The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Prof G Markets: Adam Neumann returns, cotton futures, and tax credits for EVs

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

This week on Prof G Markets, Scott weighs in on Andreessen Horowitz’s massive investment in Adam Neumann’s latest venture, and considers a few of the commercial implications of climate change, including the surprising spike in cotton futures. Then in this week’s deep dive, we find out the details of the newest electric vehicle tax credits, and what they tell us about Congress’s priorities, and perhaps what yours should be. a16z and Adam Neumann Cotton Futures EV Tax Credits Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more. NerdWallet, finance smarter. NerdWallet Compare Incorporated. NMLS 1617539. This week's number, nine. The median net worth of married couples aged 25 to 34 was about nine times the net worth of single individuals in 2019. The key to a successful marriage, you go out at least twice a week for good food and good wine. I go on Tuesday, my wife goes on Friday. Welcome to Prof G Markets. Today, after we look at the headlines, we'll be discussing Adam Newman's new business venture, the U.S. cotton market, and we'll take a deep dive into the EV tax credits. Ed, our millennial here today, making me feel younger again. What's going on? Read us the headlines. As we discussed last week, U.S. inflation is cooling off. But across the pond, it's a very different story. Prices in

the U.K. are up more than 10% year over year, which is their largest jump in 40 years. And in the Eurozone, inflation just came in at 8.9%. That's also a record high. It was also an interesting week for retail. Total US retail sales came out flat last month. But if you exclude cars and gas, there was actually a better than expected increase of 0.7%. That's a positive sign for the economy and for big retailers like Walmart,

Target, and Home Depot, all of which posted higher revenues in their earnings last week. Granted, Target also saw a big reduction in net income, but that's because it chose to write off around $1.5 billion in excess inventory this quarter. So going forward, we expect those earnings will normalize. And the final story, the meme stock movement is making a comeback. In the past month, AMC shares have surged as much as 47%. Meanwhile, shares in GameStop and Bed, Bath & Beyond have increased 19% and get this, 359% respectively. Scott, what do you think? Are we going to the moon here? There's a couple of interesting things.

In the headlines, what we forget is inflation is bad here. It's actually worse everywhere else. Almost every major region is experiencing more severe inflation than us. As it relates to meme stocks, I think it goes to a much deeper issue. And that is people your age, Ed, loosely speaking, are being fucked. And that is their wealth as registered as a percentage of GDP in the last four years has gone from 20% of GDP. It's now 9%. The two biggest tax deductions are mortgage interest rate, tax deduction, and capital gains.

Who owns home? Who owns stocks? People my age who rents and makes all of their money and salary, people your age. So over the last 40 years, my generation has affected a transfer of wealth from young people to old people. And so what happens in this last crisis, specifically the pandemic, we decided that the priority was to keep rich people rich. And we came in with this massive stimulus to prop up stocks. And all that is, is really taking money from the next generation to ensure that the current generation stays rich. So what happens? Young people sense this bullshit. They recognize that they can't buy into the Brooklyn real estate market at 2,000 bucks a foot.

They realize they can't buy into Apple at 35 times earnings and make the same sort of money we made or my generation made. So what do they do? They create their own volatility. When young people don't see opportunity, volatility is their friend. And they take to a

message board and they start talking about a stock and they try and identify, using very interesting cogent analysis, a company that's been overshorted, meaning that a slight move up in the stock could create a bunch of people trying to get through a crowded door and send the stock soaring. And they get into kind of the meme stock or crowd squeeze. And it's become a thing. It seems like when this happens, though, it's less severe. It's like when I got COVID, I took Paxlovid and it went away and then I rebounded, but I only had about a third of the symptoms. This feels like the meme stock rebound. And that is, it's the same dynamic, but it's not as severe. I would argue that to use, again, another pandemic metaphor, that the meme stock movement has gone

endemic. And now it is now a static part of the markets. Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing you've got to track day by day if you want to engage in this. This is just pure speculation. It has nothing to do with the underlying company. But I don't blame a younger generation for creating volatility. When you rob people of opportunity, volatility becomes their friend. If you're locked up in prison, you want revolution.

And if you're young and the game is rigged against you, you want volatility. Do you think you would have touched this stuff when you were my age? So this is sort of do as I say, not as I do. When I was your age, I remember buying call options in a company called iOmega, which was a disk drive manufacturer and a meme stock of that generation. And I made a ton of money and thought I was smart. And so I kept doing it and then lost it all, which is typically what happens with meme stocks. And what I would say is, if you wanna take a small percentage of your income and have some fun and do kind of crazy shit

that might offer asymmetric upside, then fine. What you shouldn't do is things like write options or things where there's unlimited downside because then things can get very ugly very fast. But what I tell kids your age is to take as much money as you can and put it into diversified ETFs because before you know it, you're going to wake up and you're going to be my age and capital that you save at your age just grows exponentially over the long term. So like I said, have some fun, but the smart thing, and we both know the smart thing, put it in diversified, low-cost ETFs. Well, let's move on. Our first story this week

is Adam Neumann. Come with me and let's build the future together. The infamous founder of WeWork, who is back with a new real estate venture called Flow. From what we can gather, Flow is basically a branded property management company for apartments. Newman has bought more than 3,000 units in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, and Nashville. And Flow will operate them with services and community features similar to what WeWork did with Office Space. But here's what is really grabbing the headlines. Andreessen Horowitz, one of the biggest VC firms in the world, just invested $350 million in the company. That's their largest individual investment ever. And with that, Flow is now a unicorn with a $1 billion valuation, and the company hasn't even opened for business. So, Scott, what is the thinking here? Specifically, why would Andreessen Horowitz

back Newman after all that we know about him? Well, I think the most exciting thing about this is that Apple TV has already announced the production of We Flow, and I will be portraying Rebecca Newman. I kind of look like Rebecca Newman, seriously. Anyways, this is fascinating. And there's a lot of snarky comments, but the core competence of a CEO in the unicorn economy is storytelling and the ability to sell. And Adam Neumann, and I know this firsthand, is very charismatic. Also, it's a

good idea. Branding apartments on a national basis is an opportunity, just as branding temporary workspace was an opportunity. Unfortunately, building sustainable real estate companies, there's a decent amount of friction, and that is you have to be thoughtful about what you buy. You have to be thoughtful about managing those properties, thoughtful about financing them. It is very difficult to scale a real estate business. What I think they're trying to do here is take advantage of an opportunity. It makes sense that people who move a lot or people who get transferred want to know that the apartment they're moving in has similar amenities, a certain type of vibe or community, maybe even the same technology. So, you walk in and you know how to turn on the TV and you

know the wireless is going to work really well, whatever it might be. I think it's a big opportunity. What I think Andreessen Horowitz is going to try and do here, and the reason why it probably won't work from an investment standpoint, is they'll try and put a veneer of technology over it. When I say veneer, I mean something that's fake, just as WeWork tried to position itself as a tech company to get an outsized tech valuation. A lot of people might be surprised to know that we have more engineers in WeWork than contractors, architects, and designers.

It's not even about being technology first. In today's world, when you build a company, if you're not technology-oriented and you're not letting that lead your information process and your decision-making process, then you're missing out. I think they're going to try and do the same thing here. This will be like WeWork. Get a lot of attention, but ultimately may not be a great investment.

Would you move into a branded apartment, Ed? I think this is probably going to be aimed at you. Actually, I looked at the website, and they just have the logo, but it feels sort of exclusive and cool. But I don't know. It all depends. And also, I think Adam Neumann gets seen as sort of the bad guy in all this. I think if there's a culprit here, it's Masayoshi San, because if you tell a 30-something-year-old male that he's Jesus Christ, he's inclined to believe you.

And Masayoshi San just went into the street and burned burned whatever it was, $13 or $15 billion in capital. And the valuation was $47 billion right before Goldman and J.P. Morgan tried to foist that bag of shit on institutional investors until academics and other pundits said, this makes no sense. And the market did its job and closed the fire door. But Adam Neumann is a guy who's taking advantage of markets and his salesmanship and is trying to build interesting companies. Now, does he represent narcissism and arrogance? Yeah, all that. But the person here who has burnt people's money is Masayoshi Son, not Adam Neumann. You know, he's actually tried this before. He tried this thing called WeLive,

which was basically this idea. And he opened two locations in New York and Virginia. But then it collapsed when the IPO fell through. And just some stats, the total value of the US housing market has more than doubled in the past decade, and it's now $43 trillion. And last year, the price of a typical home rose 20%. So it feels like we're in for a disruption here. We spoke with Dror Poleg, who's an expert in this field. Dror is an economic historian and the author of Rethinking Real Estate. He says for this venture to succeed, it's going to require focus. Here's what he had to say. In a world where people can live anywhere, there's now more and more competition

in terms of how do you attract them to come and live where you are, where your building is. So the play here is to assume that brand is going to become more important in this world and that services that differentiate an asset are going to become more important. And Adam Neumann bets that he can do to residential what he did to office, as in building a household brand of a real estate company

that actually attracts customers directly and skips a lot of brokers and traditional property managers and traditional even listing sites, and then take a chunk of all of the revenue that they generate. Is that possible to create? Yes. Is Adam Neumann a guy that can create such a brand? Yes. Can he make that without repeating the same mistakes that he made last time? Based on even the early information that we have, we already see that the answer may be no. The problem here is Andreessen Horowitz. They're looking for

venture-like returns. But look, I think it's going to be interesting to watch. Adam Neumann's a great promoter. This is a good idea. The people at Andreessen Horowitz are not stupid. So it's kind of what Charlie Munger said, and that is you should never underestimate someone who overestimates themselves because occasionally they're right. Also, I think in some ways, it's kind of the wonderful thing about America. We give people second chances. We have a ton of capital willing to pursue crazy ideas that seem crazy until they're crazy genius. So I kind of like this in the sense that America keeps taking swings at the bat, even when it gets beamed in the face. We're going to keep an eye on this. A lot more positive than I'd expected from you. We're going to take a short break,

then we'll be discussing commodities futures in the cotton market, followed by a deep dive into the newly introduced electric vehicle tax credits. See you in a bit. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing. And when you're starting your small business, while you're so focused on the day-to-day, the personnel, and the finances, marketing is the last thing on your mind. But if customers don't know about you, the rest of it doesn't really matter. Luckily, there's Constant Contact.

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Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life.

So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back. As we know, it's been a very hot summer. Heat waves and droughts are impacting economies around the world, including the US. This has increased energy prices as demand for air conditioning goes up. But there's another market we don't usually pay much attention to that's getting decimated by droughts, and that's cotton. In short, cotton farms are drying up. It's estimated that 40% of them are going to be abandoned this year.

And that means that on a square footage basis, we're about to harvest the smallest area of farmland since 1870. Last Friday, the Department of Agriculture said that U.S. cotton production will be about a third lower than last year. And as a result, cotton futures have exploded. Last week, the price of cotton futures went up 15%, which is the sharpest weekly jump in over a decade. Now, before we get into the cotton market, Scott, could you explain to us what commodities futures actually are? So a future is just a piece of paper that says you're going to purchase a set amount of that commodity, cotton, lumber, wheat, at a specific price at some point in the future. So generally, one oil future is 1,000 barrels of oil. One cotton future is 50,000 pounds of cotton.

Quick IQ test. Which weighs more, 50,000 pounds of cotton or 50,000 pounds of oil, Ed? Wow, this sounds like a McKinsey interview. I'll go with cotton because it's light and fluffy. There's that Princeton degree. The purpose of the futures market is actually to manage risk. Farmers use them to lock in a selling price. That way they can plan their business. And if the price of the commodity goes down, they can better kind of plan their business. If the price goes up, obviously they lose some upside,

but they lock in a price. Put another way, the purpose is to pass on the risk to the market. Not every future trader is a farmer or a food processor. Some of the traders are speculators, and they try to predict price movements and take on the risk in order to make a profit. So it's not just buyers and sellers trying to hedge or lock in a price. It's speculators who look at geopolitical events or look at weather patterns. My guess is there's somebody trying to predict the next major flood and then buy or sell futures based on it. So with every market, it invites speculators, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

So if I bought a cotton future tomorrow, does that mean I literally receive a shipment of 50,000 pounds of cotton? Well, theoretically, and not to your door but to a warehouse, but the vast majority of those, the traders don't actually go to collect the delivery. They'll usually roll over their contracts to the following month or keep their positions open. Most people in this market probably don't take delivery of the cotton. They're just using it as a vehicle for trading. Let's return to the cotton story. Scott, what do you make of that mass shortage? And as an investor, is there something we should be looking out for here? Look, I'm not an environmentalist, but if you're a person of data and science, which I like to think I am, there's just no denying the oceans are getting warmer. The polar caps are melting, and that's creating a lot of problems.

To not acknowledge the threat of climate change and the mass migration, you really have your head up your ass. It's going to have a direct impact on our economy. It already is. Today, 42% of the U.S. is in drought. The water level in Lake Mead has plunged 150 feet since 2000. The fun part of that is the water level is going down and they keep finding barrels with dead bodies. It's like something out of a Martin Scorsese film. I'm funny how? I mean, funny like I'm a clown. I abuse you. Anyways, in 1960, the U.S. on average suffered two heat waves per year. Today, the average is six. They're also lasting longer. There's 70 days today versus just on average 20 in 1960. And if this continues, we won't be talking about the price of cotton futures.

We'll be asking where to buy clothes. Cotton equals 40% of global textile revenue. It takes 2,700 liters of water to produce one single t-shirt. Think about that, 2,700 liters of water to produce a t-shirt. By contrast, one human needs 50 liters per day for basic living needs. Some alternatives, polyester, back in fashion, hemp, bamboo, but all require a lot of energy to process and polyester is not sustainable. Although nobody looks sharper than when they're wearing polyester. So anyways, this is a big deal, But like anything, it's an asset class. I think if you were going to start a consulting firm, you'd want to get into sustainability.

I think it's going to create tremendous opportunity. If I were coming out of school and thought I want to be an expert in something, trying to understand geopolitics or climate intersects with companies and shareholder value will be a really interesting place to position yourself. All right, that's it for the news. Let's move on to this week's deep dive. So the Biden administration has taken a major step towards trying to head off the worst impacts of climate change with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. One of the most visible components of that legislation are consumer tax

credits for electric vehicles. But they've caused some controversy because they aren't available for all buyers or for all cars. Here for more on that issue is Profg Media's editor-in-chief, Jason Stavis. Since the Tesla Model S started appearing on our streets in 2012, electric vehicles have been one of the most visible signs of our transition to clean energy. And for good reason. Transportation is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the United States, and most of that is from gasoline-powered passenger cars and light trucks. That's changing quickly. Electric vehicles, or EVs, make up 10% of new car sales in the U.S. and nearly 20% in Europe and China. By 2035, you may not be able to buy a new gas-powered car at all.

The EU has banned the sale of gas cars by that year, as have California, New York, and Massachusetts. So in a sense, the EV revolution is a foregone conclusion, and the gas-powered car is doomed. The new climate legislation offers tax credits of up to $7,500 per EV to pull that future closer. Well then, if EVs are coming anyway, why do we need to spend taxpayer money on tax credits for EVs? What's interesting about the tax credits in the new climate package is how limited they are. First, new car credits are only available for buyers with household incomes

below $150,000, or $300,000 for couples, and the used car credits are cut off at $75,000 in income, $150,000 for couples. Now, those are pretty high cutoffs. Only 2% of U.S. households make more than $300,000, but it nonetheless excludes a lot of people currently in the market for an EV. The median income of an EV buyer in California, for example, is $150,000, which is nearly double the income of gas car buyers. Now, the second limit is that the credit is only available for new cars that cost less than $55,000, or SUVs or trucks under $80,000. Once again, that's a high cutoff, but it excludes a lot of cars, such as Tesla's pricier models and the flagship offerings from both traditional car manufacturers and the new

EV startups. Now, these tax credits are also not new. We've had $7,500 tax credits for EVs for a while, but the earlier versions didn't have these income and price limits. They did have a limit that has been removed, however. The tax credit is no longer capped at 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer. So together, all of these changes suggest that Congress has moved beyond merely stimulating the EV market in any way it can and is trying to push EV adoption towards the mass market. These limits will encourage car manufacturers to invest more in lower-priced EVs rather than focusing on the high-margin, high-end. That's got to happen eventually

because of the EU and big states like California and New York having banned gas-powered car sales by 2035. So they've provided the stick in the form of those bans, and now the U.S. federal government is offering the carrot, making EVs more affordable. And are those the only important limits on the EV tax credits? There's another very significant limitation. To qualify for the tax credit, vehicle must have been assembled in the United States, and specifically, the battery must be at least partially comprised of U.S. components. And the required percentage of that battery increases over time. By 2027, qualifying

batteries must be 80% U.S. sourced. So when you combine that with the price caps, this will exclude over two-thirds of the EVs that are currently on the market from the tax credit. In the last 10 years, the Chinese government has invested an estimated $60 billion in that country's lithium battery production, and it now has a 70% market share. So the U.S. assembly requirement on these tax credits has been frustrating for consumers

who are eyeing European and Chinese brands, but they were clearly put in place with the hope of shoring up U.S. capability in these critical areas. It's worth noting that this isn't a corporate headquarters limitation. Volkswagens and Audis manufactured in the U.S., for example, are potentially eligible for the tax credit. Thanks, Jason. Scott, a lot of the early media coverage around these limits has been negative, expressing consumer frustration with the exclusions. What's your take? So I think that people underestimate how

intelligent some of the people are that are writing this legislation. And while some of it seems clumsy, basically this legislation says we're not in a hurry to subsidize two groups specifically. One, wealthy people who buy Teslas, and we don't want to subsidize Tesla. It feels to me like General Motors and Ford had a bigger seat at the table here because based on the caps of household income, because it looks as if they're trying to push EVs into the middle class and subsidize the automobile makers who service more of a middle income buyer. So I think this is very exciting. I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity to try and figure out what new markets are going to be

created based on this several hundred billion dollar investment in EV technology. And also, keep in mind, it's better to be good in front of a great wave than great in front of a good wave. What do I mean by that? You would have rather been good at Google the last decade than great at General Motors. So positioning yourself in sectors where there's just going to be growth, it gives the appearance you're better than you are. And we just know there's certain areas you're going to see a lot of growth. We're going to see a lot of growth in fintech. We're going to see a lot of growth in health tech. We're going to see a lot of growth in climate tech.

Coming out of business school, I had friends that went to work for Dell, and they did really well for a while, and then not so much. And then I had other friends that went to work for this little software company in Seattle called Microsoft. One went after computer hardware, one group of people went after software. And obviously the ones who went to Microsoft ended up with big homes on Puget Sound. A lot of it is being smart about the sector you pick. Get in front of the right wave and clearly climate tech here is going to be a huge wave. Ed, what's in store for this week? This week, we'll see earnings from NVIDIA, Salesforce, Macy's, and Urban Outfitters. We'll also hear from three big pandemic winners, Zoom, Peloton, and Williams-Sonoma. Their stocks all surged during COVID, but have since seen big declines

now that COVID is over. Anyway, Scott, what are your predictions? So I think in the next week or two, we're going to have more news out of the Musk Twitter drama. The stock's at 44. So clearly the market has decided that he's going to be forced to close. The interesting thing will be what if in fact they come to a settlement agreement once they announce it, because even if he has to pay $10 billion without the agreement to buy all of the stock at 5420, the stock probably crashes. So it's going to be interesting. And I'd be shocked if there weren't discussions right now between the board and must representatives. How's Nantucket?

It's wonderful. As usual, I will be avoiding the ocean and the refrigerators with teeth called sharks here and watching a lot of football. How about you, Ed? What are you doing? What do young people do on the weekends? I'm leaning into my Gen Z status and going on a hinge date, which will be sweet. A hinge date? Never met her.

I thought all dating apps were like like let's meet in five minutes and decide if we want to hook up in seven minutes you actually plan out that far on the apps yeah this is new york you have to plan it out really because i've got another one the following week so it's all about the accent by the way how do you get the accent across on an app and so i'm fascinated by this where are you taking your date can you i'm taking her to my favorite bar in union square what's your favorite bar in Union Square. What's your favorite bar in Union Square, Ed? Deer Roving. Have you heard of it? I go to like the Four Seasons and hang out with other business people and prostitutes.

I don't hang out with the cool kids. Anyways, have fun on your date, Ed. Yeah, thank you. She's a lucky woman. She meant to swipe left, and she swiped right. Good for her and good for you. Yeah, I'll let you know how it goes. Great. Okay, that's a wrap for today's episode. We'll see you next week. What software do you use at work?

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