The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Prof G Markets: Blockbuster Week For Big Tech Earnings + Can the U.S. Fix Its Student Debt Crisis?
Episode Date: May 5, 2025Scott and Ed discuss the latest U.S. GDP report, new data on China’s factory activity, and the launch of Amazon’s new internet satellites. Then they turn to Big Tech earnings, breaking down first ...quarter results from Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. Finally, they examine the Trump administration’s decision to resume forced collections on defaulted student loans, discussing the broader implications and potential solutions for addressing student debt. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Discussion (0)
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Today's number $16.6 billion.
That's the record amount American consumers lost to scammers and cyber criminals last
year.
Ed, I just don't have a joke about that, but I heard a lot of young men listen to this
podcast.
So I have the ultimate pickup line.
You ready, Ed?
You go up to someone you're attracted to and you say, can you take a picture of me?
Everyone always says yes, right?
No one ever says no to that.
And then you say,
can you turn on the mirror function and take a picture of the two of us?
And she'll say, uh, why? And you say,
cause someday I'm going to show it to our kids. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. It depends how cute he is. Yo, better be very handsome. This guy better be incredibly handsome.
That's a very telling comment,
because the difference between romance and creepiness
is the perceived attractiveness
of the person making the overture.
And it's impossible to know, is this creepy or romantic?
Scott, have you ever actually used
one of these pickup lines in real life?
I think they're hilarious.
I love like the whole, do you believe in love in first side or should I walk by again?
Or, you know, I love that shit.
Uh, but no, my, my current and hopefully future partner, um, 20, what are 21 years ago?
I just went up to her at the pool of the Raleigh hotel and I said, where are you guys from?
So that wasn't much of a line.
Um, that wasn't that creative.
Um, but I was much more handsome then, so I didn went up to her at the pool of the Raleigh Hotel and I said, where are you guys from? So that wasn't much of a line.
That wasn't that creative.
But I was much more handsome then, so I didn't need to be that creative.
I think pickup lines are more for banter.
Certainly on this show.
Yeah.
How about you?
What's, what's been your approach?
I've always been, where are you from as well?
But I feel like, I feel like it would be cool to, to have an actually good pickup line that's provably worked.
But I feel like the thing that we're learning,
at least in the past two minutes,
is that a lot of this has to do with, are you handsome?
I don't know, I don't think that's as true
or not as true for men.
I think women, I think men get turned on with their eyes
and women get turned on with their ears.
I think if a guy has a good rap.
Yeah, but to get in there at the very beginning.
If you can make a woman laugh,
you can ask her out on a date.
I think it's all about the rap.
I think women are much more thoughtful
in terms of their criteria for mating than dudes.
Well, by the way, Ed, I didn't say handsome.
I said cute, which could mean funny, charismatic, confident.
It's all about the way he says it.
That's a good point.
Ed rolls up and dials up the English accent.
He's like, I'm from Princeton.
I'm from, I went to Princeton.
Get to the headlines, Ed.
Let's start with our weekly review of Market Vitals.
The S&P 500 climbed, the dollar rose, Bitcoin jumped,
and the yield on 10-year Treasuries fell.
Shifting to the headlines.
US GDP shrank 0.3% in the first quarter, marking the economy's first contraction in three years.
Assurgeon imports as companies raced to get ahead of tariffs led to a sharp drop in net
exports.
The major indices all fell in that news.
China's factory activity fell into its worst contraction in nearly two years. New export
orders also dropped to their lowest level since December 2022. In response, Chinese
officials have pledged support for affected businesses and workers.
And finally, Amazon has launched its first internet satellites into orbit in a bid to
compete with SpaceX's Starlink.
The company's plan, called Project Kuiper, should begin providing broadband service later
this year and eventually will deploy a constellation of 3,200 satellites.
So let's start here, Scott, with this GDP report.
A lot of people are seeing this report and they're saying, look how bad this is, look
at what Trump's done, look how bad this is for the economy, the economy is contracting,
et cetera.
And I just want to point out before we dig into it, that's not really what's going on
here.
I think the two things to note, one, this is a measurement of the economy before the
tariffs went into effect.
This is Q1, so we're not actually seeing the impact of the tariffs themselves.
And two, the reason you're seeing this contraction
is more of an accounting blip than anything.
And I just wanna remind us of what GDP actually is,
just some macro 101 here.
GDP is an equation.
I mean, it's a measurement of our economic output, but the way we get to that number is an equation. I mean, it's a measurement of our economic output, but the way we get to that number is an equation.
And one of the elements in that equation is something called net exports, which is basically you take our total exports
and you subtract our total imports. And that's supposed to tell you how much stuff we actually made in America. And so what that basically means, if you have a giant increase in imports into your country,
that's going to mean that the net exports number goes down, which means that the GDP
number will go down.
And that's what happened last week because everyone knew in Q1 that tariffs were coming.
And so everyone scrambled to ship as many products
as they possibly could into the US
before the tariffs went into effect.
And that's why we saw imports into America surge 41%,
which ultimately had a negative impact on GDP.
This isn't the big tariffs are bad report
that you might think it is.
It's the next GDP report that we will see in July.
That's the one that's going to tell us what's really going on.
And that's the one where I think we can have a more honest analysis of what
tariffs have done to America. But Scott, your reactions to this GDP report,
which made a lot of headlines and a lot of people were quite freaked out about it.
I don't love GDP. And also GDP is a bit of a lagging indicator and I think that
the Trump administration can rightfully say this is more about the economic policies of Biden than
it is about us and your analysis around the surge in imports kind of contaminating the data
is the correct one. But why have we had a surge in imports? Because people feel insecure about the economy or specifically these tariffs.
And when I look at the uncertainty index, which has hit a new high since like the
eighties and consumer confidence, which has hit a new low since COVID, what it
largely pretends is that we're going to see a decline in GDP in the next quarter.
I believe you're going to see a dramatic decrease in inventory in stores.
If you just look at those incredible kind of heat maps of shipping lanes,
there are all these ships in kind of Hong Kong Harbor that are just waiting to
be loaded and aren't being loaded.
And then the port of Los Angeles, which I believe is the biggest port in the
Western hemisphere, there's very little offloading taking place.
So at some point, and I don't know if the lag is two weeks or two months,
you're just going to see an absence of inventory in stores and consumers
have gotten to the point where if they can't get what they want, they're so
used to such a robust supply chain, they're going to think, A, if they're not
feeling good about the consumer economy, they don't want to, it's aggressively buy that new home gym or whatever.
And B, if the products they want are available, they
use that as an excuse just not to buy.
So I think winter is coming.
And that is, uh, I would imagine the next quarter
there's going to be, you know, they'll find another
reason to blame Hunter Biden or something.
But this is, they get a pass on this one, right? But the fact that there's,
again, this massive surge in imports is because our economy is making asymmetric,
irrational decisions based on an unpredictable administration and unpredictable economic policy.
That sort of reminds me of one of his latest Trump's latest truths on truth
social. I hate that we have to call them truths, but that's what they are.
Um, but he basically said, so when the stock market ripped after he was elected,
he said, welcome to the Trump stock market.
And today, I think last week he, posted this truth, this tweet that said,
this is the Biden stock market that I inherited.
And it was sort of marking his first hundred days in office, which have been one of the worst
stock market performances for the start of a presidency ever in America.
And it is sort of a reminder of how basically his strategy to distract us from what is really going on.
You mentioned there that GDP is a lagging indicator and we can't necessarily blame Donald Trump entirely on this contraction,
or at least that's not the right argument to make.
But when it comes to the stock market, which is not a lagging indicator.
Forward looking indicator.
The stock market is live, real time, forward looking indicator.
That's the thing to focus on.
And that's the part where you cannot say this is the Biden stock market.
The stock market is live, it's real time.
This is the Trump stock market.
S&P down 4%, and NASDAQ down 8% year to date.
So that's the argument that you definitely cannot make, which of course he is making.
Agreed.
Let's move on to this manufacturing data.
China had its largest drop in manufacturing activities since 2023.
Export orders fell to their lowest level since COVID.
UBS, Goldman Sachs are now lowering their GDP
growth forecast for China to lower than 4%. And just for some context there, we discussed this
earlier this year. China at the beginning of the year had a growth target of 5% positive GDP growth.
So it looks like they're not going to come anywhere near that. In fact, I think we actually predicted that, or we at least said
that 5% was too ambitious.
So this manufacturing data has come out.
It's not looking good.
Scott, your reactions to this new data.
They likely will be hurt more than us in the short term.
Um, but their tolerance for pain is much greater than ours.
And I think over the medium and the long-term China is actually a
winner because I think they're medium and the long-term, China is actually a winner
because I think they're going to be more aggressive about establishing relationships
with new partners that will be more apt or less reticent to engage in business with them. And
also you're already seeing that basically we're thrusting the EU into the arms of China and vice
versa. Chinese e-commerce exports to the US fell by 65% last month, but exports
to Europe rose by 28% and also what we forget is that Europe is actually
a bigger trading partner, so that's 28% on a bigger number.
So the big winner in the short term is the EU because you got to think that
a lot of these factories want to keep their assembly lines humming.
And so they're going to call a lot of potential customers
in Europe and say, hey, I can get you a great deal
on this widget.
I mean, this is effectively the way I would describe it.
America's not dead, but it's the equivalent of a death
of the kind of existing post-World War II,
world order as led by the United States.
And that is these traditional trading alliances that were built up over the
last 80 years of trust, rule of law, intellectual property.
It feels like that is dead.
And what we have is the largest yard sale from an estate sale from this rich old
lady down the street who died and everyone's showing up and trying to figure
out how do they get their piece of a
$25 trillion economy. I think our economy is going to shrink and a lot of other nations are going to
try and figure out how they fill that void by either trade relationships with each other,
making, you know, grabbing market share from US companies that will no longer have the same
most favorite nation status that they enjoy with their international partners. And you're going to
see a lot, in my opinion, you're going to see a lot of small, medium-sized
businesses go out of business in the U.S. and that economic activity will be picked up
by other people in the economy or when the global economy comes, fills in those holes, if you will.
So it's interesting to try and think about who are the winners in the short, the medium,
and the long-term. Biggest loser in the long run, hands down the US, both short, medium and long,
I think. But I think the EU is actually going to be a big winner here because I got to think
China's showing up and saying, hey, the sale of the century is right now on Chinese goods.
I think this data, it sort of highlights the point that Ryan Peterson made when he came on the podcast,
which was he was really trying to emphasize, which the Trump administration doesn't seem to
understand, that trade is a positive sum game. When you make something and I decide to buy it,
we're actually both benefiting there. We're both receiving value from the transaction.
So when we decide as a nation that we want to get into a trade war with China, it means that we lose out in a lot of ways in America in the form of we have less stuff, which leads
to higher prices.
And also China loses because they're losing business.
They want to make stuff and ship it over to us.
And we're now beginning to see that reflected in the data.
That's what this manufacturing activity data tells us.
China is losing.
It's actually negatively impacting their GDP.
Of course, that's going to be the same story over in America.
Your point, I think, is the right one.
Who are the winners here?
It is so interesting to see Europe being reflected or proven as a
winner in this data. We talked recently about how China is trying to rekindle these relationships.
They're sending all these trade delegations to Europe. They went to Hungary and Sweden
and Germany. And I was sort of thinking, I wonder if that's going to work. I wonder if
Europe buys that. And to me, those numbers you mentioned,
exports to the US down 65%, but exports to Europe up 28%. And as you mentioned as well,
off a large base, my takeaway is it's working. Europe is also beginning to lift some of these
tariffs that they had on China, specifically EVs, they're beginning to open negotiations back up. It does certainly feel that as we close off this relationship with China,
we're basically sending China into the arms of all of our allies, essentially.
I think Americans are about to eat a very cold lunch in terms of recognizing just how
eat a very cold lunch in terms of recognizing just how good they had it past tense. That we had so many amazing trading relationships that resulted in a robust supply chain, really inexpensive
products, tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs. That whatever you start in an American company,
you have access to global markets. When I started L2, when we got like employee 30, we opened an office in London.
And then when we got to employees 60, we started, we started pitching clients in China.
And when you go over there as, as an American company, you're pretty well received and you
understand the cultures and it's easy to do payments and the contracts, the business contracts
were not that difficult.
I think that's all about to change.
Let's talk about project Kuiper.
Uh, we've been hearing about this for a while now.
This is Amazon satellite internet project.
It's basically Amazon's equivalent of starlink.
And last week they launched their very first satellites into orbit.
27 satellites to be exact.
The plan is to eventually increase that number to 3,200.
So potentially a big moment for Amazon,
also potentially a big moment for Starlink,
but I think it's mainly just a reminder
of how far ahead Starlink is
in this satellite race right now.
I mentioned those 27 satellites that Amazon launched.
Starlink has 7,200 satellites in orbit right now. I mentioned those 27 satellites that Amazon launched. Starlink has 7,200 satellites
in orbit right now. It makes up 62% of all of the active satellites that are currently orbiting the
Earth. So even if Amazon were to hit that target of 3,200, and who knows when they'll hit it,
they would still be way behind Starlink. Starlink is the undisputed leader in satellite broadband.
No one comes even close.
So Scott, your reactions to Amazon trying to get in the game here and how,
how they might compete with Starlink.
I think I'm more bullish on Amazon than you.
And just to call balls and strikes, we had the internet go out here in London
and Drew immediately scrambled the jets.
And we had someone, this guy came over and he went out and bought a Starlink,
a portable, and he hooked it up and it wasn't as good, but within four hours,
we had pretty robust broadband.
The product is exceptional.
And I just think it's strange and almost kind of weird that we would let one man
control two thirds of low earth satellites, low
earth orbit satellites. That to me feels like almost like a security risk. Where I'm more
bullish on Amazon is that I don't think Amazon needs to get to product parody because I think
the vision here, if I were Jeff Bezos, I'd wait till I had a decent product. And then, you know
what I'd stitch it in with? Theuiper offering Amazon prime 82% of Americans have
Amazon prime.
It's arguably the most successful and largest
loyalty program in history.
And maybe the second largest recurring revenue
product in history, maybe behind Netflix or I
guess Microsoft office.
Their brand is so deep in terms of trust in a consumer offering.
And I think that Musk is beginning to contaminate his brands.
Bezos will close the gap.
They have the gap capital.
To your point, I'm not sure they ever actually catch up, but they're talking
about they want to have 3,200 satellites.
But I think if they get there, say to 80 or 90% of Starlink, it'll force Starlink's
hand and I think our SpaceX and I'll have to go public for access to more cheap
capital, but this is going to be a celebrity death match.
Also, one of the things we talk about in brand strategy is one of the keys or
kind of pillars of branding is just awareness.
And that is if you think about the products you purchase,
you're really unlikely to purchase a product
you've never heard of,
or you're much more inclined to purchase anything.
You hear the brand, oh, I would buy a Toyota.
For big purchases, you just don't wanna buy anything
that you haven't heard of.
Think about just on a personal level, people's brands,
I think it's something like 40 times more likely
to respond to an email from someone you know,
or even if you don't know them well, you've just heard of them, then someone whose name you
don't recognize. So awareness is enormous. And I think Kuiper is about to become one of the fastest
zero to 60 brands in history. And that is, I would bet less than 1% of the US population knows brand
Kuiper right now. And I would bet 60 to 80% by the end of the year know it
because it's gonna be constantly in the news, right?
I mean, it ends up that maybe shooting Katy Perry
into space wasn't a bad idea.
It was probably a bad idea to bring her back.
But maybe this technology,
this technology that he's spending all this money on
is for a reason, right?
Other than sending his girlfriend into space.
And Amazon has the capital, they have the
technical expertise.
I bet they're going to find a lot of people from
SpaceX are willing to go to work for them.
This could be to Starlink what old Navy is to
gap 80% of the quality for 50% of the price.
And there's a market for that.
And the moment they stitch it into Amazon prime,
I think the thing gets 10, 15,
20% of households.
Uh, it made me, you know, I've been, I've been slowly but surely
burning down my U S equities.
I've been selling Apple and a little bit of Amazon.
And I'm actually now thinking about holding on to my Amazon.
Cause I think the, the, it was countervailing forces here, speaking of China,
two thirds of Amazon's businesses in the U S and I think the U S can be
negatively impacted, but I think this is very exciting for, for Amazon.
And I just love seeing a company that's as important as SpaceX,
get a competitor. I think it'll make them both better.
So I'm actually really excited. Starlink, by the way,
so far has projected revenue at 2025 of 12.3 billion. That's up 57%.
7.6 million subscriptions projected by the end of 2025 is 65% increase.
Again, 7.6 million.
Keep in mind, Amazon, I think has about 110 or 120 million households have Prime.
Over 200 million subscribers globally.
180 million adults in the United States are Amazon Prime members.
That's like most of them.
Basically, more people have Amazon Prime than have a Christmas tree,
own a gun, or have kids.
You've honestly completely sold me on it.
I'm totally with you and it seems to make so much sense for Amazon's business,
which they have a history of getting into businesses that are somewhat indispensable.
They get into household products,
they get into groceries, they buy Whole Foods,
they get into healthcare, content,
all these kinds of businesses
where it's like something you just have to have,
and then they make it a recurring subscription.
And it does feel like the next planet to conquer
is broadband and the internet.
And so I think you're probably right.
Just a question of how it would actually work.
What do you think the offering would actually look like?
Do you think it's like a premium Amazon Prime subscription
that gives you some sort of discount
on a Kuiper satellite dish?
Yeah, it'll be something like Amazon Prime Plus
where it's like, okay, flip the switch on here,
tell us when you're home, give us a window,
and we're gonna come install this cool, elegant,
whatever it is, and overnight,
you have massively blinding internet speeds.
And the thing that people underestimate
is just how lazy consumers are.
I got so excited about Jeff Bezos standing up
to Donald Trump and deciding to post
tariffs next to every product that I went out, no joke, or I went out. I went on Amazon and I ordered
16 Bose Ultra headphones for the team. And I thought, okay, I'm going to spend $6,400 on Amazon
and I'm going to go on threads and blue sky and virtue signal about how great it is that Amazon is doing this. And then that motherfucker capes. And so I'm like, I'm threading, good for him.
He reached down and despite all the human growth hormone, he found these little, little tiny,
little wee things called testicles and decided to put them into action. Good for him. Good on Bezos.
If only he'd known he would have gotten the backing
of Scott Galloway, maybe he would have stuck with it.
Literally, I'm like, I am literally, I thread,
this is what leadership looks like, send,
and all of a sudden I get a text from Kara Swisher,
he caved, he caved.
She saw my thread, and literally as she saw my thread,
she's like, he caved, you're wrong, he caved.
He's a fucking wimp and a loser.
And I'm like, and so I go back to Amazon
and I cancel my order.
I was just gonna say, do we get the headphones?
No, we don't.
No, bitch, call Amazon, call Bezos
and tell him to start acting like an American.
All right, I'll take it up with him.
But the moral of the story is it is so seamless
to add and take things away from Amazon Prime
that the moment it pops up and it says, Scott, Amazon Prime Plus includes this blinding broadband.
Wow. I would bet, God, I don't know, I would bet by the end of 27, you could very easily see Kuiper have more penetration than Starlink.
You've certainly convinced me.
I'm definitely more bullish today than I was yesterday.
We'll be right back after the break with a look at big tech earnings.
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All right, let's get into big tech earnings.
Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Amazon all reported earnings last week.
We're recording this a day later, hence why we're dressed differently so that we could
react to these earnings.
We'll start with a look at Microsoft and Meta, whose shares both rose pretty significantly
after earnings here.
Microsoft posted record revenue and record profits.
Beat on the top and bottom lines,
shares rose 9 percent,
which now makes Microsoft the most valuable company
in the world ahead of Apple.
Meta was also a beat,
beat on the top and bottom lines,
revenue rose 16 percent,
shares in Meta rose 6 percent after hours.
Really great quarters for Meta and Microsoft.
Scott, your reactions to these two earnings.
Well, daddy went deep in the paint last night.
I'm not used to working on Friday.
I'm used to long walks with the dog
and trying to get this newsletter out.
As you can tell by the way I'm dressed,
you have my green juice.
Most importantly, the door women from
Chiltern did a pop-up last night at the Broadway Hotel,
and it was pretty good. I spilled drinks on all my friends,
which at the time was a bummer,
but it's brought me real joy today,
just thinking about that moment.
I mean, literally, I went and got four drinks and not an ounce of it
was not on them
within about 30 seconds.
Anyways, okay.
So look, there's just no getting around it.
All of these terms have kind of gone from,
it's like good, better, best in terms of the earnings.
Revenue up 13%, as you said.
What was really impressive is our cloud unit,
revenue rose 33%.
That's just incredible.
And then net income up 18%.
The CapEx was interesting.
You highlighted the first thing I noticed,
and that is CapEx declined for the first time.
And I wonder how much of that is DeepSeq has given them
a little bit of pause saying maybe we don't need
to build nuclear power plants, and we're not in an arms race.
That maybe there is a fork in the road here,
or a plan B, where our AI future may not require
the capex we'd initially thought.
So it feels like they're maybe taking a pause on that.
And then good stock is up 13% because people keep saying,
all right, if you're, how do I, what is the defensive play?
What is the recession-proof stock?
And Microsoft brings you kind of the peanut butter of a tech company with
pretty decent growth with the chocolate of a defensive company, right?
Because it really is, it's, it's pretty well diversified.
It's global and it's hard to see how other than impact on the global economy, how
it can, you know, it would be really hurt versus an Amazon by the tariffs.
I think it gets about half its revenues from overseas,
whereas Amazon gets 2 thirds of its revenues here.
So it has both this recurring revenue stream
of the largest corporate recurring revenue
base in history with Microsoft Office
that I think 5,000 of the corporate 5,000 companies use.
And then it has the rocket fuel of a nice AI overlay.
So it benefits from probably some of this insecurity
because it's seen as quality in what is arguably right now
a flight to quality, your thoughts.
Yeah, I think that's all right.
And I think the most important number was the cloud growth.
I mean, I've said this before,
but I think if you're in the AI business today,
that's all Wall Street really cares about.
You can beat on overall revenue, which they did,
you can beat on overall profits, which they did,
but the thing that Wall Street really wants to see
is are you outperforming in terms of their expectations
for cloud growth or in other words, AI growth? And that is what they proved here. Microsoft Azure, which is for cloud growth, or in other words, AI growth.
And that is what they proved here.
Microsoft Azure, which is their cloud unit,
and we should just call it their AI unit,
that's where they're selling compute to AI companies,
that revenue rose 33%,
and Wall Street's expectations for that business was 29%.
Also the guidance for that unit for Microsoft Azure.
They expect the number in this current quarter, so in the next report earnings, they expect growth to be 35%, so even higher.
And that also beat expectations. So that's the number that Wall Street really cares about.
The opposite effect happened with Amazon, which we'll get to in a second. But yes,
the capex that you mentioned, that also jumped out to me. $21.4 billion get to in a second. But yes, the CapEx that you mentioned,
that also jumped out to me.
$21.4 billion, that's a lot,
but it is a decline from the previous quarter.
And it's the first CapEx decline for Microsoft
in more than two years.
You pointed out that maybe this is a response to DeepSeek.
I think that's definitely a possibility.
I was wondering if maybe it's a response
to just the tariff environment. I think that's definitely a possibility. I was wondering if maybe it's a response to
just the tariff environment. I mean, we're just living in a more uncertain economic environment right now. And I wonder if because of that, they were thinking we're going to go all in on AI
beforehand. And now they're beginning to pare back some of those ambitions, start to play things a
little bit safer. CapEx is still going to grow, but it's just not going to grow as fast as they said it would last year.
So I wonder if that's, it could be deep-seek. I wonder if it could be a tariff response too.
What's interesting about Meta, moving on to Meta here, Meta had the opposite.
They are actually accelerating their CapEx investment.
They raised CapEx guidance from what was previously a high end of $65 billion to now $72 billion.
So Microsoft meanwhile is playing it safe.
Meta appears to be actually leaning into the uncertainty.
The number that really jumped out to me was 3.43 billion.
That's the number of users who use a meta app every single day.
That's the daily active user number.
It's up 6% year over year, which means that more than 40% of the entire world population
is getting on a meta app, whether it's Instagram or Facebook or WhatsApp.
They're using it every single day.
I find the most interesting application of AI from a shareholder standpoint is actually
pretty boring and that is it's Meta's ability to increase the targeting of their products.
So they are not only increasing their revenue, I think their revenue or the way they monetize
their traffic has gone up, their CPMs have gone up, or they're able to charge more.
But not only that, their AI, which
feeds into the recommendation engine
or the recommendation systems, contributed to a 35% increase
in time spent on threads, 7% increase in time spent
on Facebook.
That's amazing.
That's like getting younger people to watch MSNBC, right?
If you can get more people to spend more time on Facebook,
that's not easy at this point.
6% increase in Instagram.
And then if you think about, you know,
one of the predictions we have for this year was that Meta was going to be the AI company at 25
because they're the second largest purchaser of GPUs from Nvidia.
And I personally, I don't know if you've noticed this, I have found that Instagram Reels is increasingly
taking time from TikTok for me.
And I noticed a tangible difference
in the quality of the algorithm, of TikTok's algorithm
to serve me content that was relevant.
And it feels to me like Instagram Reels has somewhat
closed that gap.
And I think that's leveraging AI and all this back and forth and nonsense between
Trump and China over banning TikTok, not banning it.
And the fact that Metta has such a built-in user base already, I think it's
starting, I think there's quite frankly, I think they're actually starting to pull
back or claw back some of that share from TikTok.
Let's move on to Apple and Amazon.
So Apple, they had better than expected sales, up 5% overall.
They missed their sales estimates in China, falling more than 2%.
They also warned about tariffs.
They said tariffs will add $900 million to its costs this quarter.
Shares fell 4% in after hours.
And then we also saw earnings from Amazon, which was also a beat, same as Apple.
But they gave guidance that Wall Street considered cautious and they also missed slightly on
their AWS growth and shares in Amazon fell more than 3%.
So both companies actually, when you just look at the earnings
compared to expectations, pretty solid quarters at face value.
But there were just some, some signs of weakness in there that Wall Street
didn't like and both, both stocks fell.
Your reactions?
I thought Apple had the least impressive earnings of the bunch.
Although I was surprised that they, I think last quarter they were up,
their revenue was basically flat year on year,
which is weird for a company or unacceptable
for a company trading at a price earnings multiple of 34.
And even 5% isn't sort of tech.
It's no longer really considered a growth company.
And I think, was it Catherine Rampell,
or I forget who was on the pot and summarized it perfectly, or
maybe it was Kyle Scanlon who said that Apple is a mature company trading as if it's a growth
company.
I think that was me.
That was you?
What is it about you that reminds me of thoughtful women in economics?
Anyways, Edwina. The services revenue was the highlight.
It grew 12% to 27 billion, even though that has slowed down.
It's a slow since 2023.
It's still double-digit growth.
Wearables fell 5% missing estimates, so that's kind of, that's not good.
The other thing that kind of shows an unusual operational misstep.
I was really excited about Apple Intelligence.
I thought that if anyone could consumerize
other people's massive catbacks around AI,
I thought it was going to be Apple,
that they would just organize my photos and come up with
very useful ways to speak to my AirPods and say,
oh, we're out, it's loud, I'm taking the volume down.
They do that a little bit, but I would have thought there would be
a bunch of cool things, little features that they would be able to leverage.
Totally dropped the ball on that.
Yeah.
They've branded it brilliantly.
They call it Apple Intelligence,
the AI features, but they've been delayed again.
It's unusual. Apple usually kind of under promises and over delivers.
So that they don't appear to have the same depth
of human capital around AI, some of the other guys.
I still feel that I still own some Apple.
I've been selling it down.
I think it's overvalued at a PE of, you know,
it's net income growth in 2024, negative 3%
versus Microsoft at up 21, Alphabet up 36,
Amazon up 95, Meta up 65, and Nvidia up 145%.
And yet Apple trades at the same P.E. multiple as Microsoft at 33, more than Amazon at 31,
and Alphabet's at 18.
I mean, if you just look at these things from a peer evaluation bottoms than Amazon, it's at 31, and Alphabet's at 18. I mean, if you just look at these things
from a peer evaluation bottoms up standpoint,
it looks like Alphabet's the least expensive
and it looks like Apple is the most expensive.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that was just another red flag in terms of this idea
that Apple is this mature company that's trading
as if it were a growth company.
They announced another buyback program.
$100 billion in buybacks.
They also boosted the dividend by 4%.
If you're trading at 30 to 33 times earnings, you're trading as a growth company, which
means that the market should be expecting that you're investing in growth.
You're investing in new products, you're investing in new services.
Instead they're just using all of this capital and all of this cash to just repurchase shares.
And as Aswath the Motoran says, I mean, this is sort of
the bread and butter of the corporate life cycle.
That's what you do when you're in the mature stage.
That's what you do when you're a middle-aged company
and you're on the way out. You start buying back shares.
So, I mean, I was a little surprised by how the stock pulled back because I thought overall the
earnings compared to expectations were pretty solid.
But I wonder if people are starting to realize that actually the multiple here doesn't really
make sense.
This is not the growth company that we thought Apple was 10, 15 years ago when it was on
the cutting edge of technology and innovation.
Because what we're seeing here is that, I mean, every time I see a buyback, I'm like,
oh, you're running out of ideas.
Understood.
You're being sensible about it, but you are running out of ideas.
And that's sort of the vibe I get from Apple right now.
And I wonder if Wall Street's getting the same message.
This is, I think Apple is ground zero for what I call the great reversal of flows in the rivers.
That's what I'm writing about in today's No Mercy, No Malice.
I think Apple could increase its earnings by 20 or 30% over the next five years, and
I think the stock's still going to go down because trading at that multiple, I just don't
think it can outrun the multiple contraction that it's about to experience.
I bought Apple in 2010 or 11 and I bought it, it was growing much faster.
I think it was still growing high single or low double digits.
And I think I bought it at a PE of 10.
So the company could continue to perform and I still think the stock is going to struggle
because I just think that it's the most, I think it's the most widely held stock in the
world. It kind of identifies or marks American tech. And I think
as these rivers of capital begin to reverse flow, there's just no way that won't come
out of what is the most valuable iconic company in America when people look at it and say,
great company, we love it. But if it's really, if it's growing low single digits, does it
really connote a growth-like valuation?
Yeah, I agree. It's also quite telling that the day that a company announced a $100 billion share buyback program
was the same day that that same company was ousted as the most valuable company in the world.
You would not expect those two things to be true
at the same time, but they were last week.
Let's just quickly go to Amazon.
They also beat on the top and bottom lines.
Pretty strong quarter actually.
The ad business was a big beat.
Ad sales grew 19%.
But the stock fell almost 4%.
And why did that happen?
As I mentioned earlier, what Wall Street cares about is AI
and AWS, which we could also just say is their AI unit,
their cloud unit, their compute unit,
that actually slightly missed on revenue expectations.
Still, it grew 17%, pretty good, $29.3 billion.
But Wall Street wanted more, they wanted 29.4. And if you're in the AI
business, it's the dynamic we've discussed. Beating expectations here means you need to
blow expectations out of the water. Even a slight miss on that one business unit, that's a big
problem for Wall Street, which is why I think the stock fell so significantly. Any, any thoughts on Amazon Scott?
Well, Amazon is the most vulnerable, uh, probably the magnificent seven to tariffs.
One two thirds of businesses in the U S versus most of big techs is somewhere
between half and one third medic.
It only gets a third of their business domestically.
And obviously they import a lot of products that will have tariffs on them.
Uh, in addition, as goes AWS goes Amazon.
I mean, Amazon is essentially a cloud provider now with a retail unit.
And when you don't beat expectations on what is considered the white meat of
your business, that your stock's going to get hit also, and this is a prediction.
And I'm as, as everyone who listens to this podcast, no, I am rotating out of
us stocks and my Amazon position into European and Asian holdings.
And I'm about to sell down some Amazon and put it in Alibaba because I think
what you're going to see over the next year is that Alibaba's cloud unit will
get an unnatural surge from European purchasers who are fed up with always
defaulting to American companies
for their cloud and infrastructure needs. And I think a year ago, if you'd showed up to the CEO
of Mercedes or LVMH as the CEO, as Joe Tsai would probably, or the head of the cloud unit for Alibaba
and said, we'd like to handle your data like China, no fucking way. Now, I don't think they're seen as much more mendacious
as the US.
So I think Alibaba's cloud unit is gonna get more meetings
across Europe and Latin America
than they would have before this nonsense from the US.
Yeah, and plus if you got China investing heavily in AI,
if China's made it their mission of AI self-sufficiency,
that's certainly going to be
a win for Alibaba if they can just start selling more compute to Chinese companies.
Just one clarification before we finish up here on this story. I just want to clarify, this quarter,
it was very strong. I've seen people, probably not very smart people, but people saying like,
oh, things are going well. Look, look at the tech earnings. Maybe things aren't all so bad
when it comes to tariffs. I just want to clarify, this is the quarter ending March 31st. So none of
these earnings reflect anything about the tariffs. The only thing that they might reflect, which is what I was kind of looking for,
and which we sort of covered when we discussed
the GDP report, is it could reflect
this pull forward dynamic,
which is this effect where, you know,
consumers know that tariffs are coming.
They know that prices are about to go way up.
And so maybe they're actually rushing to buy in big numbers
in this quarter, in this previous quarter
that was just reported.
And so I was interested to see,
especially with Apple, for example,
where we saw all these headlines of how iPhone prices
are gonna go way, way up.
We would have seen that reflected
in this previously reported quarter. We would have seen, if that was really
what was happening, people are sort of panic buying an iPhone or if you want to upgrade
your iPhone, you do it right before tariffs happen. That's what we would have seen in this quarter.
Actually CNBC asked Tim Cook about this specifically. They said, is this pull forward?
Are you seeing pull forward in the earnings?
And he said that he saw quote, no evidence of pull forward. And I just, I don't know,
I wonder about that. Like I wonder, one, what would evidence actually look like? Like how would you
know that that was what was happening? And two, if we're seeing signs of pull forward
everywhere else in the car industry,
in the clothing industry, even in those GDP numbers
where you saw this massive influx of imports,
now why wouldn't we see it with the iPhone?
And why wouldn't we see it
with all the rest of these tech earnings?
So on that aspect, I'm a little bit hesitant
or just suspicious of how strong these earnings were across the board.
And I do wonder if the dynamic that we're seeing is everyone rushing in to buy right before prices go way up with the tariffs.
And it'll be interesting to see in the next quarter.
That's when we're going to see the real tariff effect.
It'll be interesting to see if we see a drop off in demand there. It's really insightful.
It's sort of the AR-15 effect that whenever a Democrat would get elected, people go out
and buy more guns for fear that gun legislation is actually going to get some traction.
But Apple really doesn't have anything that interesting right now or new or fresh, so
to speak.
And that's really, I would have guessed that they would have been flat.
And I think you're absolutely right,
that there was probably some pull forward.
And also, there is no way that Tim Cook would acknowledge
that, because what that's saying is, oh, it's not our products,
it's not our marketing, it's not the quality of our offering,
it's an unnatural sugar high that's
going to suppress product sales in the following quarters,
because a lot of people have pre-purchased things that we're going to purchase the next or
subsequent quarter. So I think that's really interesting. I hadn't thought about
that and I think you're absolutely right. We'll be right back with a look at
what's happening to student debt. If you're enjoying the show so far, hit
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We're back with Profit.G Markets. For the first time in five years, the Department of Education
is restarting forced collections on borrowers who have defaulted on their federal student loans. The move affects 5.3 million people who were in default before the pandemic and could put
millions more at risk. Although federal loan payments resumed in October 2023,
forced collections had remained paused until now. Borrowers who have fallen behind are already
seeing their credit scores drop, and the White House has warned that it can and will seize wages,
tax refunds, and even pensions to recover unpaid debts.
Um, so Scott, I, I just want to clarify what's really happening here
and where things stand, just a reminder, Trump paused these student loan
payments when COVID hit.
And so if you had student loans at that time, you weren't getting billed. Now that was supposed to expire in Biden's term, but then Biden decided
to extend this student loan freeze. He actually tried to go even further, tried to cancel $340
billion worth of student debt, but it was struck down by the Supreme Court. So he ended up only
partially forgiving these student loans. And then these payments resumed in 2023. But what didn't resume and what will resume today is this forced collection
of student loans. This is where the government comes in and they just start taking the money
if you are in default. And what is being in default actually mean here? It means that
you have missed your payments for 270 days or more. So for people in
that position, if you haven't made your payment in 270 days, those are the people from whom the
government is now going to start collecting these payments. So Scott, your reactions to this news
and what it might mean for our economy. There's a lot of moral hazard here and that is my
understanding is most people with student debt haven't made a payment in five years. And keep in mind
the people who have student debt are the most fortunate third of Americans who got to go to
college. And also debt is, it sucks to be a grownup, but if you take out debt, you're supposed to pay
it back. And also there's a bit of a mythology here or semantics
or incorrect nomenclature and that is payments have been stalled. No, payments have been made,
but they're being made by all taxpayers because someone has owed this money and someone needs to
collect interest on it. And so it's the US government or US taxpayers, all of us who are
registering now the financial imposition of these student loans not being paid back.
And I think it sucks to be a grownup.
I think you take out this debt, you got to pay it back the same way if you took out an
auto loan or a mortgage and you weren't paying it, they'd come for you or they'd come for
the asset.
And in this case, they can't repossess your degree.
The real issue is that the cost of higher education is just too high and it's just kind
of much faster than inflation. That's the culprit. So then the question is, well,
how does it come down? And one of the reasons it continues to accelerate faster than inflation,
similar to any other bubble, is because of cheap credit. And that is you go into a university and
there's a nice lady in a pantsuit with a big college logo over her head saying, always invest
in yourself, you're going to be fine. And then you get a degree from a Joey Bagadonis
university that is part of the cartel where we all
raise our prices exactly the same amount.
And then you get out and find out you can't get a
job and end up as a barista and you have $150,000
in student debt.
And the, the issuing university of that debt or
the sponsoring university is not on the hook for
any of that debt.
Whereas Toyota does some diligence.
Toyota says, okay, if there's no way this person can pay back the money,
we're not going to loan them the money because if we have to repossess the
Toyota, it's going to cost us money.
We're not going to be able to resell it for as much.
Whereas the incentive for any university with government back student loans and
accreditation, and by the way, the people accrediting these universities or the
incumbents is just to encourage people to take out more and more student loans, regardless of the credit risk.
And until consumers start shopping around or holding their university accountable and saying,
this fucking sucks.
I brought a lot of money and I can't pay it back and it's your fault.
There's no pressure on these, on these universities to lower their tuition and they still have
access to cheap credit.
The real solution here would probably be to put these universities on the hook for a portion
of that bad student debt such that they would say, okay, we have found that 40% of people
with philosophy majors have a difficult time paying back their student debt.
So if you're a philosophy major, we're going to limit the amount of student debt you have to X.
And because they want to have as much, uh, cheap
free capital, they won't be able to raise tuition
as fast as they have.
So I'm really mixed here because I feel for younger
people who I think have gotten a raw deal on so
many levels.
I like the idea of programs where some sort of, you
know, working in, working in industries where some sort of, you know, working in,
working in industries where you don't, they're traditionally aren't that high paying, whether it's education or practicing medicine in rural areas or
national service, you should have your student loans, debt repayment delayed,
lower interest, whatever, forgiven.
Uh, but the idea of a generation of people just believing that debt
doesn't really count for them.
I don't think that ends up anywhere good either, but net net, we got to go after the problem here and the problem is skyrocketing higher education costs.
Yeah.
But I think that highlights a big problem, which is that for all these people going
into college and taking on this debt, the trouble is that a lot of these young
people don't really understand what the debt is because
no one's fully explained it to them.
Just some statistics here, one in five student loan borrowers say they borrowed more than
they needed just because it was offered.
One in five also say they don't even know their current loan balance.
And then you throw into the mix the fact that the president, the previous president, said,
don't worry, it'll all be forgiven. And then suddenly we have a turnaround. It's not going
to be forgiven. And actually it's business as usual starting today, starting May 5th.
And I think Trump criticized Biden actually correctly here and said he sort of made you a
false promise that he couldn't make
good on. And that is what happened. He made a false promise. The Supreme Court struck it down.
And what I worry about is that there is now a generation, my generation, who believes that
maybe it'll be canceled in the future. Maybe something will happen. Maybe this is actually
on the table.
And so the consequences of that are going to be really bad because I think there are going to be a lot of people who say, you know what, I'm just not going to pay
it because who knows, maybe in a few years, Congress will vote on this and I
won't have to pay the debt.
And what is that going to do?
That's going to absolutely obliterate my generation's credit scores.
I mean, we can talk about the forced collections and what that'll do to people, but to me,
the big downside is what it's going to do to credit ratings.
And Liberty Street did this analysis.
They found that each time you miss a student loan payment, every delinquency on your student
loan debt, your credit score drops by around 150 points. And I think this is the real
concern for young people and the part that they don't take seriously. And I just want to paint
a picture of what a bad credit score can do to you in case people don't really realize. I mean,
for starters, you pay higher interest rates. Two, it can affect your employment.
And a lot of employers actually check your credit.
And if you have bad credit-
I was just gonna say that.
Yeah, it can cost you a job.
It affects your ability to rent.
I mean, landlords check your credit.
If you have a low score, you pay a higher security deposits.
In many cases, you're flat out rejected
from getting that apartment or that home. And then four, and this is probably like the worst of it, is it just completely
hamstrings your ability to access credit.
I mean, you can get rejected for mortgages, you can get rejected for auto
loans, you can even get rejected to have a basic credit card.
It just completely cripples your financial freedom and with long, long-term
consequences that aren't necessarily your fault.
And I just worry that these young people don't understand that or they don't take it that
seriously and they're going to sort of hedge their bets on this very unlikely scenario
where it's all just forgiven overnight.
I don't think that's going to happen.
You need to pay these loans.
You can't just go into delinquency,
you can't go into default.
It's going to completely ruin you for a long time.
I know someone who got a job at
a prestigious bulge bracket investment bank and
literally showed up the first day and they said,
we need to speak to them so we have to rescind the offer.
We did a credit check and you have terrible credit and we can't have you
selling or structuring securities when you can't, you know, when you
have a low credit score.
Also, if you really want evidence that we are fucking your generation,
one of the only forms of debt that's not dischargeable in bankruptcy is student
loan debt.
So if I declare bankruptcy, I can get out of almost every piece of debt.
Now, granted, I have to give up all my assets.
Actually, that's not true.
If I own a home in Florida, I can homestead it and I get to hold onto my home.
Even if I declare bankruptcy and clear out all my debts, but except for student debt.
So if you think about the one person who, if they hit hard times, deserves kind of a
do-over button, it should be young people in student debt.
It's a very upsetting situation, but, and also I
think it, it calls up the need for what I call in
high school, adulting classes.
Yes.
I think that there should be a class.
It's just like basics, like what is the interest
rate on my credit card mean?
Right.
Yep.
Basic adulting, what is required to get an apartment?
When you want to rent an apartment, what do you need to do and possess and have?
And what's a general ratio for how much you should be spending?
We need to make sure that young people understand the rules.
They need to, we need to make sure that young people understand what debt is,
what they're signing up for by taking on debt.
And then the other thing I think that this brings up, which we need to have
young people
to really think about is like, what is actually the value of a college education? Like, is it
really worth it for you? And for many people, for different people, there's going to be a different
answer. I mean, we know it leads to higher earnings. We've seen the data on higher marriage rates,
better health outcomes. You know, so, you know, we know some of the data,
but I wonder if we need to sort of change the conversation
to instead of is college worth it,
we need to be more specific and say,
is college worth it if you're taking on debt?
If you're not taking on debt,
if your parents are paying for it,
it's an absolute no brainer,
because you're essentially going for free.
Of course you should go to college. But if you're levering up to go, I think that's a completely
different question. And there's this one stat that our team found, which I find very illustrative
here, which is that for college grads who took on student debt, one-third of them say that college
is not worth the cost. For college grads who didn't, that number is 16%.
So there's a massive gap in the ROI on college, depending on whether you are taking on debt for
it, which of course makes sense. If you're getting the product for free, there's only upsides.
That's great.
But if you're putting yourself in a hole, it's a totally different thing. So I guess one, we should reframe the question
and two, I will pose it to you.
Is college worth it if you're going to take on
significant student debt?
There's no yes or no answer there.
It's a function of nuance.
That is one.
A lot of it comes down to the university you get into.
If you get into MIT and you are cut out and feel like you can get
three or four years at MIT, I don't care if you have to borrow a
quarter of a million dollars, it's worth it.
For the rest of your life, you're taken seriously for the rest of your life.
People have an inclination to hire you.
And the scary thing and the thing that's, it's good in some ways and bad
in others is your school, Princeton.
If you have any economic hardship, they have so much money, they'll give you financial aid.
So what happens is really good kids because of this bullshit rejectionist exclusivity
LVMH strategy that every elite university has adopted such that they can raise tuition
faster than inflation and the faculty and the alumni feel good about this luxury brand
they have and it makes the value of the degree go up because it's harder and harder to get them.
We've been able to raise tuition faster than inflation. The alumni love it.
They give us a bunch of money and anyone who gets in who needs economic help gets it.
So, but the problem is is a lot of kids don't get into an elite school and they get arbed down to a second tier school.
So my strategy with these kids is always I need you to get into more than one school And once you get into the school, the university, all of a sudden it goes from, they're a seller to a buyer in the sense that they really want you once you get in, because they have something called the yield.
And their ranking is largely determined by a variety of factors, including what percentage of people who are admitted actually end up going.
So ideally what you want to do is to get admitted to
more than one university and ideally competitive
universities.
So for example, if you get, and I don't know if
that's the way any longer, but it used to be, if
you got admitted to both Duke and UVA and UVA saw
you got into Duke, UVA would give you a full ride
if you went to UVA because they were direct
competitors with Duke.
So the key is you need to be a consumer.
You need to get into more than one university and then start calling them and saying,
you know, finances are a struggle for me.
What do you offer in terms of financial aid?
I'm into several universities, including your closest competitor, this university.
What can you offer me?
But students don't take a consumer.
They're much more likely to negotiate on a hotel room or, or shop every store in
the world, but once they get into the university, they kind of sit back and just take their
price takers. They shouldn't be.
But this is the thing that's so tough. It's their kids.
I mean, you're describing this and you're describing the habits of a very
sophisticated and experienced negotiator who knows exactly what's at stake,
knows all the dynamics at play,
knows exactly what to say and what the leverage is, which is actually, I mean, most grown adults
don't understand that. I barely understand that. It's actually a very hard thing to do.
And I think it's very important what you're saying, and I hope there are young people applying to
college who could hear this. But I think what's so unfair and so upsetting is like we're telling children to do this.
Children who have no experience or have no understanding of what any of this means, who
don't even really understand what interest rates are or what a loan is.
And that to me is what's so upsetting.
The standards that we are holding them to, to evaluate these actually
quite complex and nuanced economic issues are just unbelievably high.
And we don't seem to hold regular functioning adults to those same
standards. And to me, it's just so unfair.
Ed, everything we do in our society is a subtle transfer of wealth and
opportunity from the young to the old.
And we used to love young people.
We used to live more than that.
When I was your age, we used to love unremarkable young people.
Right.
I mean, think about it.
I got Pell grants.
I had access to a world-class university that had a 74% admissions rate.
And once I got there, my tuition every year was $1,300 and I could work my
ass off over the summer and have part-time jobs and show up the next year, despite the fact I wasn't getting any
financial assistance from my parents.
And that for me started an upward spiral of prosperity where I got to
engage in the economy.
I got to find a mate.
I got to have children.
I got to build a business and all of that reverse engineers to America.
You used to love young,
unremarkable people. And now it no longer does. Now it feels America is about trying to identify the children of rich kids
and a freakishly remarkable one percenters and try and turn them into billionaires.
And higher ed is the tip of that spear in terms of losing the script.
We've become hedge funds that offer classes at the elite side and the mid tier are
basically terrible value for kids that puts a lot of them into debt that they can't discharge and
starts them with this anchor around their neck. And what a shocker we have the most obese,
anxious and depressed generation in history. So that question around whether college is worth it,
it's a nuanced conversation. What is an easy question to answer is are we fucking young people?
That's an easy one.
100%.
Let's take a look at the week ahead.
We'll see earnings from Palantir, AMD, Nova Nordisk, Uber, Disney, and Shopify.
And the federal reserve will also meet and announce its
next interest rate decision.
Scott, any predictions for us?
Well, I made it.
I think by the end of 27,
Kuiper is, it'll be hard to suss out
because it'll be in a larger Amazon umbrella,
but the Kuiper will be worth more than Starlink
and will have greater penetration in the United States
as it'll be stitched into the Amazon Prime Plus Plus program.
They should change the name first.
Kuiper is not a very good name.
It kind of sounds like the AI villain in a Bond film,
Kuiper.
What does Kuiper say?
Yeah, change that, and then I think the prediction
comes true.
This episode was produced by Claire Miller
and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
Our associate producer is Allison Weiss,
Mirce Alvario is our research lead,
Isabella Kintzel is our research associate,
Dan Shalon is our intern, Drew Burrows is our technical director, and
Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.
Thank you for listening to ProfG Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Join us on Thursday for our conversation with Michael Semblist, only on the ProfG Markets
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