MM #258: US & China End Trade War! What Stocks Will be The Winners, & Ras Baraka Speaks Out After ICE Arrest

Summary

Market Mondays Episode #258 Summary: "US & China End Trade War! What Stocks Will be The Winners, & Ras Baraka Speaks Out After ICE Arrest"

Release Date: May 13, 2025

Hosts: Ian Dunlap and Rashad Bilal from the EYL Network

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1. Introduction to Episode Topics

In this episode of Market Mondays, hosts Ian Dunlap and Rashad Bilal delve into significant economic and political developments, focusing on the suspension of US-China tariffs, the implications for the stock market, and a candid discussion with Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, following his arrest during an ICE protest.

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2. US-China Trade War Suspension and Market Impact

Tariff Suspension Announcement At the outset, the hosts discuss the recent announcement of a 90-day suspension on Chinese tariffs. This move has led to a rally in the stock market, bringing optimism among investors.

Impact on Specific Stocks Ian Dunlap notes the broader market uplift, emphasizing that most companies experienced gains. Rashad Bilal highlights tech giants like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palantir as primary beneficiaries of the tariff suspension.

"Every company is up on the stock market today. So a lot of the tech companies are up."
(02:15) – Ian Dunlap

Palantir’s Market Position A substantial portion of the discussion centers around Palantir. Despite a decline in international business slightly affecting its stock, Palantir remains a top contender in the AI analytics market, which Bloomberg projects could reach a $1.4 trillion valuation.

"Palantir is trading close to 120, which is its all-time high."
(10:59) – Ian Dunlap

Rashad elaborates on Palantir’s potential, predicting a rise to $160 by year-end, citing its essential role in defense and AI technology.

CrowdStrike’s Cybersecurity Leadership The conversation shifts to CrowdStrike, another key player benefiting from heightened cybersecurity needs in the AI era. Following a past breach, CrowdStrike’s stock has rebounded significantly.

"CrowdStrike is a powerhouse and a top player in cybersecurity."
(16:07) – Ian Dunlap

Both hosts agree on CrowdStrike’s long-term potential, with Rashad forecasting a climb to $498 by year-end.

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3. Coinbase’s Bitcoin Marketing Strategy

Focus on Bitcoin’s Scarcity Coinbase has launched a new commercial emphasizing Bitcoin’s scarcity versus the US dollar’s inflation. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Coinbase is spotlighting Bitcoin as a store of value akin to an index fund.

"Bitcoin is a better version of an index fund. Its returns have outperformed traditional assets."
(46:00) – Rashad Bilal

Implications for the Crypto Market The hosts discuss how this focused marketing strategy positions Bitcoin as the primary cryptocurrency of choice, potentially overshadowing other altcoins and solidifying Bitcoin’s dominance in the market.

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4. Berkshire Hathaway’s Stance on Stocks vs. Real Estate

Warren Buffett’s Preference Ian brings up Warren Buffett’s recent statement favoring stocks over real estate for long-term investment, aligning with Buffett’s historical preference for the liquidity and growth potential of the stock market.

"Warren Buffett prefers stocks over real estate because they offer easier liquidity and better long-term growth."
(52:28) – Ian Dunlap

Diverse Investment Strategies Rashad counters by advocating for a diversified portfolio, emphasizing the importance of investing in multiple asset classes, including real estate, to mitigate risks and capitalize on various growth opportunities.

"The answer is always to invest in both or all, y'all. Like my politically correct answer? Both."
(55:12) – Rashad Bilal

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5. Interview with Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey

ICE Arrest Incident The episode features a guest appearance by Mayor Ras Baraka, who recounts his recent arrest during a protest at an ICE facility. He clarifies the circumstances, stressing that the arrest was targeted and unjustified.

"They arrested me on the street out there, leading to a big scuffle. I was charged with federal trespass, a class C misdemeanor."
(60:14) – Mayor Ras Baraka

Economic Policies and Affordable Housing Mayor Baraka discusses his proactive strategies in Newark to combat economic inequity, focusing on investing in black and brown businesses, creating affordable housing, and establishing a public investment bank to channel funds directly into underserved communities.

"We need to create a fund to invest deliberately in affordable housing, ensuring the state allocates resources to black and brown businesses."
(69:57) – Mayor Ras Baraka

Newark Airport Challenges Addressing the Newark airport issues, Mayor Baraka explains the challenges posed by overcrowded airspace and inadequate infrastructure. He advocates for reducing flight volumes and investing in infrastructure to enhance operational efficiency and safety.

"The airspace is too crowded. We need to slow down flights and invest in modernizing our infrastructure."
(66:27) – Mayor Ras Baraka

Criminal Justice Reform Responding to questions about criminal justice, Baraka highlights Newark’s achievements in reducing homicides and improving police-community relations through comprehensive training and community engagement initiatives.

"Since I've been mayor, homicides have been reduced by 61%, and complaints against police officers have decreased significantly."
(73:56) – Mayor Ras Baraka

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6. Final Discussions and Market Predictions

Stock Market Outlook The hosts share their bullish outlook on the stock market, with Rashad predicting the S&P 500 to reach around 6:15 by year-end, despite ongoing economic turbulence and high debt-to-GDP ratios.

"I'm super bullish on the market. Do I think we'll still have an issue in the summertime? For sure. But we'll get back to those highs."
(105:45) – Rashad Bilal

Tesla’s Volatility Discussion on Tesla highlights its recent volatility, attributing stock movements to external factors like tariff news rather than company fundamentals. The hosts emphasize the importance of long-term investment strategies over short-term trading.

"Tesla's stock bump today wasn't based on their fundamentals but rather on tariff news."
(102:05) – Rashad Bilal

Investment Strategies and LLC Advice In the concluding segments, Ian Dunlap shares personal insights on leveraging LLCs for business tax deductions and privacy, emphasizing strategic financial planning for business owners.

"Leasing your apartment through your business name for your LLC can provide tax deductions and enhance privacy."
(126:23) – Ian Dunlap

The hosts also touch upon cultural topics, promoting responsible fashion choices and cautioning against the superficial pursuit of luxury items.

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7. Conclusion and Upcoming Events

The episode wraps up with promotions for upcoming shows, including interviews with industry leaders and special episodes like "Blackout." The hosts encourage listeners to participate in Invest Fest and stay tuned for further market insights.

"Get your tickets to Invest Fest at investfest.com and stay tuned with Market Mondays for more updates."
(130:30) – Ian Dunlap

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Notable Quotes:

• "Get your tickets to Invest Fest. This year, it's more important than ever with AI, crypto, stocks, and real estate."
  (03:19) – Ian Dunlap

• "Affordable home ownership, not just affordable housing, is crucial to address the wealth gap."
  (74:35) – Mayor Ras Baraka

• "We need a diverse investment strategy. Investing in multiple asset classes helps in building wealth comprehensively."
  (55:12) – Rashad Bilal

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Key Takeaways:

• The suspension of US-China tariffs has had a positive impact on the stock market, benefiting tech giants like Palantir and CrowdStrike.
• Palantir and CrowdStrike are poised for significant growth due to their roles in AI and cybersecurity.
• Coinbase’s focused marketing on Bitcoin highlights its position as a leading cryptocurrency and reflects broader trends in the crypto market.
• Warren Buffett’s preference for stocks over real estate underscores the enduring appeal of the stock market, though diversification remains essential.
• Mayor Ras Baraka’s insights into Newark’s economic and social strategies provide a blueprint for addressing urban inequities and infrastructure challenges.
• The hosts advocate for informed, diversified investment strategies and highlight the importance of community-focused economic policies.

This episode offers a comprehensive analysis of current market trends, investment opportunities, and socio-economic strategies, making it a valuable resource for investors and individuals interested in the intersection of finance and community development.

Transcript

[Ian Dunlap]

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[Rashad Bilal]

By Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. Smart travel doesn't just cover points and miles. They break down all the financial aspects of your trip, whether that's the best.

[Drea]

Days to book, how to avoid hidden.

[Rashad Bilal]

Fees, or which fancy travel credit cards pay off and which ones are just an expensive flex. If you want your travel budget to work harder, then dive into the best deals, products, services and more with Smart Travel from NerdWallet. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ian Dunlap]

Selling it back on it. Let's get on it. Top of the top.

[Lex]

Happy Monday.

[Rashad Bilal]

Happy Monday. Love y' all.

[Lex]

All the mothers out there. Hopefully you had a enjoyable Mother's Day. It was filled with love and enjoy and relaxation. Shout out to all of y' all and Monday's here. So Happy Monday. If you is happy Monday 12th May. It's an exciting day, man. A lot of stuff has happened over the weekend. We suspended those things. We'll get into all that, man. How was your weekend, my brother?

[Rashad Bilal]

Amazing. Shout out to all the mothers out there. I love y' all dearly. Shout out to My mom. Had a great time, so a great weekend. Relax, rejuvenated, refreshed, all the things ready.

[Lex]

To get this thing going. Rashad, how was yours, man?

[Ian Dunlap]

It was good for sure. Every day is Mother's Day for sure.

[Lex]

That's a fact. That's a fact.

[Ian Dunlap]

So. But we have a special guest today. Yeah, we got Mayor Raspberaka recently made national headlines.

[Rashad Bilal]

News for sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

Ice. So we don't want to waste any time because we're going to bring him on in a little bit. But also it's a big day because tariffs, I'm sure you heard by now.

[Lex]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

A suspension of Chinese tariff, which made the stock market rally and made a lot of people happy across the board. So there's a lot to unpack here. There's a few other things I didn't get like national news. But we talked about, you know, we're going to talk about health care, about a variety of different things. So don't want to waste too much time because we got a lot to unpack in a very short period of time.

[Lex]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

First and foremost, get your tickets to Invest Fest. Yes, Invest Fest is around the corner. Yes, man. It's going to be a good one for sure. So get your tickets to Invest Fest. This this year, probably the most important year so far. Artificial intelligence, crypto, stocks, real estate. So much stuff going on. So political landscape forever changing by the minute. So invest first. Get your vendor booths, please. Invest Fest.com. if you're in Red Panda, you have a code check telegram. Yes. And then we have blackout at 10 o' clock Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday.

[Rashad Bilal]

Tune in Dangerous show on Earth live episode perhaps.

[Ian Dunlap]

I'm sure we're gonna have topics that haven't even happened yet that we're gonna have to talk about because there's a lot happening on a daily basis. So tune in the blackout on Wednesday, live show, 10 o' clock.

[Lex]

Who knows what executive order could happen by then?

[Ian Dunlap]

For sure, for sure. And I will say this Thursday, we have our friends at Lex and Drea.

[Lex]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Shout out to the fam.

[Ian Dunlap]

And they have a new travel show called Travel Queens on BET on their woman's app. So that's a dope episode because we talked about traveling from a black woman's perspective as far as like the top travel cities, what to stay away from foods, all of that stuff. We also talked about, you know, the social content world podcast, how you actually make money, the difference between streaming apps and, you know, just YouTube, stuff like that, working with the company like BET, as opposed to being independent. Variety of different things that I think could be helpful and beneficial for people that's interested. But definitely the travel conversation is something that, you know, is, is good fun and they, they're always good spirits. So yeah, six o' clock Eastern standard time. They're dope on Thursday.

[Lex]

Yeah, we talked about the food, we talked about the cities, we talked about opposite sex when you travel, which is interesting and how that gets handled. So definitely check that one out. And Ian, I'm do the disclaimer.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay.

[Lex]

So we can get the thing going. You got. Well, you want to do any announcements before?

[Rashad Bilal]

No. If you want to get rich from the market, go to ian invest.com. i told you this would be over with in less than 62 days. It's less than 62 days. If I made you money, please put yes and chat. The greatest since Warren.

[Lex]

That post is crazy, by the way.

[Rashad Bilal]

Exclude nobody, by the way, that that post was crazy.

[Lex]

You know how this works? Man disclaimer time. Do your own research. Our content is tended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It's very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based on your own personal circumstances. You take independent financial advice from a professional connection with or independently research and verify any information that you find on our show and wish to rely upon whether for the purpose of making an investment decision or otherwise continue to do the research. Share the research. Stay low. Keep firing.

[Rashad Bilal]

Keep firing.

[Lex]

Block out the noise. Block out the distractions.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Lex]

Do the research when it's great. Share it. Give love to the people you got it from. That's how we build community. That's how we build our brokerage accounts, and that's how we build wealth. Let's do this thing.

[Rashad Bilal]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Lex]

Before we start, we got an important birthday in the Blah family.

[Ian Dunlap]

Sure. Happy birthday to my sister. Hey, birthday's on Friday, so. Happy birthday to Tahira.

[Lex]

I got you. Happy birthday to her. Happy birthday to Inez as well. More tourists. Taurus birthdays out here.

[Rashad Bilal]

Happy belated birthday to Shelly Red Panda family love you. That's a fact.

[Lex]

Show them some love. Show them all some love.

[Ian Dunlap]

So we got a lot to talk about, but before we jump into the main topics, let's. I'm warming up a little bit. Okay. So if you watch 60 Minutes yesterday, they talked about Andrell Co. That Ian's been talking about a lot as far as a defense company that use artificial intelligence and technology, new age level of defense, using it to like blow up missiles and intercept rockets and stuff like that. So they interviewed the actual CEO of the company. I think he's like 32 years old.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay. Anderil, want to talk about that?

[Rashad Bilal]

What most people feel about Palantir, I feel about Andrew. There will be no desire for meta verse or the meta quest. The Oculus was his technology. I've told you before how him and Zuckerberg had a kerfuffle. He since had a chip on his shoulder. And I think I'm not always big on defense companies, but if you put Elon and Zuckerberg into one, if they had a baby, that would be lucky Parmer and Andrew. I think it's going to be one of the most important companies in the world. There is a real world need for it. Does General Dynamics and North Rub Grundmann still have value? For sure. But he's putting a new spin on war. And I do think over time, him and Palantir are going to have a very great Close worker relationship, how Google and Apple had their relationship and the, the initial smartphone era, this new smart war era, they're going to be the two players in it that are most dominant. Bright kid, not Cam, he's 32 years old, but he's like a bright entrepreneur and I think he's innovating in some ways in the space that is going to be needed for the next 20 or 30 years. And also too with bricks heating up and you know, I know we got a little 90 day pause, but if things get more heated, we need technology to be able to win this potential war so we don't go to third world country status. So my pick for when they go public and my top three is Anderil and open AI as the two most important IPOs of this decade. And he's going to be probably one of our next tycoons in the market.

[Lex]

Definitely sounds like a tycoon. It, it felt a little Elon esque when I was watching the system for sure. But it's interesting when we, we think about what market they're in and I think you nailed it by saying Palantir. They're in this AI analytics market. And Palantir obviously the leader, Andrew is probably in there and I think Raytheon would probably be my father if I had to pick three from a government contract inside. But it's interesting when you listen to the functionality of the business and what they're planning to do and what they're already doing, it feels, I understand when people talk about AI feels scary. But when you, you, you have the technology that they're developing, you want that on your side. That becomes the biggest type of war chest, like war looks a lot different. And so when we think about how this market's going to look in a few years, I think Bloomberg put out a report. When you look at the valuation for a company like Palantir, which is at 280 billion.

[Drea]

Yeah.

[Lex]

This AI analytics market has the potential to be a 1.4 trillion dollar market. And we're talking about three or four companies that are going to be leading that. So there's so much room for growth, which is why you see these high valuations for a Palantir. We'll probably talk about that a little bit later. But you're right, when I saw the report I was like, yo, he's spot on with this because if that's the addressable market that has that much potential and these are the leaders, oh, we in for something.

[Rashad Bilal]

And I don't think he's Framed it right. But the, what they're doing is saving soldiers lives. So if I can send the drones out and have the AI risk itself and not human lives, if they find a way to put an American spin on that when you don't have much American exceptionalism, they're going to be a powerhouse. They are going to be a powerhouse.

[Lex]

You, you'd much rather lose machinery than people for sure. Something can, I mean we, we saw that when we had the bomb sniffing robots and I was like oh, that technology is incredible. Well now you have technology that can detect a missile, go up, shoot the missile down so it completely harms no one. That's just a different level. And I mean that's. That war looks different. War looks different.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay, so Palantir.

[Lex]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

What about Palantir which is now creeping back up not as it's not at its all time high but you know it's close 200, around 18, hovering around 220. So.

[Lex]

No, no, no, no. 118.

[Rashad Bilal]

118.

[Ian Dunlap]

118. Yeah, yeah, close to 120 which is all time high. So his Palantir the, the most, you know, close. So you like and the rail but it's not on the stock market.

[Rashad Bilal]

No, it's not in the market. Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Being that Palantir is on the stock market, somebody's interested in just this AI defense sector. Is this the only option that they really have as far as putting their.

[Rashad Bilal]

Money in the pounds here only great option. I mean you have other companies that have been legacy companies but even though my moral leaning isn't favorable towards them because they may target us eventually, you can't deny the power of the stock like or the company and they. And if it was no room, if it was not for Palantir and the real may not turn out to be the blockbuster that is going to be in a few years. Like they definitely laid the pavement and groundwork for them to have space. I mean they should break the all time high pretty soon. I can even see probably by end of year them being at like 156 or 160. So yeah, it's a great. And if you look even a few months ago, I mean it's down to 66 bucks. It's at 118 now. So you're talking about doubling your investment in a relatively short period of time. You can't deny the return. Especially when there aren't a lot of American tech companies that are priced that are affordable enough. Yeah, you can't deny Palantir's power.

[Lex]

Yeah, Palantir had a, interesting week when they reported. It was like one of those things when we watched Tesla and like, that doesn't make sense. And you watch Palantir and you read the results and you listen to the earnings call and you're like, well, why is it falling back? Why did, why did it drop back down? And now it's sitting in that 118. I'm with you. I think it goes past it's all time out 120.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Lex]

I know a lot of price talkers got raised to 140. I see it sitting in that, that 135 to 140 range before the year is out. But listen to the numbers, right? The government revenue growth increased by 45 in the first quarter.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep.

[Lex]

The commercial sales spiked by 71 year over year. For the first quarter they were up 8% and they raised their guidance from 3.75 billion to 4 billion. All these numbers would tell you that this is a company that has extreme growth and is still growing, yet it pulled back to like around 105 earlier when they reported. And so you, you got to peel back the layers. What, why is it doing that? And so you look at it. Yeah, there was some decline in international business. People are wondering, is this growth substantial? Can it, can it go on like this for another 12 to 18 months?

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Lex]

All signs point to yes. Right. When we talk about government contracting. Yes. The valuation is really high things, I think it's, it's trading 500 times on his PE ratio, which is crazy. But what it tells you is that people believe in the growth of this, of the company. Yeah, right. And they believe in a CEO and they believe in what Palantir is bringing to, to the market. Like I said, there are three or four. I put, probably put C3AI.

[Drea]

Yep.

[Lex]

Raytheon, like you said, Andrel and Paltir in that space. But those are the, the four, four like horsemen in that for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

In that space at this point.

[Lex]

And then those three that we mentioned earlier will probably be. But yeah, I, I see them growing. When it fell back, I'm like, all right, this is, this is a good point. This is actually a good point for people to grab it. I like it long term. I like it this year as well.

[Rashad Bilal]

And I know some people may ask, why do I like Andrew but not Palantir? Morally, I get it. It may be splitting hairs, but also too, I'm a fan of Lucky and given what's happened to him and how some of his tech has been stolen, I love how he's rebounded into a space that cannot be taken from him again. So just a personal fan of him and his comeback story when he was pretty much left for dead, like once he left meta.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay, all right, hit the like button and share. We're gonna be talking about the tarot very shortly, but it's still a few more things that we got to cover. Let's talk about crowd strike. So it's also been said that we are in the golden age of protection when it comes to not just data, but so much stuff. AI protection. Data protection. You know, this is also on 60 Minutes yesterday they talked about how every single person in America's Social Security number is on a dark web and you can buy it for as little as $2. Every single person in America.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

So when you're talking about, you know, protecting information. Right. And as AI gets smarter, obviously it's going to be even easier to break into different things and to crack codes and to, you know, so this is important industry.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

And so Crowdstrike, you had that low moment when it had a breach and that was about almost 10 months ago.

[Lex]

It was a summer. Last summer, alleged. Delta said it wasn't.

[Ian Dunlap]

It was dropped as low as 200, but now it's at $424. Almost at its all time high. Yeah, $455.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's a great time to buy.

[Ian Dunlap]

So what about the industry as a whole and crowd Strike specifically?

[Rashad Bilal]

Crosstalk is a power player for sure. I do want to hear, in light of AI growing, how they're going to defend some of those attacks. I don't know if they've announced that plan yet, but I can. I see cross strike going to like 498 by the end of the year. And in lieu of they don't have a bunch of players in that space that does cyber security incredibly well. Bless you. That time last year when I had that dip, it was a great time to buy. I know, Troy, you've been a big advocate for it and as well, it's a great company. Like you said, there's so much data that is being scraped and sold on the dark web that you do need protection and given how many data points are available online. So they're here to stay. Are they a top 10 company? No. But are they top in their space? Absolutely. So yeah, 498.60 is where I have them going by end of the year.

[Lex]

Yeah, I've loved them for. Well, I love the company's growth potential. I shouldn't say I love them. For about two and a half years now, we've been talking about crowdstrike. Crowdstrike, especially in the cyber security space, gave you the top four inside of it. We had crowd strike, we had Palo Alto, we had. We have Fortnite inside that group. But ultimately we said, who's going to be the leader in that space? And it's Couch. Right. What shot he said earlier was, was perfect. Right. Like, there are catalyst events that are going to happen to companies throughout the year, whether it's the earnings report, whether it's news last summer again, if you were in Atlanta or you were trying to fly on. On during, know the time when they had that breach.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep. You.

[Lex]

You saw that stock pull back. Right. And it got down under the 2002. And I'm like, oh, this is a great spot right at that moment. All right, we're getting close to 300. So 300 became my, my baseline because I watched it pull back under 40. Like I told y' all, every time I see a catalyst event that pulls back negative, I'm looking for opportunity. And so we sat in that. Still in it, the. The 300 call for. For June 26th. And so we're watching the growth now. Every time what technology is invented and created, they are going to have to create companies, and strong companies are going to have to protect that for sure, because it's the only way that makes these things functional to a certain extent. And so, yeah, they're the leaders in the space. They continue to be the leaders in the space. I like them here. I'll probably grab some more if we see another pullback in the next couple of months. But yeah, this is going in the long term portfolio. This might be one of those ones where we turn the option call into.

[Rashad Bilal]

Into the shares into actual shares.

[Lex]

We might exercise it since we're so far out.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, if it gets to like 382, 383, that'd be a definitely good price to buy in.

[Lex]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

And also sometimes one of those companies, when they go through disaster like that, you either become stronger or weaker as a result. I think they've done a good enough job of stabilizing the company and then figuring out what things they need to do so it doesn't happen again. So long term is definitely a buy.

[Lex]

Yeah, we were in there like a 263. And so, I mean, yeah, 423 is incredible, but we still got till June of next year to see how this thing climbs.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, you should definitely be in that 50525 Club.

[Lex]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Drinks on you.

[Lex]

Yeah. Sometimes when you're in a call and it surpasses the strike. Right. Then you start making new entries. Right. Like if Nvidia was a perfect one, we watched it go to 200. All right, well we don't pass 400 or we keep adding to the positions because now we're just doubling down on the investment. Even if it doesn't hit the new strike that we put in, it's still 100, 200, sometimes 400, the original one. So we're just kind of layering in good companies though. You don't want to do that with a yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

You can't do that with a yeah.

[Lex]

Bottom tier companies, leaders in their space and, and definitely crowd is one of those.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

All right, so let's get into this tariffs conversation. So last night, early this morning, they announced that 90 day pause on China tariffs. That was a big one. I mean they had tariffs across the whole world, but they dropped at least had 90 day pause for most countries. But China was the one that they really, everybody was waiting on to see what was going to happen. Obviously it's the biggest economy in the world and it was raised, the tariffs were raised to 145 and it was lowered to 10%. So for 90 days, what an additional 20 for any products related to fentanyl. So Most products are 20 or 10%. If it's a fentanyl related product, which is like a lab, anything that has something to do with chemicals, labs, things of that nature, then it's an additional 20 which will bring the tariffs to 30%. But for most, most products it would be, it's a 10 rate across the board for at least a 90 day period. And then after 90 days we'll see what happens after that. So where we started with this before, before anything, even though in the Biden administration was around 3%.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

So effectively we went up 7% which is not bad because 7%, it might sound like a little bit, but it adds up. And you're talking about billions of dollars, so possibly trillions of dollars. So 7% is, is not a number to just sneeze at for sure. But it's a, it's a big difference from 145%. So some will say, okay, well, you know, it was done intentionally to raise the price, to actually lower the price. Now I just think that it could have possibly done in a bet, could have been done in a better manner because.

[Rashad Bilal]

Absolutely.

[Ian Dunlap]

Even just looking at stocks, we're still not at the point where we where we were. But there's a lot of other things that got affected in his real life businesses. And I was talking to business owner the other day who actually sells merchandise and they was. They had their product sitting for a month in China because they couldn't bring it over to America because the 145 terrorists was too.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Too much. So just the delay in 30 days could really hurt somebody's business as far as shipping and have it not having product on the store. So there's been a lot of people that's actually spend a lot of real pain that's been. That's already been done within a four week time frame where I think that if potentially he would have just said 10 from the beginning, he might have been able just to push that through because it is already at 3%. So if you just say okay look we, I have a new policy in place and we're going to raise our tariffs 7% and now instead of 3% it's going to be 10. I don't think that that would have been something that would have been too difficult to get through. But I just feel like you didn't have to go about it as far as putting tariffs on the whole world and then erasing the tariffs on the whole world.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

And then raising tariffs on China from 50 to 80 to 125 to 145 back down to 10. That's a 140. 145 to 10 is almost a 97 decrease. So that's a tremendous drop in tariffs. Right. Which also even negotiating later on, like how do you even get taken seriously when in within a month you lowered in 97. But I still think that it's a good thing that he. That they did as far as the administration because it's not helpful for the American economy or the Chinese economy to have a trade war going on. So stocks rally on news of this. Obviously everybody's been happy about the news because everybody was waiting for some level of compromise on this on this deal. But what does this mean for the broader economy and the broader stock market going forward?

[Rashad Bilal]

I think he broke it down perfectly. To have a penalty of 145 then go to 10, it goes to show that the plan was not thought out well enough. And I get standing from like being a parent, if I tell my son you can't play PlayStation for two years and then in three days I'm like hey bring all your friends over and have a Fortnite party. He's not going to take me serious. And I think while we're fighting for America to keep his edge with Bricks closing that gap, I think we're laughing stock right now, to be very honest. If you're gonna play hardball and you step down in one month, while it's great for the market, I don't know how much he's going to need to do to recover what was lost.

[Ian Dunlap]

And I'll say this, I do think, because I don't want to be fair here and I know we've been tremendously hard on, on Trump and his administration, but he's, he's doing some things that I think are helpful. It's just hard to champion him too much because every, he does something positive and then he says like white people in South Africa are having a genocide and you want to bring refugees. Like, you know, it's just, it's very difficult.

[Rashad Bilal]

There's one step forward in three back.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah, he's, he's, he's a very erratic with his behavior. He does very questionable things, but he's done some good things for sure. And I feel like there was a need to tighten up trade deals for sure because China, especially if you're losing, there's a need, there's a need for it. So he's not wrong in, in his thought process of getting more for America. But like I said, I just feel like it was an unnecessary whiplash that we still haven't fully recovered yet. We don't know the long term effects of it. And just to do this and to abort mission so quickly, you can't really say it's a win because if the goal is to bring manufacturing jobs back to America, 10% is not going to do that at all. Right. Like if it's 10%, if that's the number that we're going to stay at, that's not drastically bringing all of these manufacturing jobs back to America, which we knew that was a scam anywhere but, but that's not a win for America in my opinion. It's more money that's brought in that's positive for sure. But if it's like a blockbuster, okay, we broke China and we, we created a new global infrastructure with trade. How you lowered you, you cut everybody's tariffs across the board to basically nothing. The biggest one, the biggest three that makes the most difference in our trading partners is Mexico, China and Canada. You cut Mexico and China, I mean, you cut Mexico and Canada early, relatively nothing. Now you cut China to relatively nothing. So where's the win?

[Rashad Bilal]

You don't get thrown on the Office.

[Lex]

Yeah, I, I mean it, I think there was a consensus. Even when we had people come on, it was the consensus of we agree, what, what he's trying to do, how he's doing it. Most people didn't agree with it. I, I think there's, there's some merit to what you're saying, Ian, inside of the laughingstock piece. Because even though they are suspended, there's still this like 90 day thing. Like it. We've been watching this 90 day, 75 day thing go on since January when it was tick tock and then it gets moved back and it's another 90. So like what happens at the end of this 90 days? Right. Like we can keep doing this, but again, and seeing the market rally like it did today, yeah, there's plenty of optimism, but there's still a slight bit of uncertainty. Right. Because if you met in Geneva for three straight days and you ironed out a deal, why is it a 90 day deal?

[Rashad Bilal]

Why is only good for three months?

[Drea]

Why?

[Lex]

So when we get into the summer months and it's like, all right, they did something that they, we didn't like or they did vice versa, we can renegot or we can go back to the 145. It's just like this level of uncertainty is really unnecessary. If you're gonna come together for a deal, then make the deal.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, right.

[Lex]

Like now we have to watch the clock and say, all right, well what happens now? What happens with semis directly? Right. Does that get suspended as well? Like that tariff that you were going to specifically put on that sector? I know he just signed in the, the farmer legislation. What does that look like? Right, like there's all these executive orders that get these deadlines and then when the deadline comes, like, oh, well, maybe we'll stand it again, which leaves more uncertainty, which means, like in business, what are we really doing?

[Ian Dunlap]

Well, I think to his credit, it's going to be extremely difficult to work out a comprehensive deal in three days.

[Drea]

So.

[Ian Dunlap]

So you stop the bleeding because there's obviously pain on both sides.

[Lex]

But I don't, I don't think that just to rebut what you're saying, I don't even think it was these three, these three days. I think that these negotiations have been going on.

[Ian Dunlap]

Well, they said it hasn't, so we can only go on what they tell us. Yeah, so they said that this is the first time that they actually had face to face negotiations. That's what they said. That's what both countries said.

[Lex]

But that's What? So to that he was saying that, remember three weeks ago they were saying we're negotiating with China, and China said no, we never spoke to him.

[Ian Dunlap]

Right, exactly. So you can't.

[Lex]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

So assuming that they just started negotiating real negotiations this week, you can't negotiate a deal in three days. That's hard to negotiate a comprehensive deal that is going to be years in three days. So I think that they did the right thing as far as a 90 day pause because it was better to do this than to negotiate for three months and just have this turmoil last for three months. So I'm not necessarily, I don't think that that's an irresponsible thing that he did as far as the 90 day situation. So we'll see what happens after the 90 days. But at least they have three months to have comprehensive real negotiations to kind of figure out what the final deal. What's important is what the final deal looks like. If the final deal looks like, then this, then, you know, they kick the can down the road and they caused a lot of unnecessary paying for. We'll see if that 7% over the course of time was worth it. Maybe it is. Maybe 7% is going to be worth all of the pain that was caused in the last month. I don't know. Only time will tell. But I do feel that they did the right thing because they made a mistake. To make the biggest thing into life is to correct your mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes for sure. They could have just dragged this, this dog down the road for months and just, I feel like, all right, they screwed up. They recognized that they screwed up and they said, okay, let's, let's, let's, let's think this thing through. Cooler heads will prevail. We'll see what happens in 90 days.

[Rashad Bilal]

And if I'm a sitting president, I wouldn't want that R word lingering over my campaign and party either. Over a bad decision.

[Lex]

You think this, you think this eradicates it?

[Rashad Bilal]

It's definitely gonna help. Definitely gonna get the fudge of the numbers a little bit. Just like they did in the last soiree.

[Ian Dunlap]

I mean, even with the stock market, you don't want to have a negative stock market. No, nobody wants to have that. Like, you know, so it's, you know, but it not where it was. Like I said, somebody, if you have a hundred dollars in your pocket, somebody takes 100 from you and hides for three weeks and comes back with 70, well, that's not a win.

[Rashad Bilal]

You're still down.

[Ian Dunlap]

You're still down $30. Right. And you didn't have a hundred dollars for it for two weeks that you.

[Rashad Bilal]

Could actually use and opportunity cost. Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

So to start a war, to get back to where we started from, which is still not where we're at.

[Rashad Bilal]

Misguided at best. Yeah, yeah, we got to think these things through.

[Ian Dunlap]

What companies are going to benefit the most? Every company is up on the stock market today.

[Rashad Bilal]

Not Google.

[Ian Dunlap]

Well, not Netflix either, but most, most companies are up. So a lot of the tech companies are up. A lot of people think that, you know, Nvidia is going to benefit a.

[Rashad Bilal]

Lot from for sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

So we can start with Nvidia. But what companies are going to benefit the most?

[Rashad Bilal]

The ones I've been telling you about. That's why I'm toot my own horn lesson of the day. You have to pick companies, assets and investments that are going to do well regardless of what the macroeconomic environment are doing. So Microsoft, Nvidia, despite the route that they're having now we can talk about the good thing that he could be doing with the pharma price cut. Eli Lilly will be okay. And the road when they go public, of course, all the Vanguard main suite of products, but I think who will have the most benefit? I don't know when they'll set up, but this open AI going public thing is coming a lot faster than I thought it would. I thought it wouldn't happen to 28 and I'm hearing some rumblings they could go public next year. So Microsoft, Nvidia, Lily, Apple, if you want to be conservative. And Visa, if Visa had a select. I keep saying it. If they had an E line that did not go off the rails, Visa would be top three for me. Be a. Okay.

[Lex]

Visa is definitely in the portfolio for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

Cooking?

[Lex]

Yeah, just cooking up. It's interesting you brought up the, the open AI situation. There's some talks that Microsoft and OpenAI are renegotiating. They're coming to the table in the next few weeks to potentially renegotiate. Now what that means, who knows. But yeah, I think Microsoft for sure will be a winner. Obviously Nvidia, I think Broadcom and we've seen it over the past year, six months that has just performed just handsomely over the past six months. And definitely in the AI space when people were looking at Nvidia like, oh, it's overvalued. What will happen here? Some of these other companies, Broadcom, B1, TSM, another one for sure, hand over fist about that. So the semis for sure are looking great. But even the ETFs inside the semis.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right.

[Lex]

Have even a little bit less exposure. And we spoke about a few of those a couple weeks ago. I think they're all going to benefit from it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. On the opposite note, not to be labeled this point about Google. For the first time in 20 years, search queries were down because of chat GPT. Just like when the knockout hasn't happened yet. But the first time Buster Douglas put hands on Mike and it was like.

[Ian Dunlap]

Oh, he spoke about this. That's what I said. Me, I said this. Me personally, I don't use Google. I use Chat gbt.

[Rashad Bilal]

Facts and people crazy.

[Ian Dunlap]

It gives you. Because it's going to search Google anyway and it's going to search every other search engine possible. It gives you a more comprehensive answer in a short period of time. So, yeah, yeah, I said that Chat GBT will be. Chat GBT is a new Google.

[Lex]

Chiefs is crazy.

[Ian Dunlap]

Why would you bring who, who, who goes to Google anymore? That's like last decade. Like everybody is going to use Chat gbt.

[Rashad Bilal]

I didn't say it this time.

[Lex]

Yeah. Or maybe not. We'll see. We'll see. But it's the first time ever, so obviously somebody has got into that space. Chat gbt anthropic. All these other ones.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Lex]

Xai which will be, you know, coming at a short time.

[Rashad Bilal]

But even on Twitter, Grok is pretty damn good. I'm not gonna lie.

[Lex]

They all, they all came to space. And then you get the lawsuit from the federal government where they don't want you to have a deal with Apple going forward. That doesn't help because that's, that's kind of your monopoly right there. If you can get inside of the phone that most people are using and be that search engine for them, then you, you've got a monopoly open.

[Rashad Bilal]

AI ends up being a search engine for Apple.

[Lex]

Their search business is over.

[Ian Dunlap]

Leads the race as far as these chat bots are concerned. AI. Yeah, there's a bunch of them. But Chat GBT has become Band Aid. Name recognition for the average everyday layman. That layman.

[Rashad Bilal]

And it's a better product.

[Lex]

Yeah, they definitely. What are they doing? Over 100 million users a day. Some crazy number.

[Rashad Bilal]

Some insane number.

[Ian Dunlap]

200Amonth now.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. Again to a premium.

[Ian Dunlap]

Again they have premium product. 200amonth. That's a lot of money.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. Or you can pay somebody 70 grand a year and get a better result or worse result. Yeah, Trade off.

[Lex]

Yeah, we gotta, we gotta. We're watching Google carefully and it's doing.

[Ian Dunlap]

Things that Google can't do.

[Lex]

Who is Chat GBT in terms of what?

[Ian Dunlap]

Rendering real time renderings for you and, and making flyers for you on the spot. And I could do that on your phone. You can say, okay, make a flyer for market Mondays. Go. You go to google.com on your phone. It's not gonna do that. Yeah, Chat GBT on your phone right now. You can do that right now on your phone.

[Rashad Bilal]

Expert level research.

[Lex]

Yeah. And that was part of the issue we were saying a few weeks ago and when Meta said that they were going to release their own app. Right. Chad, GBT has a standalone app but these other ones, they don't have a standalone app outside of clothes. I'm talking about Gemini, I'm talking about Minute AI. I mean two days after we said that on Market Mondays they're going to have the standalone app. And so when you think about in terms of that, yeah, they understand what, what's at stake. They understand the competition. But we'll see how it plays out. Man. It's gonna be interesting.

[Ian Dunlap]

But it's also something to take into consideration as far as Microsoft. Kind of their relationship is not great with Open Air right now and they're encouraging them to be a for profit company which that was through Elon, that was what he wanted to do as far as break up their non profits stake and things of that nature. So open AI is an interesting company within itself to see which direction they go in if they stay under Microsoft's umbrella, if they have a lawsuit eventually with Microsoft, break that, break that partnership up, who knows?

[Rashad Bilal]

Either way they're going to have to pay that coin. You're not going to do to Satya what you did to Elon. It's not gonna happen. So whether they pay him in cash or considerations, cool. Microsoft is still going to benefit from being an investor in that platform. Yeah, but they should be for profit and they should go public soon. Next year, probably fall.

[Lex]

Yeah, they said that the board voted to keep it a non profit. We'll see how that goes over the next couple months.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, eventually.

[Ian Dunlap]

What about Trump's new order for lower prescription drugs across, across the board, how will that have impact? Healthcare stocks? Healthcare stock wasn't affected today, but long term. And if you're not 100 sure about this, he has an exec, he's going to sign an executive order to lower prescription drugs right across the board. Mark Cuban had actually talked about this before. Once again, you know, you got to give credit when credit is due for sure. If executed correctly. Then this could be helpful to a lot of people that have prescription drugs that they're taking, but it's not helpful to the companies that actually provide these drugs. So how's that going to play?

[Rashad Bilal]

You got to give them credit. When I first saw this pop up, I'm like, it's clearly a remix of Cuban's idea, but it's an idea that the American public need as the economy is not doing as well as this could. I think the companies that have been holding on to legacy drugs and products and not innovating are going to get impacted. But I think it will cause a wave of innovation. I'm worried about Pfizer for sure. They're already been in a route for the last couple of years. I think Lily will be okay. I think Nova will be okay. But most importantly, the people need price consideration and there needs to be fair pricing. I mean, he made a great point, like, why is the same drug in another country 80 cheaper? I'm like, I can't argue with that. Now. I think it's petty that he leveraged Cuban's idea, but if, if he's going to do it and it's going to get pricing down for everybody in the country, I'm definitely with this.

[Lex]

Yeah. I think that the second part to what you're saying is key. Right. Why is it 80 cheaper and it's manufactured here?

[Rashad Bilal]

Here? Yes.

[Lex]

Right. Like, so how does that even make sense? So, yeah, when I first heard the news, the first thing I thought was like, oh, a company like Lily's gonna, that's gonna affect them long term, right?

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Lex]

The, the AstraZenecas of the world, that's going to affect them long term. Johnson and Johnson cvs, which we're talking about. Right. In terms of pharmacies, like, that affects long term business. Now, I, I believe he signed it today. He signed the executive order today. He had Dr. Ozai with him and they were talking about American pricing. And it, again, I'm not mad at the idea.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's a brilliant idea.

[Lex]

The idea most people, and from what I've been reading, is that the reason we saw, you know, pre market that those, those healthcare stocks were down was because of the announcement when the market opened. People were like, well, how is he going to get this through? Right? Like this still has to go through litigation. There'll be plenty of.

[Rashad Bilal]

There's gonna be pressure from lobbying.

[Lex]

A lot of lobbyists are going to be involved. You're gonna have to put this in front of the court. What will happen? And so we saw, like, a slight tick in some of the healthcare stocks. But I, I like the idea. Makes a lot of sense when you, when you look at how much drugs cost here.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yes.

[Lex]

Opposed to other places when it's being manufactured here. Doesn't make sense. But healthcare is a big beast, man. It's a big beast. And it's a huge, huge industry. So we'll see how this plays out. Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Democrats, I want to let you know now, if you get this prescription ID off and DeSantis get off that idea of Florida for no property taxes. Wrap up the next election, too. It's over with that.

[Lex]

I'm not mad at those ideas.

[Rashad Bilal]

What great. Two great ideas, back to back.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah. The property tax thing I don't think is gonna happen, but it's a good. It's a good.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's a good idea.

[Ian Dunlap]

Good thing to champion because you know, you know that you really have no chance of actually making it happen. But why not champion it? And nobody's gonna be against not paying property taxes. That's.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Who would be. Who would be against that?

[Rashad Bilal]

No one.

[Lex]

That's. Yeah, just say it. We're gonna just throw it out there. Let's see.

[Ian Dunlap]

But once again, give Trump credit, because.

[Rashad Bilal]

You gotta give him credit for this.

[Ian Dunlap]

He's doing some things that I think are beneficial for sure. His foreign policy. We'll talk about that on Wednesday. It's just, you know, he's just, he. Once again, it's just some things I just can't champion. But, yeah, you know, that's fair. There's a lot of things that Joe Biden did that I didn't like either.

[Lex]

Fair facts.

[Rashad Bilal]

Y' all forget to clip that up and put that in the comments.

[Lex]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes no sense when you think about the drug prices. It makes no sense.

[Rashad Bilal]

Mercia done. I'm sorry. They've been fought. Merck been falling for nine months straight. This goes through.

[Lex]

Yeah, it's gonna be Amgen, Bristol, all these companies.

[Rashad Bilal]

But hymns to everyone who kept bringing that up. It may benefit because you. You need a portal to, like, an affordable prescription portal. They may see some upside and benefit from that.

[Ian Dunlap]

What about Amazon purchasing $84 million in AMD?

[Rashad Bilal]

Listen, as soon as I said somebody needs to buy amd, I didn't know it was going to be in this fashion, but well played by Amazon.

[Lex]

But so. So that's one of these things when. That's the headline.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right, but that's not the under.

[Lex]

It's not technically what happened. So Amazon's the acquisition of the 84 million dollar stake in AMD wasn't a direct investment. It happened because AMD's acquisition of ZT Group International, which is a server manufacturer. So Amazon held equity stake in ZT and then they received over 820 000AMD shares as a part of a buyout, a stock buyout. So technically they didn't buy it. But because they had ownership in the company they got, they still have the.

[Rashad Bilal]

Equity in the asset though, which, which I'm not mad at. Amazon has been on the terror. Yeah.

[Lex]

Because it says a couple things. Number one when you. In terms of infrastructure, if we have a chip maker inside of our house.

[Drea]

Yeah.

[Lex]

We don't have to rely on outside people anymore.

[Rashad Bilal]

We don't have to go get another great relationship.

[Lex]

It's, it's a positive start.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's how the pharmacy thing started, the health side and then they grew into the pharmacy space. They don't get enough credit because their profit margin is small. But they operate the way Buffett operates. They are looking to acquire like assets across the board. They shot up a lot today off of the, the news from Trump. But if their profit margin was a little bit wider we will be having talks about like the greatest company of the last 10 to 15 years. The profit margins are staying but I even Amazon. Yeah, Amazon.

[Lex]

Okay, okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

But them having them shares through this is going to bode well for them and then I think eventually AMD will make a, a push up to the upside. But don't think that that team isn't thinking about what they can do. Okay. Historically Amazon has had enough data to take a business over from someone else allegedly or improve it. You don't think they sitting on 900000 shares and not thinking about what they can do to improve AMD business while Nvidia has been on the stair.

[Lex]

Yeah, it's, it's the self reliance play.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right.

[Lex]

We saw Apple say hey, we're not gonna, we're not gonna use intel anymore. We'll make our own chip.

[Rashad Bilal]

Make our own chip. Yep.

[Lex]

Here comes the M1 now. You here, here is AMD. Right. Which is obviously we talked about where it stands inside the GPU space. We know what GPUs mean for AI. Amazon said they're spending a hundred billion on AI infrastructure. Well some of that is going out to some of these hyperscalers, some of these manufacturers. If you got one in house that you're working with directly. I like that, I like that, that, that says okay, we're going to start doing things Our own way. Right. We have multiple umbrellas that we can add AI efficiency to. Yeah, that is a nice proposition. Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay, so how do you feel about Coinbase's campaign for bitcoin? And once again, if you're not familiar, we spoke about this last week. They, I first saw it on the NBA playoffs, but they, they have a commercial that they've been running, Bitcoin, showing how many bitcoins will ever be created versus how much money the US treasury has printed over the last decade. And it's just pretty much showing that the dollar decreases over the course of time and the scarcity model and bitcoin. So I think this is interesting for a few different reasons. A Coinbase is a crypto company, but the commercial is not for crypto, it's for bitcoin. It's not talking about xrp, Ethereum, Solana. It's not talking about blockchain technology and how cryptocurrency is going to change. The world is solely focused on bitcoin, the scarcity of bitcoin specifically. So to me, that shows that a. The idea of a euphoria where we have a million different cryptos being traded across world. Like how we have now with dollars, right, where you have the euro and you have the pound and you have the yen and you have the dollar, the American dollar, and depending on what you want to do. That was the idea of crypto originally. It was like, okay, you want a game, then you got Tron, or if you want, yeah, security, you have. I forgot the security coin. But it was a security coin. It was different coins for different utilities. You don't really hear that conversation happening too much. The banking coin was XRP now, but.

[Rashad Bilal]

The banking coin, not Bitcoin.

[Ian Dunlap]

Bitcoin now is the only thing that they're talking about as far as, at least in that commercial. So that's interesting. What's the, what's the, the idea of their marketing strategy?

[Rashad Bilal]

There are two types of ads that I really like, one being educational content and then another one being product demo. I think they did a great job of explaining to, let's say maybe if you don't listen to Market Mondays, the value of bitcoin and also too, cryptocurrency can be scary. But bitcoin is a better version of an index fund. If you look at returns is outperformed. It's a beacon of safety. So if I'm a crypto platform, it would behoove me to not talk about other coins, but to talk about the one that is getting the highest return year over year and has like the greatest store of value and the one that most people know. For those of you that may have studied the history, ETFs and the history of indexes, it looks very similar to that. So if a person is on the fence about coinbase per se, you can't at this point be on the fence about bitcoin. You can just look at the numbers over a 10 year span, highest return of asset ever. Even when I'm talking to people, when I'm coming in out of my building, three years ago was about Vanguard. Now all of them are, hey, what you think about Bitcoin at 80 or 90, is it still a good. Will it go to 200? And I'm seeing there's excitement there that has not been in the market for other products. So I think it's a brilliant move to focus on the asset that's returning the highest in a field to. If you're maybe 50 to 65, it may still be scary. And I'll say this to everyone who's making indexes and ETFs, you better figure out a plan how to out return bitcoin. Like I figured out mine with two tech, two indexing with features. But if I'm looking at a traditional, like no one wants to hear 8% return anymore. The, the minimum now needs to be 20. And that's because of the influence and impact that bitcoin has had on the market.

[Lex]

Yeah, it's a, it's a growing asset. It's, it's an attempt, and we saw it at the super bowl, the attempt to make it even more mainstream. I think the 7% of the world's population own some form of cryptocurrency, whereas in the United States, I think about it, I think end of this year, 28 of our population will have a, some form of cryptocurrency, most likely being bitcoin.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Lex]

And so if you start to see numbers that are trending in that manner, you want to market to even get that, that percentage even higher. 20 is pretty good. When you think about five years ago it didn't look anything like that. And so how do they get that to 40 which brings more business? You got to have bitcoin as, as the, the market or the Trojan horse, because that's the one that's making people money. Right. When people think of the space, they think of bitcoin. And so the marketing is great for it because there's a growing audience and the younger population more and more. So are Investing in alternative assets like bitcoin. And so you want to get it to them. You want to get to them.

[Rashad Bilal]

I mean, I even think it's unfair to call it alternative asset if I know I'm gonna sound like Chris or financial conspirator. But if it's keeping his value longer and giving a higher return, like it's a, the value of the dollar dying is the issue. Even like I went back and looked, I was talking to my parents over the weekend. It was like when they were born, the cost of raising the kid from 0 to 18 was 50,000. We may be looking at 500,000 million dollar babies. That's insane.

[Lex]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

While the quality of some of these products have gone down tremendously. So Coinbase hasn't moved a bunch because of it. But I do think the branding behind it is amazing. Even though Ethereum started to move a little bit last week as well. Finally they, they crept up out of the dead. But bitcoin definitely is the way to go.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay, so Berkshire halfway. Well, let's talk about Warren Buffett also said that stocks is a better investment over the course of time than real estate, at least for him. He said it's easier.

[Lex]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

To understand. And Warren Buffett, I mean, only thing we can go by is public record and public record says that he owns one house, the house in Omaha, Nebraska. Yeah, he had a vacation property in Laguna beach, which he sold. He brought the property for 175, 000 and sold it for like $7 million years ago. But he only on paper, he says he owns one home.

[Rashad Bilal]

He did your play.

[Lex]

What are we doing now?

[Ian Dunlap]

Farmland. Owns 400 acres of farmland and stuff like that. But long story short, he said that he understands stocks better. It's, it's easier. It's a lot easier. He said Charlie liked real estate a lot more than he like. So what do you think about Warren Buffett pretty much saying that he prefers stocks over real estate? Like I said, I mean it would, it would assume if you look at his, his personal life that that's consistent with what he's actually saying.

[Rashad Bilal]

There's two sets of information. I've always said this. The information that you give to the public to give the right answer or answer that's easy to understand. And then it's the information when you talk to your peers or you're in the mastermind setting, homework assignment, go Google how many units or doors does Berkshire Hathaway on? That's the other trick. Like I don't personally own the thing, but I May have it in a trust or a trust of a ally or family member. Now, our stocks, like, do they have more data points, easier buy in, easier exit liquidity, easier to research hands down. But the answer is always. And this is what I love about Amazon and that example we talked about. The answer is all, it's not one or another. You want to own stocks, real estate businesses, crypto, water, air rights, want to own everything. The. The day of, I'm just going to be a linear investor in one thing that's over with because then you're not going to see the missed opportunity and something that is huge elsewhere. And BlackRock doesn't do that. BlackRock has ETFs. And then Bitcoin got popular. They said, let me get that too. So is it easier to invest in? For sure. Are the returns higher? I know some of y' all want to do a stock versus real estate debate. I'm not gonna do it. I love y' all because you're my friends and I want to obliterate y' all. But the answer to me is always to invest in both or all y' all. Like my politically correct answer?

[Lex]

Yeah, both.

[Rashad Bilal]

Both on both. Yeah. And if you come to Invest Fest, you will be able to hear how to invest in real estate. Crypto stocks trade. And they haven't announced the lineup yet, but, you know, there may be some other assets out there that you guys can invest in that's investing yourself and go to Invest Festival.

[Ian Dunlap]

Invest in yourself. That's the biggest investment you'll ever make.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay, well, you think that Berkshire Hathaway will jump into Bitcoin now that he. He retired.

[Rashad Bilal]

Hello. Now this, I would think, okay, if I'm replacing Buffett, which. It's a lesson in certain shoes you shouldn't feel. But how do you turn down that job? I think at some point he has to at least look if he wants to get a incredible return. No matter what he does, he'll never be worn. But what can you do to have an impact as the person who succeeded Warren? An alternative asset with a high return. Just imagine if they would invest it when it was at 20,000. So if I were him, I would definitely be looking at an asset class to invest in that can give me a higher return over a longer period of time, for sure. And Bitcoin looks like the best investment vehicle for them to do.

[Lex]

So. They're not invested in Bitcoin, but they're like Bitcoin adjacent.

[Rashad Bilal]

Adjacent, Yep. Yeah.

[Lex]

So they invested in new holdings, which is a Brazilian Digital bank that offers cryptocurrency and then they hold shares in Jeffrey's financial group, which has exposure to Bitcoin's ETFs, like BlackRock that you just mentioned before. So they're adjacent, but Greg Apel is. Yeah, he's a successor. Based on everything that he's done in his career thus far, he's kind of leaned toward the side of being what we spoke about last week, a cautious.

[Rashad Bilal]

A very cautious investment.

[Lex]

So that's been his approach. Can that change? We'll see. I mean he, he's not, he's not in that, that frame of 90 years old. I'm sticking to my plan. And this was. Or he could, you know, be like, I've learned from this guy and you know, I'm going to continue his legacy down the approach of conservative investment because we've seen it pay off to the treasure chest of 347 billion. So yeah, it will, it'll be interesting.

[Rashad Bilal]

To see how it plays out.1% exposure for them and that fund over a five or six year period could get them a 7,800% return. Hypothetically, if they get, if nothing else. I know Warren has done a great job of acting like he doesn't know how to trade his price. And like if you just go homework assignment, go map out like his top 10 investments and see when he got in, they're usually close to the bottom of the market. So if anything, he's learned him, he's taught him how to do price discovery really well. If they get in Bitcoin at the right price, like even if, let's say if it fell to 61, 000 or 62, 000, which I don't think it will, but if it did, how do you argue to not buy it at that price?

[Lex]

You gotta have some exposure at that price.

[Ian Dunlap]

You got some exposure at any price. We said if you, if bitcoin goes into 80,000, you gotta like it. If it's in 70,000, you gotta like it. Like if you believe in bitcoin, you have to have exposure at any, at any price.

[Lex]

Yeah, that's the, so the, the part is the, the belief, right? If, if Warren's stance has been that it's a rat poison, you don't gotta.

[Ian Dunlap]

Have exposure on any price, then that's either you got to have exposure, you got to have exposure at any price, or, or you don't have to have exposure at any price. Because if you don't believe in it, if it's at $10,000, you're not gonna buy it.

[Lex]

And that's what I'm saying, right? It's. It's more than just the price. It's the actual belief, right? If the CEO is saying, yo, it's rat, boys, and we're not touching it.

[Ian Dunlap]

Well, Jamie diamond said that it was a scam also, and they were buying.

[Rashad Bilal]

That like crazy in England.

[Lex]

He's still a CEO. He. There hasn't been a successor. He's passing it down. So let's see what the successor does. His. His stance, rat poison. We don't know yet.

[Rashad Bilal]

And if, even if you're not pro bitcoin, you can't not see that the value of the dollar is dying. It's a pair trade. You would have to be long bitcoin versus short the dollar.

[Ian Dunlap]

That's a fact.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well, you know, it's just math.

[Ian Dunlap]

We will see, we will monitor the situation. But, yeah, people tell you things all the time. That's not actually true.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yes, hello.

[Ian Dunlap]

But switching gears, we have a guest. Let's bring our guest up if we can. How's it going?

[Lex]

Good, man.

[Drea]

How you guys doing, bro?

[Rashad Bilal]

Good. My brother, how good to see you.

[Lex]

Mr. May, how you feeling?

[Drea]

I'm all right, man.

[Ian Dunlap]

So, Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ras Baraka. You had quite the week.

[Lex]

We should start by saying, how was your weekend?

[Drea]

I'm part of the formerly incarcerated.

[Ian Dunlap]

Oh, man.

[Lex]

Returning citizen. Okay.

[Ian Dunlap]

That is returning citizen. I'm glad to see you back in the office. So, first and foremost, thank you for joining us. Mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yes.

[Ian Dunlap]

And you are also running for governor of New Jersey. So a lot to talk about, a lot to cover. So first and foremost, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it.

[Drea]

Thank you for having me, man.

[Ian Dunlap]

So I want to talk about your, you know, your economic policies and a variety of other things, but I mean, we have to address the obvious question. So if people are not familiar, you was arrested, I think Friday, you were protesting at an ICE facility and it made national news. You got arrested and then that went viral on social media. So can you talk about that experience as far as for people that might not be fully. A lot of people have just seen clips on social media. They don't know exactly what you were protesting. How did it lead to that point? All of it, all of the things?

[Drea]

Well, I was actually not protesting when I was down there that time. You know, we. The GEO Group is a private owned prison firm that ICE contracted or Homeland Security contracted. The whole prisoners. They don't have a certificate of occupancy. That's updated According to us, we're disputing that. We were disputing that in court. They started putting detainees in there anyway. So women going down there every morning trying to get entry, serving them papers because we're in court and we just want to prove to the judge that they have denied us entry over and over and over again. So we've been doing that every morning. There's protests going on outside there every single day, almost every day with local activists. Sometimes I speak with them, sometimes I don't. I went back down there at 1:00, clock, 1:30 that evening because the congressmen were there and they wanted to do a press conference. They wanted me to be in the press conference. So I went. We went there for about an hour and a half, man, until Homeland Security's boss, the Special Agent in charge came down there, Ricky Patel, I think his name is, he came and escalated the situation. We was all there for our ICE agents. Everybody was there. Nobody said nothing. We was just in the same space. He came down there and came straight to me, you know, trying to arrest me. I didn't got orders to do that. I'd be like the police director here, going downtown Newark, arresting somebody for shoplifting or something, you know, he probably never made an arrest in like years. He came there to target me, made me get off the property. I did. He came outside of the property after he got a phone call and with about 15 ICE agents. And they arrested me anyway. After I left, they arrested me on the street out there. And it was a big scuffle, obviously, people trying to stop them from arresting me. But they, you know, they did it and they did the whole thing. I went to a cell, they cuffed me, they kept me in cuffs, they took my picture, fingerprinted me, you know, interrogated me the whole nine. I stayed in about five hours.

[Lex]

So they, they arrested you because they allegedly said that you were trespassing, meaning that was private property. Which is interesting because about four years ago, New Jersey passed a landmark law that, that banned prisons from making deals with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is, which is ice, Right, right. But in February of this year, the Geo Group, which you said, you know, they're known for privatizing prisons and jails. They signed a one billion dollar deal, a 15 year, one billion dollar deal. So I'm just trying to figure out how this happens. Does that get approved by the governor? How does this happen in Newark without you knowing?

[Drea]

Well, I mean, this is a private deal, obviously. The case that you're talking about is still, you know, part of it has been ruled out, so they're still appealing it. AG here is appealing it. So it's still not completely adjudicated yet, but. But I don't know if it applied to the private sector. But in any event, anybody, private or public, they opened up something here. We have to have record of it. We have to do inspections. There must be certificate of occupancy. These guys believe they don't have to have one. Well, that's settled in court. It's not settled by ICE or the US Attorney or the President of the United States. A court settles that dispute, and they have not settled it yet. So until that's done, we still in dispute with geo, which has nothing to do with ice, by the way.

[Rashad Bilal]

I can't lie. Seeing you arrested was very unsettling, and I hope that you're okay. For those who are, like, in New York and New Jersey, if that can happen to you, like, what advice do you have to kids or young adults who may face similar instances and may not necessarily know how to handle it?

[Drea]

Well, I think we living in a dangerous time, man. I don't know if we really understand that what's going on. I mean, we. We learn the new line dances, but we gotta figure out what's going on around here, man. We had a serious space, man. These guys could just like, disregard the Supreme Court, disregard court orders. They can do what they feel like. They can do whatever they want to do. And so you got to be on alert. You got to be focused. You have to know your rights, the laws. And at the end of the day, ultimately they arrested me and took me through the whole process. Like, I have to go to court on Thursday for pretrial hearing. They charged me with federal trespass, class C misdemeanor. That stands for 30 days in jail and about $500 fine. It seems small, but it's still a problem. You know, the reality is we need to be focused on what's going on and be engaged and keep our ears and eyes open and be a part of what's going on. We can't be sleep around here.

[Ian Dunlap]

Well, talking about some economic issues.

[Drea]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Another thing that's really big in the news right now is the Newark airport situation.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yes.

[Ian Dunlap]

What is going on with Newark airport? I saw today that a lot of flights have been canceled and it's been delays, cancellations. The federal government has gotten involved. You as the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. And Newark is a. Is a major hub as far as transportation on the airport. What's going on with this airport situation?

[Drea]

Well, you know, it's. The airspace is too crowded. The Federal Aviation Administration, they, when Trump came in, he started firing people immediately, right? Fire 400 people in the FAA and they had the problem, I would say, before that. But he made it worse by firing people. Newark air traffic controllers walked off the job. They basically sick, did a sick out because of stress, because it is stressful if you lose communication with planes. People's lives are in your hand because the infrastructure is too old in all these air traffic controller sites, from Atlanta to Newark to Philadelphia. And so they finally stopped talking about DEI and started saying they're going to hire more air traffic controllers. They're going to invest in, you know, the infrastructure. In 2019, Biden put something before Congress to get more money to invest in infrastructure. You know, they, they rejected it. And ultimately now we have this problem that we have in, in Newark and in that airspace. They really need to just. I'm actually glad they're canceling and delaying flights because if they wasn't doing that, then we'd have a lot more accidents going on because they still have the personnel or the infrastructure to manage that. But what they need to do is slow those flights down, you know, put some more space between or the time between when flights come in and when they leave or when flights are leaving. They need to reduce the number of flights coming out of Newark in the first place. Until they get this thing fixed, you can't operate the airport like it was three, four, five years ago, not even last year. You need to slow those flights down and put some space in between that until you get this thing fixed.

[Ian Dunlap]

So let me ask you this. Me personally, right, I'm booking an international trip. I don't, I don't know if I feel confident flying out of Newark. And it's a real thing because there's only two international airports in New York, JFK in Newark. Would you suggest to just not fly out of Newark for the time being?

[Drea]

No, I think, I think you're safe. I think if you want to be inconvenient, I mean, you're going to have inconvenience for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

Because.

[Drea]

And the inconvenience becomes on that day of, or the time that the flights are going on when they feel like it's too many flights in the air, they're going to slow yours down or they're going to delay it, you know, or cancel it. And that's what's going on. Instead of having an overall strategy of just saying, look, we're Only going to fly a certain amount of planes this today or certain amount of planes period for this year until this thing is fixed. Which is going to hurt the bottom line of some airlines. Right. They're going to have to say we can't fly as many flights out. We have to figure out what flights we're flying out and which we're not. Which is going to divert people to other airports anyway because you're not going to be able to fly out like you used to because those flights are not going to be available. And that's what needs to happen. And at times we fly out many. I mean, Newark is one of the busiest airports in this region. We're flying plane after plane after plane. That stuff has to slow down. And the time periods between the planes leaving land has to be wider. And. And honestly, these folks don't really want to do that because, I mean, you know, you. You hurt people's bottom line. But that was. That's what exactly needs to happen until we get this thing fixed.

[Lex]

Yeah. One of the things I definitely commend you on, and we've been watching from a distance, but a lot of our friends have been doing work in Newark. Is your focus on entrepreneurship in education and black and brown business growth. Can you talk about some of the strategies? I know obviously as the mayor of Newark, you've implemented a lot of things, but now going to be the governor of the state. What type of strategies are you looking to implement statewide?

[Drea]

Yeah. First of all, we need to get a procurement adversity procurement officer in the state. I mean, right now in the state of New Jersey, only invest less than 1% of his dollars in black and brown and women businesses. It's awful. In the county that I live in, unless they invest in 1/2 of 1%. We've invested more money in Newark and black and brown women businesses than the county that we are in did as a whole. Right. Which is a travesty. So we need a procurement officer there, a diversity procurement officer that has KPIs on these departments that making sure they're spending their money. You know, they're distributing resources in black and brown and women businesses deliberately. Right. And track what that looks like. And key performance indicators throughout these departments. We also, I believe we need a public bank here, an investment bank, not a commercial bank that we put our dollars in, that cities put their dollars in, that we let investment bankers put their dollars in, as well as banks with cra. With the cra. We put their CRA dollars in there and we invest directly and purposefully in black and brown businesses and help them grow, help them expand, help them hire more employees. A lot of black businesses are single proprietor businesses. If they have to fill out paperwork, if they have to get permits, they got to close their business down to go and do that. It means they're losing money. They can't afford to hire another person. You have to step in and give them the opportunity to be able to do that, to grow their businesses in multiple cities, especially in cities that are historically underrepresented or economically distressed. And we have to do this purposefully and deliberately. And we can do that with this public bank to invest those dollars and invest in home ownership in those communities as well. Giving people a few opportunities to have capital as down payment for their, for their homes, to begin to invest in folks who are building homes up, who are repairing homes, adding capital to that and adding, you know, helping people who have Section 8 vouchers to turn those vouchers into mortgages and give them the opportunity to get a low interest loan to be able to, or mortgage, to be able to have affordable home ownership, not just affordable housing. So we can deal with the crisis of affordability and wealth at the same time. These are very deliberate kind of things. And these are things we're doing in Newark. So it's not like new for us to do like we've invested almost $200 million in black and brown businesses in the last four years.

[Rashad Bilal]

I know DEI has been stripped away given the new leadership in Washington, but can you talk to us about why it's important to have those investment dollars flow directly into our community and how it eventually affects the state?

[Drea]

Well, I mean, the problem with our economy now is that it's exclusive, it's not inclusive. The economy becomes more robust and it grows when more people are in it. Put money in people's pockets and they can afford to participate in the economy. They could buy a home, they could invest in businesses, purchase goods and services on the market. The US Market, the GDP is a purchasing market. We don't make anything, we buy everything. And so in order for our market to grow, you have to have money in people's pockets. And black and brown communities have been excluded from that market. And we need a universal design that gives people a pathway into the market to stabilize it and to help it to grow. You know, that's just a really economically right thing to do. It's not just the socially justice, social justice thing to do. It's also the right thing to do economically. It's silly if you had a lemonade stand. You want everybody to stop and buy your lemonade no matter what their car was or what they look like. The reality is our economy cannot grow as exclusive as it is. There's not just not enough people participating in the economy and they don't have enough people to participate in the economy without black and brown and working class families in this, in this country. They just need us. That's just a fact.

[Ian Dunlap]

So when we talk about Newark, New Jersey, and we talk about the Oranges, we talk about Jersey City, the major thing that comes is gentrification and affordability. That kind of goes hand in hand. So you, as somebody that I'm sure is dealing with issues like that in your current city, within the state, if you become mayor, what is your plan to tackle the affordability crisis when it comes to having rent and home ownership and also balancing gentrification so it doesn't displace communities?

[Rashad Bilal]

Great question.

[Drea]

Right? So we, we have to build. Right now, New Jersey is short 230,000 units of affordable housing. We have to build more affordable housing across the state up and down the area. Median incomes from as low as people that are making 40, $30,000 a year to folks that are making $100,000 a year. We have to build affordable housing across the state. And the state needs to lead that. It needs to be a public works project. Statewide, the state is only building 3 to 5,000 units a year. We have to be building 20,000 units a year. We got to scale that up to that number, sit with the buildings raised, community advocates, local folks, and figure out where we're going to begin building housing first. Around transit, where people can move back and forth to their jobs and goods and services. We need to be doing that and expanding transit so we could do it in more areas and then working to build accessory dwelling units that people can add pieces onto their home for their, for elders and their family. Folks that are disabled, for their kids, come home from college, charge them a minimum rent, that becomes affordable housing. Allow people to build housing on irregular lots as starter homes. We, we have to engage in that more across the state. I mean, there's a lot of space and we need to also count affordability in home ownership as well. So affordable home ownership, not just the rental units. And, and we can do that, right? We, we have to create what we call first loss capital. The state has to put money up first and then get kind of, you know, investment to come in after that 2 to 1 and get other firms that, that want to invest to come in three to one. So we create a fund, 400, $500 million fund to avoid. To invest just in affordable housing. Right now there's no market for affordable housing. And he's a ton of subsidy in order to build that in New Jersey. So we need to create the market. Right now the market is geared towards luxury housing. That's why people are building it. And folks think that, oh, there's a button you push and gentrification happens. That's not how it works. Right. So it starts off because the mortgages are too high, because nobody. The demand is greater than the supply. The mortgages are too high. So somebody coming out of college to get a good job, you got a six figure salary, you could probably go into the house, but the mortgage is too high is anywhere from 600,000 to a million dollars, which forces you into these rental units in Jersey City and Newark and East Orange and all these places for about $2,000, $2,200. So a unit that could have been used for somebody who needed it at 1500 dollars, at 1200, at 900, is now off the market. For a person that's trying to get a unit for 21 or $2,200. About 100,000 people who fit that bill in New Jersey. So those housing units are being built for them. Besides the people that's coming from New York and other places where the rent. Average rent in New York is about $5,000. So those people are coming to those units. And so that drives people into like homelessness because they can't afford what the market is doing. Which is why we have to deliberately and purposefully create or shift the market by investing tons of dollars into affordable housing.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Lex]

After your experience over the past few days, I wonder now how you look at or how you're reshaping or maybe not your commitment to navigating criminal justice reform. Right. We've seen people wrongfully accused. We always hear discussions and debate about police accountability. How are you navigating that in the next year or so?

[Drea]

Yeah, man. I mean, we're the only city that has a civilian complete review board with no teeth. We took it all the way to the Supreme Court in New Jersey. We lost there. They said the state has to. The legislator has to give us subpoena power. They did not do that yet. We're still fighting for that. We need that. New Jersey has a law that can take police officers licenses away if they do things that they shouldn't be doing, even if the court does not completely convict them. The state Has a remedy. Is it being used properly? I don't think so. But there are remedies in New Jersey that we could use to put pressure to make sure police are doing the right thing in our communities. We still battling around, around qualified immunity, but the real issue here is that we need to make sure we reform the police Training Commission here in the state of New Jersey so police can be trained completely different. We also need to make sure that the police departments reflect the communities that they serve and that they're trained specifically around de escalation and community engagement fundamentally. And I think we need community violence intervention organizations working closely with the police. When you create that kind of ecosystem, it changes the relationship between police and the community. They begin looking at the community and its people differently and vice versa. It has worked for us in Newark. We reduced homicides in our city by 61%. Since I've been the mayor, our complaints against police officers have went down about 40 to 50%. So that relationship is being repaired as people begin to work together to solve fundamental and intractable problems that the city has. That's based on trauma. Right. We have trauma to trust trainings between police and community. So all of that, this stuff has to be repaired. Right. You can't just pass a law and do something and it changes. This is long standing behavior that exists because of cultural differences and because of history of police and our community.

[Rashad Bilal]

Jersey City looks different than what I remember it when I was in college. Newark is looking beautiful. Why do you think, despite the growth in tech innovation and let's say in Newark, that there's a change or a need for bold leadership for the state of New Jersey?

[Drea]

Well, New Jersey has serious inequity, man. We compare ourselves to everybody else, so we, we don't really talk about it. You know, the wealth gap in New Jersey, white family, the median white family in New Jersey's wealth is about what was during COVID was about $300,000. For Black families, it was about $20,000.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right.

[Drea]

Since then it has doubled. So white families, median wealth is $600,000 and black wealth have stayed the same. That wealth gap is incredible, is large and is growing under Democratic root. Right? And that's basically fueled by the lack of homeownership and the lack of business development and growth. Fundamentally, your income, you can't pass your income down to your children. You need wealth and assets to be able to pass that down, to make it generational. Those gaps exist because of the boulders that exist in our way that were put in our way deliberately. So we could not obtain wealth in this country. And it has nothing to do with your education. You can be dumb as a doorknob and obtain wealth because your family passed it down to you. African American women, we have some of the finest hospitals and medical institutions in the nation. But African American women die seven times more in New Jersey's hospitals giving birth. And African American children die three times more before they become the age of one years old. Right where I live, in a weak lake section of Newark in Livingston, which is only eight miles apart, there's a 14 year life expectancy difference. This is very real inequity in our state. Black children are charged with the same crimes as white children, but are 17 times more likely to be arrested for those crimes. And this is problematic. And so we can't carry people's water anymore. We have to fight for the things that we need. And I honestly believe that rising tides lift all boats, man. And that honestly, if we could change this inequity in this state, the state is better off, the economy is better, our lives are better, our community is better. Look, we're fixing Newark little by little. And if we had a deliberate state plan to do that, we could deal with Newark, Camden, Irvington, Patterson, all of the places where we are, we could do that. We can do those things simultaneously. And that's what we need. We need bold vision right now, especially in this Trump time.

[Ian Dunlap]

Before we go, I got, I'm gonna squeeze two questions in, one if I can. The first question is Mark Zuckerberg. It might be hard to believe now because he's ultra maga, but a while ago he wanted to help a lot of black people for some reason. And he gave a hundred million dollars to New York, to Newark, New Jersey. This is when Cory Booker was the mayor of Newark. Now Cory Booker is the senator. He just gave a 27 hour speech. So he gave $100 million. What, what, whatever happened with that situation? Like, how'd that ever pan out? We never really heard like after that. And then my follow up question to that is, do you feel the Democratic Party has been hijacked by extremists? What I mean is that there's an extreme liberal part of the Democratic Party. So when Trump ran, he ran on things that most people not in their day to day thought box, like transgender people playing volleyball. Right. Like me personally, I don't think transgender kids should be playing with girls. That's just my personal opinion. I think most Americans believe that, but Democrats can't say that because I feel that Part of their base has kind of hijacked the party. So they're getting held up, in my opinion, they're getting held up on very small issues. And that's hurting them because they can't just say, like, no, I don't agree with that. Like, I know I'm, I'm for certain things, but I draw the line on certain things. That's my, that's my two questions combined into one.

[Drea]

Right. So the Zuckerberg money went to a non profit organization. It didn't go to the city of Newark or newer public schools, and went to a nonprofit organization. And they basically disseminated the money in ways that they thought was good for them based on their policy. They helped charter schools, they helped different things like that, but it never went directly to Newark public schools and never went to the city of Newark. There is a community based nonprofit that they created that use that money in a way that they saw fit. So it wasn't a direct infusion. Infusion into the city's economy like that. And, and wouldn't great if it was, but it would have been a little better. I mean, obviously they needed to have somebody monitor what they were doing, but I think they had their own agenda at the time. Look, I think the Democratic Party, ultimately, I don't know if it's going too far to the left, but I think what has happened is that people can't differentiate between the Democrats and the Republicans. I think the Democratic Party more than anything has become elitist. I mean, transgender sports, I mean, they're about less than 1% of that happening in the country. You allow Donald Trump to hijack the conversation. That's what happened. He hijacked the conversation. We were defending ourselves all the way through as opposed to being on the offense. Whether you agree with folks being transgender or not, I mean, most people in the Democratic Party believe that folks that in the transgender community should not be targeted, should not be hurt, should not be, you know, oppressed or their rights taken away from them. Right. And that's really what the stance is. They turned that into something different. Right. As opposed to what it really was, which is people need to have gender affirming care. Like, people need to be able to go to the hospital. People need to be able to go.

[Ian Dunlap]

Some level of pushback for that. All right, I, I get what you're saying, but there is a certain level of you can't. Like, I felt like she couldn't. Kamala couldn't say. Or like no Democrat could. Could say. No, I, I agree that People that are transgender should have rights as human beings, but that doesn't mean that they should participate. And like you said, it's a very small thing, right? So you let somebody hijack the entire collection, the entire election, based off of something that's a non issue. It's not even a non issue.

[Drea]

Why can't we handlers and people that are in charge of messaging, right. Who really dropped the ball there? The reality is we should be talking about working class issues, issues of us being able to take care of ourselves and our families. But we also have a legitimate concern about people and their rights being taken because ours have been taken over and over again. Just like the fight around immigrants, we let them paint this picture that everybody was like a murderer, a rapist, a killer. And in reality, you know, that's a very, very small minute number. African Americans was the first undocumented people in this place, period. Which is why the 14th amendment was important for us, because the people born or naturalized in the United States, that amendment came from post slavery, from after slavery and Reconstruction. Black people fought because we were considered property and could not sue, could not vote, could not do anything. We had no due process, right? They could just round us up and hang us. We were the first undocumented. So we fought for the 14th Amendment, and now it's being applied to everybody else. So we have to be sensitive to those issues because they could be turned on us quickly. Right? And so people in our party, we understand that. And people just have to have the courage to say what they believe and what they think and so forth and so on. And the irony of this, people don't want transgender, you know, folks to play sports because they believe they have the strength or some other sort of men and not women. And that's what people believe. But gender affirming care is hormonal care that allows them to have the treatments so they can change their hormones. So that situation wouldn't be that way. Which is interesting that we don't want one or the other. Like, the way I see it is like, if we let people go to the hospital to get their breasts reduced or people do it or to get it enlarged to do all kinds of things like that, you know, that is, you know, elective surgery that we allow folks to do. Now, if other people want to do it, then that's also elective surgery. And so we can't say one person can do it and not the other person can do it. Getting into this argument about it, to me, it really serves the interests of these Folks who don't care about anybody, the Republican, the Democrats harping on this and backing themselves into a corner on it is a problem as well. We never on the offense. We're never on offense.

[Rashad Bilal]

Why is that? Yeah, I wanted to ask that. Like, why are the Democrats always on the fence and not willing to speak freely really, when the messaging is not getting to the people? Like, I've seen more Democrats turn Republican in this last election just because the messaging was off base, but because they.

[Drea]

Are we on the defense and because they don't know how to talk to working people anymore, because they trying to protect their interests and act like they support everybody at the same time. These folks in leadership of these parties, the people that keep saying we've given the millionaires money and we take it, those people are their friends too. Like, these people finance their campaigns as well. These people are in their circles. So it's difficult for you to. You can't say you want to reduce health care, but you're being financed by, you know, multinational insurance companies, multinational hospitals. You can't say that. You can't say, oh, I want to have affordable housing. When the people finance your campaign, does these huge BlackRock who invest in buying up all of the property and artificially raising people's mortgages up so they can take all the equity out of these homes? Like, I mean, these are the people they support, Republicans and Democrats. Right. There's no. And so you. It's hard for you to talk about the issues that matter, so you're focusing on things that regular working people not really focused on. Yeah. The reality is you can't talk about health care and reducing the costs and doing all this other stuff. So you let the Republicans make them. Make people believe that they're the party of the working class and they not the party of the working class. All this stuff Trump said he was going to do, he did none of it. The minute he came in, he started passing executive orders, attacking black people and brown people. That's it. Clearly point blank. He didn't do no infrastructure. He didn't give no reduction on your income on tips that he was talking about. He didn't lower egg prices. He didn't do any of it. Right. What he did was what he was planning on doing from the very, very, very beginning. And I think Kamala was very honest about wanting to have an economy that's inclusive. I don't think the people around her helped her get that message out the way it needed to be, that's for sure. And they have us Focused on the discussion still. We still talking about, you know, all the things that we shouldn't be talking about. We really should be talking about black wealth. We should be talking about wages, work and wealth. That's it. How do we increase our wages? How do we increase more opportunity? And how do we get wealth in this country? What is stopping us from getting those things? Move those things out of our way so we can get it right. That's, that's what our topic of discussion, to me, that's how we should be on the offensive. Don't let people steer us into all of these other directions. And we defend people who can't defend themselves. We was raised that way. We speak up for people who can't speak for themselves. We don't like bullies and we fight bullies. That's it. Like, we did that in school and we're doing that as men. So the reality is this is what we need and we should be pushing in that direction. Wages, work and wealth, period.

[Lex]

It's interesting you said standing up for people who can't stand up for themselves, because obviously we saw what happened this weekend with you being arrested. There's been an increase in ice rays, obviously with the political climate. But in the midst of that, you're making Newark a sanctuary city. So how, how's that process going? We looked at what happened here in New York City with Mayor Adams. We, we saw some of the outcomes of it. What's your vision for making it a sanctuary city in this climate?

[Drea]

Well, we've been a sanctuary city since when New York was right. So we, when first Trump won, when his first term, we were sanctuary city. We got some of the residual from New York City. You know, obviously, when people come and those buses came to New York, you can't keep them in New York by law. So they wound up on a train, on a PATH or Uber or whatever they took, and they wound up in Newark. So our food lines grew and we had to give money to more agencies that gave our food food, our sheltering group. And so we had to spend more money on sheltering. That's. That is. We got the effects of that. Not as bad as New York because New York got the direct hit. We got the second wave in Newark and New Jersey and parts of New Jersey. And so we basically had to do what we need to do to take care of people. The reality is we give people access to our economy and that's what needs to happen. And that's really what the answer is. Immigrants in New Jersey contribute a billion Dollars, more than a billion dollars to state and local taxes. Finding opportunities for people to work, finding opportunities for people to move from sheltering to transitional housing, from transitional housing to homes, just like you do everybody else. Right. You don't have to do anything separate. You already got something for people who come into who are homeless. Homelessness in New Jersey just didn't start. We've been had homelessness in New Jersey, whatever program you were instituting for that to push people through, you begin to, you know, you have to make it more urgent. And that's what we've been doing, like making it more urgent. And we're moving away from sheltering to transitional housing. We reduced street homelessness two years ago by 57% in the city of Newark through us having, you know, outreach teams, 24 hour outreach teams, psychiatrists on the field with them that can give scripts to people on the street. We can admit people on the street. We can give them prescriptions on the street. We can do all of that right there. Right. And using container homes to build more housing out of containers in Newark. And so that, that helped us house people. And we, and we commandeered 200 units from the housing authority that we fixed up ourselves. So we're in the process of fixing completely up. So those units will be used just for us, so we can use it for transitional housing. I think sheltering is old, is costly. It doesn't work. It's warehousing. People don't move away from shelters to go to transitional housing to permanent housing. They stay in those shelters for a very long time in horrible conditions. And then we kick them out in the daytime and they wander the streets trying to make money without any support or help. That model is broken and needs to change. And we've been moving to change that. And it's working for us in Newark. So we do that with, with immigrants and migrants as well.

[Ian Dunlap]

Sure. Ian, last question.

[Rashad Bilal]

What's the greatest opportunity you think for the city of Newark over the next four or five years? And I know you guys have done a great job on tech, but what are the other industries that you think could be brought into or East Orange, Newark to help the state overall?

[Drea]

So I think the film industry is growing in New Jersey because of those tax credits. We are building a studio for Lionsgate already in Newark on Friedland Hyson Avenue. We're in the process of talking to build another studio to Oprah Winfrey Studios in Newark as well. I think film in New Jersey is going to be big, especially what's happening in California. People are trying to find places to go. I notice a lot of these studios and the content they need is so rapid. They're looking for studio space. They're building all of Netflix is building a studio in New Jersey as well. So I think film in New Jersey is going to be the next thing. Newark is benefiting from that tremendously. There's a lot of kind of residual effects that will happen because of these film studios coming up. You know, in our city, a lot of commercial opportunity, retail opportunity as well. The second thing I think is that we need to invest in a port. We have the second largest seaport in the nation. Could easily be the first. Could affect the supply chain that's coming through this country through the city of Newark to if we expand it, modernize it, add more berth. So take the dredge that they pulling out of the Passaic and build another berth to make it the largest seaport. We already feeding up and down the eastern seaboard. We can push that further into the midwestern part of the United States. There's a lot of things that can happen. There are a lot of jobs that are created. Logistics is New Jersey's number one thing anyway. We have an incredible transportation infrastructure that we don't lean into. Lean into it and make sure that, you know, we involved in it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right.

[Drea]

And we as us on this phone, this zoom that we are involved in that. Like there's nothing that should happen in New Jersey that we don't have an opportunity to. To be a part of.

[Ian Dunlap]

When. When? Before. This is my last question before we wrap because you said something that I was going to mention earlier, but you guys have a major port in New Jersey. People don't might not know that in Newark. How has this been affected by tariffs, if any. And what is your. What's your whole thought process on this whole tariff thing? How it played out. We talked about it earlier in the show, but you know, went from 145%, they dropped it back down to 10%, drastic drop. So that directly affects your port because I'm sure that there's been a disruption in chips come in ships coming from China or maybe it hasn't. But yeah, I'm just interested to know like how. How it has it affected in your thoughts on the terrorists in general?

[Drea]

Yeah. So Newark is the largest seaport in this part of the nation. When the Baltimore bridge fell, all those ships came into Newark. All of them came into Newark. Right. So it hasn't. Hasn't had a marginal effect now. Not a massive or impact. It Would take time to do that. What it has affected is the market itself. I mean, tariffs are really a dumb idea. It's really a wage a battle that these guys are having that they can't uphold. You see what the tech companies did? They automatically jumped on them and dropped those tariffs off of those phones because an iPhone would have cost you about $9,000. And this place is just ridiculous. It's just like telling China we gonna put a tariff on everything. But the main thing we get from there, it just doesn't make sense. And what the President understand is that we are a consumer economy. People don't want to make iPhones, they just wanna buy them. And that's really what this is, right? There's no manufacturing in this place. And Newark was a manufacturing city in New Jersey in this area. Everything was built and manufactured here. From paint to drawers to film to light bulbs, everything. Furniture. And that's how people work. That's why people came to Newark to get jobs. Most of that stuff is gone, right?

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Drea]

Because this is. We're not manufacturing anymore. Manufacturing is now high, highly advanced, technologically advanced, robotic, all this stuff. It doesn't happen in the U.S. if he wanted to do that 10 years ago, he should have started building plants in the US Engaging them, building manufacturing here. Then the tariff would make a little bit of sense. Right now that makes no sense at all. You're not going to force people to build a factory in your country. Plus, how long is it going to take for them to do that even if they decided?

[Ian Dunlap]

Absolutely.

[Drea]

Just makes no sense at all. It's just a dumb strategy. And it's designed to make him appear like he's strong. And it just doesn't work. Right. It just doesn't work.

[Ian Dunlap]

Well, we appreciate your time.

[Rashad Bilal]

Absolutely.

[Ian Dunlap]

Thank you. And yeah, best of luck in your gubernatorial.

[Lex]

Appreciate you.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay, there you have it. Yes. Insightful conversation.

[Lex]

Yeah, man.

[Rashad Bilal]

You know Jersey, one of my favorite places on earth.

[Lex]

So you good in Jersey now?

[Rashad Bilal]

I always been. What?

[Lex]

No, I remember you was. You know, Irvington has some issues with you.

[Ian Dunlap]

Irvington?

[Rashad Bilal]

Never in life. I'll call every orange I know. East, West. I'll call Bayone too.

[Lex]

What a lot of summer vacations in Germany, Jersey as a child.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Lex]

Yeah, man.

[Rashad Bilal]

I know some summers in Jersey too.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay, New Jersey.

[Lex]

Shout out to Newark.

[Rashad Bilal]

Bershad, you're a hilarious show.

[Lex]

New Jersey, Drive facts. Red man.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, Red man.

[Lex]

Yeah, Red man. Latifah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Stretch.

[Lex]

Stretch. Yeah. All that.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. Cooking too, on the real estate side.

[Lex]

That's a fact. That's a fact.

[Rashad Bilal]

Flavor unit, other flavor unit, a bunch of doors.

[Ian Dunlap]

So, okay, so back to the stock conversation for a little bit. Let's talk about Tesla. So Tesla stock is back on the rise. And that's, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence, but it's a direct correlation for sure from Mark Zuckerberg. Just shutting up, really. Like, you know, he just hasn't really said anything.

[Lex]

Elon, Elon.

[Ian Dunlap]

I mean, Elon. Elon Musk has not said anything in a few weeks. And, you know, it's just kind of getting back to being a CEO of a company and not a talking head for a political party. But what's the future direction for. For Tesla stock?

[Rashad Bilal]

You got to put out guidance. As of the first quarter, Tesla's net profit margin has declined to 2.12%, the lowest level since mid-2019. Now, the great part about when you have, when you make mistakes, like you said, you have to correct them. So he has said that he's going to be back in office. The stock, of course, pushed up today because of the news, but not based on their fundamentals. But got to work on a profit margin, I think, needs to work on a product offering to make it more appealing. And once again, I think the biggest lesson from the tariff situation in this is to not lose the edge that you have because you're not guaranteed to get it back just because the environment changes. I don't know if people will look at that brand the same going forward. Will that be okay? Yes. Do I think they can get back to up to360? Yes, by end of year. But he needs to be very clear with his executive management and himself what the plan is going to be going forward in order to turn things around at the company. Because the bump today had nothing to do with him. It was everything about the, the news on the tariffs.

[Lex]

Yeah, the, the, the trading, the tariff trading in China. I mean, you're right. When we, when we talk about fundamentals, matching actual stock price, this is one of those companies and we spoke about it a few times, but it kind of doesn't add up.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well, huge mismatch.

[Lex]

The, the most important number will be the sales in China, let alone the tariffs. Right. Because that hasn't stopped BYD from continuously selling cars. Tariffs are not. They're still selling cars. And so what would that number look like? What would the number look like inside the US and obviously the cybertruck has been a huge disappointment, except on some of these Instagram feeds. But the sales overall are not what they expected. And so yeah, maybe, maybe him being back in the seat will, will focus up. There'll be some more innovation. But it's tough to trade it the volatility. Yeah, it's just been inconsistent. I mean even during the pandemic you saw some very high moves and some very deep pullbacks. Yeah, we'll see it now. We, we saw what happened around the election and that ride up to you know, four hundreds and obviously after the news today we saw a nice uptick but again it's not based on. On the fundamentals. So it's. I know people have it in their long term portfolios which is great and if you do it great, if you got it at a great price, even better. But it just makes it tough to trade it.

[Rashad Bilal]

To trade is almost.

[Lex]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's not wise to do so. There's too much volatility. Yeah. Yeah. The operating margin dropped from 2 to 2.55% in Q1 of 2025 and 2023 was at 9.2% percent. It's okay to try and save the country. You got to save yourself first about the 19 keys gotta take. You got to keep the main thing. The main thing.

[Lex]

Yeah. And he wasn't. I mean he was opposed to tariffs. He was outlying against the tariffs. That would be too obvious reason.

[Rashad Bilal]

What. Yeah. I walk right in your office. Rashad. What we doing the red Panda tariff school, my boy. Yeah. So I think they'll be fine. They definitely need to course correct. And if inflation continues to pace higher. I mean another company that had a bitcoin investment, I know they sold some of it off but they have to figure out this profit margin issue. It's the most important factor in the company right now.

[Lex]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

What. What's your thoughts on the year end price for the S P500?

[Rashad Bilal]

It's a great question. I'm gonna be man we should probably get to spy. We should probably get to 6:10, 6:15. Like I'm super bullish on the market. Do I think we'll still have a issue in the summertime for sure. But that once again the asymmetric reward when we bottomed out at 481 the 500 area it was too attractive of a price to not buy. And if he can hold off for 90 days on this and then after the 90 days extended for another 90 days we're going to have a great rally and at some point like you said he may just have to stabilize at 10 or 15% and say that the strategy is not working. I'm going to keep it at a flat rate and let business be business. If not, the Republicans are going to get shellacked in about a year and a half. So.

[Ian Dunlap]

So you think that it's going to just go back to where it was February. Yeah, in February before this it was 6:13.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep. Back to those highs.

[Ian Dunlap]

You're saying 6:15 that. So it'll go back. It'll go back to where it was. Not higher than where it was.

[Rashad Bilal]

No, I don't see. Because there's no catalyst for right now for it to go higher with the debt to GDP being so high. And also too, I mean the mayor talked about it, but like the, I wish all the governors and the president and the powers that we would come together and put together a 20 year plan for America to change it. Everyone's thinking one to four years, you can't run a business like that effectively. And for us to be a superpower, a lot of the advantages that we've used to have are bleeding away. So yeah, we'll get back to those highs but there's no reason right now for us to push to the 620. I saw some people calling for 700. I'm like, what's the catalyst for that? We can't just keep. And I love Kathy, but we gotta quit throwing that 2700 number around Tesla and 700 spy end of the year just because. No, no.

[Lex]

Yeah. In order for it to just be positive for the year, I know February had its highs but it S P has to finish above 5870. So even it gets up to 63. You're talking about a positive year in S P which would have been the third year in a row. So hopefully we'll see that.

[Rashad Bilal]

I hope so. But we have a lot of turbulence to navigate through.

[Lex]

Yeah, we still, I mean we still have two rate cuts coming. We know, you know everybody has predicted that. So that could potentially be a catalyst. I don't know if that gets it up to 65. 7,000 is. That's real lofty. I don't, I don't, I don't think we get there. But yeah. Can we return to February highs? Very sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Lex]

We get a certainty around some of these, these tariffs. We get some rate cuts. You can see again there that little.

[Rashad Bilal]

Spoon that they had in that France office with that little powder. Y' all gotta stop doing that. When y' all get your price targets for the end of the year. Seven thousand. Not happening. I don't care. No, not happening. Sorry.

[Lex]

Yeah, that's.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, it's a great headline.

[Lex]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

You want to go viral? S P800. I feel you. It's not gonna happen. Sorry.

[Ian Dunlap]

Nowhere near gonna happen.

[Lex]

That's the S P4000.

[Rashad Bilal]

Like, come on. We can't even get market stability state to state. Like, even like he talks. Homelessness is at peak levels. And it's just, I just wish there would be a consortium that would come together, make a 10 year plan and, or 20 year plan. And that stuck too. So it's not happening. It's too much.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

And I'll see I can. I've been telling y' all for two or three years, 64 already portfolios dying, and now y' all want to do 25, 25. 2525. That sounds like 2 tech 2 index.

[Ian Dunlap]

What will be the 25? 25, 25?

[Rashad Bilal]

They're saying stocks, crypto, bonds, and then like an alternative, maybe like crude. I'm not mad at it, but I've been screaming, why is the bond market down this much for three years? No clear answer. I know Easement gave an answer, but.

[Lex]

So you're 25, 25. 25. That would draw the comparison between two tech two index four. Just the four quadrant.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, yeah. They just won't say two tech to index.

[Lex]

Okay, I got you. All right. All right, gotcha.

[Rashad Bilal]

Because it's that what they're doing is a truncated version of Dalio's All Weather portfolio.

[Lex]

Yeah. Because I, I'm, I'm thinking as a listener, right, If I have 100 allocation, right. This is my 100. I'm not putting 25 into one tech. Am I putting a 25 to tech number two and then obviously split the 50 between two indexes. That's my 100 allocation.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Lex]

Got you.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. And really it's, it's of course the tech or the ETF or the index, but you're really investing into companies who have a moat so wide that they won't be able to be breached. That's why Vanguard, BlackRock, Vesco Investment of Esco, you're invested into superpowers. Like some of these companies are super companies. BlackRock and Vanguard are two of those.

[Lex]

So Invesco is another one for sure investment. Thank you. Thank you for saying that.

[Rashad Bilal]

But if I can do it all over again, if that was institutional investment into Bitcoin, I probably would have put Bitcoin into 2 tech 2 index. Had when we started to show if they were in, they just didn't have institutional buy in.

[Lex]

So.

[Rashad Bilal]

And I told y' all what happened.

[Lex]

Now we hear is it subject to change? Could there be an amendment?

[Rashad Bilal]

Me?

[Lex]

No, no.

[Rashad Bilal]

I have features. I don't need that. Hey, shout to conspiratorial. I see all the little posts you make. I, I get that and I from the long term, but it's hard for me to even divert that if I can get 700 return in a month from futures. Now, if you don't know how to trade futures, amazing investment. But I see the. We'll value this in bitcoin. Value it based on my return.

[Lex]

Figure.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep, for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

All right, ladies and gentlemen, it's been real. Another legendary episode of Market Mondays. Oh, and also let me. So the post that I made on social media that got a lot of traction about the LLC thing. Appreciate it. And I was anticipating some level of trust conversation to come into that situation. So, yes, I'm aware pass through and entrust and. But this is more specifically towards business owners. Where is the protection aspect is one thing, but you got to make sure that you're getting tax deductions for everything that you actually do. So that was something that's very beneficial. As far as even with Shaq when he said, I actually learned something from Shaq because that's something that I implemented when he was saying that he was putting his mom. He was just giving his mother money. But then after a while it's like, well, that's not really beneficial for me. It would be help. It would be more helpful if you actually sign this W9 and I could hire you as an independent contract. And now the money that I'm giving you is actually tax deductible through me, for me, through my company. That's something I actually implemented in real life. So that, and then of course we talked about the cars and a variety of other different things. Even leasing an apartment, that's something that I had to learn also. Like, you know, you lease an apartment through a business name and you can actually get a tax deduction for leasing your apartment through your business name for your llc. So yes, I know everybody's a trust expert. Yeah, trust expert. Everybody's a trust expert.

[Lex]

They asked. I saw one comment. They said, but what's wrong with the bus down Rolly?

[Ian Dunlap]

No, no. Shout out to. Shout out to the Bust Down Rolly crew.

[Lex]

I just see that one comment like that's what you got from this shout.

[Ian Dunlap]

Out to the bus downs out there. You know, I, you know, this is part of marketing because shout out to. I have friends, I have personal friends that we're Busting rollies. So I don't want to offend anybody, but what I learned from social media is that you got to say something provocative to get. So the bust down rolly thing was a provocative statement to make because I know it's going to ruffle some feathers, but that's just more just to get people's attention. If you want to get a bus down roll, you get a bus down. Really? I personally, it's not my thing. I just feel like a. From a standpoint of that, of course it doesn't appreciate you devalue the asset. That's one aspect of it. But for me personally, I just. I don't think that it's. It's tastefully done. As far as, you know, me personally, like, I don't. I don't. I don't even wear chains. I never had my ears pierced. So I don't think that I would be a person that would be an advocate for putting, you know, a tremendous amount of diamonds in the face of my watch. I just, you know, I'm a. I'm a tastemaker so that I actually make taste for the palates of the community. So being a taste maker, you have to step outside the norm. And. But like I said, I'm not crucifying anybody that has a bus down rolly. I just don't think that is a. Is a great investment. And I also don't think that is something that personally looks good. If you're trying to be taken serious in this world, I think it's a little bit embarrassing.

[Rashad Bilal]

I saw that too. It'd be so many fake ones. You can't tell the real ones from the fake ones. Oh, they're ruin the jewelry game.

[Ian Dunlap]

That's a fact. Yeah, that's a fact. And that happens to a lot of celebrities. People brought, I mean, little baby. He had a fake watch, right? And watch busters caught him and he went back to the jeweler and they had to make a whole thing about it. He's like, are you gonna give me the. A real watcher? We're gonna have a real problem.

[Rashad Bilal]

You do not want that problem. Real why?

[Lex]

It's a real problem.

[Ian Dunlap]

It can happen to anybody. Like, I mean, you gotta be careful. That's why you should always buy from directly the store or author. That's why I don't trust jewelers. Sorry. To any jeweler that's watching another conversation. I just don't trust you guys because how do I know what you're doing behind the curtains? Like, you could be putting deep they all look real. Like Ocho said it looks real when the lights. Is it for real? Your cupid's a coney. If you get good Cubans. Cuban.

[Rashad Bilal]

Some of them Moise the knights be outshining real.

[Lex]

And that'll. That'll ring up a few times as. As diamond.

[Ian Dunlap]

So it's like me, man.

[Lex]

It'll ring up.

[Ian Dunlap]

I just stay away from that, man. The rest in peace. To the young brother from Philadelphia. We really gotta talk about. But also it goes back to just, man, that's why I'm just like, I ain't even wearing no chain. I, you know, I had said put this on Instagram a few days. Like, the best way not to get robbed is don't have something that somebody wants. Right? Like I may. I know that may seem like you're taking a coward way. Like, yo, if I work for this, I'm not going to tuck my chain. I'm not saying that you have to tuck your chain in. I'm just saying that. Is it worth dying over? Probably not. Is it worth paying security more than the actual cost of your chain? Like, you could just walk freely and not have to worry about that. Like, you know, I mean, so for me personally, I want to be able to shine without diamonds. So that's why I'm in the gym. That's why, you know, I drink water and all of that. Like, you know, I don't feel like I need diamonds on the shine. But also just be careful because it's like the wolves are watching. You're putting a price tag on your head by wearing these things, wearing these items, and it's really costing people their lives.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's the other part of that conservative talk that a lot of people don't factor in. With me, yeah, no, I've never wanted to be robbed for Apple watch or books. Nobody is like, yo, when I see Ian, boy, I'm getting that money. Master the game off on, boy. Does not happen. You gotta learn how to shine just in your circle. And other than that. Plain Jane.

[Lex]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Like all the other billionaires do. They won't show you all that, like in public at the conference. Then when you go see them in other countries. 700000 watt.

[Lex]

What's the above?

[Rashad Bilal]

Eight watch what? Okay. It's tears. Be careful.

[Lex]

Enjoy it in real life. Enjoy in real life. Like, if that's what you like, enjoy it. There's no gratification. And saying like, this is what I got. Because any type of success breeds envy. It's just a natural way of life. So if that's what you like, enjoy it, Enjoy it in your, your. The circumference of your people who you think, who love you and do it because you enjoy it. Not because you're trying to prove anything to anyone else, but just, just, just be, just be mindful of it. Man. It's a dangerous world out here and we all, I mean, we're all susceptible to anything like that doesn't. We could have nothing on and something can happen. We're not saying that we're immune from that, but the chances and the likelihood of something happening with that definitely increase.

[Ian Dunlap]

You gotta be careful. You gotta move correct. And then also, like I said, as, as my job as a tastemaker, it is, it is, it's important. It's important for me to ruffle feathers, to set the tone. I don't, I just don't agree with bust down or just not my thing. But also chrome heart jeans for $14,000 that you gotta make layaway plans on. That's not my thing. I don't. Somebody's gotta, somebody's gotta speak out against this to let you know that that's not, that doesn't dictate whether you have good fashion sense or not. Just because you spending thousands of dollars on chrome hard jeans. To me, as somebody who's. Has some level of relevancy in this conversation when it comes to fashion and taste making abilities, I got. I want to say that I don't agree with that. I want to break up that I want to, I want to be a person that breaks up that ideology of the more you spend, the better it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Is, the better it is, because it's not.

[Ian Dunlap]

I feel like you could spend a hundred dollars for some jeans if you rock it and they don't got you rock it the right way. Like, I, I'm not. I've never looked at something like, oh, this cost $14,000, so I have to buy it.

[Rashad Bilal]

14,000 for some shout to the boy, but 14,000 for some jeans and crazy. They look like some old Jankos.

[Ian Dunlap]

And two years, no, I'm not even gonna be worth nothing.

[Lex]

Yeah, that was a revelation.

[Ian Dunlap]

Jeans.

[Lex]

That was a revelation. I didn't know there was that much. And that's all that were more. I said, damn, how they getting these? How they getting them crazy? And do you wear that once? Like, how does that work? Do you, do you like, is that a once a week thing? Or like, how do you, how you, how you, how you go about that, man?

[Ian Dunlap]

All that comes from skateboard culture. That's when Jim Jones shout out to him. But then.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

Tank Davis when he was rocking the chrome heart boxing shorts and all that just comes from moments in, in culture. Black people doing it and then they just seeing how far they can go with it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

That's. That's the same thing they do over and over again. Let's just see how far we can push it. And they just keep pushing it until. Until people like a certain point in time you just gotta be like no, I'm not doing that. I'm not. $14,000 for a pair of jeans. There's no jeans in the world. That's actually even disrespectful that they would even target. And it's targeted to us. 75. We're gonna talk about this on Blackout. 75 of luxury buyers are middle to low income people.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep.

[Lex]

We try and prove it's not what we trying to prove.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep. It's another little video going around too about certain brands. And if the monogram is only black models and so do I set a premium? It's like for what? Some of that don't even look good.

[Lex]

Oh, like true religion. Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

And some of the watches too. Some of the bus downs y' all paying all that money for. For it don't look like $90,000 worth of diamonds.

[Lex]

They had a whole revamping campaign. Was about to file for bankruptcy. Re envisioned the entire brand. First order business. Let's find women who can sell this brand for us. Who they find Sexy Red and, and Meg and Megastalling. Those are the two ambassadors right now.

[Ian Dunlap]

And I'll say this too. Shout out to the CEO of North America lvmh. Because he, we actually interviewed him. Good guy. But he said something that I, I caught and they said he said he's happy that there's the end of the choir luxury era. So the choir luxury era was be able to wear luxury items. But they had no logo on it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

So I'm like, why would the, the CEO of LVMA say that he's. He's happy that that's ending? I don't know. To me it hasn't ended. But of course they want you to wear a logo because now you, if.

[Rashad Bilal]

You, you're paying to be the brand ambassador.

[Ian Dunlap]

If you feel comfortable wearing clothes with no logo. Everybody's in competition with each other. You don't know the difference between Zara or, or Louis Vuitton. But now if, if you gotta have the logo on it, it could be the same exact thing. But that one logo is going to change it once again. I'm not. I don't. I don't. I don't really wear clothes with too much logos because I feel like I'm not just going to give you free promotion. But if it's dope, it's dope. It don't matter who makes it. It don't matter if you make it. It don't matter if Gucci makes it fly. Like, to say that that era is coming to an end and you. You happy. That means that you have the logo and it's going to help the brands that have built that logo to mean something. But, man, we gotta destroy all that logo worship. And that's just like idolatry. It's like. It's like praying idols. Really. Like you. You really just gonna do anything just to have a small logo on it?

[Rashad Bilal]

For sure. I'm paying a premium that we've never seen before. And the quality of some of that stuff not what it used to be. No.

[Ian Dunlap]

A shirt is a shirt. I don't care. Like, maybe the bags, because they was telling me about the luxury bat whatever.

[Rashad Bilal]

And the leather, like, belts, stuff like that.

[Ian Dunlap]

Jeans are jeans. A shirt is a shirt, bro. Like you wearing a shirt. If you. When you. If you wash it, it's not going to be the same, but as before you washed it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Your T shirt is. Is washable proof. It's always going to get altered on a certain level if you wash it. I've never seen a T shirt yet that has not changed when washed.

[Lex]

Yeah, but how are we rocking this, though? I'm really. After you buy the item of that price, you can't just wear that. That's like.

[Rashad Bilal]

Oh, the little chrome hoodies they'd be getting. They'd be wearing like six days.

[Lex]

I'm just saying, like, you doing it once a week, once a month. Like, how does this work?

[Ian Dunlap]

People are wearing for Instagram, so you wear it. You do a photo, you take photos, take video. You do all that, you know, look down all that. To me. That's just corny. If you're taking a photo, look at the photo. Like all of this that happened, which Scott and all that, were you trying to look away? You're y' all trying to emulate other people looking like vampires. Not looking at the photo, looking up, putting your head down, putting your hands in front of your face.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

All that is weird.

[Rashad Bilal]

Be you.

[Lex]

Yo, I'm gonna do an episode like this.

[Ian Dunlap]

Come on, man. Wearing ski masks at. In summertime, like, while getting robbed, you get Robbed.

[Lex]

Definitely just seen Thugger. He did a whole interview with GQ with a mask on.

[Ian Dunlap]

And I'm telling, dude, I'm not doing. I'm not talking to some. We had this happen before. Somebody was going to do an interview with us, and this is a person that, you know, people was kind of scared of at that moment, and they were like, yo, he's going to do an interview with his mask on. I'm like, no, I'm not talking to somebody with a mask on. I said, bro, you might say, no, no problem. Because as a black man, yeah, I'm respecting you, and I expect you to respect me. Right? Like, I'm not. I'm not gonna have a conversation. I'm talking. I'm looking your face. You don't have a conversation with a man with a mask on. That's disrespectful.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy. But y' all do what y' all want and keep spending and giving all your money away, but then telling us stocks are doing too expensive. I don't want to hear it.

[Ian Dunlap]

I digress. That's the moment of culture. Moment of culture segment. So, yeah, the LLC play all you trust experts. Congratulations. Salute. But it's a good way to save money on your taxes, for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

And for privacy, too, so. Because people will get to Googling where you live.

[Lex]

That's a fact.

[Rashad Bilal]

You have to be careful. That's a fact that you got to be careful.

[Lex]

I think it even invites the conversation. Right? Even if somebody is saying trust, six years ago, that wasn't even a part of a conversation. So at worst, it invokes conversation for the betterment of us. Right?

[Ian Dunlap]

I definitely want to do llc, because there's a thing called llc. Twitter. Llc. Twitter has turned into a joke where they, like, they turned it into, like, a meme where it's like, everything is like, oh, I'm right this. But like I said, it's funny. But the comics are still broke, so don't let. Because this happened to the black power movement. I talked about 19 keys. There was a. There was a time and place where you had songs. Like, what was the song with all of the rappers? And they came together in the early 90s. Self destruction. You had Public Enemy, and then you saw a concerted effort by Hollywood to make a joke out of the black person. So it was like In Living Color. Remember the dude with, like, the bean pie and all that? So it was like the pro black, but it was like, come on. I ain't trying to Hear that? It became a joke. But that's done intentionally because if they can, if they can criticize something to the point where it becomes a laughingstock. No, now it's no longer taken serious. Now it's no longer a threat. So you got to be careful with these jokes because it's like we've seen this happen with the pro black thing, and now it became like, I don't want to hear that. Pro black. Like, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

And then gangster rap came in at scale right after.

[Ian Dunlap]

That's not a joke, though. So now it's like this llc. Of course there's people that go too far. Of course there's people that don't know what they're talking about. But if you can criticize something and make it so to the point where it's just not taking serious at all, then nobody's going to care about business, they're not going to care about stocks, they're not going to care about that. Then you could just go back to where you were and just be happy just working a 9 to 5, giving somebody else your money, paying rent. And that's not threatening to the power structure. So you got to be careful with these jokes because who's starting it and the people that's promoting it are still, are still in the same position that they were before.

[Lex]

It's funny till it's not for real. It's all funny Game still is not.

[Ian Dunlap]

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we have Drea and Lex from Poor Minds on Thursday at six o' clock. Shout out to them. Black women make up a large population when it comes to traveling in America.

[Rashad Bilal]

Sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

This is a great episode. Highlight that. And then we got blackout 10 o' clock. I got a feeling it's gonna be a good blackout episode for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

Can't wait. A lot to talk about.

[Ian Dunlap]

We're gonna talk about him saying that white South Africans are being are genocide. Why would he say that? That's what I'm saying. Like, why would you say something like that? There's real genocides happening on the continent of Africa. In other places in the world, there's real genocides happening. White people in South Africa are not being genocide and they've their colonizers anyway. They actually committed genocide not too long.

[Lex]

Ago in the same place.

[Ian Dunlap]

Like, why would you say something like that? Like, he just makes it hard to defend them.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. Stock club call Wednesday, 7pm Central. I got to give you y' all credit for bringing up Ibrahim Ture to you podcasters who always have something to say. I'm not seeing y' all talk about that enough.

[Lex]

Don't worry. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. Stay tuned.

[Ian Dunlap]

It's been real.

[Lex]

It's been real. Earnings this week. Retail space. Walmart on Thursday. That would be a full opening. Alibaba too. Let's see, let's see what what happened.

[Rashad Bilal]

It'll be uptick.

[Lex]

Yeah. Let's see what happened in the Chinese e commerce space when they report Thursday morning as well. So those are the two for the week. Take those out.

[Ian Dunlap]

Get your tickets to Invest Fest, please. Invest.com please. And stay tuned with this China thing, man, anything can happen.

[Lex]

Who knows? Who knows?

[Ian Dunlap]

I have to do some investor journalism for myself. You never know. You never know.

[Rashad Bilal]

Content.

[Lex]

Love is love. Y' all be good to each other. Happy birthday to our Taurus family out here. And we'll see y' all Wednesday. Peace.

[Rashad Bilal]

Peace.

[Ian Dunlap]

When you're with Amex Business Platinum, you have the card that helps businesses dream bigger, get a flexible spending limit that adapts with your business, and earn 1.5 times Membership Rewards points on select business purchases so you can stock up on what you need to take your business further and get rewarded for growing bigger. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Not all purchases will be approved. Terms apply. Learn [e-mail] AmExBusiness Today's episode is sponsored.

[Rashad Bilal]

By Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. Smart travel doesn't just cover points and miles. They break down all the financial aspects of your trip, whether that's the best days to book, how to avoid hidden fees, or which fancy travel credit cards pay off and which ones are just an expensive flex. If you want your travel budget to work harder, then dive into the best deals, products, services and more with Smart Travel from NerdWallet. Wherever you get your podcasts.