You're going to take the money and buy treasuries. No return for you.

None. Right. All you want back is access to the money. Nominally, the dollars that you put in. Right. And I could do whatever I want. And you're gonna put the money in treasuries and you're gonna keep the yield. This is maybe the greatest business, this is maybe the greatest business that nobody

believes in. Why the hell didn't I think of this back in 2012? Right, Tether is super controversial because of, and I haven't been keeping up to date, but the complaint about Tether is nobody knows what they're actually investing in. And this is the reason for the Genius Act, is that there's no regulation right now.

Tether's offshore, and there's no requirement that they buy treasuries. There's no requirement that they disclose what they're doing with the money. Will they conform now in the wake of this this law passing? It's, well the law hasn't been signed yet but that's the anticipation. This is why Circle went public first because they're a US-based company. They're conforming to all US laws. They're doing audits, they're doing disclosures, they're conforming to all US laws. They're doing audits, they're doing disclosures, they're conforming to all US rules that exist and they're going to conform to the Stable Act. And that's why it was easier for everybody

to support a circle IPO than a tether IPO. If JP Morgan has a coin and Fidelity has a stable coin, Fidelity has a stable coin, and someday probably Schwab has a stable coin, and this just becomes a standard thing that all large financial institutions offer. Is it too late? Has Circle already built up the network effects to where they're unassailable?

Or do you think there will be many of these? There's going to be many. It's not too late for everyone to get engaged because even Circle doesn't have all that much money yet. Nobody's got trillions of dollars, which is why all the major banks, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citi and Wells, have announced a consortium to jointly create a stable coin they'll all use.

Fiserv just announced yesterday that they're creating a stable coin that their 3,000 community and regional banks are gonna use. And two weeks ago, Amazon and Walmart independently announced they're going to create their own stable coins. Okay.

Basically, remember when you went, you used to go to Disney and they had Disney dollars? Yes. Well, you now are going to be a customer at Walmart. It's going to be like loyalty rewards structure. So if they can get you to download the app, because that's your wallet and it's filled with Walmart digital dollars that either from returns or whatever you have, no one's going to walk away from that money. Exactly right.

And you also have the benefit, I believe, of Walmart and Amazon with their reputational concerns. They're not going to let anything go wrong with that stablecoin. Will there be interoperability between there? So if you're a regular consumer, you probably don't want to hold current seven different currencies You probably don't want your dollars and all these different stable coins becomes really difficult to manage and understand what you have Is that the role that coinbase plays or will the banks play that role? Who's gonna help you keep track and keep custody of everything?

I think that's going to be a huge business opportunity as someone is going to come out being the Fundamental wallet of choice. Switzerland. Exactly, that holds and facilitates arrangements with everybody else. Think about, I mean, I've got a PayPal account and a Venmo account and a Zelle account. How annoying.

So annoying. And so having a single provider that gives me access, you know, a hub and spoke approach is where the future's gonna be. Okay, now you are not counting stable coins in this crypto allocation because they're effectively a yield free money market. It's worse than cash. Correct, yeah, you're right.

From an investible standpoint. Yes, correct. Okay, so that's not part of what you're doing. Correct. Okay, got it. Let's put this graphic up with the allocations. So walk me through what this means. It's a graphic ranging from 0% crypto up to 40 with Bitcoin valuations.

Yeah. So these are two projected outcomes. So the theory is you take a 60-40 portfolio, you invest $100 for five years. We're going to ignore taxes. If you have a zero allocation, that's a typical 60-40 at the top of the chart. If Bitcoin blows up and becomes worthless, you have a 100% loss.

At the end of five years, because you didn't own any crypto, your 100 bucks at 7% a year, is that a reasonable 60-40? Yeah, we'll take it. So 100 bucks over 7%, five years, 100 bucks grows to 140 bucks. No problem.

On the other hand, what if Bitcoin does as great as it might? And a lot of the projections, you mentioned Matt Hogan earlier, a lot of folks are projecting that Bitcoin is going to be a million dollars. You're at 500,000 now? Yes. Okay. We'll get into that in a second. That's a, we'll call it a 10 X increase from its current price of about 100,000. So if that were to occur, Bitcoin's future price is far higher.

It grows 10x over the next five years. If you have a 10% allocation and Bitcoin becomes worthless, the future price of your portfolio will be $126. That's if Bitcoin is zero. Because you got the gains from stocks, you got the gains from bonds, you lost everything in the 10% crypto sleeve. You still wind up going from 100 to 126. Disappointing relative to 140, but not catastrophic.

If things go right, you're now 236. And that's if Bitcoin hits a million. Hits a million bucks per Bitcoin. And there you see the 25% allocation and the 40%. So even at a 25% allocation, if Bitcoin becomes worthless, in five years, you still have more than you started with. You've got 105 bucks, even if Bitcoin goes totally broke. Bitcoin goes to, you have 25% allocated, let's just say strictly in Bitcoin. Yeah.

Okay. You have 25% allocated, let's just say strictly in Bitcoin. Yeah. Okay. If Bitcoin goes to zero from $100,000 per coin today, you go from $100 in your portfolio to 105. Yeah. So it sucks. And you lost a big chunk of your assets to Bitcoin,

but the rest of the portfolio bailed you out. Yeah. You're still no worse off than where you started. You don't have much profit, but at least you didn't lose money. Now, this is a great thought exercise, but as you know, and everyone knows listening to this, in reality, most people are not going to allocate once. They're going to allocate over the course of their life,

which complicates the return assumption, but the illustration is still worthwhile. Absolutely, and we know that from dollar cost averaging, by slowly adding to your portfolio, you improve the NPT statistics. Well, most people will do the opposite. Well, true. They'll buy high and sell low. They'll buy.

They'll take a 1% allocation at 100, and then at 150, they'll raise it to 10%. No question. OK. This is just human nature. We can't fix that. And we also, you can't fix stupid, right? And we also know that people aren't gonna rebalance the way that they should.

They're not gonna tax holes harvest the way that they should. So this is an incredibly simple example of a one time investment buy and hold for five years. And it shows pretty compellingly that the worst case scenario ain't so bad. And compared to the upside, because the upside has such incredible potential that it dwarfs the downside.

One thing that's interesting to consider, and we don't know this because we only have 15 years of Bitcoin data, a lot of people make claims, oh, it's correlated with the stock market, oh, it's correlated with gold, oh, it has no correlation to anything at all, which is probably the truth at this point. But there are periods of time where it looks just like the NASDAQ. And I think the nightmare scenario for investors considering a 10% allocation is, well, let's say I've in this scenario, 10%, I'll have 50% of my money in stocks, 40 in bonds, 10 crypto. Okay.

In that scenario, think about how dominant technology stocks are in the S&P piece. So I get wiped out there, 30% bear market, and I lose 50% in crypto, I de-worsified my portfolio. That's the thing that I think makes people the most nervous. Yeah, but is it any worse than just owning the S&P? Well, I don't know, you know what happens. Yeah, I mean, in the S&P, as you noted,

a third are in the Magnificent 7, a third of all the money. So is it any worse having a third of your equities in seven stocks, as opposed to having a third of your money there plus another 10% elsewhere? Well, if Bitcoin acts exactly like Nvidia does, I'll let you know. And so a lot of people would say, yes, this is worse, but not necessarily. But I would also argue that we're talking about a static environment and we know that as life actually evolves, we're going to evolve our portfolio management. Fair. You make a pretty pointed remark toward the end of the paper

that I wanted to share with people. And I think one of the things that you talk about is you can't have an investment that's gone up 1000X and still have the same opinion of it as you did at the beginning. And then you cross over and say, not only is it responsible to make sure your clients are allocated to Bitcoin, it's actually irresponsible

not to. A lot of people would say like, well, I also don't allocate to REITs. Is that irresponsible? I also don't allocate to international small caps. Is that irresponsible? So I still so I do think that there is room for the crypto skeptic to say, okay, that's your opinion. My opinion is that's just speculating on price with no cash flows, no fundamental underpinnings. And I think Rick is crazy. How do you answer that? Yeah. I'm sure you have before. A couple of different ways. First, I get it. You know, that's a- Well, what's your exact wording? I can't find where I got this from. Where I talked about whether you're a fiduciary or simply an order taker.

Yeah, all right. So let's cue off of that. I get the skepticism, but to say that it doesn't generate any cash flows. Well, that might be true of Bitcoin, but it certainly isn't true of Circle or of Coinbase or of other companies in the crypto space that are equities. or of other companies in the crypto space that are equities. So I think it's a misnomer to simply equate the entire universe of blockchain technology with Bitcoin. You might be making an argument, you don't want to buy Bitcoin. Fine.

That doesn't mean you stay out of the asset class entirely. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you believe in passive investing, which I think most advisors do these days, and portfolio diversification, then you would argue that you want to basically own the market. That's why you're buying the S&P 500. This is now part of the market. This is crypto represents 3% of the market.

So if you own zero, you're essentially shorting the market. 3% of all the wealth in the world? 3% of the US wealth. If you add up stocks and bonds and real estate and gold and etc, etc, you would discover that there's about $111 trillion worth of wealth in America. And the crypto market is three trillion. That's roughly 3% of the total market. OK, so what's interesting is that's how it flips.

So originally it was I don't. Originally, it was more like I choose to make no decision on Bitcoin. I'm just not involved. Now if you have no crypto exposure and don't offer it at least as an option to clients, your point is you are making an active decision now. Now you're not just abdicating your... Or now you're not just saying,'re not just like abdicating your your or now you're not just saying I'll leave it up to the client now you're actually actively deciding right as a fiduciary I don't invest in crypto and you might end

up being right for some period of time but you're it's active it's no longer a hands-off thing exactly right okay and so my challenge to advisors is merely to make an informed decision. Don't go on assumption or conjecture or the recent past of five years ago where the world of crypto was totally different. I want you to prove to me that the claims you're making as to reasons not to invest are valid today. They might have been valid five years ago. That doesn't mean they're valid today. Because if you are relying on incorrect or outdated information, you're making a mistake

that could harm your client's financial future. This is you. If you're fearful that recommending crypto could cause a client to fire you, then you're suffering from a conflict of interest. And you know that if you can't avoid a conflict of interest, you are required to disclose it. So simply explain that to your client. Quote, from my research and training, I'm convinced that crypto belongs as a part of

your diversified portfolio, but I've been afraid to tell you that out of concern that you might terminate our relationship. May I share with you why adding digital assets to your portfolio is in your best interests without my worrying that you'll fire me. Do you get the sense that a lot of advisors really think they'll be fired for broaching the subject? Yeah, I hear it all the time. I think it's the opposite. I hear it all the time, Josh. These must be people servicing extremely, a population of much older people is the bulk of their business. I would agree with that. These are folks who are saying, look,

I don't want to push my client into doing two or 3% in Bitcoin because they'll be so angry at that. And they said to me, don't ever dare talk to me about Bitcoin. I don't want to risk my client's relationship over a 3% allocation. You have the obligation then to at least explain why they should listen Yes, and not force them to do it But just say this is why I'm doing this with my other clients because the clients themselves don't have the facts They have the same misconceptions. Yeah, that you have they see like, you know what they see Stick a banana to the wall with duct tape. It's it's in, asshole's gonna buy it. They see NFTs, they see Sam Bankman free.

And all of those things are real. They read about a different scam being busted in the newspaper. And half of them are Democrats listening to Warren. Right, who is demonizing the space since day one. So it's not without reason that these concerns exist among all the investors. So let's take the extremism out of it,

let's take the politics out of it, let's take the emotion out of it, and simply say, I'd like to talk with you about why I think this might make sense for you, I'm just afraid that you'll fire me by making you mad. And if you put it in that kind of context, the client would be like, all right, I'm willing to listen. The conclusion may be the same, but at least it's an informed decision. I

Would imagine with the success of bitcoins price? Coinbase near record highs Circle being the biggest IPO of the year outside of core weave I would imagine that these conversations have only just gotten easier and easier For sure, especially if you're talking to the half of the country that loves Trump. So I think it's probably easier to broach the subject. And maybe it's the advisor that's more hesitant just because there is a lot of volatility in this asset class and volatility leads to uncomfortable conversations.

And it also leads to being fired, even if it's an inconsequential amount of someone's portfolio, it's putting somebody into a coin that's at $80,000 that drops to 30,000. There's no way to explain, yes, but I still did the right thing. Even though we know that this is not always about outcomes, it's about process, we know this is long term. It's still very difficult for a fiduciary advisor

who's gone through the CFP certification process to say, I'm gonna deviate so wildly from everything I was taught and do this untested thing. And there's an elephant in the room we haven't mentioned yet. Keep in mind. Getting sued, arbitration. Beyond that, Josh, you're right on those.

The average advisor, 50% in this country, personally on Bitcoin, but only 20% are recommending it to clients. Why? Because their firms won't let them. It's the compliance officer who isn't saying yes. Because the compliance officer often knows nothing about crypto, and they can't say yes to something they themselves don't understand. And they're also thinking about their career risk. I don't want to say yes, have it blow up, I'll get fired.

What's in it for me to say yes? It's safer for me to say no. On Wall Street, as we know, everybody loves to be second. Nobody wants to be first. Well, that's a good point because the first pioneers who made the run out to Oregon had arrows in their back and Then the second pioneers say oh, okay. We won't go that way. We'll go a different way So this is this is also human nature, but there's also safety in numbers And so if you are an advisor who's on the fence you don't have a solution yet

You haven't picked one of the 13 ETFs you haven't found that SMA manager. You haven't wrapped your head around Well, maybe you know 14 ETFs, you haven't found an SMA manager, you haven't wrapped your head around, well maybe I should look at the next IPO that comes along. If you're not quite there yet, the thing that you're thinking is, I'm going to do this wrong. And I'm going to be the one. And look, we launched a crypto index with WisdomTree in 2021, right at the old top for Bitcoin. I would point out. But the idea was not, all right, let's get this into everyone's portfolio. What we basically said was we have a way to invest in, I guess it was 10 or 11 different coins.

Some of these are zeros, some of these are 10Xs. We don't know which is which. The research was all done by Jeremy Schwartz's at wisdom tree They're super passionate about this. They're gonna follow the the coins and they'll update the index and We're not gonna actively manage it. We don't know anything if you want to do this with some portion of your wealth. You could do it Great. We do it the market crash the Bitcoin market crashes anyway alongside the Nasdaq and everything else and that immediately triggers or that triggers industry-wide. Anybody who said anything about crypto got an examination. So we did the examination and it was fine. But the point is, a lot of RIAs are not equipped to withstand the scrutiny that could come along with getting this wrong. Or, okay, it's okay that you did crypto, but you did it the wrong way. We don't

like the securities you picked. We don't like the allocation you picked. We don't like the custody solution you put in place. We don't like the compliance oversight you did in vetting the instruments. These are the things that I think a lot of, there's 18,000 RIAs. Most of them really don't want to go down this road if they don't have to. The price pressure is forcing them to. So I don't know what the standard thing is now. Is it buy iBit from BlackRock and just everything else will work out? Or like what do you see people doing now? For those who are new to this and recognize everything you just said and just want to have an exposure check the box call today

Or check the box buy one ETF and tell your clients good news You're in crypto exactly and black rocks gonna deal with the bullshit and you know, we wish you well black rock fidelity Franklin Templeton bitwise wisdom tree Grayscale, Cathie Wood. It's simple and easy to do. They're ETFs, so they trade like ETFs. You are familiar with them. The tax reporting is simple and easy.

You can rebalance very simply. It checks the box. And just do that and move on. I want to end with why you think this is so important. And the reason is extended lifespans and I've heard you speak about this topic for I don't know the last 10 years or so and you're really passionate about this idea that all of the leading causes of death outs I mean you could even throw in DUI we

got the Tesla Robo taxi over the weekend every major leading cause of death in America, the stats are going to start getting materially better, especially in the AI age. We're going to have drug discovery on steroids. We're going to wipe out all these things that humanity has lived with for 100,000 years. You really believe that we're going to see that material change or we're already seeing it now. Talk a little bit about why that makes you need to take more risk and own volatile assets.

Yeah, it's all because of medical innovation brought about by computer technology, nanotech, biotech, bioinformatics, fintech, contributing to all of this. Gene editing. All of it. We've got CRISPR technology. We have focused ultrasound. We have the human genome.

And what's coming is the human cell atlas, which will be released this year or next. What's the human cell atlas? They're mapping. The human genome mapped the DNA. The human cell atlas is mapping the cells, the individual cell types. A billion cells.

There are trillions. But there are tens of thousands of cell types. They've already found thousands in the brain, hundreds in the gut. And once we can map the cells, we can then develop treatments for them. So this is revolutionizing healthcare in America. Go back to the 1800s, leading causes of death included

are syphilis, and pyemia, typhoid, cholera. When's the last time you saw somebody dying in the US of cholera? TV. We're trying to bring that back. That's an RFK project. We're rooting for them. So the leading causes of death today

are heart disease, respiratory illness, obesity, diabetes. And all the cancers. Cancers and Alzheimer's. We're going to be curing all of that stuff. By the time you get to 2050, leading causes of death are going to be homicide, suicide, accidents, war, pandemics. So aside from those horrors, we're

going to be alive because we're not going to die accidentally or inadvertently. Self-driving cars are a great example. Self-driving cars don't drive drunk. So it's massive change on longevity. You give the example, a 60 year old might have 50 more years to go, or 40 more years to go, or whatever the case may be. You're going to need a lot of upside in the portfolio if you're not working anymore. What would you say to a 20 year old who wants to invest? They've just got an inheritance.

20 years old, they got 100 grand. What percentage of it would you tell a 20 year old for their retirement to put in the stocks? We do this and we tell people 100% stocks. Of course you do. It's my own portfolio and I ain't 20. Because you've got so many decades to go. But if you're at 60 with decades to go, why wouldn't a 60 year old also have 100%?

Right, so now you're probably past your peak earnings years or you're in them. Right. It's unlikely you'll be able to work and earn at the pace that you had been Right, so now you're probably past your peak earnings years or you're in them. It's unlikely you'll be able to work and earn at the pace that you had been for the prior three or four decades. But the money is going to have to go a long way. And there's another element to this. When I was in my 20s in the 1980s, bonds were at 14%.

And they've come down to, we saw, near zero, hovering now in the low single digits, which means the great bull market of bonds, my entire investing career, is over. We're not going to see the kind of wonderful bull bond market over the next 30 years. Well, mathematically, you can't. Exactly.

So at the same time, we're going to need more equities. Bonds are not going to deliver the returns that historically we've grown used to. All of that explains why we need a greater equity allocation for much longer. And technologically, you need to be invested in the technologies of the future. And crypto is one of the leading ones. So, I've been an equal part crypto curious and crypto skeptic. As you know, I haven't gotten everything right. I'm allocated to crypto.

I hate a lot of people that I see come along and become charlatans in the crypto space. That's a big turn off factor for me, given my own background in retail brokerage. I know one when I see one. But then I think generationally speaking, my opinion doesn't really matter anymore. We've got 30 million people with Robinhood accounts. They look at crypto and stocks interchangeably. You can talk to them until the cows come home about, well, stocks have cash flows and a lot of these coins, they're just based on what the next person will buy.

You can do all that speechifying and in the end, they're just unmoved by it. They do what they see their peers doing. They are not interested in hearing arguments for why it won't work. They're more interested in hearing arguments for why it will. You're on the right side of history only because even if advisors my generation and older don't agree with you, the portfolios that advisors will be managing over the next 20 or 30 years are gonna come from the demographic where crypto and stocks are interchangeable

and second nature. So like this is, whether people like it or not, this is just what allocations are gonna end up looking like. Maybe not a year from now in the wealth space, but directionally, that's where it is. You feel that way? Very much so. And I'll turn it into a practice management conversation. My most popular course is called How to Build Your Practice by Hating Bitcoin. It's not about liking it or even

recommending it. It's about understanding that a whole lot of your clients own it, and they don't know what to do with it. They don't understand crypto financial planning, crypto taxation, crypto estate planning, crypto philanthropy. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to be of greater value to your client. And in the course of that, you'll gain more assets under management. You'll gain more referrals. You'll build your business by serving your client. Has nothing to do with liking it or recommending it. It's recognizing it's a part of the marketplace

and you can't ignore it anymore. Clients are gonna come to you with commercial real estate. You may not be bullish on commercial real estate. It's not the point. I totally agree with you. All right, Rick, this has been amazing. Is there anything that hasn't been said that you wanted to get out?

Well, I encourage folks to download the white paper. Tell us where to do that. You can do it at dacfp.com, d-a-c-f-p dot com. It's free. And take a look at our CBDA program. This is where you get certified in blockchain and digital assets, an online 18 CE credit course with a world-class faculty so you can really learn what all this is about. The legendary Rick Edelman, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you so much for joining us. We'll be sure to point people toward those information sources. We really appreciate you and all of your insights today. Thank you. It's a pleasure, Josh. Thank you. All right, that's it from us.

Like and subscribe. Talk to you soon. All right. 5pm Eastern. We are here with another all new edition of What Are Your Thoughts? I'm here with my co-host as always, Michaelnick. Michael say hello. I will. Hey we got a hot shot. The chat is blowing up right now. It looks like it's Nicole appreciation day. Okay. The chat. Everybody's saying hi to Nicole. Yeah we haven't been live in a couple of weeks and that's been my fault. I've been traveling. I was in Chicago.

I was in Florida. Let's say hello to some people. Dr. Horton is back. Welcome back, doctor. Missy Ledger is here. Akbar Mohammed, what up? David, Georgie Day, Evan Beauchamp. Nice to see you.

He says Nicole fandom is at all time highs. You bet it is. You bet. Let's see. Scott A says Josh nailed the straight of Hormuz talking point. Damn right I did. Uh, let's say Alex Mathias is here. Mike Russo is selling tiny bits of Nvidia.

Don't know what to buy. LOL. That's everybody's problem. Where is it? Where did Nvidia go out today? 147? Not mine. I know what to buy.

I'll tell you later. All right. Yeah, we'll do something around. We'll grind some tickers for sure. All right, guys. Thank you so much for coming to the live. We really appreciate it. We miss you when we're not here.

And thanks for bearing with me. But we are here tonight and we've got a sponsor. Michael's going to tell you a little bit about them. The sponsor is public and you a little bit about them. The sponsor is Public. And you could do anything on Public. You could... I'm not going to say what I was about to say. That's inappropriate. But you could do whatever you want in terms of investing.

Within reason! Within reason. You want bonds? Boom. Stocks? Boom. Crypto? Boom. Cash? Double boom. And let me triple boom the cash, Josh. You know what happened today? Jerome Powell said if it weren't for fears of higher prices in the consumer basket later on in the year as a result of tariffs, he would be lowering rates, but he's not. Which benefits us.

Yeah. Hush cash holders, guess what? I'm not going to lie. I still got some money in cash. So I'm getting yields and at public, you can collect 4.1%. My opinion, that's still fairly juicy. So check out public.com. Get it while it lasts, right?

Slash what are your thoughts. Get it while it lasts. Because it won't be here forever. All right. That's public.com slash W-A-Y-T, as in what are your thoughts. Thank you so much, Public. I thought this was a fascinating story that I wanted to start with.

Novo Nordisk, which is the maker of Ozempic. Excuse me, We Govee and Ozempic? No, that's Eli Lilly. Eli Lilly is Monjaro. This is way outside my comfort zone. So I thought Eli Lilly was- It doesn't matter. It's all the same shit. The maker of the weight loss shots and the diabetes treatment. Anyway, so there's this really big thing that's been going on all over the country,

probably all over the world, which is there was a shortage. So the FDA formally placed this compound, semaglutide, into what's called the shortage, which gives permission to compounding pharmacies to make their own knockoff version of a FDA approved drug and sell it. And you know, you have a prescription, it's the same as normal prescription, LOL. But these compound pharmacies have been making a ton of money so long as that drug was in shortage. Now it drug was in shortage. Now it's not in shortage, meaning there's plenty of supply, there's no emergency. You can get it, you can get terzepotide, which is the basis for a lot of the other popular

weight loss drugs. But here's what's happened. In the last three years since this, or let's say two years since this weight loss shot craze has taken off, the distribution has become not just doctors calling in prescriptions to CVS but like an online phenomenon. And you've got companies like Roe and Hims and Hers which became one of the wildest stocks in the stock market over the last year or so. It's a meme stock. I classify it as a meme stock because it's heavily owned by retail and it's got like 35% short interest. Soterios Johnson What does Hims and Horrors even do? Is it online?

What? Andrew Dutton Yeah, you know what's funny? During the pandemic, I had the CEO on my podcast, Andrew Dutton. So Hims was doing like hair loss treatments, but you're too embarrassed to go to a doctor. You can get an online consultation in like 30 seconds and they'll prescribe the drug and they'll mail it to your house. Erectile dysfunction is another big one.

People don't necessarily want to go talk face to face with another dude, right? Or God forbid, you're a female doctor, you have to have that conversation. So, that's been a huge bull market for online pharmacy. And then compound pharmacy is like a really big thing. Professional baseball team, they have 40 players. Each player needs specific formulations of different things with vitamins and all kinds

of whatever. And compound pharmacies would supply. So that's like an example. So it's a great business to be in and it really took off like a rocket ship when these weight loss drugs all went into shortage. They were like, oh, we'll just make you. How many do you need?

So that was then. Now what's happened is the drug has come out of shortage but these companies like him's and hers, they're not stopping. They're not like, oh, all right, I guess we'll just fold up the tent. So they are continuing to advertise and market all over the place, bring in new customers, make their own formulated version and sell it. And now there's friction.

So why did the stock get killed so badly when Novo pulled out? So a few weeks back, Novo Nordisk announced a partnership with Hims because Novo Nordisk is in the fight of its life with Lilly. Profit margins for these drugs are coming down. Demand is obviously still high, but there's like 10 of them now on the market. So they cut a deal because Hims has the distribution, they have millions of customers. So they cut a deal with Hims where it's like, all right, sell our drug. And that pumped the stock and now it's taking it back?

Is that what happened? Yes. Okay. So Hims and Novo Nordisk agreed to work on authentic WeGo V-sales. Okay. Does the customer care? Customer, customer would literally inject bleach into this. They have no idea. Right. This isn't about that. This is about like, this is about like branded patented pharmaceuticals being knocked off at incredible dollar amounts.

So what's the biggest takeaway for you? Well here's what just happened. So they announced this partnership and then yesterday, I've never seen this before, Novo Nordisk puts out a press release. Here's the headline, Novo Nordisk terminates collaboration with Hymns and Hers due to concerns about their illegal mass compounding and deceptive marketing. This was their partner. I'm telling you I've never seen this before. Here's the TLDR. They had a partnership for one month, Michael. Collaboration over one month has ended

based on Hims and Hers deceptive promotion and selling of illegitimate knockoff versions. This is press release language of WeGovv that put patient safety at risk. Norvo Nordisk will not stop taking action to protect Americans from the dangers of illicit foreign active pharmaceutical ingredients in knockoff drugs.

So here's what it sounds like. It sounds like they struck this partnership. Hems and Hers said, okay, cool. We'll sell you our shit, but we're also still going to make our own and sell that too. And that was not what they agreed to in principle. What Hims and Hers has said in response to this is, actually, here's what's going on. We make a cheaper version that should be available to the public and Novo Nordisk is leaning on us and forcing us to sell their version, which is the more expensive. So I know this will go to litigation.

I also know that this is the kind of thing that will get the attention of the FDA. I mean, who knows today's FDA. They seem to be busy trying to reintroduce measles into the population, but this is going to get regulator attention. This is not going to stop with, oh, we're not going to be partners anymore. This is inflammatory. This press release that they put out. It was like a bomb drop. So do we have a chart of a, I don't even know if I asked for a chart. Hims crashed yesterday, 35%. So this is like, I should have asked for this so we could show people. But again, this is a widely held retail stock, which is why it's interesting and why it

matters. It went up 2% today, so tiny bounce, but the day before, just absolutely pancaked. The stock has now fallen from a recent high of 65, back down to 42. In as recently as April, it was 25. There could be some more air to come out of this before this is over. It's back down to a $9 billion market cap. What are your thoughts? I mean, I don't follow this stock, but by the looks of it, it does appear to be a meme

stock. I mean, I don't have any other thoughts. You laid it out pretty well. Do you have any big thoughts? What's a big takeaway for you here as an investor? I always think about whenever I'm going to make an investment, the thing that stops me from investing, and it's not always right, I hate investing in things, companies that become overly reliant on another company. Because like in my mind, it's only a matter

of time before somebody pulls the rug. Somebody says, look at this company. They live off of us. They have 40% profit margins. Why are we allowing this? I watch this play out in our industry and finance all the time. So I always feel like it's not sustainable. Now in this case, here we go.

Thank you guys. Well done. So this is the short. So in this case, it wasn't gradual like Novo Nordisk, like gradually pushing this company out of the way that it had, you know, that it was going to be, it was one month. And again, the announcement was like throwing a grenade into the stock. So can you think of any other examples like this that happened in the past, recent or otherwise? No.

I mean, this is like, this is the nightmare scenario though, because this company effectively like doubled its market cap or more. Probably on rumors that there was going to be a partnership and then there was a partnership and people like, oh, cool. That's one big risk taking off the table. I was always worried that the FDA would crack down on the compounders, but now I'm not worried about it because they have a partnership with WeGovV. That would have been the way my mind works. All right, that's a huge risk taken off the table.

Turns out not so much. Here's another quick quote. Over one month into the collaboration, Hymns and Her, so they, this is not the only telehealth company they partnered with. Okay? So they need to partner with telehealth because this is where the marketplace is going.

This is where the consumer wants to be. The Hymns customer wants to buy on Hymns, doesn't all of a sudden wanna be sent to a doctor's office. So they said, failed to adhere to the law which prohibits mass sales of compounded drugs under the false guise of, quote, personalization and are disseminating deceptive marketing that put patient safety at risk. So they'll have to substantiate all that, I assume, in a civil suit or something at some point.

But it's just very rare that you see two public companies that have just announced a partnership have it break up this fast and this ugly. All right. So I thought it was eye catching. Nice segue to another two-sim. Let's talk about Google or Waymo and Uber. Yeah. Well, Uber in this case won't be reliant on Waymo per se, but the partnership is really

important to Uber. So what is the partnership between the two companies? Okay. So Waymo is far and, the leading autonomous taxi service. They have their own app. They get their own customers. They've gained huge market share in San Francisco since launching. That makes sense, obviously.

People are tech curious. A lot of people take the ride just to take the ride. As a result, they're already as big as Lyft is in San Francisco standalone. Uber is not partnering with them in San Francisco as of right now. So, launching there, Waymo has proven that they can be in effect in a city. It's gone really well for Waymo. They've raised a ton of money this year from investors. Alphabet is only one investor.

The partnership with Uber is about the fact that Uber actually has infrastructure and logistics all over the country. Think about it. These cars have to be maintained. Things happen. Things break. They get into accidents or wear and tear. They get dirty.

Imagine 500 human bodies getting into these cars, eating ice cream cones. They have to go to a depot at night and be charged. There's a whole subset of things that have to happen even with autonomous taxi where there's no driver. Because with a regular Uber or regular limo or taxi driver, the human driver is the person who owns the car and they clean it. They maintain it. They're responsible.

Who's responsible for this? Does Alphabet want to get into that business? Does Waymo want to get into that business? They want to do fleet management? Probably not. Have you seen anything on the economics of what that partnership looked like? Has there been any reports written? I'd be curious what it looks like.

No, there's nothing public about it. But here's the premise. Uber has 18 partnerships with different autonomous vehicle companies, including the most recent one at sign, which is Volvo. And Volvo, just so you understand, is the second largest automaker by market cap on the planet or by sales, one or the other. So they have 18 of these things. They have WeRide. They have Waze, which is backed by Nvidia. They have Waymo. Everyone but Tesla is partnered with Uber because what Uber brings to the table, in addition to expertise on fleet management, is Uber brings users. If you make the investment to put autonomous cars out into a given city, it's a huge expenditure. It's a huge technological lift.

It's a huge physical investment that you're making. You need rides right away to justify the expense of that. Uber can legitimately drive a million rides to you immediately. You'll have to share. You'll have to share the revenue. From Uber's perspective, it's found money and there's no human, so there's no take rate from a person who needs to be paid. But there's costs involved in setting up the infrastructure, obviously. I wonder what the charges are. Well, they have it. The infrastructure exists. So the first city that Waymo and Uber partnered it, by the way, we're talking about this because Uber made a almost, I think almost a record high today. It had a huge day. It was the number one performing stock in the S&P 500. Took out 90 to the upside and you know my opinion already.

So the reason why this is important is Waymo is trialing a partnership with Uber in two cities. The first is Austin, the set which is already underway. If you hail an Uber in Austin, it'll give you your options for comfort, for black, or for electric, and you'll see it'll say autonomous. You could decline it or you could say, yeah, I'll do it. Okay. Already happening. Atlanta launched today. I don't even the timing was coincidental, given that Tesla's robo taxi launched over the weekend, which we'll talk about in a second.

If it turns out that Waymo likes this business model where it's partnered with Uber in Atlanta and Austin. It paves the way for the potential for more cities. The big prize is New York. Uber has made substantial political and infrastructural inroads in Manhattan, in Brooklyn, in Queens, in the Bronx. In order to do autonomous driving in these places, you're going to need an ally that knows these places. Frankly, Waymo just doesn't. That's the big prize. If Uber and Waymo can launch in New York, it won't be long before they have the whole thing on smash. As a shareholder in Uber, that's

what I'm excited about. There are 100 Waymo vehicles on the Uber platform in Austin, dozens are about to launch in Atlanta. It's very, very early. The Waymo autonomous vehicles on the Uber app are going to have the run of about 65 miles in and around Atlanta. So it's a geo fence. You can't just get in the car and say, take me to Alaska. So do you think the pop in Tesla today, I'm sorry, in Uber today was the result of the excitement on the rollout or the flop for Tesla or both? I think it's the excitement of the Atlanta rollout.

And I think, I don't know if Tesla is a flop. I think Tesla is sort of an incomplete situation. It's just the start. I assume whatever the problems were that people were snorting about, they don't sound insurmountable. The car went into the wrong lane and then corrected itself. The car did 39 miles an hour in a 35. These don't seem like, oh no, the RoboTaxi is dead. What's notable about the RoboTaxi launch to me, and I'm not long Tesla, is that they only had 10 cars. And by law, because they're not level five or whatever, they had to have human drivers

or Elon thought the responsible thing to do was to keep a human driver so that there was no PR nightmare, whatever it is. So there's that. It's like not that impressive, especially compared to where Waymo is. But also the people who took the rides were selected in advance and they were all Tesla influencers. It was Dan Ives. He took two 15 minute rides around Austin. Like, what do you think he's going to say?

He has a $500 target on Tesla. He's going to get in the car and say, this is nothing special. I know he's been in the Waymo. So it's him. It's like a guy that's like a Twitter Tesla fanatic. You know, it's like people like that. So they kind of seeded the population of first riders with friendlies. And again, there's only 10 cars.

So I think that maybe that, maybe that helped Uber a little bit because people said, oh, okay, no big deal. Um, I wouldn't count robo taxi out. Nope. Like Elon does not give up. Uh, I just think it doesn't mean for Uber what the bearers thought it meant. So I think a lot of this is the overhang on sentiment and price because I almost, I was fairly close to selling Uber last week. I thought to myself, price action was not good.

If it broke 82, like convincingly I would have sold because I'm thinking to myself, I did great in the stock. I'm up 30% in a couple of months. I don't want to be in a battleground stock. Like I just, I don't couple of months. I don't want to be in a battleground stock. I don't need that. I'm not trying to get married to this. And I think that a lot of that sentiment that I and others were feeling, I think it got lifted today. Not I think.

It was up 8% today. So here's the thing that you don't know that I do. This is going to be a network and software business. The cars will have no value. The cars will have no value. The cars will have no value. No, here's the thing that Jim Chanos told you, that you keep repeating. What? What are you about to say?

But he's not bullish on Uber. No, don't act like you're a genius. I'm the idiot and you're the genius. You stole this from Jim Chanos. No, no. Yes, yes. I've said this for three years. I do not think, I do not think autonomous driving, the profits are going to accrue to

the company that bends the metal and makes the money. Dude, I listened to Jim on ombots too. I heard it too. So, well, this is my opinion for three years. This has been a threat for three or two years since Elon Musk has been saying Robo taxi is going to be a trillion-dollar business. Great. Here's the most important thing, and maybe this is why the stock ripped today.

Autonomous is great for Uber. Their highest expense is managing millions and millions of drivers. Some people drive all day long. Some people choose to drive once a month, some are professionals, some are stay at home dads who just picking up some extra income. It is an enormous human capital management responsibility. And it's where most of the expenses, the expense is not managing the app. It's built already. Hiring engineers to run the app, that's not the most costly part. The take rate on these rides, the amount that they

have to give to the human driver, the degree to which you can reduce that because the entire world population becomes accustomed to autonomous cars picking them up is hugely bullish for Uber. How far away do you think that is? Because that's not happening tomorrow. It's gradual. It's not overnight. Nothing's overnight. But honestly, it's inevitable.

Number one, it's inevitable. Number two, there'll probably be a two or three decade period of time where human drivers coexist with autonomous vehicles. So this is not just about the rider becoming accustomed to this, police, safety officials in all these cities, municipalities, everyone's gotta get comfortable with this.

And drivers on the road who look next to them and it's like a ghost driving the car. We're not, it's not overnight. So in Tesla's quarterly report, all of them, they show how long it took for global penetration of electric vehicles to hit 10%. And it took a while. Do you think the arc of this happens quicker

or about the same as that took? I'm so glad you asked that question. What's great about that question is think about what's happening now with EVs. The trend is not pure EVs anymore, it's hybrid. People want the safety of knowing there's a gas tank there with the optionality of running it on electric. They don't need to save all the money. They'll save some money. That's what's selling right now. Hybrids is that we went from everyone's going to go all

electric to, oh, wait a minute, actually in a Midwestern winter, that's not the best thing. Can a human take the wheel of the Waymo if they need to? On the Waymo, I think so because it's just a Jaguar with a ton of cameras and sensors on it. I think it's still a standard car. I could be wrong. I think Tesla's approach is smart because that's just a regular Tesla with sensors on it, cameras. It doesn't use LiDAR, which is the big controversy... The technological specifics are uninteresting to me. I don't care. But what's smart about the Tesla approach is, you could buy a Tesla Model Y,

and when you're at work and it's just sitting in the parking lot, you could flip on a switch on the app and toggle to active, and it could become a taxi. Now, I'm not interested in that. I don't do Airbnb. No one's getting in my car. I don't even get in. Like, there's just no way.

But there's millions of people who would love to turn their car into an income generating vehicle. That will be less interesting in a place like New York, New Jersey with high population density because there's no shortage of rides. But in a place where there's not that many people willing to pick you up and there are just cars that are sitting idle, turning a Tesla into an autonomous taxi is a pretty cool idea. Last question.

I know we're 25 minutes on topic one already, and not to sound like a New York asshole, but pedestrian traffic in New York City is out of control. I think that I don't know if the city can handle, at least today, autonomous vehicles. Do you? New York and Los Angeles are the prize. They're also going to be the hardest. So over under five years. Los Angeles because of the traffic that already exists now, So over under five years. Los Angeles because of the traffic that already exists now. And also rioters in the street who like to attack robots. New York because it's already f**king undrivable.

It's maybe the least drivable city in North America. Yeah, I don't think it's happening anytime soon. Not knowing anything, but I would say like 10 years, maybe longer. So in a place like New York, you'll probably see it in the suburbs you'll probably see it in Westchester you'll probably see in New Jersey before. Yeah fine. And they and they have to geo fence these things so if you put a destination into the app that's beyond what the car is capable of it'll stop itself because a lot of people this is the early days of Uber Travis Kalanick just did whatever he wanted. All right. 26 minutes. He just showed up.

I'm pulling the rip cord. The stop. I don't think they could do that with this. Too much. All right. All right. Listen, it's an exciting time for autonomous vehicles, but it's not an overnight thing. Okay. All right. You know how Ben and I like to poke fun at media outlets for plucking random quotes from investors?

Well I think- That's your favorite. That I read an article last week in the journal and I found myself nodding my head for what these people were saying and I think it also helps to explain the rally that we're seeing in tech stocks. So the queues are at an all-time high today. I think in large part because people dumped them and now we're seeing in tech stocks. So the queues hit an all time high today. I think in large part because people dumped them and now they're chasing them back higher.

Okay, so Patricia Andrews, for example. Josh, let me tell you. Where is this article from? The Wall Street Journal. Let me tell you what Patricia Andrews did. She plugged tens of thousands of dollars into two tech-focused mutual funds during April's market turmoil.

Now that those shares have rebounded, she's unloading most of them. She said, I feel like they're probably running out of steam, said the 60-year-old entrepreneur based in California. She plans to invest the profits in different pair of funds, focus on international companies. And she said, knowing that it's still a really volatile market, it just makes me say I've had enough of these.

So credit to Patricia. She scooped them up. I've made enough on these. She dumped them. That's an important distinction. OK. Tom Griffin, after scooping up shares of Tesla and Nvidia during the sell off, he pivoted to United Health and Wells Fargo. So Josh, you always say the money goes somewhere. Well, here it is. I'm going to give you one more example. Texas based cattle rancher, Tom Griffin, again, he's 42 years old. Listen

to how savvy he is. He said he isn't so much turning away from tech as he is searching for shares of large, reliable companies at a decent price. So Tom says, and I quote, when the whole market dips, that's when you buy the important huge companies. And he nailed it. So chart on, please. Good strategy.

Yeah. I like that. Yeah, like no snark, no irony, like real talk. So retail flows. This is from Vanda Research via The Wall Street Journal. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, like I'm no snark, no irony, like real talk. So retail flows, this is from Vanda research via the Wall Street Journal. Retail flows into big tech stocks as a percentage of total flows.

And you could see that as the market dipped in March and April, they went hog wild. And on the V-shaped recovery, they dumped them. So we spoke about this, Ben and I did last week. A net $7.1 billion has flowed into tech-focused ETFs in 2025, but funds that attempt to buy stocks at a discount, so let's say value stocks, saw an inflow of roughly $25 billion, while international ETFs logged a net inflow of 70 billion. So 7 billion into tech stocks ETFs, 70 billion into international ETFs. People have been dumping tech stocks aggressively, which I think again, explains a lot of the

rally. They dumped them and now they're probably piling back in. So they sold them like in late May, early June because the rally was huge. Exactly. Pivoted to something else. And now they're like, oh, my God, Metta is running away again. Yep. Microsoft at all times high.

I have a different take. I think we were told by Steve Quirk on the compound and friends that in a bull market people buy individual stocks and when the market is volatile and dropping they buy ETFs to buy indexes. That's what this seems like to me. They're telling you, what's this woman's name in Cedarville, California? Patricia Andrews. Put some respect on her name.

Patricia Andrews plugged tens of thousands of dollars into two tech-focused mutual funds during April's market turmoil. Right on brand. That's exactly what we were told about how retail tends to behave. Now those mutual funds have rebounded a month later. She sells that and she's saying those have run out of steam and she's looking for international companies. So she's getting like, she's going further afield and the other guy is doing Wells Fargo United Health. I don't know if I could make the case

that this is because everyone's all of a sudden bearish on large cap tech. I can. Or buying at that. No, no. I don't know. No, they are. They are.

So a couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet, somebody cited Vandetrek saying that retail bought an institutional bail. They maybe have that backwards. And one of them is going to need to chase these stocks higher. That's exactly what happened. But also Schwab's Stacks Report, which shows individual investor behavior in Schwab, Nvidia was by far, by far the biggest seller for like four or seven weeks in a row. So individual investors were actually, actually dumping these individual names and now they're

chasing them. So, all right, a couple things. The good news is if you're a retail investor, this is a really big advantage you have over professionals. You don't have that many. You don't have to do anything. Nobody is grading your performance. Nobody is calling you and asking you,

why didn't you buy that Nvidia? That's all well and good, but that's kind of a talking point. So you don't have to do it. Yeah, yes you do, because you grade yourselves harsher. Well, no, you might be have to do it? Yeah, yes you do. Because you grade yourselves harsher. Well, no. You might be compelled to do it. Exactly. But you don't have a career risk in not doing it.

You could just say, all right, I sold Nvidia at $136. Now it's $146. I've f**ked up. I'm not going to make it worse by chasing something, and then it falls back to 136. You're allowed to do that and nobody will notice. Literally nobody will notice. You're the only person that will notice.

I have noticed that the news flow around the giant tech stocks, the Mag 7 mostly, has gotten pretty bearish with the exception of Nvidia. Apple is obvious. We don't have to belabor that. We've done that already. And that stocks hovering around 200 is not rallying with the rest of the tech market at all. They were saying this week that Apple needs to buy perplexity just to catch up to where Microsoft are. And of course, they're Chinese competitors. I think that would weirdly be a sign of desperation, I think. I think Apple would go up 20 points. I have the opposite take as you.

I'm not saying that the stock wouldn't rally. People are dying to be invested in perplexity. It's in the private market. You can't. If Apple bought it, I think the stock would go 220 in two seconds. That's my opinion. People would get really pumped, especially if they're like, what's the guy's name? Arvind.

Brilliant, this guy. If they're like, he's the new head of Apple AI, Johnny Ive, kiss my ass. The stock will go nuts. That's my opinion. They never do stuff like that. So it's not going to happen. The last major acquisition Apple made was headphones from Dr. Dre. It's not a... That was it?

Yeah. It's not an acquisitive company. They never do acquisition. Or they do tuck-ins that you've never heard of. They do not buy big tech brands that people know. They like, I don't know why, and I'm not saying they should or they shouldn't, because what the hell do I know? I'm just telling you, they don't do that. So if they do do that, I think the stock will get, people will get excited.

Because it's like, holy shit, did you see what Apple just did? I'm telling you. Think about your, like a sports team. They announced a huge deal. We got Kevin Durant. He's probably not even gonna be that great. It doesn't matter.

You don't get excited. Yeah, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that the stock won't pop. I think you're 100% right. I'm just saying that I don't know if that would be ultimately like, what are they doing? This is not what they do. Well, let me tell you something.

It's like the game of risk. And the map is mostly colonized. And OpenAI owns a whole hell of a lot of real estate on the consumer facing AI side. Like almost most of it, I would say at this point. You got a couple of other continents on the map where there's some room to do something and perplexity is one of the last ones left. You need to find a dance partner. If you're not going to build it in house, that's one. Two, this ain't going to help them in China. China's not allowing perplexity

into phones in their country. So if you want to do AI in China, you got to partner with DeepSeek or figure something else out that's homegrown and Chinese native. And that's a whole other can of worms. So the news flow is bearish on Apple and Google, I would say. SEO. Dude, you see all the media and journalism layoffs? Yeah, Google's killing them. Google is pivoting everything to Gemini results, which is obviating the need for anyone to play.

They're not sending people to Business Insider anymore. It's really bad. They're not sending anybody to a lot of publications and it's also not necessarily helping the share price of Alphabet because there was a lot of money in sending people to Lynx. Derek Thompson started a Substack today. He's a smart guy. Obviously saw the writing on the wall. He was at Atlantic.

Atlantic. And I think they got a quote. Whoever wrote an article about this Times Journal got a quote from the editor-in-chief of the CEO of the Atlantic. Like, yeah, this is hard. It's not coming back. All right, this is Ink Magazine, just at the end of May, just so people understand.

It doesn't matter. The point is, if your business model was built on SEO, that business model may not be functional for much longer because of the amount of searches that are not making it as far as the blue links. And Google, to survive, has to do this Gemini thing. It has to work. So that whole thing is going on. That's a really big market cap stock. Meta, did you read the article this week about Mark Zuckerberg is personally hopping on calls and sending emails to AI people at other companies to try to recruit them away.

I saw Ben Thompson talking about that. So this was in the journal. And he's sending people emails direct. And they're like, this is fake. But it's him. And the dollar amounts that Metta is offering people to leave open AI, for example, they're huge numbers, like tens of millions of dollars.

Sam Altman says people aren't leaving, they're staying with us. All right, for now, if Metta gets more desperate, we don't know. Apparently, they have a WhatsApp chat called Recruiting Party and they're legitimately trying to poach AI talent because they're falling behind. Their initial approach of, here, Llama is open source. Anyone could do whatever they want with it. They make this deal for Scale AI. It's a company that was founded 15 minutes ago.

They value it at $28 billion. They give the founder $28 billion. They give the founder $15 billion for half the company, give them a job. So if Alphabet's looking at that, they might have to think something up quickly. The difference between Meta and the other two stocks that we mentioned is Meta is much closer to an all-time high. Yes. It'll be there in a week. I think I would rather be Meta than Alphabet

right now. Not forever. Just right at this moment. I think I just I would rather have Meta's core business is not under assault. Well Meta already makes a ton of money utilizing AI for advertising. They've been doing machine learning since the company was founded. I'd rather have metta's problems than Alphabet's problems today. Let's talk about Circle. So here's a question. Put the chart up. This is one of the largest IPOs ever and it's one of the biggest IPO winners we've ever seen for, I don't know what it did today. Did it

go up? It was down 15%, but whatever. All right. No big deal. Effectively, the IPO price was $31,000 and it went to almost $300,000 in like three weeks. According to Renaissance Capital, Circle's 168% first day IPO pop was the biggest IPO pop for a billion dollar plus US IPO on record. So record breaking IPO.

I think this is from Sean. Over 30 years, there have been roughly $200 billion US IPOs. The average first day return is 16%. Only five have risen at least 100%. This one I told you did 170%. So everybody wants in. Everybody wants whatever is the next circle. So I thought it'd be fun to put some candidates up

in front of you. These are the crypto infrastructure companies that people seem to be the most, you have some circle stuff before we get to the names. Yeah, let's see this real quick. So I think that the fundamentals and the valuation of circle don't make any sense for long term investors. I also think that it doesn't really matter because nobody's trading on discounted cash

flows right now. This is a firm statement that there is massive investment demand for stable coin and the like, okay. Like period. That being said, it is just kind of wild. Tom Dunleavy tweeted this, that USDC revenue sharing, Circle and Coinbase. So Coinbase makes more money from Circle than Circle does. And yet, Circle's market cap is like not quite closing in. But John Ma tweeted, Circle is now a $74 billion enterprise value. Oh, I showed us closing it.

Okay. Circle is more valuable than Robinhood, New Bank, Block, and just $4 billion shy of Coinbase. And again, Coinbase makes more money from Circle than Circle does. So Circle trades at 32 times revenue, 80 times gross profit, 152 times EBITDA, and 285 times earnings. So, to which I would say, like people could scoff and say, like, how dumb is this insurer? It is dumb. But the investor demand, it's there and it's real, obviously.

Well, I think, you know, I was talking to Rick Edelman on the live from the compound yesterday, which, guys, if you haven't watched that yet, it was talking to Rick Edelman on the live from the compound yesterday, which guys, if you haven't watched that yet, it was pretty incredible conversation, at least for me, and how much I learned from Rick. But he was talking about allocation to crypto and what he is now formally recommending to people. And he's saying anywhere from 10% to 40%. But included in those allocations are the publicly traded equities of crypto infrastructure

companies like Coinbase and like Circle. So he's bullish on stablecoins not because stablecoins themselves are going to rise in value. He's bullish on the relatively few issuers of stablecoins because if they can get share and hold it, it's a really great business to be in. It's like riskless printing of money, at least with where interest rates are today. So there's a little bit of a chase. If you're an asset manager but you're limited to the stock market, you don't want to buy another

You're limited to the stock market. You don't want to buy another 1% of Coinbase. Here all of a sudden is an alternative. Oh, we own Coinbase and we own Circle. There's a little bit of that going on, I think, and some people front running that. That probably is part of the appeal. It's their scarcity. Now, if you get 20 crypto infrastructure companies that are publicly traded and the aperture widens and it's Robinhood and it's Coinbase and it's not the low quality miners, but you

get like real infrastructure plays, that sort of maybe takes some of the multiple. Yeah, I'm sure. But yeah, you're right, because it is a scarcity of equity that's on the publicly traded markets, but Circle is so far ahead of whoever would be number three in this space. I don't even know that you can say Tether is number one. This is important. Tether is $150 billion, Circle is $65 billion. Let's say both numbers go up or let's say Circle goes up faster than Tether now that

they have a public. Yeah, but if Tether is public, it's not getting these multiples. No chance. No chance. Because people don't trust it. What if in their S1 filing, it's a breakdown of their assets? Does that change things for you? Maybe. USDT is sort of foundational for global crypto.

I think a lot of asset managers, I didn't want to make a benign, but these legacy and common asset managers are not going to want to own that. I don't think. All right. Here are some crypto companies that have IPO filings in the queue already. No, hold this. Hold off on this. You'll be delighted to know that the day after Circle went public, the Winklevoss twins filed their S1. Good, good, excellent choice.

It's a huge opportunity and you got to act now. So Gemini, not Google's Gemini AI, but Gemini, the crypto, is it a brokerage or exchange? Exchange. Okay. So they are, they're considered to be the gold standard in terms of compliance. That was always their thing. Like from 10 years ago, they said like, we're considered to be the gold standard in terms of compliance. That was always their thing. From 10 years ago, they said, we're going to be the exchange that conforms to all the banking rules and they did it. That's an S1 that's out there that people can read. There's something called bullish, which you probably know about. I don't.

Peter Thiel backed this exchange called bullishish. And there are some pretty serious traditional markets people behind this. They have filed confidentially with the SEC. So we have not seen it yet. What they're saying their businesses or the risk factors. And then there is something called Falcon X, which is a crypto focused prime brokerage. Its last round, it looks like it was valued at $8 billion in 2022. I would imagine that's higher. How much was it, you say? $8 billion valuation?

I bet you it's not higher. I bet you it's half that, if I had to guess. With Bitcoin doubling from 2022, you think a prime brokerage aimed at hedge funds trading crypto is a lower valuation? I do. I'm not a table pounding vet, but I would think so. 2022 is wild, dude. Valuations got really stupid.

So supposedly, they're going to go public on the New York Stock Exchange this year. And then, all right, now you could pop that. We could just run through these other names quickly. People have heard of Kraken. They're talking about an IPO late 2025, early 26. Tron is already in the process of going public via a reverse merger on the Nasdaq, pure class. BitThumb, this is Korean. BitCub, Thailand.

BitGo, which is a custody provider. Consensus, which is Ethereum infrastructure. Ledger, which people know is the wallet company, and they are talking about a Euronext slash US listing. Fireblocks. Chain Analysis, which is an analytics firm. People say that it's IPO ready. I guess like a morning star for crypto.

Figure, which is lending, the regulators don't like that. And Animoca brands, which is Web3 gaming and Anchorage Digital, which is institutional custody. So look, if you're looking for what might be the next circle, none of these seem to be as big. Like I don't think they're as big a circle, like revenue-wise, it could be wrong. But some of these are going to get through

because there's just obviously way too much demand. And special surprise, we're going to have Aaron Dillon on the show next week to get into some of the more likely candidates. I'm not buying any of this. But I don't really buy IPOs anyway. Maybe Aaron will convince you otherwise. We'll do that next week.

Okay. All right. So there have been a couple of articles written last week. Andy Jassy wrote a thousand words clearing his throat, basically saying like, we're using a ton of AI in our thing. I know by the way it's been less jobs. Like it was a lot of and there's been less jobs. So I want to share some charts with you that I thought were face blowers and I want to get your reaction. Try it on please, John. Oh, I've had my face blown.

Okay, well prepare to be melted. So on Y charts, they have this nifty little feature that shows CapEx to revenue and not surprisingly, Amazon has, uh, Amazon went all the way up in its infancy, right? They were spending all their money basically in CapEx and then the bubble verse and they got more responsible, but it was grinding higher over time and then it hit a major inflection point in 2020 and it's kind of unbelievable that they're now spending this much money relative to the revenue.

Would you agree? Totally. I mean, it's only believable because everyone else is doing it, but yeah, it's wild. All right. So great segue to the next chart. So I also threw on Google, which is, I'm sorry, Microsoft, which is doing the same thing as Amazon. They're all in, right? They're just whatever it takes.

And holy shit, Josh, look at Apple. You know the meme, hey, do something? Yeah, what is this even about? So for the people listening, the CapEx to revenue line for Amazon and Microsoft is straight up into the right, like vertical at this point because Microsoft all time highs. They've never invested this way before.

Yeah. Right. So, so they recognize that getting AI right is like basically the land grab for the next 20 years. If you don't, if you don't get this right, you probably never have enough. If all these predictions come true about the impact of AI and you don't invest now, you're like out of the race is the mentality. I'm not anyone to say yes or no.

But look at Apple, dude. But Apple is like, now we're good. I don't know. It peaked 15 years ago. With the iPhone, I guess. I mean, is this the kind of thing... So is this the kind of thing where one day Tim Cook calls everybody to the headquarters for like one of those Apple events and just like rips his shirt off and he's like, this

is it. We're going nuts. We're going to reverse this capex to revenue decline. And here's what we're doing. A B C D. Dude, it's time to build. When that happens, that's not bearish. No I agree.

How much? $400 billion on their balance sheet and cash? Like put it to work. Stop buying my shares. I don't understand. I don't understand how if you're in technology, you could look at all of your competitors in this race. They're the only one. And you're raising your stock buyback. The only way it makes sense is if they do buy a perplexity or the like. It's the only way to make

it make sense. It's not enough to buy though. You need to build the infrastructure to make it actually do something for your customers. Okay, so here's the important part. So let's move to total employees. So Amazon was up and to the right for the entire 21st century. And then they over hired and they're getting, they're getting fit, they're slimming down, but it flatlined.

And I don't, I'm going to say this. How about this? This line has peaked. I don't think that Amazon will ever have 3 million employees. In fact, I would bet a lot of money on that. And in fact, the next chart is evidence of what I'm saying. I think that this is going up and to the right. So now we're looking at revenue per employee.

And Amazon and a lot of other companies are using AI as an excuse and a legitimate excuse to offset the revenue cost. They're investing all of this money into infrastructure and spend and build that on whatever. Now you are going to start hearing a lot about revenue per employee and this number is going to go higher over time. I'm sure of it. I don't even know why charts had this revenue per employee, which looks like it bottomed out in 2022. Yep. Just after the hiring spree from the pandemic.

Also, they're going to hire different types of employees. So a lot of that ramp up in employees to get to 2 million employees in Amazon is fulfillment center. And those are going to be robots. And over hiring and they paid the price for that in 2022. A lot of these big tech companies over hired for demand that they thought was permanent and it wasn't and the stocks got killed. Not just because of that. Jay Luther in the chat, Jay Luther in the chat is saying, I think Bezos can still afford

his wedding. Are you seeing this shit? He rented out the city of Venice. That's his venue. Did he get married yet? The wedding is now. It's like a one week long celebration. They just had a foam party on his $500 million yacht. What's a foam party? Like a party with foam? But like, what does that even mean? Foam party. Like the DJ and they spray foam all over everyone's t-shirts become see-through.

Nice. Amazing. Never been to a phone party i've never been and then probably never will all right all right that's it anyway he had one he had one of those great let's move on it's late all right um dumbflation okay this is a new one we'll do this fast let's uh just you you gotta watch the whole video so just bear with me john hit it. Hello. Hello. Hello.

It's Vegas. Well, you see, and this is Harris in Las Vegas and this is Dunkin Donuts and a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich is $13 and 99 cents compared to the rest of the country where it is only $4 and 29 cents, not $13 and 99 cents. And it's making a big difference in travel. Las Vegas used to be based on cheap food and cheap drinks and then people would go over to the tables and they would gamble their money.

But all of this has changed because Caesar's Corporation borrowed $24 billion. And now we are dealing with a nightmare out here and Las Vegas is failing because of the gross overcharging that is going on. You think it's slow because a sandwich is $14? You think maybe that's why it's slow? You think anybody at Caesar's says maybe thought, hey, sandwiches are $14. That might slow people down.

You know, a cup of coffee and a sandwich. $23 with tax $24. That might slow things down here at Caesar's. You know what I'm saying? Take these prices might slow people down a little bit. Here in Las Vegas, ripping off all the customers think that might slow things down. All right. All right. I'm going to take over. That is, of course, my second favorite Las Vegas influencer, Vegas Pauly C. Do you know him? I think I just started following him. Casino Comp Wallet. He's literally the man.

My favorite Vegas influencer is Joe Fami, as you know. But Vegas Pauly C is... I'm going to try to hang out with this guy. I have to go in October for an event. Anyway, I call that dumbflation. So people are stupid, right? Just generally. Vegas tourists are stupider than average. But there's like a limit. And when you hit that limit, I just call that dumbflation. Where it's like, no one's buying any of this shit at this point. Like you get to a point where it's just so insulting and so outrageous that it just, it screws up your regular business.

This is the point he was trying to make. Caesar's got into so much trouble in the financial crisis debt wise, they're still hurting from it and they're forced to resort to stuff like that where the Dunkin' Donuts in the casino. It's gross. It has to, like that's where you need to make, you need to make $5 on an egg and cheese to pay your, but what that does is it slows down the gaming. It slows down the foot traffic. People don't want to go places where they get treated that way.

How dumb do you have to be to gouge somebody so badly in a Dunkin' Donuts that they decide not to play blackjack there? So dumb, the definition for me, and I just invented this dumbflation, is when you do things that are so gross and outrageous that they jeopardize the real business that you're in. And this is like a pretty good example of that. So you could probably come up with examples. One last thing. I think McDonald's and Starbucks did the same thing. Not quite as egregious, but like people were like, all right, it's too much. Yeah. Pump the brakes. John, put this page up. This is New York Magazine this week. They did an entire Hamptons issue.

So all the towns, Watermill, Bridgehampton, Southampton, Eastampton, Hampton Bay, Zama, Gansett, Sagaponic. What's on there? What are they showing? It's so great. Like it's a great feature because they tell you who lives in each place, what the vibe is like, what the best restaurant is. But there's almost the entire article, and it's a whole issue on the Hamptons, because let's face it, the reader of New York Magazine is in the Hamptons for the summer. The whole issue is people complaining about prices.

And everywhere you look is dumbflation. Starting with $100,000 to rent a house for, for a month. Yeah. And then like a hundred dollar lobster rolls. I'm sorry. You can't go to vague. You can't go to Hamptons and complain about prices. Like just. Don't be poor in the Hamptons. Just, you know, it's not for you. It's not, I would, I don't even, I do the Hamptons once a year. I walk around like an idiot. I sit in a mediocre restaurant. The people flipping out over, Oh my God, I walk around like an idiot. I sit in a mediocre restaurant.

Flipping out over, oh my God, you have to try that dumplings. It sucks. The whole experience sucks. Where are the dumplings? Anywhere. Anywhere. Even like really good New York restaurants, they open an outpost in the Hamptons. It's terrible.

Yeah. But people, they don't care. They want to be seen there. It's a whole thing. And it's not my thing, but dumbflation when people in the Hamptons are complaining about dumbflation, you know, it's like really a phenomenon. I like it. It's the point I wanted to make. I like it.

Okay. I'm going to make the case for a company, for a stock that I bought two weeks ago. Uh, and I want to thank Steve Straza for putting this on my radar. It's not a stock that I followed. It's not a company that I'm particularly interested in. ago, and I want to thank Steve Straza for putting this on my radar. It's not a stock that I followed. It's not a company that I'm particularly interested in, but the stock looked great. Before I pitch it and the company is Celsius Holdings, I just want to make the point, something that's very important.

I think the most important thing that traders, not necessarily investors, although investors can't ignore this. You have to understand what type of market environment we are in. And right now, we are in the kind of we're back market. In fact, let me not say kind of, we are back because today you have the Qs hitting an all time high. We spoke about Circle. We spoke a lot about CoreWeave. Tramath is doing SPACs. You have IPO's, the IPO window is wide open. Polymarket just filed. Wealthfront just filed. It's all happening.

ARK, we haven't spoken about Cathie in a while. The ARK, I think I have a chart of this. John, chart on please. Look at ARK. Dude. This is how it starts. Breaking the f*** out of it. It's like the highest.

I don't even know what she owns anymore. I think it's still Tesla Roku. Here's another one. Another one from Lukawa and Sherwood. The retail favorites index. This is from Goldman, so it's proprietary. I can't see exactly what's inside. All time high.

It's been a minute, okay? So, so, so, so, so, so, shut off please. I want to see the viewers. If you are in a name that is acting lethargic, it's not working, it's not going up when the market does, there is something wrong. Your stock should be working right now. And so, OK, so the case for Celsius,

I guess the fundamental case, is that they are gaining share. Chart on, please. Look at this chart from Alex Morris that they are gaining share, chart on please, look at this chart from Alex Morris. They are gaining share- This is the energy drink to be clear. This is the energy drink. I'm not a consumer of it, but whatever. They are gaining share bigly from Red Bull, who's flat, from Monster, who is flat to down.

These are the two behemoths. Look at the portfolio of Celsius. Came out of nowhere. All right? So monster growth. So I don't know exactly. In fact, I don't know at all what happened in 2024 and 2025. The stock got annihilated.

Chardon. It fell 78%. Why? I don't particularly care. Honestly, I just don't care. For me, this is a technical trade. And look at the technicals. So you've got an RSI of 69, which that's very, very nice.

You've got just a breakout of all breakouts. And I'm in the name. And if it rolls, I will sell it. But as long as it keeps going up, I'm going to ride this baby. I think the Nugget drinks this stuff. I got to talk to him about it. Because I don't know from energy drinks. Not from egg. I like this baby. I think the nugget drinks this stuff. I got to talk about it. Because I don't know from energy drinks. Not from egg. I like this

pitch. I'm gonna take this and do some homework and if the stock works I'm gonna take credit for it. I have a mystery chart for you and then we'll get out of here. All right you should get this in one guess. Hold on. Let me I'm not being terribly fair to you. Okay that's fine, let me, I'm working on half the screen. I'm not being terribly fair to you. Okay, that's fine. Hold on, hold on. I'm working on half a screen, so let me big this up, okay? Let me blow this up. Let me just, alright, I'm gazing at it. Okay, okay. Alright. This should be easy, right? So, for the listener, it's a one year chart and there are no price, there's no y-axis with prices. Oh, I know what this is. Oh, I was going to give you more, but by all means, solve the puzzle.

Okay. Well, maybe I don't. Is it crude oil? Holy shit, you're good. Look at you. Look at you. Dude, I am very good at this. You gorgeous son of a bitch.

This is crude oil futures. I just thought, I just thought this was like an incredible moment in you don't know shit history, which is my favorite. Like I like to learn how little I know. You know that about me. I think it's hilarious how little everyone knows. This is a great moment in you don't know shit history. You have Israel and Iran for the first time ever literally trading full arsenals worth of missiles and bombs. You have threats of the straight of Hormuz being closed and the price of crude reacts

to that by falling 12% in a couple of days. And I just think that's a magnificent reminder to shut up always. And buy your politics. Well, when geopolitics are in the, just shut up. Just shut up. Do yourself a huge favor.

You have your preconceived notion. I always do. And then share it with literally nobody. I always do. And I should take my own advice. All right. That's it for us. This has been an amazing show.

I want to remind you guys, we have new summer merchandise on the Compound Shop. It's idontshop.com. Thank you, guys. Look at what an amazing job Nicole and Daniel and everyone are doing on the designs. The Animal Spirits shirt, if you're an Animal Spirits fan, that's a no-brainer.

The Compound towel is all the way lit. Uh, people are loving the towel. And of course we have the new series 777 Las Vegas themed, uh, shirt in two color ways. I believe that's bone and black. Um, so check out iron shot.com, uh, all new episode of animal spirits tomorrow with Michael and Ben. They were together today in Chicago. Looks like that background looks like you're about to do improv or something. I mean, let me say that's our office in Chicago. I mean, how beautiful is this? Sick.

Wish I were there with you guys. Not really, but like sort of. And at the end of the week, it's an all new compound and friends, of course. Thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll talk to you soon. Whether you're just getting started as an investor or you're managing a multi-million dollar portfolio, Ritholtz Wealth Management has the solution for you. It all starts with building the right financial plan.

To speak with a certified financial planner today, visit riddholtzwealth.com. Don't forget to check us out at youtube.com slash the compound rwm. Make sure to leave a rating and review on your favorite podcasting app. If you love investing podcasts, check out Michael and Ben every Wednesday morning on Animal Spirits. Thanks for listening.