The Trillionaire Mindset - 16: Ben’s Big Short

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

It’s Friday! This week Ben and Emil tell the hilarious and dramatic story of Ben’s big bet against the market during the first few months of COVID. Links: Ossoff Legislation: https://twitter.com/ossoff/status/1481419087716786182 Congressional Trade Performance: https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1480656947577860096 Ackman Interview: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/03/18/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-billionaire-investor-bill-ackman-on-coronavirus-outbreak.html Urine Guy: https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-vax-leader-christopher-key-urges-followers-to-drink-their-own-urine-to-fight-covid-19 Listen on Apple Podcasts: http://apple.co/trillionaire Trillionaire IG: https://www.instagram.com/trillionairepod/ Trillionaire Twitter: https://twitter.com/trillionairepod TMG Studios YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tinymeatgang TMG Studios IG: https://www.instagram.com/realtmgstudios/ TMG Studios Twitter: https://twitter.com/realtmgstudios BEN https://www.instagram.com/bencahn/ https://twitter.com/Buncahn EMIL https://www.instagram.com/emilderosa/ https://twitter.com/emilderosa  *DISCLOSURE: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS VIDEO ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS INVOLVED. THESE OPINIONS DO NOT REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF ANYONE ELSE. THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. THE VIEWER OF THE VIDEO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CONSIDERING ANY INFORMATION CAREFULLY AND MAKING THEIR OWN DECISIONS TO BUY OR SELL OR HOLD ANY INVESTMENT. SOME OF THE CONTENT OF THIS VIDEO IS CONSIDERED TO BE SATIRE AND MAY NOT BE CONSIDERED FACTUAL AND SHOULD BE TAKEN IN SUCH LIGHT.*

Speaking of raising money. So is that a jar? Look, I didn't fart in it. It's like, it was driven mad by how much money this woman was making off these jars, right? Go on. And I said, there's got to be some money in this for the old trillionaire mindset, boys. And what happens on every podcast that we do? There's a lot of giggling.

No, no, no. You always have to burp. Oh, and I figured. Well, Sharers, you're just getting hammered this morning. Every day they're pelling at me. B- I'm not fucking late. I'm just- Problems. You got your pens all set up there shut up Ben. I don't know why I have a sharpie on here. I have a sharpie too I

Was never a kid who huffed Remember that was like a thing they they taught us in the drug classes all about Inhalents, yeah cuz Nancy Reagan was like, just say no. Just excuse me in one second. Just say no. Whoa. Just say no. Oh man.

So on the car ride over here, remember I told you that I had something to tell you about that was gonna be a funny surprise. I mean, it's not that funny. It was kind of these little games with me in the car. It was actually really painful. So there's something, this is, it's not that funny. It was kind of these little gains with me in the car. It was actually really painful. So there's something, this is, it's funny because it involves the butt,

but with one T, it's very painful. So last night I was awoken as I have been several times over the last year with severe stabbing ass pain. What? And it's a real thing. It's called, cause I, I,

did you have a visitor? What do you, what does that mean? Like an actual person, or you making a joke about me getting, well, I just, what was stabbing your ass? Well, okay, so a little bit of background. I don't know when it was, but a year ago, two years ago, I was awoken in the middle of the night with like the most painful thing

I've ever experienced. This is like the start of one of those Halloween songs. I was awoken in the middle of the night. By a severe ass pain. His ass hurts. His ass hurts. His ass hurts. His ass hurts. It wasn't about painful ass. That's the monster match. No, but I legitimately was laying in bed like writhing around sweating. Was it gas?

No, it wasn't gas. I was delirious because it was so painful. I thought that I had to go to the bathroom. I didn't. And then all of a sudden, like a miracle, it just went away. But obviously I was Googling what I just Googled like severe anal pain. And it was revealed to me.

It is a thing called Proctalgia Fugeax. And it is... You got Proctalgia Fugeax? Fugeax. It is a thing called Proctalgia Fugex. It is. It is Proctalgia Fugex? Fugex. It is. What do you fucking call me? It's from helfline.com.

Proctalgia Fugex is anal pain that doesn't have a specific cause. This pain is usually caught. It's so funny. It says that it doesn't have a specific cause, but pain is usually, it's so funny, it says that doesn't have a specific cause, but then the next sentence is, it is usually caused by intense muscle spasms in or around the canal of the anus. Damn.

Anyone can experience proctal jafugaks, but it doesn't usually affect anyone prior to the start of puberty. And the symptoms are muscle spasms in or around the lower rectum area or around the canal of the start of puberty. And the symptoms are muscle spasms in or around the lower rectum area or around the canal of the anus. And it's pain that happens suddenly and usually without warning. It lasts for only a few seconds only, but it can last up to 30 minutes. These episodes may be severe enough to keep you home from work. They may limit your other activities

until the episode is over. That's not staying. It is, and people don't have any anal pain between spasms. Thank God. So you're in between spasms right now. Yeah. And so this is permanent to me. The pain or spasms that occur at night

may be painful enough to wake you from sleep. When I was experiencing it before and I was like, sweating and like, how do I make this stop? I went on Reddit, like, you know, months ago when it was happening at two in the morning and it felt so good because other people were saying, this is, I've given birth before and this is more painful than that.

It is, yeah, it's legitimately so, it's gonna wake you from your sleep. And it's just not related to anything? It's just a random your ass just goes Yo, why do some people get it? I don't know they don't know. I'm never getting my name. We need we need to raise money to fund Research studies, but I did find Either I figured this out on my own. I can't remember or I saw But there is a yoga position that it allevi alleviated immediately which is the cat cow position

Oh, I love that you get on maybe move his is that where you get on all fours and like archer back and you go Yes Move Keep going Cat cat cow cat. Oh, oh yeah, cuz the cat you archer back. Yeah. Oh That's what they call that. That's why they call that. Move and hiss.

When you do the cow, you go, move. Interesting. Yes. Well, I just did the move one and I bent my back like this and like, I guess it's stretching your ass muscles and it works like a charm. So I was awoken and then I just, I was laying there in pain and I thought, oh, I know exactly what to do.

So I got on my bed. It'd be funny to see like if I had a nanny camera, or something, me just waking up and then immediately getting on all fours and like presenting myself to a ghost and then being like, whoo, that's over. I'm going back to bed. So, spooky little song.

Yeah. He heard his ass, chch, he that is. Wait, speaking of raising money. Is that a jar? Look, I didn't fart in it. It's there. Okay. I was just, you know, wait, wait.

By the way, check the disclaimer in the box because I almost forgot to say that. I was, please. I was, please. I was driven mad by how much money this woman was making off these jars, right? Go on. And I said, there's got to be some money in this

for the old trillionaire mindset, boys. And what happens on every podcast that we do? There's a lot of giggling in front of you. No, no, no. You always have to burp. Oh, and I figured. Ha, ha, no, you always have to burp. Oh, and I figured. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, yeah. If we could capture one of these burps,

it's a real episode burp. You're gonna give it back to me, and I'll say you can get in my DMs, and we'll come up with a fair price for a premium bin burp. That sounds like a hot deal, man. You guys, we're gonna NFT this and sell 10,000. No, no, no, no, we're not gonna do that. This is the real deal.

This will come to your house and you can open it up and take a big whiff of Ben's burp. I'll tell you exactly what it's gonna smell like. It's gonna smell like half a banana. A lot of. Wait till it's a good one. Wait till it's a good one. Oh no, I know.

I'm gonna have it at the ready. I just spilled water on myself. It's my first time drinking. It's gonna be a spontaneous burp. Boy, that liquid death sure. At least these, you know, if there's gonna be burps on every episode, we might as well. Mine's one monetizing. Yeah.

Well, you could be the lucky owner of a, um, of a, of a Ben burp. Did you know, by the way, that this is a Kerr jar, but ball, the brand, the company that makes the other jars, is it a publicly traded company, ticker symbol BLL. How are they doing? I have no idea, but any who. We should tell people it is Friday now. Do not be alarmed.

I like that ball. What's their market cap? Scroll down just a little bit. Market cap is 29 billion dollars a little bit. Uh, market cap is $29 billion. Oh, shit. Holy shit. They do $11.78 billion in revenues. And they were founded in 1880. They got a fucking monopoly on the jar.

We gotta get. Don't they got Kerr right here. Unless they own Kerr to. No one buys Kerr except for me. That's a only look at that. Head for headquartered in broomfield. Oh, well subsidiaries, ball aerospace and technologies. So they may maybe do some shit like that.

Okay, so we gotta tell everyone, it's Friday right now. Yeah, oh yeah, that's right. It's not Monday, we're trying something out. Yes. We explained it last week, we usually do, we record on Thursdays and they come out on Mondays. Yes. And we want them to come out closer to the day we're talking.

Yes. So we're trying to get them out on Fridays. Yes. And if people hate it, we'll go back. And if people like it, we'll stay. Yeah. Cause you know, we're, we're trying a new thing here. Cause one of the complaints that we had gotten before was that by the time the

episode comes out, the news, whatever we're talking about that week, maybe a little stale. You know what the worst part was? Literally every time without fail, every time we mentioned Elon Musk, he would do something, we would talk about it, and then over the weekend he would do another dumb thing. Yeah, well, because he's a shit heel. So it's Friday. We got a lot of comments from you guys about the student loan

episode and wanted to express our gratitude for sharing your stories and your frustrations because it is a frustrating thing. Some of you have loans that are now higher than the amount that you initially borrowed because of outrageous interest payments and whatnot. Oh yeah, there was a really good one too. I mean, because some people were talking about what this pause over the pandemic has meant for them. And I think there was one guy who was like, I was able to save up enough money

to move out of my parent's house, like just from not paying these. That's huge. Yeah. And that's all, they owe that to us. Thanks a lot, Obama. Yeah. Man,'s all he always that to us. Thanks a lot Obama. Yeah. Man, what's he doing now, right?

You know kneecapping popular democratic movements. Oh yeah, and podcasting with Bruce Springy. Two, you know, just fucking boomers who are so popular calling themselves renegades. Is that yeah, that's the name of the podcast, Jesus. Renegades. Oh yeah, that's in the podcast, right? Renegades? Jesus, H. Oh yeah, we had some comments from the, the Graham Steffan episode.

There's one guy, Tyler Church, says, guys, please don't think we hated you for the Graham episode. This podcast absolutely slaps. It was just a severely different vibe between both of you. This episode very strongly brought back the chill vibe and a meal actually got to talk unlike the last one. We love you both. He's of course referring to episode 15 that just posted this week.

Tyler, thank you very much. It's a very sweet thing of you to say, uh, yeah, the vibe was vibe was different because we had a guest who was much better than us and wealthier. So we had to treat him. You guys don't understand what happened. The slew of the show. We had to let him, it was in his rider. We had to get down on our knees and let him spit in our mouth. Yeah. And we did it. I got the first spit, so it was a lot. I was like, gee buddy. What do you eat a banana one? But it was like he's done it before.

He said, give me a minute before he did my spit. And like, because mine was pretty hefty too. Yeah, and then he asked us to leave a comment on. I just smashed that leg one. I just smashed that leg one. Hey, if you enjoyed that spit, go ahead and smash that leg button. Damn. That spit algorithm.

But the leg button is so, what? Go on. No, no, finish it. Come on. The leg button is so what? Come on. Come on. This is going to be good.

I better be good. We're going to take it out anyway. I was going to say. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no sat down in the whole show. Oh man. That's obviously getting taken. Bob Boo. Oh, maybe not. Maybe we can leave it in. Maybe after we listen to this back, we'll enjoy it. So before we get into the meat and bones, meat and potatoes,

meat and potatoes, or in your case, beans and potatoes, because you don't eat meat. And you, my boy loves beans. Cause we got a special episode. So stick around. Because this is going to be a doozy. But we wanted to get some news out of the way. John Assoff proposed a no congress trading bill that hopefully fingers crossed goes somewhere

doubtful. Yeah. His tweet tonight. I introduced legislation to band members of Congress and our spouses from trading trucks. Three-quarters Americans agree. You said trading trucks, but I'll let him. Tricks. Three-quarters of Americans agree.

I love how I put three-quarters of Americans agree. It's very, I don't know if you saw that viral study that was like Princeton finds that popular opinion in America actually doesn't matter to policy making sure cuz they don't give a shit That's like yeah, John we want a lot of things to happen pal I hope you can do it, but you know and it wouldn't I wouldn't put it past some of these sniveling Coward politicians to find and exploit create Some loopholes like oh well then they just trade out of an LLC or their kids or any number of things.

Like I'm sure they can create an S-Corp or something. It's just, it's all horse shit. It's also crazy because, you know, you don't have to run for Congress, right? No one's forcing you to run for Congress. Yeah. If you want to trade so bad, you could just not run for Congress. Yeah. And also, while you're at it, pal, we appreciate what you're doing, John

Asif. John, awesome. Oh, fuck. I don't have my sunglasses. I was going to do the wrestler guy. Anyway, well, okay. So that bit is dead. But I do love all the people messaging him. Like, where's my, where's my $600? Some people didn't get 600 bucks. No, remember when, because we needed people didn't get 600 bucks. No, remember when, cause we needed Raphael, Warnaq, and John Asif, from Georgia to both win their Senate races.

And the big push was the Democrats were like, if they get in, we'll pay you. We'll send you the $2,000 checks. Oh, right. But what they did was they sent out the $1,400 cause they were like, well, you guys already got 600.

And everyone was like, you promised 2000. People are still salty about it. The last thing unusual whales from their Twitter account got a lot of, got a lot of coverage this week. It's pretty similar to the insider story we covered. They just, yeah, they broke down Congress members trading for 2021. You can scroll down and you could, they have all the members of Congress. Not only, not only, right, not only are they trading more than ever before, sorry, you interrupt you, but just go for it.

Not only are they trading more than ever before, but many of them beat the market. And they made, to quote the tweet here, they made numerous unusually timed trades. This Austin, what's the guy's name? There's, it's, it is worth going and checking out. They, it is, they do have a big list of all their unusual trades. And it's, I mean, it's interesting to read. Nothing's going to fucking happen.

Yeah, I shouldn't say that. Let's hope something happens. Do you know what Austin's got? I, because I didn't look what it Austin's got. He. I shouldn't say that. Let's hope something happens. Do you know what Austin Scott, because I didn't look, what did Austin Scott, he's the number one by far. He actually beat. Yeah, he made a big trade.

I can't remember what, uh, what it was. Did he trade his soul for freaking? It's a huge information. Oh man, yeah, that's a huge list. Uh, it's gonna take forever to find it. Oh good God. Wow, this is an exhaustive list. Oh man, yeah, that's a huge list. It's gonna take forever to find out. Oh good God. Wow, this is an exhaustive list. It is like people should check it out. It's really cool. Oh, oh, no, balsamore. That feels so gross. I can't imagine putting my ass up to one of these.

That is kind of a gross visual. I never really thought about her actually making the jars. Like what position do you think she did it in? Do you think she did it naked? No, I think she was underwear. Sitting legs out. Legs straight out. Stefanka, if you're out there, let us know how you tuted into those jars. You'd be a 2D lady, 2D girl.

Ben, I gotta tell you. What? It's good. It feels good to talk to you, you know why? Why? Guess there's no one fucking talk to you anymore. I feel crazy. I feel like I'm on lockdown again.

Everyone is sick. Everyone can't hang out. Yeah. They're either sick or been exposed to someone. Yeah. And I feel very much like early days of lockdown. Yeah, those early days, man. Remember, oh, I remember.

You would have days where someone would call you and you're like, like, dust kind of comes out. You're like, oh, God, I haven't talked in so long. Yeah, it was a weird time. That's a great transition you just made, pal, into the meat and potatoes. I know. You don't even have to call attention to it. You can just start going. I love a good transition. That was fantastic. So here we are now, which I don't really get it. And here we are now, which I don't really get it. We wanted to go over the COVID crash, our, our,

our different vastly different experiences of the COVID crash. And since it's about just about two years since the whole thing started. And we're going to do an interesting thing here where we, Emil and I really put together a timeline here. Well, though, yes. Was that a good enough rope? Okay, that's If anyone wants it DM me it will work something now. Yeah, we'll donate it. I'll have to see what the going rate is for

Yeah, I'm not I won't keep the money. It'll go to a... Koala fund. It'll go to a Koala fund. Yeah, yes. We will donate it to some kind of thing to save koalas from Gladys Barigicklian. That was Climidia infested, guys. Well, so anyway.

So because of how much it feels like early lockdown and how horrible it is right now, we started talking about the old days. And you have an incredible story that's very pertinent to the show. Yeah. My story is not, my just funny because I'm like a f**kant

Deer walking around the forest waiting to get shot. Yeah. So we put together an exhaustive timeline of the entire, like the start of COVID and my experience trying to short the market. You'll have to stick around to see if I actually scored. But so let's just dive right into it. January 9th, 2020, the WHO announces, announces, stroke and out here.

January 9th, 2020, the WHO announces a mysterious coronavirus-related pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 closed at an all-time high of 30 to 75. So I'm obviously, I'm dialed in. I'm paying attention. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Reddit, and I'm on, I'm dialed in. I'm paying attention. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Reddit, and I'm on other websites.

What's going on when you're at home trading? How many monitors you got? I just have three. I've got laptop and two. I've got my laptop in an external, and then I've got my PC in an external, or just a monitor. So you're checking news, you're checking stock apps.

And there's starting to be some rumblings about some kind of crazy shit going on in China. And I being the reactionary that I tend to be, I'm like, oh, I gotta start shorting the market, man. Oh shit's gonna go down, man. That's the trader in my head. So in early January, you were like, you were Michael Bury.

I was starting to Michael Burury it a little bit, but it was a, it was a painful thing. So then fast forward to January 20th, the CDC says, hey, three airports in America will begin screening for coronavirus, JFK, SFO and LAX. Now, you would think that the CDC saying like they're starting, it's starting, at first it's all the way in China. And it's like, it feels like a distant thing

that's not gonna touch our shores. Therefore, that's why the S&P was probably not caring, because hey, it's probably just another SARS thing or a bird flu. Swine flu, you name it. Swine flu, you name it. Yeah. But then, you know, this headline 11 days later pops up,

but lo and behold, the S&P shoots past 3,300 and it goes sideways for that whole week. The next day. Wait a minute, but just so like, what? Well, are these, was this like unprecedented at this time, all time highs, like we've ever seen it? Yeah, it was all time, I mean, and you were like, this is time, like, in a turn. Yeah, because I'm thinking, how the fuck are we chilling at all time highs

when this thing that's starting to, you know, happen in China is just being wholly ignored because it's clearly something's going on. And it's kind of- But for me, I did not. Oh yeah, well, yeah. Well, and then the next day, January 21st, 21st, the CDC confirms their first COVID case in the United States, but

the markets didn't give a shit. Meanwhile, I'm going fucking nuts because I'm like, okay, it's here now. And we still don't know anything about this thing. It's a mysterious illness. Two days later, Wuhan goes under quarantine. Like 20 million people locked in their homes, and I'm going absolutely fucking bananas. Why the fuck is the market still up? I'm losing thousands of dollars, like, weekly.

That was good. We had daddy trumping like, it's like a flu. It's all gonna disappear. He wasn't, I don't even think he was saying that yet. Things are going strong, nothing's wrong, nothing's happening. Meanwhile, I'm seeing videos of people collapsing in the street in China. The S&P starts to falter a little bit. It'll start to shake.

It did start to shake and I'm betting against it. You know what the problem was? What? They were still calling it the corona. No one started taking seriously until they started calling it COVID. Well, they were... The coronavirus is like a bad joke. That your uncle would make like...

It was still called the Wuhan virus back then. Now, I remember coronavirus, like back in. Now I remember coronavirus back in December. I remember being at the gym and I took a survey. I there was like this girl that I knew in her friend. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I know, but this is the anecdotal evidence. It's a coronavirus. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But back then, this is before anybody even knew about it. I'm looking at my phone and I'm like, this shit's getting serious. And I just took a minute and I said, hey guys, there's like seven people around me. I said, hey, can I take a quick survey? You guys have any of you ever heard of it? This is how Ben is, by the way.

He just walks up to people and asks these, we're all people. Can I take a survey of you guys, and they're like, do you work with, like, who do you work for? He's like, no, no, this is a personal, this is just a personal thing I wanted to do. That's pretty much what I, this is a personal, this is just a personal thing I wanted to do. That's pretty much what I said.

I was like, this is just a personal thing. And can I ask you at the gym? And I said, you guys ever heard of this thing called the Wuhan virus? None of them had heard of it. And then I said, I, I, what's the word where you're like projecting, predicting the future? Is it gonna drive me nuts?

If you know the word, put it in the comments. I, I, I just said, it's all you're gonna hear about for the next two weeks. And I only put two weeks on it. Little did I know. This is, you're such a weirdo. That's not that weird, man. Can I ask you a question?

You ever heard of the Wuhan virus? It's all you'll hear about. Two weeks, yeah. Wait, wait, but did you, what was the point? You said they weren't going to go to the Convirus. I wanted to know personally, if they had heard of it because it was my gauge on the market. But what about the coronavirus?

It hadn't been called that. I mean, it was that, but it wasn't referred to that. I don't know, I don't know. It wasn't on virus. I don't know, it was a Trump thing. At first, it was called the Wuhan virus. What did he call it? Wuhan? No. Kung flu't know, it was a Trump thing. At first it was called the Woo-Hon virus. What did he call it? Woo-Hon, no, Kung Flu.

Yeah, God, I don't even repeat it. So stupid. It's clever, but it's stupid. It's a clever play on words. And then, okay, so then we jumped to January 26th. Kobe Bryant died. And what were you doing? Walk us through what you were doing.

I mean, this is just, it's hard to explain without going in. And I don't want to go into the details. Why not? We got time. This is what the show is about. I also feel very stupid as we're explaining you're like three monitors watching the market. And like, oh my God, people are dropping dead. And I'm just being a moron.

But we had this thing, me and Phil, my best friend had this thing called the beach crew. And it all started because we're both from the East Coast and we're in LA, no one goes to the beach in LA. It's weird. It's right there, no one goes. So we started going every weekend. Then we would be out at parties

and people would be like, you guess we're at the beach? I never go to the beach. I never think to go to at parties and people would be like, you guess we're at the beach? I never go to the beach. I never think to go to the beach and they'd be like, tell me the next time you go. So we started telling more and more people and all these people started coming to the beach and at one point we had so many people wanting to come to the beach. We started this newsletter and people were at it got out of hand. We had all these people go to the beach every weekend. We had sent out an ease letter on Wednesdays that said, here's what beach we're going to.

Everyone loved it. We wrote these like, it was fun. We heard long, you were in the beach crew. Yeah. And yeah, it was a joke that went too far. People were calling us the co-captains. Yeah. And so, yeah, and then, you know.

Builded a logo and everything. Oh, it's a great logo. Yeah. It was very exciting. It was very fun. Because we also started extending to like parties and stuff. Events. We're like, beach crews having a thing.

Yeah. And people are itching for beach crew activity in the winter. Yeah. And so we said, we'll have a beach crew winter formal in February. So we were planning the winter formal and for our invitations. And we also had another element of it was going to it was going to be a fundraiser for Bernie Sanders. So we had our friend take some pictures of us. Well, I'll see if I could pull up the pictures there. And we'll put them somewhere there. Yeah, no, we'll put them us. Well, I'll see if I can pull up the pictures there and we'll put them

somewhere. Yeah, no, we'll put them up. Yeah, we'll pretend like we're looking at them right now. Right. Now these promotional photos that you guys took. Yeah, there's pictures of us in different outfits. You and Phil. Yeah, and they're great. And then so at the party, we had a bunch of them printed out and we would, if you bought a picture for $5, or you showed us a donation slip to Bernie Sanders for $5, we would sign the photo and you get a sign to photo of us. It was insane. I have one, I have it on display. But so that's what I was doing. January 26th, I remember it, it was the day Kobe Bryant died, I'm literally changing into a new outfit and someone goes, holy shit, Kobe Bryant died. They crashed his helicopter. And I was coming back from a mushroom trip in Joshua tree,

and I pulled over to go pee at a gas station, and I checked my phone in the bathroom of the gas station, and I saw a text from my mom that just said, Kobe Bryant with a broken heart. And I was like, a broken heart emoji, and I was like, okay, it's going on here. So I went on Twitter, and I see Kobe Bryant, and I was just, okay, it's going on here. So I went on Twitter and I see Kobe Bryant and I was just like, oh man, you know,

I'm tired because I just don't mushroom until three in the morning. And you know, something like that happens, you wanna tell somebody, the only person was the gas station attendant, this lady in her 40s. And you're like, let me ask you a question. You heard a coming Brian?

No, I did not. It's all you're gonna be hearing about today. Very good. No, I just said, I like, you know, I paid for my water and then I just went, Kobe Bryant just died. I when needed to connect with someone and she goes, no, really?

He said, yeah, Kobe Bryant. She said, really? And he said, yeah, he died in an helicopter crash. No, and then I left, and I listened to the radio all the way home, the drive home, Kobe Bryant died. Yeah, that was the Sunday, I believe. Anyway. Okay, so the market, Kobe Bryant's dead.

Yeah, I'd understand, this was a different time. Dead is a door nail. Kobe Bryant's dead. Yeah, I don't understand. This was a different time. That is a door nail. And... Kobe Bryant's dead, the market. How is it here? Market doesn't care about Kobe. But then, so fast forward to January 31st, the WHO finally declares a global health emergency.

And I was fucking ticked off because at this point, the market is starting to pay attention. And people are tuning in to hear exactly what the CDC and the WHO are saying. And they still weren't calling it a pandemic. They did not label it as such. But this was a Friday, January 31st, and the market started to drop.

Things looked pretty grim. Okay, so let me ask you this. What was your status as a trader? I was shorting the piss out of the market and losing. Shorting the piss out of the market. Yes. When did you start doing it? Oh, like it's January 9th.

It's like as early as January 9th. I was like every week was just like drop in 5 grand, 5 grand. So at this point, you're three weeks, you're waiting. Oh, I'm just losing, yeah. Just losing. Yeah, I was just getting my ass beat. And I've got some screenshots. Wait, do we have, when, oh yeah, this, they'll be coming up here. I've got some screenshots. Wait, do we have, oh yeah, they'll be coming up here.

I've got some screenshots from the Discord stock chat that I'm in that I went back and dug up, showing just how fucking frustrated I was. But so that was a Friday, and then the next week, lo and behold, shocker, the market just shot right back up to all time highs. Is there a reason why? I don't know, buddy, but it was frustrating. Let me tell you that.

I'm getting frustrated two years later. I know. Just shot right back up. It just didn't care. And then finally, three days later, February 3rd, the United States finally declared a public health emergency and the market didn't care. This is after a seeing Wuhan get locked down,

like all of China gets shut down basically. It wasn't just Wuhan, it's like, we see the people dropping dead in the videos, which was, you know, it was still kind of like rumor, who really knows. But then now, okay, we've got cases here, we've got a public health emergency, market didn't care, it went higher. And I wrote on the notes here, this is got cases here, we've got a public health emergency, market didn't care. It went higher.

And I wrote on the notes here, this is actually good news because that's what it felt like. It just felt like actually, no, this is good news because who the fuck knows? Because the market just kept going higher. Look, life was good. You know, we couldn't lock down at this point because you know what? February 8th, you know, we had the Beach Crew Winter formal. It was very important. We couldn't lock down at this point, cause you know what? February 8th, you know what we had? The Beach Crew Winter Formal, that was very important. We couldn't lock down, okay? Yeah.

Hey guys, we wanna take a quick break to thank the sponsor of today's show. Us! It's us! It's a bonus episode, so we are the sponsors today. Yeah, well it's kind of a, it's a complicated situation, but today's gonna be the first one that we're releasing on a Friday,

so we don't have any ads, so we're taking this opportunity to be self-promotional, because we're bad at it. Yeah, we bad at it. So, us? Yeah, we need you guys to follow us everywhere. Every social you can think of. Yeah. LinkedIn, no, no.

See, we're already fucking it up. Go to Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, and follow the show page. It's gonna be TrillionairePod, and all of those things. Follow it. Us personally, if you care. Yes, follow us personally.

We'll let you figure out what our handles are. Mines of Meal to Rose, I'm sure you can find Ben. I don't know what mine is. And then once you've followed us, we also need you to like the video. Yeah, do that to like the video. Yeah, do that. Like the video if you're watching comment as well too, but only nice comments.

Yeah. And then if you're a listener, even if you're not a listener, if you're a video viewer too, Yeah. We need you to go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Yeah. And leave a review. Five stars. Yeah. Because five is good one is bad look

We've got some people are doing it already. Let's read some of the comments We've got you leave a good comment that we like hey buddy. This could be you next time so from being talked about Cmg, we've got thanks to them. I now know how much money I missed out on when NFT started and how to defraud target true Millie trillion our mindset right there. That could be you. Uh, we've got this guy R3Q5, 5 out of 5 wood by fart jars. And then we've got, uh, Rat City Bench. This one might be my favorite.

Rat City Bench? Yeah. Hmm. I made my hustle culture obsessed father listen to this. He hasn't, he hasn't lost quite as much as Ben in the stock market, but he's getting there and I thought it might be helpful to him. His review, they talk about business for five minutes and then it's an hour of nonsense. The one guy Ben I'm assuming won't let the other talk. Shut up for a second. Okay, go on. And they only have one episode a week. High praise, I love it. It's hilarious. This show makes finance accessible and entertaining in a way

that I didn't think it could be our parents watch Yeah, my mom likes it. Hi mom. Ben's parent watches Wait, did your dad watch the show. Yeah, that's cool. What does he say? He likes it although after the when when William presone stormed the show. Yeah storm the capital. I said I said did you see that one and and He said yeah, I said did you like him? No, he's honest. He's honest anyway. Thanks everybody So this is what I was up to I was while you were there while you were freaking out watching Videos of people dropping dead in China, people fucking passing out in labs.

I was trying to figure out if we had enough inflatable beach balls to make the party fun. You did, it was great. Yeah, I didn't care at all about coronavirus. I was preparing my speech so I could give out little awards for who went to the beach the best. Yeah, I got an award. What was your award?

I don't remember. I think biggest dummy or something. I know we gave out a best body border. Well, my nickname was Thurdy. Oh, yeah, I was something to do with being able to track the waves and stuff. Yeah, because every time we would go body surf, I would see the waves coming before you guys,

and you called me third eye, that became my nickname, because I had a sixth sense about these things. I know Maddie was pissed because she won Best Body Border and we saved it for last, because I mean, it's the best award. And she's really good at bodyboarding and body surfing. But, and so the whole time she doesn't everyone get awards and she's like, I can't believe

I'm not getting a fucking award. Getting snubbed. And then she just wins the best award of the night. Wow. You know, I actually, so on my glossy 9x12 or 3x10, whatever the headshot was with you and Phil, you both signed it. You wrote deer third eye and you obviously made this bit as a pun But you said I see a bright future with you little did you know look at us. Yeah, look at this anyway

February 12th here we go. I'm getting increasingly pissed off because I'm short the market and it's not going down and we got some Here's some screenshots. So the first one. So what are these from what are we looking at screen? This is from February 12th, 2020. No, no, where are this is what do you mean? Where are this is on discord? Yeah Yeah, explain like discord is it is it not what discord like you have a discord with who? What do you know? This is it. This is a bunch of other traders. Okay. Yeah Is about to explain discord Oh, so discord have you ever used slack? His peltics lane discord. Oh, so discord, have you ever used slack? So that's kind of like slack with more functionalities.

Oh, I'm so pissed off at discord though. It's a whole other thing. I'm frustrated because I'm noticing that a bunch of S&P Friday, for that Friday, a bunch of puts, meaning bets against the market, went off. And so because a bunch of puts meaning bets against the market went off. And so because a bunch of puts went off, I was expecting that the market wasn't going to go below there because usually when people bet big that it's going to go down, it doesn't go down just because that's the fucking rules.

And I wrote in this frustrated bit here, call buyers always win, put buyers always lose thems the rules. What's always win. Put buyers always lose. Them's the rules. What's the next one? Ben is pissed. This is the word. So fucking angry. How deep are you in at this point? I'm pretty well. Because you still for that week, I was in some Friday, 3350 puts, meaning I need the S.O.K. How confident were you at this point? Very confident. You're still confident.

But I was pissed off. But so like, this is how pissed off I was. I was sarcastically just at home angrily typing. I'm in some Friday, 30, 350 puts at $3.60 because my favorite thing in this whole world is to lose money. And then, so this, I gotta ask you what? You're so confident that like the world economy

is gonna crash and like COVID is gonna be a big deal. Yes. We're hanging out this whole, COVID is gonna be a big deal. Yes. We're hanging out this whole, you didn't say a word to me. Because we didn't have any guidelines yet. We didn't know like anything. There were no masking rules. There were no nothing. Could it tip me off to buy a little fucking?

I, well, that's the thing. It's like nothing was happening. And I even, so I expressed my frustration by saying in this court, Donald Trump could nuke the entire state of NYC and we'd rally on the prospect of rebuilding Ben Thanks that New York City is a state But that's how it was it's like any bad headline would come up and then Because the market didn't react adversely to it and actually went up people would say well the market's forward looking and like actually So so it felt like yeah an asteroid could fucking hit planet Earth and the market would rally

2% because, well, now we get to rebuild and there's going to be more jobs created. It's that fucking frustrated. There was a very confusing, I mean, every day there was a new story about how much or how little we have to worry about the virus. Yes. But you were confident that this was coming. Well, yeah, and then the very next day, February 13th, the numbers of infected from China were released

and it was tremendous in the hundreds of thousands and the market didn't care. And so I wrote in Discord, all news is good news because that's how it felt. And then I wrote, China could be shut down for an entire year and we'd hit new highs on the prospect of them coming back in 2021, which is exactly how it fucking felt.

And then I wrote, bad numbers from China? Good, not as bad as before numbers? Good, like it's all, it just felt like all good news all the time. Then February 17th to the 21st, the next week, global markets begin to weaken. So is that good for you? It's good, but it still wasn't fucking happening. Global markets start to falter. But meanwhile, America's like, hey, you can't bring us down.

Can't bring us down. And then something special happened on February 18th, which was I was alerted to on February 18th, when GameStop was about $4.50. Okay. I was alerted to the unusually high short interest. And I was like, yeah, that must be false or something. And I also explain that a little bit though. So what was going on?

So more and more people, there were rumblings about the unusual more and more people trying to short game stuff. Well, not more and more people trying to short. Just more and more people were talking about, man, there are more shares short of game stop than there are shares circulating okay, but so this is February

2020 way before months before yeah, I mean it would be so close to a year before no not close to Several games stop thing happened. It went it was over a year. Yeah, like lasted. But I remember thinking, oh, this data's gotta be wrong because if this were the case, it would already be squeezing to high heaven, but it wasn't. Little did I know. So you didn't get in. I did not.

But around that time also, I was growing increasingly frustrated, which seems like a stretch because I was already at my max levels of frustration. Because companies like Apple, the biggest fucking company in the world, started to publicly raise concerns about the growing dire situation in China. It was affecting their supply chain.

It was affecting their manufacturing capabilities. And how's the market? The market did not fucking care. Let's see, okay, so here's my buddy, UPB. He's a... You down with UPB? You would never guess what UPB stands for. You're an airy?

No, pract, benfection. You're an airy, pract, benfection? He's a good buddy of mine from the chat room, and it stands for uranium pinto beans. That's his nickname on there. But anyway, you see, he pointed out to me that 103% of the float was short. And yeah, so and I wrote sometimes the ones that are supposed to be an easy short of the ones that squeeze the most mighty template.

Explain this percent of float thing to me. That means that, like I said, the more shares are short. Same thing, that's what. It's something that's going on with the inside. Because the float is how many shares are freely floating that are available to buy and sell. Anyways, that was that. And then, so, on the news that Apple was saying,

I give up, truly, I just don't understand anymore. Apple could say they're cutting estimates in half and we'd spike on the prospect that in five years they'll be back up. So glad I didn't buy the 33.65 calls or the 33.80 calls for tomorrow because the market just kept fucking going up at this point.

And then I said, probably see futures, which is, you know, the market. Probably fucking going up at this point and then I said probably see futures Which is you know the market probably see futures up 10 points then gap up and hit all time highs tomorrow Half the world could explode tomorrow and futures would be up two points Ben I had no idea you were going to this. This is oh I was 18. I was getting gray hairs I was like it was absolutely fucking insane. And- So were you right? Did they, did they go up? Yeah, the market kept going up. February 19th, the next day, things are looking worse

and worse in the market just wouldn't budge. And we, we, I got more, more of my complaints here. I'm so unhinged. This is February 19th. Yeah, the next day I said, I'm honestly starting to think the market never crashes again. Why would it when everyone now knows the Fed has our back no matter what? Why sell when you can just hold on and someone in discord reacted with an Elon Musk demote or whatever. And then the next one I said,

if you wanna make money, sell me options. So you're still not throwing in the towel. I'm not throwing in the towel because I'm like, something's gotta give. How much money have you lost at this point? I don't even know, probably 20 grand, 25 grand. Shit. Are you worried at all? No, because I, I, I, I mean, yes, but you must have been a little worried.

I was like this. I felt like I felt a little like Michael Burry in the big short. I was like, I'm right and the market is wrong. Like this is insane. And sure enough, the next day, February 20th, hospitals in the United States started to prepare for the pandemic. The market took a little bit of a hit, but it's still barely fucking moved at all time highs. And I'm just getting crazier, crazier. This is February 20th.

Ben is absolutely losing his mind. I said, oh, daddy, I want you to crash the market. And then I said, where's that headline about hospitals preparing for the pandemic? What the fuck? And I said, and that day we did have a 40 point drop in 40 minutes. And I said, it's fine, it doesn't mean anything. No, just see, yeah, my attitude was, oh no, the market drops, no, just buy it back up again

because it doesn't fucking mean anything. Oh, it just, a drop, it went back up. Well, I mean, it was, yeah. And then there's an old saying, an old saying in the market, bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered, which means people on the upside, bulls make money, bears make money,

but if you're a greedy pig, you always get slotted. And my nickname in this Discord is Benjo. And I wrote, I wrote Bulls Make Money, Bears Make Money, pigs make money, Benjo loses money. Yes. That's what it felt like. It was like, wow, no matter what I fucking do. Was anyone else in this Discord also trying to shorten?

There were a few people, yeah. I think everybody had a little bit more. But no one was shorting it as heavily as you. No, because I mean, I honestly don't remember, but I did not think that anybody else was. But okay, so then, okay, here we go. It's starting to get real. We got a lot of, there's a lot of screen caps here,

but the market started to drop on Friday, February, I believe it was Friday, February 21st. I finally, so here's the fucking crazy making thing that happened to me. I was betting against the S&P, but I also would bet against like Amazon because I, Amazon's a huge part of the S&P, and if one drops, if they're both going to probably drop in kind, right? So I had been betting against the likes of Amazon also. So I finally got a little bit of profit on my Amazon short, so I took the profit, which is so funny because though, usually I never sell.

I just buy options and I hold them either to profit or they go to zero, right? And after like a month of losing money, I finally had one little winning trade. So I sold some because I was like, all right, I'm just gonna take a little bit of profit here. And it's funny because, or ironic, I don't know, because the one time I shouldn't have sold

is the one time that I fucking did, you know. So I actually chronicled that a little bit here. What are we? What are the screen? How much did you, are we going to find out how much you made? Yeah, it was, it was a pittance, but oh yeah. I, I sold three out of my 10 Amazon 2050 puts for the following week, meaning I needed Amazon to go at or below 2050. And I bought them at $3.72 and I sold them at $8.50.

It's pretty good. And then I started to laugh because the market was starting to look weak and I was breathed. He's an absolutely crazy point. Ah, still holding 3332.50 points for next Wednesday on SP X. Yeah. And then let's just burn through these. Oh, man, there was a fucking headline that drove me fucking insane. The, the, it's taken out of context, but the quote was, though the market hasn't been complacent regarding COVID-19. This is as of February 21st, when COVID has now been like in the ethos or whatever, for weeks.

And it says those, whatever the fuck, I don't know, ether. Yeah, thank you. I don't know, the public collective consciousness. Sure. And this, whoever this jackass commenting on the market said that the market hasn't been complacent regarding COVID-19 and I wrote, are you fucking kidding me?

Like it has been the definition of complacent. Says the guy who's been shorting the patient. What's the definition of complacent? Just, didn't care. Just, that's complacent. I'm so complacent right now. Right? Do I have that right?

All right, what was the next one? So what have I got here? Uh, then I started to get serious. I grabbed some of the following week, 32. Now he's getting serious. I grabbed some puts and what else? Uh, So for any audio listeners,

Benazon discord, any rights me today, and he's got Jim Carrey and Liar Liar screaming, losing his shit. Yeah, and this is because I had taken profits on some of the shorts. Like I had been losing money on shorts this whole time. And then finally, when I got a little bit of profit, I took some, I took some of it off, and it's the one time that I shouldn't have because by my estimates

as of, as of the 21st, I had left about $50,000 in profits on the table. Jesus. And then I wrote, love being short for weeks, then missing most of the move by selling the day before, which is, by the way, something I never do because I never fucking sell but I was like I'm gonna say this time. I'm not gonna lose any more money and it's the one time that I shouldn't have done that So is there any part of you that's worried yet that it's not coming? No, but then I followed that up with I never cut losses and I did yesterday Unreal it truly just felt like it felt it really felt unreal Like I've been I'd been doing this for a month, and I just, but then I started it, you know, the stars started to align,

and I said, call me paranoid, but it feels to me like we're on the precipice of a huge sell-off. And buddy, I was prepared. Is that the, yeah. And then by then, the CDC and the WHO said today, February 21st, to expect human to human coronavirus contact here in the United States, whereas a week prior they had said, hey, no big deal. Which was part of the crazy making thing is like it was obvious to anyone with a fucking

brain what was going down and they yeah. It is great. Like, so seeing all this happen, I'm like, was I fucking stupid, but now looking at the notes, I think maybe I was just so hyper focused. So February 22nd, the next day, I was in Nevada that weekend with like the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Nevada caucuses. And I think throughout all of this, the only thing I was thinking about

was that Bernie Sanders is gonna be the president. Yeah. You weren't thinking about anything? Why would you be thinking about anything? Right. And I was like, we need to win Nevada. And then we did. And it was the greatest fucking day ever.

Well, well, then the next day, February 23rd. So there's this thing called the futures market. And that's basically for lack of a better explanation, it's like the after hours market. So the market closes at 4 p.m. Eastern, and then there's after hours trading until 8 p.m. But then beyond that, there's just what's what are called the futures. And they are, they're basically, they give you a good idea of where the markets headed, roughly. And that Sunday night when the futures market opened, they were tanking,

like in a serious way. So I was very mixed because I'm like, oh fuck, I'm about to make tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Holy shit. But I was also scared to death because I'm like, this is tanking way more than I anticipated. This is a real problem. Like now it is finally here and it's serious.

And I don't know, like I'm kind of scared. Like I gotta go to the store. And so I couldn't sleep that night. This is still early. This is February 23rd. 23rd, yeah. So I was scared for like everything. And I remember I called my mom at like 2.30 in the morning.

She, God bless her, has her phone on and woke up and was like, what is it? And I said, mom, I'm a little scared. You called your mom in the middle of the night. Yeah, because I was freaking out. I said, you're gonna make her worried. Well, she was. She said, well, what should I do?

And I said, you know, I think you just go to the store first thing tomorrow and just buy a bunch of stuff. She didn't do it. So I ended up doing it for her that week. And I think I loaded up a shopping cart, just more full than I've ever loaded a shopping cart. And I remember people were giving me looks and I was like,

that is an early to be doing it. I know. I was so paranoid that I even wrote an email to my ex-girlfriend who hadn't talked to you in months. And I was so paranoid that I even wrote an email to my ex girlfriend What I hadn't talked to you in months and I was like why be careful and you gotta go to store and things are gonna get Serious and like because I was I was like on a high just like holy shit I know what nobody else knows it felt like it was crazy. Did she respond? No like it was crazy. Did she respond?

No. It's great because it's so early to be sending that. Well, yeah. But at least you were vindicated. Oh, yeah. For probably three weeks, you'd be like, should I fucking call someone and see if Ben's okay? Yeah, no, no, that was not.

I don't know, she probably didn't even get the damn thing. But anyway, so then Sunday night, I was in Discord and everybody, everybody in there was so, they were, they were so happy for me because I was about to clean up. I had loaded, I think I had like, I had to care about remember 70,000. I want to say it was, was it like 70,000 dollars worth? This math doesn't cut. I don't think this was all of my positions, but I had, damn dude, you were putting that much in.

I mean, for the audio listener, I had just 5, 15, 25, 30, 42, 47. I basically had like 50 put options across the S&P, Amazon, Google, and Tesla. And that week was like a very bittersweet thing for me because the market was crashing. Well, it was like the first big crash, then it bounced, and then I re-shorted it, and then it really tanked. And I don't want to disclose, I made a fucking, I made a lot of money. And it was, it was, you don't want to tell us?

No, it was weird because it was like, I mean, I didn't know the extent of it. I didn't know that like people were going to die. I just thought, oh, this is, I was thinking supply chain before it was like a big thing. Oh, I was thinking, okay, China shut down. What's going to happen when essentially the global economy is going to grind to a halt? Holy shit. And that's what I was prepared for.

What day are we at, so February 23rd? I mean, the supply chain issues oddly enough didn't really, the effects didn't get felt until, you know, now, but what did you do, February 28th? I got in an Uber to go on a date and the driver asked me if I was scared about the coronavirus and I said, no, not really. Which is funny because the next day, if February 29th, we had the very first COVID death in the United States.

And what did you do? I I went to dinner with two friends and we are all gonna split. It was a nice restaurant, so we said let's just get a bunch of plates and split. And the waiter said one of the plates that we wanted they didn't have. And they were like, but the sandwich is really good. And we're like, yeah, but we're splitting everything. Like, how are we gonna cut the, like it was like a round sandwich.

We're like, how are we gonna cut that into three, and he's like, I don't know, you guys can figure it out. And so when it comes, it's like wrapped in one of those burger wrappers almost. Yeah. And that's how you know it's good. We looked at each other and we were like, well, we'll just, we could just take turns taking bites.

We'll just keep passing. Ha, ha, ha, ha. So we're just passing this thing around. We'll just keep passing. Ha, ha, ha. So we're just passing this thing around. As it's like, it's definitely a big story at this point, but I remember joking. We were like, if we all get coronavirus, we'll just quarantine together. That's so funny.

So that's what I was doing. And then the next day, you went to a Bernie Sanders rally in Los Angeles. Right. And then I was going just to super spreaders on there. Oh, yeah. And then two days later, super Tuesday, what did you do? I went out on a date and made out with a stranger in a bar.

Oh, no, no, no, no, even better. Oh, it's Jesus Christ. I was everywhere. Super Tuesday, yeah, I went on a date and we made out and then I went to the DSA party to watch the results of Super Tuesday and that same day it was at the doobar. Oh nice. Love that far. That same day the S&P dropped a ton but it started to rally. That's that first kind of rally I spoke of as Jerome Powell came in and tried to calm things down by dropping the Fed funds rate. And that was putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound at that point. So then the next week, what did you do?

March 6th. Come on. I just, I made out with a stranger in a bar and we joked about giving each other coronavirus. It's very funny. And then what did you do the next day? The next day, we, I met my friends at a bar, and we had some drinks and then we went to a bowling alley. It was like, we found the grossest bowling alley in Los Angeles to go to.

And then we went to do karaoke. It's like you were, it was like we were trying to get COVID. Yeah. Uh, and then this trying to get COVID. Yeah. Uh, and then this is my favorite note of yours. On March 9th, two days later. These are the Monday, right? So, after that weekend of going to bars and bowling and karaoke, I felt sick, but.

No, not only that, you said you felt super sick. I felt super sick and you went to the gym. I went to the gym anyway. Ah, but at this point, I hope that doesn't make me seem like a the gym. I went to the gym anyway. But at this point, I hope that doesn't make me seem like a bad guy. I had no idea. I didn't know. I have no idea if it was COVID. I have no idea what it was.

Of course you don't. It was. But. Well, that was a black Monday for the markets when the S&P dropped seven and a half percent or 225 points. And I was short, so that felt really, really good for me. What did you do the next day? I canceled the date because I felt sick.

Good for you. I was being responsible. Then the next day I had a virtual appointment to see if it was actually COVID and they were just like, yeah, what do you, we don't have tests, what do you do? And I was like, oh fuck, And so I just dealt with it. And then that night, Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks, man. And now it's his COVID. And the NBA shuts down and it all becomes real. Yeah. That was when it all became real. Well, I think I would argue that the next day we became really real because you canceled the last time a tux shop comedy show in your backyard.

That was a bummer. That was a big bummer. I remember Coachella was canceled too. Arguably tux shop is bigger than Coachella, but I would agree with that. That same day, Thursday, the S&P was down 9.6% or 260 points. Trump tried to calm the markets, but it did not help. And the market, it was wild. It halted multiple times. It had a circuit breaker where it drops so much that they just stop everything called limit down. Oh, excuse me. Oh, I burped.

Well, that's when it's not going in the jar. Wait, so what's going on with you? Like, you haven't sold off all your... I was slowly selling off some of the options that I had. I had put on new positions because all those other ones from that screenshot were February. But is March 12th is when everything starts to really...

Well, that was down. And then the next day, the market rallied because that's what happens during bear markets is like things will drop, but then they'll rock it back up. But then March 16th, we had another black Monday where the S&P this time dropped 11.98% or 324 points. It was, it was chaos. It was like, this is the first time I'd lived through and traded an actual crash. I'd never seen the S&P down that much or halted that often.

Like, were you freaking out? I wasn't because I was positioned for it. It felt great for me. I was like, holy shit! This is opportunity for me, because not only am I getting a bunch of cash, then I'm then gonna be able to buy the dip on on all these quality companies.

It just, yeah, I was not, I was vindicated, finally, too. Damn, which felt fantastic. You had such a different experience too, because for this point in time, I feel like everyone I know was so scared about just COVID, and you were dealing with all of your positions. Yeah, and at that point, I felt like I had learned enough about COVID to know that, all right, you know, for relatively healthier, younger people, it's probably not going to affect you, you just got to be careful and like mask up and whatnot.

But also by then, the central banks were doing everything that they could, like they were just literally throwing money figuratively because they're not literally throwing money. They should, they should have to do it like that. Yeah, strip club. They should just have to throw every trillion, all the trillions of dollars. Yeah, put it on pallets. Yeah. Yeah. And then funny enough, on the anniversary of my dad Yeah, put it on pallets. Yeah. Yeah. And then funny enough, on the anniversary of my dad dying, I guess, Bill Ackman.

Oh my god. Bill Ackman is this billionaire guy, and he's an interesting dude. Well, not really. He's just kind of milk toast, but he went on TV and he cried. No way. Yeah. Well, he liked choked up because he's an emotional guy, but it's funny because it was later revealed

that he had shorted the piss out of the market too. He was doing it like you. Just like me. And except he turned $27 million into $2.6 billion. Billion dollars. And then when he was going on TV, spreading fear, it was kind of a mixed bag, because he was saying that he was buying stuff, but he also was like

He was a you know Spreading fear and like freaking out and that one a billionaire guy who's who carries some weight is Freakin out and crying on TV Yeah, but but at the little did everyone know he was actually loading the boat and buying the hell to know that whenever There's a global catastrophe. There's some rich asshole just becoming a billion clean it up So this is him. This is just a quick little moment of him choking up on on CNBC. I'll watch a billionaire cry You're not saying you know Oh my god

He's not saying to storm the beaches at normandy right he's saying go home go home go home and a month with your family okay and i know for some families at the heart um... but it's nothing all right

he he at the time yeah he was uh... bill acman was going on and saying that what Donald Trump needs to do is just keep everybody home for 30 days. Just shut everything down except for hospitals and stores and whatnot and give everybody money and that's what we need to do. And he likened it to like, this is our responsibility. It's not like he's asking us to store in the beaches at Normandy. It's just stay home.

And he made an emotional plea for it. Because he also then revealed that his father was very vulnerable and he had already been quarantining for like a month. So it's funny that I was on the same one track mind as this billionaire and like, hey, where's the credit that I get? We didn't try to tell anyone. Yeah, fuck, hey, where's the credit that I get? We didn't try to tell anyone. Yeah, fuck well, because he probably knew that nobody would listen.

Uh, but then, then shit started to turn around. March 23rd, the low was officially put in in the market rallied from 2,200 in the S&P to 2,600 in just a couple of days. Uh, the Fed stepped in, lowered the rates to zero. Uh, it's funny. Oh my God, looking back at this holy shit. They had their quote unquote dual mandate. This is like their guidelines of 2% inflation and maximum employment. And now we're sitting at like 7% inflation. So kind of ran a little bit hot. Around this time, Congress approved their $500 billion

in corporate loans. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. There was all sorts of restrictions. April 20th, oil went negative. You remember that? That was fun. And then around that time, the market started to just really rally and that's when you had dipships

like Dave Portnoy. Have you still not sold off all your positions yet? Oh no, I had sold all my... Oh, so you made your big money. I made my big money, I bought the dip. I bought a bunch of quality shit at low, low prices. But like one of them was car. Remember I told you, I bought like several thousand shares of car,

but then I sold it like almost right away. Cause I thought that we were gonna maybe have a double dip. We never double dip. And then yeah, we had everybody gambling with their stimulus checks and everybody thinking themselves as day traders and stocks only go up and Dave Portnoy starting his stupid shit. God, that guy's such a douche. And then, you know, unemployment was above 15% and that's when we had Tesla and Zoom and Moderna and Amazon and Facebook and Google and Shopify and Chewy, you name it. Anything that even closely related to, hey, are people going to use this more now that they're staying at home just absolutely rocketed? And that's why Jeff Bezos is wealth nearly doubled.

And yet Amazon hardly gave anybody a pay boost because uh, they got hero pay. Oh, right. They got like a sandwich or something, right? I had not for a little bit. It was like $2 an hour, but it expired. It's like, it didn't last. And so that was it, man.

That was the, that was the whole... I still wanna know how much, will you tell me off camera? Yeah, sure, I'll tell you how. Okay. Wow. It's not as much as you think, it's not like millions of dollars. No, I know. It should have been, like from the top to bottom

and then back up, it should have been several million dollars. But I kinda, I... Damn, you could have made several million. I could have, in my goal. But I kinda, I, damn, you could have made several million. I could have, I, and my goal, like I've disclosed before, my goal is to like, not be a trader anymore. I don't wanna do this shit forever. I wanna like make enough to where that I just don't have

to work again. What's enough? Three million dollars. Three to, like five million dollars. Where you just park it in dividend stocks and you get an annual income of you know $200 million bucks at 250,000 300,000 something like that and it's totally doable but anyway you got to pay taxes and you got to pay for life so it just constantly chips away in the uncassandra just taking

the fucking money and we gotta hey we gotta bend we really love what you're doing but we gotta buy more bombs man we're big fans here at the IRS. We're big fans, but that F-35, it's just, it's just, we're almost there. We're almost there. It can hover. It can hover. It doesn't crash themselves. Yeah.

F-35. Ben? I love, it's a real sore point for me, because baby, I love airplane. We do love planes. And when they fly. I like it when they fly. I'm not a fan of the F-35.

You know what I love? The F-14A Tomcat. And you like it when they fly. I like it when they fly. I'm not a fan of the F 35 You know what I love the F14 a Tomcat the that was a cool jet that was my favorite one They retired it was a Navy plane. Did you see the videos of the The I think their Marines or something with the jet packs no and they're going from the small boat to the big boat No, they've got legit jet packs. Wow. It's wild. But that whole, you know, the meme of just like, please give us healthcare.

He's just like, you guys in jet pack. I clicked it to see if I was like, I bet the first reply is, please give us healthcare. And it was. Oh, I love that. I love it. It's always like, just watching them. It's, why are you doing this?

Yeah. And I think some military guy chimed in and was like, these guys would get absolutely smoked if they tried to fly off this. Of course. Yeah. Pick them off like no problem. Oh man, so I don't even know.

Do we even wanna talk about predictions going forward or where we are now? Oh, look at that. Oh, you look at that. Royal Marines. Oh, he's a British going, oh, I'm going flying right here. Little boat in the big boat. And It was time to hit the jet pack. All right. Here we go. Oh, champs. Oh We go for it. Oh, god old geez. Oh, this is for the queen. This is for the queen. How much do you think we

He's listening to the Beatles What how much do you think we paid a military contractor to make that stupid fucking jet pack? Yeah. Oh, in the hundreds of millions. Right. Yeah, they got money. We should start a military contracting company

and say that we're developing like, I don't know, psychedelic warfare and they just pay us to take mushrooms. Research it. What was everyone complaining about with the whole MK Ultra thing? You guys were getting free LSD. Just take the ride, baby.

Well, because then the government gas lit him. And it was like, you can't be doing that. No, yeah. Here, it takes a massive. Why are you doing that? And then they were trying to figure out how to make like remote viewing work. Yeah, and like super soldiers or like,

how to get truth serum. Yeah. Can you imagine some government guy giving you LSD and then going, okay, try to imagine what's going on in Russia right now. Well, have you ever seen the woman, they give it to her and they're asking her questions and she's just like, she's in awe.

She's like, it's beautiful. The colors, everything, it's amazing. And they're like, shut up bitch. The colors, everything, it's amazing. And they're like, shut up bitch, don't let's sit. Let's do it with the new stuff. This drug just rocks. Yeah. Oh man, we're hoping this could be some kind of rump in.

Not a torture people with this. Yeah, not a spiritual thing. I'm sure if you give people enough of it. Yeah, you'd kind of manufacture your own paranoid. Yeah. Wait, so we've come very far, but it feels like not that far at all, right? It's been almost two years and we're still just... Well, the market is now at all time highs. It's now just kind of stuck there.

Now we do have inflation. It's like I said, I mean, throughout we had inflation creeping up and then every time the Fed talked to the people they said They went from saying that there's not gonna be that much inflation to well, there is gonna be inflation But it's gonna be the big word was transitory. It's gonna be temporary and then now it's there is inflation but it we're gonna handle it and Every time that there's something I'm basically I'm kind of in a similar position right now where I've been kind of shorting the market here and there

because it feels like, okay, we've like rocketed past where we should, I don't know, where we should be. I don't know how to say. All right guys, Ben is shorting the market. I would get to the grocery store. Very soon, but I'm not. And also I'm not, you know. I got to pull up this picture of, I was so panicky.

It was, I'll look at the date. It's got to be like March 15th or something. And I'm at the grocery store. March 15th, 2020. And the guy in front of me literally just has, I had to take a picture. It was just like two big Miller high lives and then just like coffee creamer and cigarettes

or something. I'll find a picture. It's really an amazing, I was like, this guy doesn't give a shit about anything that's happening. Wait, can we pull the clip real quick? I sent something, I don't know if Ben's seen it. There's a guy who, you know, look quick I sent something I don't know if Ben seen it there's a guy who You know look a lot of people don't want to take this vaccine right they don't trust it and so we've got this guy who has um

He's he's figured out the latest antidote to covid and um this guy yeah, and so we can he's got a little video if you uh well first of all his photo is he's wearing a like a whatever kind of anti sweat what is that like a um underarmor shirt with a custom label on it that says vaccine police yeah which I guess he's like he's posing he's anti police so he's saying like we're stopping the vaccine right vaccine police I would think you're trying to help get people to say it. Yeah, so he's got a little video down at the bottom But he's also posing for a photo in front of his white Mustang. He's getting multiple guns. He doesn't look crazy He looks like we could watch him for a little bit. He's got a photo of some football players behind him. He's in a non-descript room. We'll skip around a little bit. Let's see.

G-R-O-U-P. Okay, Dr. Group. And Dr. had a 90 minute conversation with him. And he told me that it's very possible. Probably we have the antidote. Okay. And the antidote, even for those that have been vaccinated and the research he's already sent me even if you already told me away and they're going to tear me apart but hey they tear me apart all the time Oh, and I've been practicing this for 20 years. I got a teacher to make a lot of Tesla Everybody's always said I'm Craig Craig and I am but I'm crazy like a fox, okay? Hey guys, when I tell you this please, you know take it with a of salt, but go do the research. Okay. Do the research. What?

This is going to just be like, there's no way. But the antidote, and I'm going to kill the credibility. I'm not going to have any way. So the antidote that we've seen now, and we have tons and tons of research is you're in there. You're in therapy. He's telling people to drink their own piss. And I know. I swear to God, go to the end. I was like, maybe it's like, he does something with, it's like probably like two minutes and he's.

Let's see. Vaccine I would ever take, but this vaccine is the worst bio weapon I've ever seen. And keeps me up all night and every night is, I don't know how to cut it off. Okay, I know how to fix almost everything, but this right here, once you inject an mRNA technology, me and my friends are like, we have no idea. I literally just had this conversation with Dr. Grave and I trust this man's life, my life with this man. I'm not a medical doctor. I'm not telling anybody

to drink their own urine, but I drink my own urine. I've done, I've done my own urine for the last 23 years and I'm still alive and I drink I'm not telling anybody to drink their own urine, but I drink my own urine I've done drink my own urine for the last 23 years and I'm still alive and I drink bleach not bleach I drink chlorine Noxides, but anyway Wait, you mean to tell me that this guy has been drinking his own piss for 20 years. He looks great I might start drinking my mouth. You know, I got a piece so bad right now I might just try to skip the cup and just shoot straight to the source. Pissing that cup will blow through the surface. I couldn't fit anybody.

I would overflow in it. It'll be. Omicron is everywhere. It's probably in this room. Well, you know where the Ancied Ode is, right? You know, our fucking piss. Yeah, it's in our piss. Which makes the question, why even have to drink it?

If it's already in, I don't know. Why? Well, he's not a medical doctor. Why won't the WHO and CDC tell us about this? Why are they hiding it from us? Because they make money, they can't make money on the piss. It's big piss. Piss is free.

You know who gets pissed, all the piss they want, toilets. Man, they are thirsty. Big toilet. Big toilet is hiding the antidote from us. Do you ever, do you ever have toilet, do you, what? No, what did you say? I ever, do you ever apply to my pants? What? No, what did you say?

I said, do you ever feel bad for your toilet? No, never. I do sometimes. Sometimes it's like, man, we ask so much of these things and they get so little from us. They're just choking down shit. But maybe they like it. I mean, I guess that's their function after all.

But maybe they dream of bigger ambitions. What do you think a toilet wants to do? I don't know, sit on the curb, get picked up by someone. To get more shit and piss? I don't know, I don't know. Somebody should ask one. We should take some acid, get someone in the CIA

to give us some acid and experiment with toilet communication. The CIA is gonna have us talk to toilets. It's called toilet ultra. Operation toilet. Toilet ultra. All right, so we got some, what else do we have at the end here?

Inflation, if I want to, this has been. Yeah, this has been a lot. We're almost to the end here. I mean, we could just, I don't wanna talk about COVID more. I, yeah, me either. The story has been crazy and everyone's, literally everyone is talking about Omicron and it's horrible,

but I think your story was worth it. That's, thanks. Wild, I didn't know that. Yeah, it was a while. I didn't know that it was a moltuous. But the good thing is that it probably took years off of my life. Do you think so? The stress probably.

And I wasn't that stressful, but it was frustrating. But we're all gonna, we all got years taken off our lives, probably. Yeah, well, about two, depending on how you live. Yeah, who has it the worst? Donald Trump. Yes, I can't stop thinking that. As an empath.

I feel for him. Yeah. It's so annoying about living in LA. Actually, some of these like fucking insane people who are like very spiritual and everything. I was at a dinner and this was way before COVID. This was like just when I moved to LA actually. And I got invited to this dinner and everyone's talking and there was this woman who was like just very woo woo and I didn't catch the beginning

of the conversation but she was like, you know, yes, like and I've just and I've started to realize that like radical love is the answer. And I've, I've truly been working to love everyone. I love everyone. And so I was like, you love everyone. And she was like, yes, I have even been able to find the way to love Hitler. And I was like, I hate this place. I need to. Hey, I'm lady. And everyone was like, for sure. Save some crazy for the rest of us, lady. Wait, who do you feel the most bad for?

Donald Trump. Was that really? No. Who? I forget. Sorry. You know what I'm talking about. Donald Trump.

Oh, kids, I know. I don't even want to get into the school's thing. I like it, but I just cannot imagine trying to be. Being a kid is so great. I must suck right now. Oh, it I just cannot imagine trying to be. Being a kid is so great. You must suck right now. Oh, it sucks for so many reasons, pal. You gotta have a good brand as a kid.

Otherwise you're useless. Even just going through that, like what, I haven't really been ruminating on what pre-COVID was like. And it was just the spontaneity of things, of just like, going to parties and going to bars and going to places and not thinking about it was, I'm so bummed even thinking about this.

Yeah, me too. I'm over it. I think we should just stop. Stop COVID? Just, yeah, cut it out. Joe Biden, we're asking you to stop COVID. We've all had enough. Bingbong, Joe Biden.

Bingbong, should we wrap it up? There's more that we wanted to talk about, but at this point, it just feels stale. Plus I got a pee and we're well over and out. Okay, so, but one more plug, uh, we're gonna do, uh, why do you look at me like I'm a fucking psyched? I'm like, what's the plug?

I don't know anything about this. Well, so I haven't pushed a book in a minute. It's January, it's a new year. I was gonna recommend a book. Come on, it's about the reed. Because people are asking me, and I was gonna recommend they read The Price of Peace by Zachary Carter.

Great book, it's about, it's a biography of John Maynard Keens, which probably sounds boring, but it's not, he's fascinating, dude. And it also, Ben can't read, so he gets, but it also functions as like compelling history of modern economics. It's really great. And that leads me into the plug of me and Ben are going to be starting to put stuff into the newsletter, the TMG newsletter. So TMG is doing a newsletter that comes out every week and you guys should all subscribe. We'll put, we'll put stuff that we recommend. It'll have

fun little clips from us. Any kind of news from us and the rest of the TMG gang. I got a book recommendation. Just do it. The Bible. Fuck you. The Bible. you got it. TMG Studios. TMG. TMG Studios.tv. You just put your email in, join the list, make sure to put them in your contacts or whatever because it did go to spam for me, so make sure it doesn't go to spam. And you guys can get all kinds of fun stuff. Yeah, if you've made it this far on the episode, we love you. We appreciate you.

Be sure to lick your fingers, suck them off, smash the like button with your finger, your wet, wet finger, your clean finger, because your mouth is clean like a cat or a dog. And all the stuff we said to do earlier in the episode, leave us a review, follow us on every social media thing, comment, five stars everywhere, liking. Kill your parents. Kill your parents, quick job.

Shit, your pants. Kill your parents. Quick job. Shit your pants. Don't do that. Drink your piss. Drink your piss. Stay safe out there folks. Drink your piss. Yeah. Bye.