The opinions expressed in this program are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry to determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results. Any endices referenced for comparison are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly.
Any references to performance of securities are thought to be materially accurate and actual performance may differ. As always, please remember investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. Please seek advice from a licensed profession. And we're back with another edition of the Daily Dots.
And I am joined as always by the Brain Trust himself Mr. Chase Taylor. Bounceback day fully expected it. Quite honestly, I was actually expecting a little bit more rip to the upside, especially on the broader markets.
Yeah, I mean, we had a really nice. I think at one point during the day you had that, but it kind of faded. So. So what do we see?
Well, we'll give this a rundown on the markets. So many different things to talk about today. It's hard time to over which direction. So S&P close up point three seven queues up point six five.
And one reason I would say it is a significant bounce back at one point after hours like overnight in futures. You were down like one percent. Yeah. So you kind of went from down to down one percent up one percent and then you close kind of in between all that.
Small caps had a nice bounce back up one point four, equal weight up point six, mag seven up point seven six. So back seven barely the equal weight for once. You had all world X us out performing up point six eight dollars essentially flat, which is a little notable because you had rates up a good 10 years of eight basis points. We'll talk about why coming up you had a build up point eight silver up a little bit more than that copper up less than one percent.
And then as far as mag seven was concerned, it basically was like Google and Tesla and the rest not super impressive. Vol down four percent. And what was the other thing? No, that's it.
Yeah. Trying to think about which direction we go with this. So to go back to the yields part, yields are up because we had the oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court on the Iepateris. I think if you're following along on that is really clear is that the justices are are pretty skeptical of it being something that's going to hold muster.
So you went from like so if you look at Cauchy, you were kind of like 40 ish percent chance of them ruling in favor and that dropped into the 20s throughout the day. So markets are quotes decided like watching that like, well, okay, these are these have a less of a chance of holding up than they did before, which makes sense for why you would have yields popping up and stocks popping up at least at least on the day. Yeah, no, it's it's I was telling you it obviously it's over completely different things. But when you watch this tariff debate go down on Supreme Court, it reminds me a lot of the Obamacare scenario, right?
Because it comes down days of attacks or is it attacks? And that was the exact same way the Obamacare thing got dialed in and before now this one seems actually they seem oddly similar to me meaning there is some debate around the tax part. Yeah, there's some debate about around the tax part. The other part of it is going into the Obamacare decision.
I felt highly confident that the Supreme Court would rule against it. And the reason why I thought they'd rule against it is because the way the legislation was written, it didn't allow you an opt out. Right. Right.
So if you can't even really call it attacks because there's no way to get around it. Right. And so I actually thought that I still think that was a bad decision by the Supreme Court for that reason, not because I'm going to sit there and try to make a I'm not going to try to make an argument that socialized health care is against constitution because it's not if you voted it. I'm just saying the procedures that they went around doing it.
It feels like a terrorist are unconstitutional, but how you apply them can be right and one of the issues at the center of it, which is understandable, is that only Congress has the power of the purse. And so if you have tariffs that are indefinite, how is that different than passing attacks without congressional approval? Right. It's in that same way to go back to the revolution.
You know, it's taxation without representation because your Congress person had no say in attacks, you know. So it's like, I hate to use this phrase in this way, but like it's kind of like having the king say, like, well, the tax on this and this and this is this much and you don't get a vote on it. You don't have your representative way in on it. Just sorry.
Yeah, I actually thought to and I haven't delved into it. I just read some read some snippets. I actually thought the way that the administration's argument, at least from where I just thought I would have expected them to take a different tack that I thought would be a lot more effective in arguing the role. Meaning.
Be fair. Or get in front of the Supreme Court about why my tariff plan was legal and constitutional. I would gear it all toward the executive branch powers and using tariffs to protect American workers and to I would try to tie it to international trade laws and say, look, I understand what you're saying on the taxation part of it is, but I can't get Congress to move and I've got to use executive powers to use tariffs to protect the the point or the aim of these different laws, right? That that's where I would have taken it.
Now, I'm not a constitutional scholar. So I'm not saying they're stupid. I just thought I thought the approach was kind of odd because they're trying to argue. It's not a tax.
And that's a really that's a silly argument. I think they are trying to make the arguments here. You're also trying to make they're trying to make it sound really big and, you know, top down and stuff to you. The problem, the problem they're running into and to defend the lawyer here, like, they just don't have a good case to make because.
Does it's tax? So well, not that at all. It's it's so many things that seem like that doesn't seem constitutional that have held muster over the last 200 years or whatever. It was usually because like it wasn't specific in the Constitution.
So that's when you would people would use like the Commerce Clause or something like that to be like, oh, it fits in there. And then people were like, well, I guess in this case, it is explicitly enumerated power to Congress in the Constitution that tariffs are that they're firmly in the legislative branches per view and not at all in the executive branches per view. So not just because it's attacks, but it went out of their way to be like Congress controls this. And even if it was revenue list, you know, like it made it clear like regulating commerce.
This is you and tariffs. This is you. So it's yeah, no, no, and this is why I'd say I would attack it completely on the executive power side of it because I think that's the only argument you have to make. But what I'm saying is you can't use that because the executive power is outlined in the Constitution along with congressional power.
And this is agreed expressly written in the Constitution. Agreed, but there is significant precedent for the now I'm not saying I agree with all of it, but there is significant precedent on the executive power side of things, meaning the executive has been given substantial wiggle room in the enforcement of other existing legislation, which is the primary power of the executive branch. Right. And so that that's what I was saying is from a legal argument.
I think that that is a much better way to attack it. And like I said, they said things like that. I just because of what you decided from the Constitution, I just long thought that the only way you're going to get this held up is if you if you go at it through that executive powers side of it. Because if you're not, I don't see another thing that is capable of overriding what you just cited.
But there shouldn't be because the Constitution is clear on it. The only way to override it should be a constitutional amendment because the Constitution is so clear. I know, but that's one of the purposes of the executive, the executive powers is for our country not to be stuck in neutral. Sure.
But what you're talking about is not that's that's extra constitutional stuff. What I'm saying is that there is precedent for the executive branch getting, you know, for instance, the suspension of habeas corpus went exactly against the wording of the Constitution as well. And that didn't get ruled against by the Supreme Court. Now I'm not saying the composition of Supreme Court is similar to the 1860s, but I am saying there is substantial precedent in crises of granting the executive powers.
And the law we're talking about, that is exactly what it handles. It's like, hey, in a major crisis, here are some limited powers to give to the president from Congress to deal with the stuff. Like we don't have time to, you know, maybe wait for this, but it, but there's guardrails around it. Well, words like temporary.
Yeah. First of all, tariffs, not not one of the powers it was given to him. But like if you need to like free some assets or free, you know, like change a regulatory structure whenever it comes to like on the fly really quickly in emergency basis, over trade, let's say you start a war, somebody you trade with, like, well, maybe we should change the way we trade with them, you know, really quickly on emergency basis. Like that was the idea of the original law and I, but which amended it actually to reduce that presidential power there.
But I would also say there's, you know, I think there's an important argument behind all this of if it's super expressly delegated or not delegated given to Congress, can they even. Offload that power onto the executive, right? Like on some level, you have these three three branches, they have certain significant powers. Are they allowed to hand them over to one of the other sides?
Like you do this, right? I think that's an important question that may come up in the decision. It's like, Hey, like you don't even get to delegate that because that one was given to you. Well, the other part of it is like being hard pressed to make an argument that that's what Congress did.
I mean, by default, that's kind of what's happened. Right. I think they are arguing that they didn't grant those. Right.
Yeah. So I think that White House would like you think like, Hey, like they gave us the power to do this. And I think the reality is if you go back and read the law, the prior law, the debate around the law, they weren't trying to do that. They were trying to give you the president some power.
Like if things got crazy to do some stuff, you know, but does that mean, you know, to put on 50% tariffs on India for as long as you decide? It's a good idea. Like, no, that clearly doesn't hold muster there. Yeah.
But with that said, this is one of multiple authorities they're using on tariffs. It's the best and easiest one for them to use because the other ones are very explicit. Like, here's how long you have to get to get tariff off and here's the limit on how high it could be. So that's why they chose this one, this way of doing it.
So if it does get struck down, it's not like all tariffs go to zero and like it's all over. It just means these tariffs get pulled off and they have to use the other more difficult, more constrained ways of doing it. Yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting, it's an interesting setup. Based on my reading of it right now, I think I would go along with the Cal sheet prediction.
I it feels like you're looking at about a 20, 30% chance that the administration gets a win here. And it was always going to be a tough field of climate. You know what I mean? Like just because like you said, I mean, there are examples and there is precedent, but when you get into the powers of the person, powers of taxation, those have been the probably some of the stickiest things that have really not been wavered on.
You know what I mean? Yeah, there's a lot of really great stuff where it comes to the court and they have to like, they have to make a pretty hard core judgment call. It's rare to have a case where it's pretty black and white. And this one, I would argue it is.
But and I think another important point off to the side of this is if this works a past muster and be like declared fine, you have to think about what the other possibilities that opens up and they even talk about this in the court today. Like if you had a president want to say like, Hey, there's a climate emergency. I'm declaring an emergency and now there's going to be a border adjustment tax on carbon. Like through through this precedent, you do be arguing against it.
And that's one example of probably millions of examples that we could all just dream up of. Oh, you just raise taxes on on trade in any way you kind of want to as long as you go emergency, you know? Yeah, magic emergency. Yeah.
I think we've covered everything on the tariff side of it. It'll be interesting the way that plays out. I was just reading some stuff by the cent talking about other things that they're planning and the event that that gets done. So I don't think it's going to be the end of the saga by any sort of imagination.
But it's becomes a bit of a whack-a-mole like, sance him up, take him down, sance him up like that. Yeah, one thing I will say, I just saw this tweet from this guy that was like, it showed like an old World War II tank like getting going close to a cliff and then like, you know, going off the cliff and dying, I guess. And he's like, if Trump's tariffs get repealed, this is the market and I'm sitting there going, no. No.
I don't know. That's not the way that works. Yeah. And to be clear on that, like we saw it on our own portfolio, we had a few, a few of our investments were up a lot today and for no other reason than because if they don't have to pay tariffs anymore, so hugely deal for them or less tariffs, I should say.
Yeah. Yeah. That's more income for the US economy and it's a bigger deficit from the government. Both things are stimulative for the economy and for the market.
Yeah. Yeah. And gold and commodities and all that kind of stuff. Right.
And if you think, if you go back to the one big, beautiful bill, like one of the big arguments around that was like, yeah, that was about the deficit, but you know, we're going to fill in a bunch of it with tariffs, which has been largely true. So if you unfilled the tariff part, then that bill did blow a bigger hole in the deficits than we thought. Now again, they will, you know, a lot of these tariffs will come back in other forms and stuff, but it's not, I don't think you can completely refill the hole that you're going to create here. So it makes a deficit a bigger problem than this.
Well, yeah, I mean, you'd have to go through the exact numbers and I'm sure I'm not going to be right on the money. But if you repeal tariffs, you've got to immediately start looking at, you know, $2.3, $2.5 trillion deficit, supposed to $2 trillion. I mean, yeah, if it was going to create, let's say it was going to create $300 billion on the year. We're not the projections, like $336 billion or something like that.
Yeah. Let's say it goes down to $150, $200, I mean, that's still $100 plus billion or whatever of lost income. Not only that, but it's possible that they have to repay the money they took in as part of this, because you know, if what you're doing was illegal, you know, you may have to give it back. $200 billion is a lot of money.
I don't know how that would work. That's crazy. I can't even wrap my head around it. But if you know, if you got to cut a billion dollar check to GM because you took that money, like, you know, that's a way bigger deficit.
And now GM has a billion dollars to throw around. $200 billion is a lot of money flip side. Last time I checked. It's only about a 3.5% move on a video.
So, you know, a Snapchat up to 60% after hours, they have some deal with perplexity that is all across the tapes. Paula. Yeah. Once you have your favorite things combined, yeah, I should only like Snapchat other than the possibility of the investment to theoretically work when no one else thinks again.
I don't, I'll be honest with you. I don't, I think the anti-snapchat takes sound like reaches. I don't, I look at their growth. I look at their revenue growth.
Now, I have heard some critiques on stock based comp. Yeah, we totally fear. They do a lot of that. But, you know, look at the revenue growth.
You continue to grow revenue with that rate. And then you're also getting it. It, I think it's like three and a half times revenue. Three and a half times sales is where we bought it at.
All I remember is less egregious than most of the space, you know. Oh, like half is egregious. In my opinion, anyone's wearing out of the work perplexities, getting something right. Yeah.
And then the other side of it is too, you know, you go, yeah, I got kids. Go. I mean, kids use Snapchat more often than they use regular text messaging. Yeah.
You know, and those kids are going to get older and they are getting older. You know, I just, it, at this price, I'm not advising people what I'm getting. No, that's a very speculative play. It's not something, it's not a pure value play or something.
It is, but it's a speculative play that it, I mean, I don't think it's speculative because, and here's why I don't get speculative. If the valuation we bought it at what the company is currently doing, we just need them to keep doing what they're doing and it'll be a phenomenal investment. Do you get what I'm saying? We're not betting.
We're not betting the house on an unknown type thing. That's the flip side is it's not S.R.O.T.S.S.S. market. Right.
They have, when I say speculative, I mean, it has downside bigger than a lot of things we normally play in. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it has revenue and the revenue.
It's not profits. Yeah. A hundred times, you know, earnings or whatever, like, yeah. Yeah.
It, it, it, it, I think the reason I like about it or what I like about it is the core business is a good product that people like and that is growing. Right. Um, the other thing I like about it, it is uniquely tied into the fabric of the younger generations. Yeah.
Those things can change, but I thought I was going to be a fad who would go away. So I just didn't. Yeah. But there's something, there's information in that alone.
Yeah. Yeah. And then when I look at the universe, there are just, there are so many things that are unforeseen. I mean, we could sit here and list a bunch from out, but I'm just saying there are so many ways that that investment could become something different entirely, could morph into something so much bigger, deals with perplexity.
You know what I mean? Like, I look at that company at these price levels and I just see a lot of potential upside. So perplexity would be like a default search within, within Snapchat starting next year. So the AI chat, but within, within that thing will, will be live.
I mean, that could be a, they see that's interesting. And this is what I'm talking about. No. Obviously there's a lot of things that go wrong, but if you're going to take Snapchat with that younger generation and they freak in love it, they love it.
If you're going to turn it into like an all encompassing eco sphere, that could become really interesting. Yeah. Especially. The other thing I think is interesting about snap.
So flexing is paying snap to do that, not the other way around. Wow. And the other thing I think is really interesting about that is. And they're getting equity and perplexity.
How much? I don't know. The deal apparently is a $400 million deal, but that's, you know, I don't know what that actually means in real life. I like it.
Interesting. That's a real time update for you folks. That's, we're just like reading about it on the air. So who knows?
Yeah. Yeah. That's, I'm going to want to dig into that and see how that's, see how that structure. But these are the types of things I'm saying when I see something like Snapchat, it could get purchase by, I just, there's, there's, what was that look like?
Lightning in our area. When this surprised me. Oh, really? Sorry.
Sorry. Sierra your phone during a live podcast, you know, I, it cracks me up. I bought faces. That must have been what my wife was talking about.
My wife was just sent me a text and she's like, you know, you probably shouldn't still be at work with all this rain. That's her basically telling me she just wanted to come home. Yeah, it's totally fine earlier. We're going out tonight for anniversary.
So, uh, Happy anniversary. By the way, how many years have been eight? Eight years. All right.
You're almost, you're past the seven year. It's the Ocho. Yeah. Good at you.
That was good news. Yeah. Well, good for you. I wouldn't have thought you'd got me.
Yeah, that's fair. Totally fair. Her on the other hand. One's got the patience of Job.
But you're still two years away from 10. See 10, you're officially an OG. Well, in post-COVID years, that's like 10 minutes. So whatever.
That's true. See me, I've got number 21 coming up this year. That just means you're old. Well, in this case, we're about close to same age, though.
Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. All right.
On to different news. What other stuff do you have that you want to get to? We had good economic data come out today. Um, you know, manufacturing continues to be in the delms with the services I assume came out and was a bit better than expected.
ADP jobs were better than expected. Um, I mentioned this that the weekly jobs data has been picking up. It looks like the worst over the summer was kind of ugly. Uh, the monthly one was, I think was like 60,000 when we were expecting like 40.
So we added a lot of jobs, especially given the net immigration thing. It was a very good number. Um, and as we've learned ADP is more trustworthy than the government data anyway. So the economy, like very much may be stabilizing here other than manufacturing.
But I think we all know at this point that manufacturing is probably a big part of our economy to really blow the whole thing up. So that was notable. You know, the further this goes on and I watch these, this economic data come in, I just keep going back to the stock market. I, I, I just, I think without the context of asset prices increasing in the stock market going up, I'd be pulling my hair out, trying to understand like what is keeping to propel this economy.
Like, you know, everybody goes, well, look at household network. Like, yeah. Okay. But that network, that network number isn't really real, right?
Because you're not getting constant dividends off all your assets. You have constant bills on all your debts. Do you know what I'm saying? So like, that, that wealth is houses went up a ton after COVID and sort of the queues.
Yep. So those things reverse, especially the queues. Obviously like you have a problem. Yeah.
I just think that I think the stock market is pumping so much money into this economy. And to me, it's the only thing that explains it. You know, just like you, you'll see the economy floundering or whatever. And look like you're on the wrong way.
S&P jumps 15% and boom, everything's fine. Yeah. I'm convinced if the market went down 30% held there for three months, like all the day it was our will and all. Oh, I want to go back to that.
And to go back to like, I mentioned like, hey, we had a job problem this summer. Well, that was after we had a drawdown because of liberation day. Yep. That was a big part of it.
Yep. You know, so. You know, so. Type note, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we've been saying this for months now, but you can make good arguments from different angles on the broader economy.
Like you can paint a pretty decent picture, you can paint a pretty ugly picture. So I mean, at the end of the day, it's, you know, is aggregate income and spending a real problem and is employment a real problem, right? Like in those obviously are connected. Both have had some struggles along the way, but none of that stuff is like a problem to the point where you're like, oh, recession pretty close here.
Like just not. It's not. But the thing that scares you about this environment is I feel like it, look, everything moves faster. I was reading a story this morning or yesterday that crowd funding is, I could be butchering the statistics, but it's something along this line.
There are as many crowdfunding campaigns now to help people cover the cost of living is there is like, you know, disasters and typically people go on there. My kid got hurt or whatever. Now you're seeing just as many crowd funding campaigns around just subsidizing cost of living. Yeah.
The cost of living is a huge problem. It's not gone away. It isn't going away and it's very difficult to tackle. I mean, it just and it's almost sad and dark that you can have a cost of living crisis while the economy's growing 3% it's sort of unfortunate that the aggregate macro economy is fine while tens of millions of people are not fine.
No, I know. I was thinking about it the other day and felt kind of guilty about it. I was sitting there going like, why are these people struggling with the cost of living? You know, because our portfolios are up 28% this year, whatever.
My income's gone a lot. Right. And you just see that gap between the haves and the have nots just continue to grow, continue to grow. And one of the other most frustrating things I have about it and not to get political, because I don't think talking about I don't think talking about finance in the way that I'm going to is political.
I think it's factual, right? If you want to sit here and have a debate about tariffs, have to sit there and have a debate about abortion, things like that. Those are much more political topics, tax policy, things like that, right? And I think that there's legitimate views on both sides of a lot of those arguments.
When it comes to what we're seeing here in the United States, what is shocking, it's not shocking, but mind-numbing to me is looking at the results of inflation and cost of living, which were entirely caused by the government, right? And then turning around and thinking increased government with communist and socialist policies is the way to address it. It's like saying, hey, we just got robbed. Go find us some robbers to fix that.
You know what I mean? It's, huh? I think there are some national answers that require some big stuff. Some of this like industrial policy stuff we're seeing correctly done.
Some of that is important. I think even some tariffs properly done, important part of it, subsidies can be important part of it. Even to a small, very, very strategic degree, some of this like taking a stake in a company, stuff can make sense or something close to that. But to your point, I feel like the populist, from both sides left populism, right populism, impulse to go a very, I'll use this analogy again, peronus to what like avenue of like, you know, let's put our thumb on all the scales to get the outcomes we think we're going to get.
It just becomes enticing to people in power whether they're left populist or right populist. And we got here because the tried and true establishment folks just did such a bad job of managing things for the last generation. I think they did a wonderful job which is illustrated in the wealth gap. I mean, meaning they did exactly what they were trying to do.
Yeah, it's hard to argue against that. Yeah. The other issue we've got in this country too going on and that's adding to the political intel's trends that's currently at least my opinion defines certainly Congress and I think the majority of our government. But one of the other issues you have is that old adage.
It's much easier to deceive somebody than to convince them that they've been deceived, right? And I think that that's where you have, you have so much of that, where despite facts and despite obvious evidence to the contrary, people are just digging in ideologically, right? And just kind of like sticking to that. And one of the first things that comes to mind is actually an example from the right, which is this whole attitude you see so much on the right right now, which is the opposite of whatever my enemy's view is going to be my view.
And that is a really stupid way to go through. Like, sit there and pushing back against the woke stuff and the flagship of that movement becoming like anti-Semitism. It's not a good way to prove to people that there isn't a racist problem. Flip around on the economic side, it's the exact same thing going on in New York City where you're sitting there going, guys, you are complaining about the results.
You're complaining about the outcomes that were a result of overspending an overinvolved government. And you think you're going to solve that with more overspending and more overinvolved government. It's just, and I was saying on interview earlier today, why I say that's not a political view is because it's not free markets are more efficient. And the reason they're more efficient is sort of by, I was explaining this to my kids the other night.
I think it's important for people to understand this. Free markets are made up of free people. And the winner in a free market is somebody that can deliver a good to that market. The way he wins is by delivering that good or service to the market at a cheaper price.
The way he usually is able to do that is it usually has proximity or access to that good or that service that allows him a competitive advantage. So what you end up with at the marketplace is all the people that have the best access, therefore the best prices for goods are the ones showing up at the marketplace to sell their wares, right? And then the people showing up are looking for the best price. And they've got capital to buy that good because they've been good at allocating their existing capital.
And it's the self-balancing thing. Is it perfect? No. But it is the most efficient way to distribute goods because it, inside of it, it kind of encapsulates the greatest good for the greatest number.
Do you know what I mean? Like, there are winners and losers, but so then you flip around. It's human selfishness makes it worth a hundred percent. Okay.
Now, when you have a government doing that, you have people that by definition are usually some of the furthest away from the good in the service that are allocating goods based on political desires and political meaning it can't be as efficient. It's not even trying to be. That's not the purpose. And there's, and there's, and there's things inside of it that aren't even the fault of the people that are running those institutions that disallow them to be price competitive with these things.
It's, we don't disagree, right? Like you, you, you're worried about somebody breaking into your house and so instead of buying a dog, you bought a cat. Well, congratulations. You got a pet.
It's just not going to do what you want it to do. It's not able to, you know, and that to me is the most frustrating part is not the political. We're always going to have political divides and political arguments and stuff like that. But when we start going back to the trash heap of history and grabbing completely disproven, like, and I've said this before, and I don't want to, but it'd be like bringing back letting blood and leaching.
You know, it's, it's that stupid. We're going to lower costs by handing it over to God. I mean, when has that ever worked? And I think, I think, unfortunately, it is becoming bipartisan.
I think, I think both sides are willing to, you know, it's like, let's see how much we can, we can use the state to do economically. It's just different styles of it. It's different ways of doing it. And it was one of the reasons I like to use the proneism framing is because one of the things you learn when you learn a lot about Argentine history and politics is like, it's, I think in America, we think, oh, proneism leftism.
It's not though. Like, there's a lot of like, centrist views and rightist views and leftist views that all get wrapped into proneism. It's more of like a super structure of how to, how to use government than it is anything else. And I feel like that's where we're kind of going back in that it's more of like, how can we, you know, mobilize the state to do to get certain economic outcomes?
But they're in ways that are very distorted, you know, depending, it depends on which style you want to use, they distort in different ways, but they both distort. And I was listening to my mom, Domi's acceptance speech, and there was a particular part of it, this scared me the most. And it was the way that he cited all of the different nationality groups. And listed them off separately and didn't say a single thing about Americans.
Didn't say a single thing about white Americans, you know, and the reason, forget the racism parts of it, right? E pluribus, you know, out of many one, right? The only way this works is if everybody is coming from all over the world and uniting as Americans, not Nepalese, not Sangalese, not Kenyan, not Chinese, we're Americans. And when I watch this divisive politics on top of the toxicity that's in there, we got a serious problem on our hands.
Now, I think we've crossed from the economic part. So the just pure political part. I agree. But I agree with you.
But what I'm saying is to everybody, like, I want that not to be a political issue. I'm looking at it and going, Hey, guys, if we all quit being Americans, this thing is gone. Yeah, the no isms thing. Yeah, it goes back to you.
How do you maybe I can rule who can't help with that? But just yeah, this is not to say you like people have to just completely throw in the trash, their heritage or anything. It's just no, I mean, them carrying certain parts of that heritage over is what's created the beautiful quilt that is America. That's why I get to have Thai food one night next to the next night.
Yeah, and I love it. Right. And that's one of the unique things about America, right? But when you start separate, we're not supposed to be separated into races.
And we were talking about the resegregation of society. This is not good. Which feels like a real trend in certain places, certain times. So it's, you know what, man, this is a human being.
It's really defeating. I think this may be like almost like a cyclical fourth turning thing where you go through cycles of people really wanting to feel like individuals and very special and unique. And then you feel then you go through periods where there's like a need for and a yearning for that cohesion again. And we are clearly not in that environment, right?
We are in a, how can I feel special? And not to mention like kind of the financial stuff of like, how can I get mine? And how can I feel special and unique and like, it's not like, how can I pull my weight with you? And how can I, you know, you know, it's really interesting.
It's really interesting. It's really interesting. You bring that up versus wevers thing. We just have a lot of representation.
Yep. And it's also interesting that that is happening when it's happening, we're quickly emerging and we probably do the math. But within the next, I would assume within the next five to seven years, the biggest voting block in the country is going to be millennial engineers. And the reason I bring that up is those dynamics politically are probably more likely to be amplified over the coming years, because you have two generations that grew up in social media, meaning by definition, the social media age is just much more self-focused, right?
It's much less collective. It's much more individually focused. And now I mean, I can turn around too, right? People can start voting against that stuff because they thought it was self-interest too.
That's the hard thing. Like, every time I think I understand a generation, they kind of evolve, you know? And they will continue to, right? Like, for instance, you know, I used to mock the old idea that millennials were a lost generation were to stay in their parents' basements.
You know, I was going to be like, yeah, they're going to do that until they don't. They're going to know getting houses. And then there's one reason houses got really expensive is because we formed households, we bought them. Yeah.
Yeah, no kidding. The opinions expressiveness program or for general information purposes only are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or any specific security, any references to performance of securities are thought to be materially accurate and actual performance may differ. I really hope this isn't the beginning of a trend. And it isn't, I don't say that, like, I don't say that from a political position.
I say that from a human interest position, meaning, hey, I'm all about trying to ideas and do things, but you know, it's not me. No, and if your, if your policy is, hey, let's put our hand on that red hot burner to see if it's hot. Like, I'm good. You know, it's, I'm pretty sure that, I'm pretty sure that red color on that maybe means it's probably pretty, pretty hot.
And that's what, that's really what I find really concerning is there, there doesn't seem to, it doesn't seem to be a third rail anymore where people on both sides agree, we can't go there. Right. Most forms of stateism have failed for various reasons for very important reasons. Like, so to go all in on any version of stateism, probably get the same outcome.
So yeah, I'd rather not re-burn the hand too. But at the same time, it's like, we're, we're still learning a lot of important lessons and starting to like have emergent things that we never had to deal with before, because certain new technologies are just new. Like you won't get to look in the history book about how to deal with certainly, yeah, some of the stuff. So like it, I don't know, it's a tough mix.
It is a, it is a, it is a very, very tough mix. Yeah. And after the other part that is a very troubling thing, you and I were talking about this, is that the rapid way in which you're watching, it's not like we're watching elections swing in two to four year periods of all the Democrats won the Republicans won. It's the extremes of those parties, right?
Yeah, you just, both sides are pushing out to the populace, populace edges. There's just no, there's no two ways about that. I mean, and in our, I think our primary system makes that even worse because you don't get to be in the middle and have sensible views on things and do well in a primary, just that ain't gonna work. No.
So the, that incentive system, but that's where I do think that there's, you drive a truck through the middle where a lot of Americans are with a third party. Obviously there are structural issues and headwinds to that working, but if you got the right backing and the right person carrying that flag, I think the opening of for that is immense. I agree with you in principle. The problem is, is I think that that is the quickest way to just complete one party dominance.
Meaning I, I, I think for a variety of reasons, a third party candidate is going to be far more attractive to people that are traditionally on the right than people that are traditionally. I disagree with that. But I mean, we've got a very good example in recent history, Ross Perot versus Borg. Why I say the right person carrying the flag and the right structure behind it.
Like that, I don't think the American needed Ross Perot. We didn't have insane left versus insane, right? Fair enough. In the average election.
And we didn't have like, in fact, then, you know, the average politician was at least still partially a statesman that was like, seemed to like understand like basics of economics and history and stuff. Like, it wasn't like influencers seeing who could dunk on each other on Twitter to get votes. And you know what I mean? Like, what I'm saying is that my fear is, is that females between the ages of 18 to 29, which were the most dominant aspect of this recent election, I do not see a statistically significant portion of that voting block getting attracted by a, by a sensible third party candidate.
And that's like a micro cop. I'm just saying. Every time I think I latch on to something like that, like certain voting block they go and flip and go do the other thing in the next election or so. Well, no, and you make a really good point there because it circles back to the point I first made.
When you see, when you see such polar opposite candidates getting elected in the same area inside of a two to four year span, exactly. A lot of the same people, there's a lot of people would have voted for Bernie or Trump happily. I'm not happy, but like they would have done that without a problem. They couldn't be more different in so many ways.
But I feel like both were willing to be like, look, I have a little crazier idea on how to fix these big problems because I think the average person like we have big problem. And then like we have this guy, you know, wanting to change it 1%. Like, not going to fix it. Like, I don't know if this will work, but at least this person wants to change it 90%.
Like, let me try that. I already tried your 1% solutions and it'll work. And so I, but I think we've gone so far to the like, hey, I'll change it all that the average person in the middle is like, wait, what? Like, I think a lot of us feel completely politically homeless if we're in the middle.
And for me, like I'm, I'm in the middle, like I'm, I'm center left on some stuff, right on some stuff, very libertarian on some stuff, like, so I've completely politically homeless in any national election, I mean, here in any state election, but, but if you gave me a sensible person that was kind of in the middle focused on being a weaver, not a river focused on solving problems, not dunking on opponents, like, I would just be all about it. Like, yeah, I think millions of people would. I think for most of our history, the party's very close to representing that person. And we're decent at trying to solve the average person's problems.
I just think we're not there anymore. And I don't think they have, I don't think they have a, I mean, I don't think I make a really good argument that either party doesn't even have a handle on what the average person's problems are. I think that's very clear. Yeah.
And I don't think they understand it. I don't think they can sympathize it. I think they're part of the ruling class. I think they're going to their cocktail parties and everything's great.
You know, they're, you look at the new report of insider trading came out on Congress. It's just disgusting. It's just disgusting. And, And it's one thing for like a broke 20 something financial analysts to go, you know, better on some altcoin.
But it's another for like someone's already made it to be, you know, grifting on non public information. They're looting it. It's a $100 million worth, $120 million worth like they're looking at it. Look, there's very little, there's very little bit.
If you look at the power class, the week, whatever you want to call them in this country, there's not a lot of space between them and what the Senate was doing in Rome right before it fall. Just enriching themselves. The inability of the of people to define enough and stop at enough. And more importantly, to turn that around and go like, all right, how can I like, how can I use what I've made to like better other people's lives is just it's it's pretty intense.
Like, you know, me and I always say like the lack of the no blessable each, the no obliges is just it's rampant and it's systemic and you know, average noble, if you will, is more more concerned with just getting a bigger gate built around there what they got. And here's the irony of it, of which they'll never be able to spend anyway. It doesn't even it doesn't even impact their quality of life. No, you know what an extra 50 million does?
Nothing. Nothing. It's it's it's bragging rights with your other rich bodies, right? And then that's another part of this, right?
In terms of like power games instead of money games and stuff too. So yeah, and but you sit there and you watch these people do it. You go when they come for you, because they will, right? Eventually pitch forward when they come.
You got yourself to blame, right? It's like it is a weird loop back into like medieval times where, you know, the king in his court, if they get overthrown, like all those people are in big trouble, right? And it feels like that way now, like more and more like whoever is on the down slope, you know, just like in really bad emerging economies and stuff like, oh, you're in the loud going regime, but you're all going to jail. Yeah, my well, and that's why I've long thought that, you know, one of my hopes in this whole thing is that people on both sides start real.
If you want to find the real fraudster, if you want to find the real criminal in any system, look for the people or the group of people that always win no matter what. You know what I mean? Like you there's the giveaway and you look at both sides and go, Hey guys, what you're so busy aiming at each other, take a step back and look at who wins no matter what happens. It's not you.
Yeah, you keep getting screwed. But there is a class of people to keep winning. Right. Why don't you get mad at them?
You know, and that's and that's what I fear for all yelling at each other on social media. Then no one's yelling at that. Well, no, and that's the problem with what's going on in New York is those people are looking at you going, we did get mad at it. And that's why we voted in Mondami, right?
And you're like, yeah, it's so yep. That's that's not gonna cut it. I mean, when, you know, the other thing you can, you know, the other thing you can sit there and say one of the greatest things that might have happened to mom, and this is the problem about being in the place that we're at politically and culturally here. One of the biggest things that might have gotten when Tommy elected was the fact that Trump and Bill Clinton said, don't vote for you.
It reminds me of of the shooting on the foot. Like the one thing the Democrats never ever like got straight was like, all that stuff is fuel for Donald Trump and for the media, like, and it just keeps him out there. It keeps him energized. Like the one thing they all along should have done was just kind of ignore.
And it but instead it was always like the, it's like hardcore pushback and like everything has to be like against him, not forget like what are we going to do to help people. It's like, no, what's against him? And that just fuels that is fuels him and his people. I think the same thing, like, yeah, if you're just out there telling people how bad and dangerous he is, like a lot of people are like, sounds like a scare of them all the form.
The other thing too is that you're watching inflation is becoming the defining characteristic of every single election. And it's really funny, and that's I think that's one of the biggest reason they just keep switching spots over and over. Neither of them are taking care of it. Neither of them fix it.
Exactly. I think that is the most important political issue today is it I think I think the Biden administration and the party completely missed how important that would be electorally. And to me, it's clear personally, I mean, I know people disagree, but personally, I think it's the biggest reason Trump did so well was just the pure, you know, cost of living stuff like, oh, yeah, it was an exit poll show and stuff. But so to sort of believe it largely unaddressed is just wild to me to watch.
Like, you win because reason X, because people think you're going to fix it. And you're like, man, what's not only what's not fix it, what's gas like people and tell them there is no inflation while there is like, man, not not politically the idea. Like people have bank accounts, they know what stuff costs. Well, I just don't think I just don't think it was good messaging, right, which means you had virtually nothing to do with the inflation, certainly on a political level, you had nothing to do with it.
Right. I mean, did you, of course, this is if you go all the way back to 2018 or whatever, like 19, yeah, yeah, technically, but like, I'm okay with this actually of of limitations any after four years though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, depending on that on Biden. Yeah, I know I just it just feels disingenuous because you're like, you know, to sit there and go, for instance, 130% that GDP, you want to hang all that on Biden?
Well, we wouldn't have gotten there unless we had 100% first and we didn't do that under him. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like, so just literally every president's fault. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yeah, but yeah, just the messaging was odd was I didn't understand that from the very beginning. I would have if I was Trump, I'd still be campaigning against inflation. And that probably would have delayed my institution of the tariffs, because my first thought would be, Hey, get this inflation down because it's such an important thing. And then in midterms, like my thinking would have been going in, you know, whether it would have been Biden or Trump that would want I'd have been like, you need to operate through the first two years with an eye on the last two, right?
Meaning if you don't hold the wins in the midterms, it doesn't matter. You're not going to get anything done. And you're going to be a lame duck president like you were the last two years last time with it. So if you want to address tariffs, do it in the second two years, right?
And I'm not even saying it like, I'm not even saying don't use tariffs. I'm just saying if what you are fighting is inflation. And if that's the number one thing that got you in, that's probably not the best place to start. No, and especially like, it's wanting to tear up certain things that are really important, but when it's like food, and can we do a carve off of food?
You know what I mean? That hits regular everyday people right in the pocketbook. And if people on the lower income spectrum, they're going to feel that. And in a real way, go buy back coffee.
And there's another point to with where our culture and our society is, if we really want to get back to our knitting, if we really want to maintain free markets and all the things that make America great, you're going to have to institute those things slowly because you've got a populace now that doesn't want to put up with even six months of pain for anything. Do you know what I mean? And so I think that needs to guide policy. Like, yeah, you got to attack these things, but you've got to do it inside of a framework that accounts for that.
Sorry, I think the biggest problem with all this, and this is very, very bipartisan, this is just an American problem, I think. And that is, I think we just look for the easy button on everything. Everything. And it's like the rare thing.
Now, I know they have to sell this public places part of the job, right? But a lot of the messaging around it is like, Hey, we're gonna have this thing. This whole thing's gonna be solved in two years. And like, no, that's not that's not this works.
Like, it's not possible to me. It's like, why can't we own the fact that some of the stuff's gonna gonna take a while and like, it's gonna require some sacrifice. And you know, like some of the problems we have, they're a 20 year problem. But like, if you don't start working on it now and you never solve it, and then, you know, you're, you're late, you want your kids to have it better.
How long did it take us to outsource our entire manufacturing base? It took about 20 years, like China was a 30 year overnight success. But we're gonna just two year, the same thing they did in 30 is kind of like vibe, I get, and again, totally bipartisan. I don't think anyone's willing to tell you how long it takes to catch up on certain things.
And you know what I mean? And I find that incredibly frustrating. Yeah. Because no one's gonna sacrifice for it.
If you keep telling them, like, don't worry, we're just gonna have that easy button over there. Then, you know, no one's gonna be like, oh, well, I guess I better get ready for working really hard for a few years to catch up and like, no, well, it goes, it goes, it goes right along. It's perfect bedfell of the staff that you like to cite, which is we're 31st in the world, not gonna have performance, but number one in terms of how confident we are about our ability. You know what I mean?
It's the easy button. Like you said, that's just, and you're looking at a lot of the problems and you go, Hey, guys, the biggest issue we have here is the people telling you there's an easy button. There's a button. It might, so I'll leave us with that football analogy.
And I bet you've seen this is you go through maybe junior high early in high school with a kid that is clearly the most talented kid just the guy given ability is just off the charts. So maybe this kid doesn't have to work hard because they're just better than you. Yeah. But then there's like that small kid over in the corner just working.
And then next thing you know, it's junior senior year and all of a sudden the kid with all of the natural blessings is getting passed up by the kid that was working the whole time. Because he had his girlfriend. Yeah. So like, it feels like that sometimes to me.
And it's always that way. Yeah. It's always that way. And that's why Americans nominated for so long.
Is that was an ethos that was at the center of our culture, right? Get up earlier, work harder, work longer. And if you look at us today, like, are there still parts of us that are like that? Yeah, you and I are like that.
There's a lot of hard working Americans are out there like that. But you look at the younger generation, not that they can't be. I think they can learn that. They can read it.
Yeah. And if it's a need people, people figure it out. But that ethos is not a live law in America anymore. Yeah.
And we used to find a way to stay hungry, even if we were on top or near the top. And I think I think when 1990 something happened, we just we lost, we lost the ability to stay hungry. And I think to this point, China's doing a good job of like, hey, they're starting to do really well and stuff. And they find ways to maybe unfortunate in bad ways, to be honest, but like to stay, keep people hungry.
Like this whole like, I'm going to let you get super rich thing. That sounds messed up to an American. You know what I mean? Like Jack Moss starts getting cool and it's like, yeah, sit down, Jack, right?
To us it's like, whoa, like that guy, why would you do that? Big picture though? Like, I don't know, like everyone's staying hungry. Like it might kind of work.
I'm not saying we should sideline, you know, still, you know, our best and brightest to sit down after they make it. But like, point being, they have effectively stayed hungry. They don't let people get wildly rich on, you know, well, like they did. But not the same way, you don't just get to buy stocks and get really rich, you know, in China.
Like you got to go work for it. Yeah. If you're an AI researcher, you're not getting a billion dollar contract or $100 million contract. Like, no, I'm sorry.
This has got to work for a pretty normal, you know, number there. Yeah. And that, and that really concerns me because that part, like I said, the American exception was American culture. That was, you know, I mean, you go listen to songs like Elton John, that he put out like 70s and 80s talking about American muscle and just that bravado that we're going to outwork you.
We're going to be up longer. We're going to get up earlier and all that kind of stuff. Hard stuff didn't bother people. No, no, we were, we were the country in the world that tackled those things.
You know, and like an engine getting engineering degrees really hard. Like those cats are on campus longer than you know, if you're getting, you know, a softer degree, let's say, but in the end, it really pays. And it's really important for the country to have that kind of workforce. And this is a microcosm of the eversperson's like not really should get in that degree.
And also really helps to have much people understand the complex systems too. And you know, like, I everywhere I look, I just see a breakdown of the educational system on so many different levels. It means we're all. But I agree with you.
I think it's important. Like, it's, it's, if people are educated correctly, and not just what I mean that. I don't mean just that they agree with me, but in terms of classical thinking, classical education, socratic methods, scientific, right, things that we know are good that work, all that kind of stuff. I think so many of these issues wouldn't exist.
Yeah, and high standards that don't come down to you, you come up to them. Yep. Yep. And I just don't think I think so many of these issues wouldn't exist.
And you've had academia telling kids that they can have their cake and eat it too, and that it's all about oppression and all this nonsense. And you've got generations of people that think the way to fix everything is to take from that person and get to themselves. And you're like, yeah, that's because that's work so it doesn't go by. No, got anything else?
Fine. Nope. Does it for us today? All right, you guys, you know the drill catches on social media.
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