MM #261: Are Big Tech Stocks Still Safe? EYL Africa Recap, AI Chips, Gold, & The Hidden Recession Signal

Summary

Market Mondays: Episode #261 Summary

Title: Are Big Tech Stocks Still Safe? EYL Africa Recap, AI Chips, Gold, & The Hidden Recession Signal
Host/Authors: Ian Dunlap, Rashad Bilal, David Shands
Release Date: June 3, 2025

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1. Introduction and Shout-Outs [01:09 - 02:22]

The episode kicks off with the hosts warmly greeting their audience, expressing excitement about returning from their Africa trip. They give shout-outs to various individuals and communities, including Michael Saylor and the entire African continent, setting a positive and inclusive tone for the show.

“Shout out to everybody that had a birthday over the past week... Shout out to everybody again on the continent.” — Ian Dunlap [02:01]

2. EYL Africa Recap [02:22 - 04:33]

Rashad Bilal shares insights from their recent trip to Africa, highlighting interactions with influential figures like Khalees, who owns extensive land in Kenya and is building a resort. The discussion emphasizes the vast investment opportunities in African agriculture and real estate.

“We're gonna talk about the total Africa's experience and later on in the show... she laid out a whole blueprint... this is very important.” — Rashad Bilal [03:48]

3. Investment Strategies: Gold [07:00 - 22:55]

The conversation shifts to gold as a safe investment. David Shands references a previous episode where Mike Novograd highlighted gold and Bitcoin as top investment picks. The hosts discuss gold’s steady increase over the years and its role as a hedge against inflation and debt.

“Gold has been going up since 2004... there's always a bull market somewhere. That's true. And gold is one of them.” — David Shands [19:03]

Ian Dunlap elaborates on integrating gold into an investment portfolio, suggesting ETFs like GLD as accessible options for investors.

“Gold might be that fourth leg* [19:03]

4. Big Tech Stocks: Current Safety [51:16 - 54:48]

The hosts analyze the stability and future of major tech giants—Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft. They advocate for holding these stocks long-term, citing their robust performance and continuous innovation. The discussion includes Meta’s shift towards AI-driven advertising and Amazon’s expanding infrastructure.

“These companies aren't going anywhere. Shout out to my guy Sloss... you can't avoid there's no natural gas play to invest in that is going to trump the technology space.” — David Shands [51:38]

5. Tesla and Elon Musk's Strategies [33:15 - 36:00]

David Shands critiques Elon Musk’s delayed Robo Taxi project, suggesting that unrealistic deadlines might harm Tesla's position in the autonomous driving market. Ian Dunlap counters by pointing out the strategic advantages of potentially acquiring Uber to bolster Tesla’s logistics and data capabilities.

“If you're gonna participate, that's all that's a fact.” — Ian Dunlap [21:40]

6. Palantir's Growth and Federal Contracts [65:51 - 69:06]

Palantir secures a substantial federal contract with the IRS and Social Security, solidifying its position in government AI use. The hosts debate the ethical implications of Palantir’s surveillance capabilities while acknowledging the company's expanding revenue streams.

“Palantir is going to surveil Americans at the highest rate we've ever seen... this is a long term moat building moment.” — David Shands [65:49]

7. US-China Relations and Investments [69:06 - 75:46]

The discussion turns to the strained US-China relations, with references to recent tariff disputes and China's deepening investments in Africa. The hosts argue that China's strategic global presence, especially in Africa, poses significant challenges and highlights the need for the US to adapt its international strategies.

“China has a Chinatown in every country in the world... Their strategy is different and it's working.” — Rashad Bilal [75:32]

8. Hidden Recession Signals [86:00 - 89:29]

David Shands highlights alarming economic indicators such as a 58-month decline in the bond market, soaring debt levels, and increasing inflation. The hosts express concerns about these signs potentially signaling an impending recession, urging listeners to stay informed and prepared.

“The bond market has been in drawdown for 58 months. The largest drawdown in American history.” — David Shands [86:19]

9. Community Building and Media Empire [107:03 - 109:40]

Rashad Bilal and David Shands discuss the importance of building a community and maintaining consistency in content creation. They credit their loyal audience for the show's success and emphasize leveraging technology and social media to bypass traditional gatekeepers, fostering a trusted and engaged listener base.

“Building a community. I always tell people, whether it's social media, they say, like, how do I build a social media? Like, build a community.” — Rashad Bilal [107:39]

10. Upcoming Episodes and Announcements [104:54 - 115:05]

The episode concludes with announcements about future shows, including a special episode featuring Khalees discussing her move from America to Kenya. The hosts encourage listeners to engage with their content, attend Invest Fest, and continue building their financial education.

“Tomorrow we back. Tomorrow we back. EYL University. I got my class. We had to reschedule it. So we'll be back tomorrow.” — Ian Dunlap [13:25]

“This Thursday, we got Khalees amazing six o'clock. That's gonna be a dope, dope episode.” — Rashad Bilal [106:10]

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Conclusion

In this episode of Market Mondays, Ian Dunlap, Rashad Bilal, and David Shands provide a comprehensive overview of their Africa trip, delve into investment strategies with a focus on gold and Big Tech stocks, analyze Tesla and Palantir's business moves, discuss geopolitical tensions between the US and China, and highlight warning signs of a potential recession. Their emphasis on community building and leveraging technology to bypass traditional media gatekeepers underscores their commitment to empowering their listeners with actionable financial insights.

Notable Quotes:

• “Gold is a language. That's a fact.” — Rashad Bilal [17:06]
• “Gold has been going up since 2004.” — David Shands [19:03]
• “These companies aren't going anywhere.” — David Shands [51:38]
• “China has a Chinatown in every country in the world.” — Rashad Bilal [75:32]
• “The bond market has been in drawdown for 58 months.” — David Shands [86:19]
• “Building a community.” — Rashad Bilal [107:39]

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Stay Tuned:

• Blackout Episode: Expected to air Wednesday at 10 PM EST, covering topics like Larry Hoover’s sentencing and more.
• Special Episode with Khalees: Discussing her experiences relocating from America to Kenya.
• Invest Fest Announcement: Lineup to be revealed on Friday.

For more insights and updates, join the Market Mondays community and participate in their live shows and events.

Transcript

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[Ian Dunlap]

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[Rashad Bilal]

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[Ian Dunlap]

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[Rashad Bilal]

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[Ian Dunlap]

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[David Shands]

Oh yeah, New York City. Hey, let's go.

[Ian Dunlap]

Right back at you. What's going on, people? Happy Monday. Happy June. It's June 2nd. The year is 2025. We are live and direct in the space. We came from a long way to be here with y' all. Yeah, they didn't think we was coming back, Ian.

[David Shands]

I don't know why y' all did. I'll be honest with you. Listen, pH8. I'm gonna be around the corner from y' all. Go ahead, count it up.

[Ian Dunlap]

We've been summing a shout out to the entire continent. We'll get into that a little bit later.

[Rashad Bilal]

I don't see us on here.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, we lie.

[Rashad Bilal]

No, my thing refresh.

[Ian Dunlap]

The people's in here with us.

[David Shands]

Oh, yeah, yeah. We live.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.

[David Shands]

For Rashad, we live. Okay.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know.

[David Shands]

Yeah, man. Michael Saylor, call up there and apologize. Shout out to Michael Saylor.

[Ian Dunlap]

Shout out to everybody that's tapped in with us. Hopefully everybody had a great restful weekend. Shout out to everybody that had a birthday over the past week. And yeah, the, the, the second quarter is coming to a close, but we'll get into some of that. Shout out to everybody again on the continent. We'll talk about that. All the countries that have summoned us.

[David Shands]

Yes.

[Ian Dunlap]

You know, you'll be in the country like, yo, why don't y' all just come here like we could just walk over there, but we'll get into that, man. But we're happy to be here, man. Next time came a long way. Shout out to you, Ian, I saw you was in the city.

[David Shands]

Had to be. Shout out to New York. Shout out to Trav and Teach Jam. New York had a great time. Keys is there. Ash, Cash, Matt. Shout out to everybody I met there had an amazing time. Great event.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah. The OSG family was in the building. Shout out to everybody in osg. That's our family over there. Everything that they're doing in. In education, especially black men and women in education, Latino men and women in education is very powerful. As the school year comes to an end, we need to see more of that. I know we're gonna be doing some. I'm gonna be in some schools in the next couple weeks, just checking out the. Checking out what's going on. So if you in Brooklyn, be on the lookout. I might be in your school tapping and going back to my roots.

[David Shands]

Oh, that's fire. I love that.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

[David Shands]

I know you said, how you doing, my brother?

[Ian Dunlap]

I know. Counseling them right now.

[David Shands]

My brother look real sad. Yeah, Too sad.

[Rashad Bilal]

Coming to America, man. We made it back. We made it back. We're gonna talk about, you know, the total Africa's experience and later on in the show. But definitely great, great time in the motherland, for sure. Thank you for everybody that hosted us. Too many people to name, but on the top, you know, Alvin, Fatima.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yes. Some people we can't name.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, for sure.

[David Shands]

Bill Clinton. I'll say it to you guys. William Clinton.

[Ian Dunlap]

Some people we can't name.

[Rashad Bilal]

Sure. Yeah. But it was, it was, it was good to be over there, you know, got to touch three different countries. And I felt like it was something that was inspiring for a lot of people. Eye opening experience, you know, doing different things that people might not be familiar with as far as going to the safari and, you know, seeing the. The gorillas firsthand. We got to put the billboard up in Ghana.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

So, you know, it's just a lot going on these days, man. But we'll talk about it, but glad to be back for sure. I will say this. You know, one of the. One of the dope things that we did in Africa was we got a chance to talk to Khalees.

[David Shands]

That wasn't.

[Rashad Bilal]

A lot of people don't even know that she moved to Kenya and owns over 300 acres of land in Kenya and then other land in other places in Africa. She has a farm and she's building a resort and just a bunch of different things she got going on. So we spent a few days with her actually she took us to her property. She has zebras and giraffes on her property.

[David Shands]

That's tough.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, Slight stunt.

[Rashad Bilal]

And, and we actually filmed the episode with her while we was out there. So she spoke about her first hand experience about moving to Kenya and why she chose Kenya. And she talked about buying the steps of buying property the right way. The steps of, you know, sustainable food. She was a farmer in, in California before she became a farmer in Africa. But becoming a farmer, building a resort, she laid out a whole blueprint because a lot of people have questions about, you know, how do you actually invest in Africa, how do you go, what if you want to move? What about schools? What about all types of different stuff. Check that episode out this week at 6:00 Eastern Standard Time.

[David Shands]

Okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

YouTube channel.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Very important episode. Very, very insightful.

[David Shands]

Run that back three times.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, it's definitely one of those ones you gotta run back. In addition to the, the why healthcare, you know, everybody looks at different reasons why they should move to it. She unpacks a lot, man. She did a great job representing the diaspora from coming from America. Shout out to. We gotta give a shout out to Harlem. She's from Harlem, from New York to Cali to, to Kenya. What she's doing is incredible, inspiring. This is one of the ones you got to have your notepad for. Get your notepad on the fence if you're thinking about it. This is going to unpack a lot and it's going to help hopefully make you, hopefully help you make a decision about traveling abroad. At least seeing it for yourself and then hopefully making a decision for sure. Some things you got to see.

[Rashad Bilal]

So we're going to talk about that. Blackout Wednesday to the clock. We got a lot to talk about.

[David Shands]

A lot to talk about.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, we, we going unpack that. The group chat a little bit.

[Rashad Bilal]

The Cardi B situation is getting crazy. But also just being in Africa, you know, it was very eye openening experience for a few reasons. But you know, you don't, you don't say.

[David Shands]

Rashad, Rashad.

[Ian Dunlap]

Family discussion.

[David Shands]

But I'm down.

[Ian Dunlap]

Oh man, I told you next time you hear that, yo, we going out there, just clear schedule.

[David Shands]

For real. What? Tell me what to send a little deposit.

[Rashad Bilal]

The Maasai tribe, you know, they do the 10, 10 cows. That's the dowry. 10 cows per wife. We're gonna talk about it.

[Ian Dunlap]

We're gonna talk because you got Man, Bob Grand a cow.

[Rashad Bilal]

And we also learned that you cannot talk amongst men if you only have.

[Ian Dunlap]

One wife or no wife.

[David Shands]

Run that back. Come one more time.

[Ian Dunlap]

So you're not permitted. You have to be invited to speak because you, you know, you haven't had life experience unless you had three or four wives. And so if you have one, technically you don't really have enough life experience to be part of the conversation. If you got none, you can't even sit at the table.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well, if you have one wife, you got to ask for permission to have a conversation.

[Ian Dunlap]

Somebody said noted. Cam said noted. This is not relationship advice.

[David Shands]

No, this is just the reason.

[Ian Dunlap]

Reporting back, doing our journalistic integrity.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

From the Maasai tribe.

[Rashad Bilal]

We're gonna talk about that on Blackout. So tune in the blackout. That's a sneak preview. Tune in the blackout 10 o' clock Eastern Standard Time. I got a feeling that this is going to be a pretty fun conversation. And the last thing I'll say is get your tickets to Invest Fest. We will be announcing the first wave of lineup this Friday. Sorry to make you wait.

[Ian Dunlap]

Long break the news alert.

[Rashad Bilal]

Sometimes in life you gotta, you gotta, you gotta let the beat.

[David Shands]

Let the beat. Bills. Yep.

[Rashad Bilal]

And you gotta let it simmer. Yeah, a little bit. But we will be announcing the first names of Invest Fest this Friday. And another thing that, you know, we've been potentially torn out. Put in the comments if you think this is a good idea because, you know, when we go in Africa and a lot of different places, we're getting a lot of deal flow. There's a lot of deals that's on the table. So of course, like, you know, our media friends like Ian and people like that, we're gonna, you know, always bring a deal if he's interested in. But think about maybe Platinum VIP members to have a deal room where it's like we have like, at Invest Fest, we actually, we actually have like deals being pitched and Platinum VIP members can sit in on the, on the deal, on the deal room. And if they want to get in on the deal, because there was some deals out there. I'll tell you that much.

[David Shands]

That's a great idea.

[Rashad Bilal]

There was some deals out there that hit. If they hit, it's over.

[David Shands]

Yo, y' all broke up. Where the show at? Go to episodes.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, the if is like, like more like when it hits. Because it's gonna hit, is going to hit.

[David Shands]

That's why you gotta layer them with the long term investing with the options.

[Ian Dunlap]

If we're gonna participate, that's all that's a fact.

[Rashad Bilal]

But so, yeah, let us know if you think that's a good idea. We're just.

[David Shands]

I think that's a brilliant idea, to be honest.

[Ian Dunlap]

Prince Marcel said, that's amazing.

[David Shands]

I'm with you.

[Rashad Bilal]

I think that that's going to be a good idea too. Yeah. All right, Ian, any announcements?

[David Shands]

Bring your checkbook, your wire laptop to Invest Fest. Be ready. I'm telling you, this the year. Be ready. Shout out to Trav at Teach Jam. I had an amazing time. Shout out to Keys, Ash, Cash, Matt, everyone I met there, I love you dearly. Rest in peace to my great aunt, Auntie Emma.

[Rashad Bilal]

Rest in peace.

[David Shands]

My cousin Tracy. I'll be calling you tomorrow. I'm so sorry. Oh, my God. Like, spend time with those that you love. Family is everything. Shout out to Math Hoffa. I'll be calling you tomorrow. Shout out to everybody in New York. I saw at the cage with my son. My son was out there getting buckets. I will not lie. Shout out to my baby. And let's have an amazing show and shout out to the continent. So shout out to y' all for manifesting the in the belly. That part is not talking about. And one thing I want the audience to realize is, like, in the interview with Khalees and in the preview that you saw online, look at how happy she is. That tells you everything you need to know about the deal flow.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[David Shands]

It's how joyous and relaxed she's. Oh, my God.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah. Shout out to our brother, Maddie J. We saw him too as well. He put up a nice post about his experience being in Ghana, and I thought it was dope, man. It was one of those moments where you watch somebody that, you know, be vulnerable about their experience. And he was just like, he's at peace, right? He's not in the consistent battle to try to prove that he is something in a country where it's like, it doesn't. What you bring is yourself. So if you haven't checked out his post, check it out. Yeah, we ran into him as well.

[Rashad Bilal]

Before we. Before we end, the last thing we'll say about this is Maddie. So he was in Ghana for my birthday, right before my birthday. So February 26th, I think we left and we ran into. So Maddie J. You don't remember Maddie member used to live in Atlanta. So Maddie was in Lagos. And when he found out that we was in Ghana, Lagos and Ghana is like an hour flight away from each other. So he flew from Nigeria to Ghana in February to just hang out and when we came back now, he never left. He didn't leave.

[David Shands]

Really?

[Ian Dunlap]

He doesn't.

[Rashad Bilal]

He hasn't left since.

[David Shands]

Smart man.

[Ian Dunlap]

So says a lot in his two dollar Uber.

[Rashad Bilal]

Shout out to Maddie J.

[David Shands]

Man.

[Ian Dunlap]

Right? That's. That's a little dude, man. But y' all know how this works, man. We're gonna get into our disclaimer. Do your own research. Our content is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is very important that you do your own analysis before making any investment based on your own personal circumstances. You should take independent financial advice from a professional in connection with or independently research to 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. Research. Give credit to where you heard it from. Shout out to the Red Panda family. Shout out to Eyl University. Tomorrow we back. Tomorrow we back. Ey University. I got my class. We had to reschedule it. So we'll be back tomorrow. So make sure y' all tap in. We're gonna. We're gonna unpack some things and check our table of investment. But yeah, man, let's get this thing going.

[David Shands]

I don't make any money off this. Get your tickets to the deal room. I know I can't get you in. Don't call Ty. He got a new number. Don't call my brother. Don't call Xander if you're not in the. Because if I get a good enough like it's 1988. Here you go. To check right here. 22 equity.

[Ian Dunlap]

I got one for you. I got one I think you're gonna like.

[David Shands]

Gotcha.

[Ian Dunlap]

I definitely got one for you.

[David Shands]

We definitely gonna talk Black Sam all money in.

[Rashad Bilal]

So let's start with gold. And shout out to Black Sam, too. Actually. Shout out to mar. Gold top three. 400 this week. So this is interesting for a few different reasons because that's one of these things. Last year when we did Mike Novograd's show, that was probably in October or September of last year, and he said the two things that he was. He personally was focused on was bitcoin and gold.

[David Shands]

Hello.

[Rashad Bilal]

And they both have done tremendously well. And gold, just one of these things that just keep going, goes up. So I want to talk about goal. And I think it's. It ties into our trip to Africa because so when I. We just came back and if you don't know Ghana, they used to call Ghana the Gold coast because it has so much gold. So Ashanti, like the singer Ashanti, she got her name from the Ashanti tribe in Africa. So there's still a kingdom. People don't know that there's still actual kings in Africa. And one of the kings is in Ashanti kingdom. They still have. They still have a king. And they said they have so much gold. Like, it's just. The level of opulence is just tremendous. So I was talking to my friend Alvin and what I've realized, I didn't fully understand because, you know, the official language of Ghana is English, but they have. Their native language is tree. So most people know at least two to three languages. And you know they know English and they know tree and then pigeon. Pigeon is sort of like broken English, but you probably can't understand it if it's being spoken. So they know English a lot of times. Pigeon and then tree. So I was getting my hair cut and I realized that the barber that was cutting my head didn't know English. So I told album like, yo, bro, like, and they started laughing. I'm like, yo, I thought everybody knows English. He's like, nah, a lot of people don't know English. Like, if you don't go to school, you're not formally trained. Like, people in Ghana that don't know English, he's like, yeah, they speak tree. He's like, you, like, you go to. Up. Up north to Ashanti kingdom. Like, he was like, there's kings with basements full of gold that no. No English at all. He's like driving a rose war, driving a Rolls Royce. So I was like, how they buy a Rolls Royce if they don't. Like if. How you go to the dealership and communicate if the only language that you know is tree, which is a native. He was. He said, look, if they come with a brick of gold and drop it on the table, you think that they're not going to figure out how to.

[David Shands]

Speak money talks.

[Ian Dunlap]

Currency.

[Rashad Bilal]

So I was like, damn, that's kind of true. I say that to say Ghana is actual. Their currency is doing the best as far as percentage uptick this year than any other currency in the world. One of the reasons is that the government has been buying tremendous amounts of gold and they're buying it for lower prices because they have so much gold there. So that they're building up their gold reserves. And Ghana heavy.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep.

[Rashad Bilal]

So this conversation of gold we was having when we was. When we was on the continent about gold and it's working in their favor right now because obviously gold is going.

[Ian Dunlap]

Up in Value and the city is up 16 this year.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. So yeah, somebody said gold is a language. That's a fact. So okay, gold, gold. What do we feel about the direction of gold? Is it, is it just going to continue to go up?

[David Shands]

Absolutely. If you look at the actual chart, gold has been going up since 2004. And given the hyper concentration that most hedge funds are having into the semiconductor space, there's a class of investors that don't want to put their money into tech because they don't want the drawdown and they may not be exposed to bitcoin yet. And gold is an easy alternative asset or currency to invest in. That historically always goes up. Also kudos to Mike Novograts for taking this company public. But I will say if a billionaire like we have to take our feelings out of investing. If a billionaire comes on and declares and doesn't gatekeep, hey, I'm, I'm looking to buy bitcoin and gold. We should take that as law. Anybody can have a mistake. But if he's given two great recommendations, we have to find them. 3260 is the area that I would like to get in long term or if it ever got down back to the 3187 level, I would love it buy in there. But year over year gold has been dominating and I think a lot of people are just looking for beacons of safety given the inflation that's going up, the debt that's going up. I saw interesting stat that the bond market has been losing money for 58 months. Like if that was happening in tech, it would be World War III in Silicon Valley. So in light of that, as Kramer famously said, there's always a bull market somewhere. That's true. And gold is one of them. So yes, you, that's one of the things that you have absolutely need exposure to if you want to have a portfolio that you don't worry about.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, we talked about the four leg strategy where it's like you have the four ETFs that anchor your investment portfolio. Gold might be that fourth laying. Right. If we have a semiconductor, if we have a technology, if we have an overall S P, an etf like gld. If you look at the chart, I mean this is ideally what you want to see from inception to now, whereas it's one of those anchors. I know bitcoin is something obviously Mike Novograss was spot on with that, but he's been spot on with gold. But most people will say, well, how do I invest in gold? Well, you can go the ETF route. And so now I'm thinking about like if I have strong legs to that table, gold might rather than having QQQ and xlk both technology ones. And yes, the allocations inside them differ. GLD might be coming.

[David Shands]

One of those ideas commodity wise for sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

Commodity is that this might be a strong leg based on the long term sustainability of the isa.

[David Shands]

Yeah. The last time gold was in the negative range was 2001. Like.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep.

[David Shands]

Argument over. There's nothing else to argument to argue about. It's been on the hell of a tear. You can go to Costco and get it if you want to but God will give you exposure and hold it for the long term. And if we stay having these political issues go probably get to 5 000, probably by 28 or 29.

[Rashad Bilal]

So yeah, GLD is the, is the ETF. And 10 years ago was 112. Right now it's 311. So it's tripled. Is tripled in 10 years. Which that, that's great.

[David Shands]

That's a hell of a return.

[Rashad Bilal]

And that's, that's, that's you know, buying it as an asset. Now if you want to buy physical gold that's a little bit more involved process. You got to make sure that you know you're buying it and you got, you know, it's certified. Certified that it's legit and all that. We did meet somebody in Ghana that but that's a different situation.

[David Shands]

Somebody in Ghana did what? It don't matter. Just text me and that deal. I want.

[Ian Dunlap]

A two minute conversation turned into an hour and a half conversation.

[David Shands]

Gotcha.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, that might be part of the deal.

[David Shands]

You hard truck me.

[Rashad Bilal]

The Fort Knox play if you want to actually have gold.

[David Shands]

The gold in your possession. Yep.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, the gold thing. Your possession play.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

One of those tips or just like a hat. Not even a hack. But some of the information that we got was look at the countries that are acquiring gold. Really study the countries that are actually acquiring it and adding to their reserves in times like this.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

It tells you a lot.

[David Shands]

It is in this. There's a reason why. Yeah, for sure. Once again I want to repeat, the bond market has been negative the last 58 months. Bitcoin and gold, please hedge long term indexes hedge. Now is not the time to not be an investor is going to cost you too much because I can't guarantee that when y' all try and message Rashad on Instagram in two years he probably not gonna reply. I'm being real. When I didn't know when y' all was coming back. I'm like, damn, let me. Let me write a little notice. Hold on. Don't blame you.

[Rashad Bilal]

Oh, man. Well, I'll tell you this. Let's do something that we haven't done in a while. I want to play a clip because I saw something on Instagram and I posted it yesterday, and it was actually very insightful and inspirational at the same time. So can we play this clip?

[Ian Dunlap]

Let's run it. Let's run it.

[E]

I think that being Magic Johnson, that people say, oh, here's a lot of money, and that wasn't the case. Matter of fact, Magic Johnson worked against me, and they said, oh, we want your picture in your autograph, but we don't want to get give you the money. And so I got turned down seven to eight times from banks about getting capital because I wanted growth and sustainability. And the only way I could do that is to use other people's money. So finally I went up to Sacramento to the pension funds. They turned me down three years in a row. But finally, the fourth year, Calper said, okay, I believe in you. So I'm going to give you $50 million. And if you're successful with the 50, you can come back and get 100 more million. And so I invested in a shopping center in the inner cities, bought it for $22 million, 40% occupied, took it up to 100% occupied, resold the center for 48 million, took the 26 million profit up to Sacramento, and they said, oh, I guess you do no business. So that's what got me started. Then I was able to get access to capital. So this is what happened. I go up to Seattle, knock on Howard show's door, Chairman, CEO of Starbucks Bucks. And I said, look, minorities, we like coffee, too, but we had to drive 45 to an hour outside our community to get some coffee. So I said, if you build them in our community, they're going to be very, very successful. And so we did the deal. He came down to see my movie theaters and see how I manage my theaters. That was going to be if he gonna decide to do the deal or not. And thank God, Whitney Houston's first movie was coming out, Waiting to Exhale. So I had 5,000 black women wrapped around the corner to come see this movie. So he walks up and he said, man, what's going on here?

[David Shands]

You know?

[E]

And I said, waiting Exhale's coming out, so every theater is sold out. He had to see how we managed the theater. And then we went in to see the movie. The movie pops up about 20 minutes in. See, we go to movies different than everybody else. So we start talking to the screen girl, why you still with him? And Howard elbowed me and hey, come on out into the lobby. So we went out to the lobby. He said, magic, I haven't had a movie going experience quite like this. Guess what? That got me the deal. So it worked out great. We built 125. And the great thing is the headline rolling in the LA Times said, no way minorities will pay $3 for a cup of coffee. Thomas, we'll pay $3 for a cup of coffee. We quite don't know what scones are though.

[David Shands]

Yeah, it's a lot of great lessons inside that club.

[Rashad Bilal]

You know what a lot of bars. I, I was like this, this is a case study within itself. And shout out to Magic, because people don't give Magic enough, enough credit. You know he's a billionaire, right? I think he's worse. He's actually worth more money than LeBron. He's worth $1.4 billion according to. According to Forbes. And man, his journey. Because especially at that time, Starbucks didn't even franchise their locations. He actually had the part. He's one of the first people to actually get a Starbucks outside the Starbucks ownership. And he opened 125 Starbucks. And for me personally, when I saw that story, I thought it was pretty interesting because access to capital, something that we speak a lot about. Right? Even him, he had to prove himself and he had to maneuver, get an asset selling asset to actually prove that he can actually be worthy of the access to capital. And then from a scalability standpoint, you started off with 125. He didn't start off with one or two. Right. Also the power, the cultural power. Right. That movie kind of sealed the deal for him. That was if you said 5,000 black women wrapped around to see the thing and just his ability to actually know that there's something in the marketplace that needs to be done. As far as not having something as small as we don't have coffee shops in the neighborhood.

[Ian Dunlap]

Right.

[Rashad Bilal]

That turns into. And then Magic actually ended up selling his portfolio. He's like a junior Bridgman. He sold his. He sold all of his portfolio, then starts buying a life. Bought a life insurance company heavy in real estate. And then he starts buying sports. Sports teams. Like he's. He's part owner in the Washington Football Commanders. He's part owner in Dodgers. It's a Lakers too.

[Ian Dunlap]

LA Sparks. Lakers, not Lakers So he like, he.

[Rashad Bilal]

Literally climbed his way into that billionaire stat. It wasn't like one thing like he really had to scratch and crawl to become a billionaire. And the stories like that, I think sometimes it's just really inspirational and, and also informational as well to actually see. So when I saw that, I'm like, damn, this is kind of like, this is some good game in like two and a half minute clip.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah. And he understood culture. He underscore cultural needs. Before the Starbucks, it was the movie theaters. So like even having them absolutely. In environments where, you know, Regal or Cinema wouldn't put it, he said, like, we'd like to go to the movies too. And so you had the Magic Johnson theaters in parts of LA with nobody would put them. We had a Magic Johnson Theater in 125th street where nobody thought people, yo, we like going to movies, we're going to support it. And so out. Once you bring it, they'll come. And then now you can build infrastructure around it. So then you get the Starbucks and you get other retail spaces to add to what you already had. So, I mean, it was brilliant. It was brilliant.

[David Shands]

And I think a great lesson in performing at a high level, no matter what you're doing, like the thing that you're doing now is going to lead to the next example. Like, I was talking to H this weekend, shout out to my guy, he was asking about Africa as well. I'm like, all roads lead to a certain place. But it's about how can you do one thing incredibly well and then people will open up the opportunities for you to do other things. I think it's a great lesson to not belittle anything that you're doing because people are going to watch your level of work ethic and your efficiency for the next opportunity. So hell of a lesson, hell of a clip.

[Ian Dunlap]

However, said he put the master Johnson did in the jungles. Who else is gonna put a movie theater there?

[Rashad Bilal]

No, he was doing it. He put it in like all the inner city because at that time people take it for granted. But at that time there was no movie theater.

[David Shands]

It's not being done.

[Rashad Bilal]

It wasn't done in the inner city. So he had the foresight to put movie theaters in the inner city. That worked. Then he had the foresight to put Starbucks in the inner city. That worked. So.

[Ian Dunlap]

And his name alone attracted people to come to it, not just regular patrons. I remember going just a few years ago, it was like there was premieres. People were having their premieres at his theater. Mission Impossible was There like Paw Patrol was. There, like, premieres are coming. Just because of the cachet of the name associated with the person who. Who was owning the data. So, you know, it's an incredible story in entrepreneurship, but it's also an incredible story in leadership. Yes, we know from being on the court. But like, look at how he's leading in business.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[David Shands]

And on top of that, I'll say to all my black entrepreneurs, don't let anyone make you think that there's not opportunity or money and solely investing in or targeting black people. Target is going through hell right now for a few decisions. For taking us for granted. Nike is going through hell right now for a few bad decisions. They always want to tell us that it may not be an ideal target market, but I think we've proven that's not true. But if you don't believe me, believe Target.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I mean, how many quarters in a row are we gonna have to see Target not meet the expectations I saw? The next one is now Dollar General. There's a target. Well, all upon attended.

[David Shands]

You better call.

[Ian Dunlap]

You on the clock, Cardi.

[David Shands]

Steph, you better call everybody black.

[Ian Dunlap]

You know, not Cardi. Busy right now dealing with some other stuff.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's a fact. Salute to Cardi. But. Yeah, but now shout out to. Shout out to Magic. Maybe once a month, we could do like a business highlight. I like somebody that has, you know, risen to a high level of success. And like I said, that mean there's only a. A handful of black billionaires in the United States of America. From America.

[David Shands]

And I'll talk to quite a few, though.

[Rashad Bilal]

He's number seven. So he's one of the richest black people in American history. On a low. I don't think he gets his. I don't think he gets enough credit or enough recognition. So we gotta highlight our. Our superheroes while they're still living. So salute the magic Man. Congratulations on achieving that billionaire status. And keep. Keep pushing the culture forward. For sure. It's needed.

[Ian Dunlap]

I got Prodigy playing in my head right now. Young black entrepreneur.

[Rashad Bilal]

Let's talk about Tesla. He said that boy Elon off that ketamine. Allegedly.

[David Shands]

Is it alleged?

[Rashad Bilal]

I thought allegedly.

[Ian Dunlap]

Alleged. Okay, okay, we're going always alleged. Always alleged. Especially Special K. Special K serial.

[David Shands]

And that black eye, that blackout.

[Ian Dunlap]

Serious. I got two kids. I've never been punched.

[David Shands]

I've told my son to punch me before and he wouldn't dare do it, but I. I' ma stay out of. But it wouldn't look like that.

[Ian Dunlap]

I was serious.

[David Shands]

Pray for Elon yo, he got the lock jaw.

[Rashad Bilal]

His jaw tweaking is not. And dozing.

[David Shands]

He's meditating. Active meditation. That boy tweet we're going to invest fest. Active meditation.

[Ian Dunlap]

Active meditation, Yes. X punched him.

[David Shands]

He said, scotty's calling me. Hey, he was geeked up. Yeah, man.

[Ian Dunlap]

Piped up a dog food turned up.

[David Shands]

It's one thing to see him operate so efficiently even while meditating so often. It's a feat to see. You gotta commend them for being that active with the kids and the companies and floating that much.

[Ian Dunlap]

Well, he stepped down from his government position.

[David Shands]

Well played.

[Rashad Bilal]

He caught that Bobby Brown. Joe. They said.

[David Shands]

For sure. Told y' all and I told y' all that was gonna break up real soon. Faster than I thought. Put it. Put yes in chat. If I told y' all that little relationship was gonna break up real fast.

[Ian Dunlap]

Terence Thornton would be proud.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay. All right, so as far as the business sides, a few different things with Tesla. First, Elon said that there's no need for Tesla to acquire Uber. So is that. Is that a strategic flex or is he missing a key opportunity for integration in the autonomous war for autonomous driving cars in the future?

[David Shands]

My only Elon is richer and wealthier than me, so I don't want to offer too much critique, but I will say I think the thing that is misguided with his Robo Taxi network is the dates that he's provided. He's offering dates that seem impossible to be achieved, and I don't think Uber wants to sell to them. They've done a great job of turning that business around. I do think that the Robo Taxi network could have great impact if he said, in three years, we're gonna. And here's the plan, year by year to get to that milestone. But to say I'm going to have it in this short of a Runway, I don't see how that's possible when you are also working on the robots. Starlink is the real gym that you really need to focus on. The underground tunnel at the company escapes me at the time. The boring company isn't working. You just went through a breakup with Trump and post breakup, sometimes doing business post breakup is tough. Maybe that's why he was meditating in the office on the last little visit. You know, the last little visit before when y' all break up. But you gotta see each other one more time. I wish you would give further, well, better milestones, but also give a more of a window for execution. So, yeah, the stock has been doing well regardless Like I said, him being focused is great. If you can get in at 3:17 79, I wouldn't be mad at the entry there, but I think he is doing the company a disservice by giving these deadlines and windows that are almost impossible to hit.

[Ian Dunlap]

The deadline is moved. It was supposed to be this June for the. The reveal of the robo taxi has now been pushed to August 8th. So I'm with you on that. There's a couple of things though, right. When you think about a company like Uber, what are they great at? Global routing, logistics data. They have a huge customer base. When you think about Tesla in that standpoint, do they have the mobility infrastructure? As of now, probably not, right? Not just yet. What it does, and this is one of the things that you've always said, Ian, and I'll give you credit for it, is that everybody's your competition. Yeah. And so if you don't look to merge or try to acquire, not that it's on the table, somebody will. And a company like Google, which, which has the way most self driving cars that we've seen. Right. We were in San Francisco, we saw it, we saw it in Atlanta. If they can strike a deal with Uber now, the robo taxi kind of has a competition in the space where it's like they have the data, they have the infrastructure and they have the logistics combined with that base. And a company that's already doing autonomous.

[David Shands]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

You may not be needed.

[David Shands]

The big lesson from last year that every company needs to learn from Drake is don't be aware of the one person who can beat you. What if three or four team up to actively destroy your career? Google together with Uber would provide a lot of problems because now you have to ask which company is better, Google or Tesla. You have to take Google all day. And Uber CEO has done a hell of a job. You have to give. Given the, the margin and operating margin issues that they had and the turnaround and the fallout from Travis before he took over, he's done a, done a hell of a job. While Elon was not maybe the most focused and maybe some promises weren't delivered that were supposed to be given to him as well. That's the other part about politics. Like once the cash is in and you start to upset the people on K Street and in the office. Yeah, your money's already in, bro. You can go home. Yeah, go home.

[Ian Dunlap]

And there's, there's no real like verbiage that says that, hey, we can't partner Waymo with Uber and for sure.

[David Shands]

Right.

[Ian Dunlap]

So if you get both those companies in rideshare, they, They've taken over the entire market.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Elon. Well, he said he's gonna be more focused, so hopefully. I don't know if that's what that means. Hopefully. You know, he might have to go sit down for a little bit.

[David Shands]

He said he's sleeping in, in the office.

[Ian Dunlap]

Starlink is the priority.

[Rashad Bilal]

He might have to go sit down a little bit.

[Ian Dunlap]

You know, neuralink as well. They just had a competitor that has now put a chip inside of somebody as well.

[Rashad Bilal]

So is Twitter is access to write off at this point, is that ever going to be recouped or it's just the value? Just in the propaganda that is able to be.

[David Shands]

I think he got the value once he made it to the White House and got the contracts. That was part of the strategic investment. So if he put up 288, what did he pay for X? He made that back in contracting already 42 billion.

[Rashad Bilal]

And, and, and for people that don't know. So X was a company that started from Jack Dorsey. He's another, he's another guy that people don't really speak about a lot because he's. He's like Jay Z's best friend, Jack Dorsey. So he's a guy that people don't speak about a lot, but he's one of them ones too. Super billionaire.

[David Shands]

He.

[Rashad Bilal]

He actually co founder of Twitter. Then Block, formerly known as Square. Then he purchased title, the title acquisition. Cash app, they own. Cash app.

[David Shands]

Yep. One of the earliest investors into like institutions adopting Bitcoin. But before Kathy or around the same time, before Michael.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. So Jack. And he's a very, he's like more of an introverted person. Yeah, he doesn't, he doesn't like make public appearances too much or speak. Yeah. Publicly. But he's very intelligent guy and somebody that if you're in business, you should definitely be aware of because he's one of those, those guys that's been making moves for a long time. So I look at business like you gotta look at like sports. Like, you know, if you, if you, if I tell my son, like, if you want to go to the NBA, you gotta watch not just LeBron, you gotta, you gotta watch like all the greats. Latrell Sprewell's highlight tape. Like, you know, I mean, like, you gotta study the greats. You gotta know like Karl Malone's like, back down move. Because this is what you want to do for a living. You gotta study game tape. And you gotta know how did Gary Payton play so such good defense? What did he do right?

[Ian Dunlap]

Like, how did Hamilton come off the curl?

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Or like the killer crossover. Like, you know, like you gotta. Actually, so I say that to say if you're in business, you got, you got to do the same thing. You got to study Mark Cuban and you got to study, you know, Jack Dorsey, you gotta study the greats in business. You got to know who Aliko Dangote is. You gotta, for sure, you gotta look at Robert Smith's backstory. Like, very important for you to have this type of reference because that's what you're aspiring to, right? Some people say, well, they're billionaires. Like, I'm just trying to start out. Well, you should aspire to be the best.

[David Shands]

You got to study the greats.

[Rashad Bilal]

If you coming into the league, you want to be Kobe, you want to be LeBron, you're not trying to be the seventh man coming off the bench. A journeyman. Like, that's not who you should base your career after.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Study the habits. Study the habits.

[Rashad Bilal]

For sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

Success leads. Cool.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's what Nip said. Study rich people's habits like it's your homework. That's a fact. That's the homework. So you know, it's one of these things you never know. But you gotta, gotta do the homework, Ian.

[David Shands]

Okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

Always give an opportunity. When given opportunity, gotta be prepared. Preparation.

[David Shands]

Every shot is a game winning shot. So I keep telling y' all, be ready. You never know when your opportunity may come.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's a fact. So the robo taxi hype, is that something that is just a write off.

[David Shands]

Or is it by August? It's, I mean, it's. It's something that he says, okay, if you have something you aspire to, but you can't pull it off in time. Is it or not? It is. I'm sorry. I think he can pull it off in two years, maybe three if he's focused by August. No, it's hard to get a fire vendor boost from now, I was gonna say this sell.

[Ian Dunlap]

And then like, I guess, right, because if you look at the valuation of the company is being based on. This is not a car company. Right. It's based on the valuation of the future technology. Robo Taxi being one of them.

[David Shands]

I mean, at some point he's either going to have to deliver on the robo taxi or he's going to have to put Neural Link and Starlink and Tesla all in one bundle to. To make a conglomerate. I don't think he wants to now if he could acquire Uber though, it would give him his way to off ramp and move the company and he can be chairman and now you can have another CEO.

[Ian Dunlap]

So we keep saying August because that's when they're going to reveal the auto the robo taxi. It got moved to August 8th. It was supposed to happen this month but it got moved to August 8th.

[David Shands]

Go get all the tokens you can from Google VO3 and put together the AI presentation. Actually being on the road it won't be this August. If that's the case I got some dinosaurs for sale at Invest Fest vendor booth 28. I'm get you a pterodactyl if we just gonna flat the flat out lie.

[Rashad Bilal]

What get your vendables. What okay, switching gears. You know being spend a lot of time in Africa. It was a few different things that we picked up. I will say this about the, about the political because I'm always interested to know how what do people think about America not being in America. Right. And it was some, some interesting consensus. Of course everybody think nobody thinks the same but from we're talking to pretty high level people, especially people in government and a lot of people said similar situations where they said Donald Trump they said, they said we're going into investments.

[David Shands]

My brother, my brother, my black brother. So unless we're going back to Africa tomorrow, remember there's no edit we are.

[Ian Dunlap]

Live now in the flesh. I don't think it's surprising what I think people could assume this is what they said.

[Rashad Bilal]

The thought process said that Republicans are usually more welcomed on the continent because they're hands off. They have a hands off policy. So they was like, you know what? Like we can just deal with, with the hands off situation because it's like just let us do our thing. They said the Democrats are more stifling and they want to, they want to, they want to help in, in the, in the gaze of, you know, interference. So a lot of people was actually there's a lot of pro Trump sentiment.

[Ian Dunlap]

I don't know if it was pro. I was.

[David Shands]

That's right. Like a mighty maggot a day. Rashad, hold on.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think they were understanding of why he's in, in the position he's in. But it was also a disbelief of the uncertainty that we face and why are we still there if there's all this uncertainty? Why are you going to a. Why are you investing in a place why do you continue to be in a place where there's all this uncertainty and it doesn't look like it's going to change, but they're definitely pro Trump. I wouldn't put that.

[Rashad Bilal]

They had a rally form last time when he lost the election. They had it.

[Ian Dunlap]

Which country? Because we're in a few countries, the.

[Rashad Bilal]

Country shall remain nameless. Not important. But the bottom line is that. The bottom line is that the thoughts was the tariffs. They said, yo, tariffs not gonna hurt us anyway. They said, you ever hear terrorists on any African countries? Like, they was like, the terrorists ain't gonna hurt us anyway. It was like, we'd rather have somebody. At least we know this is what we're gonna have for four years. Y' all gonna let us. You're gonna stay out of our way. We're gonna, we're gonna be able to just operate correctly. Fine. We're good with that. But they was like when the other side got in and it's like, oh, y' all coming over here. Y' all trying to do this, you're trying to do that. You're meddling in things. Interesting global perspective.

[David Shands]

Yeah. Be in the deal room. We'll tell you which country. I'm gonna find out. I'm gonna let you know right away. So if y' all go there. Oh, they had a rally for him. What, 2016.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[David Shands]

That's crazy.

[Rashad Bilal]

One of these things, you know, One of these things. But I will say this, too. Another thing that's very interesting is that people talk about the minerals in Africa, and obviously that's been well documented, but they said the next. What's even going to be worth more than that in the next 50 years is vegetation and cattle and livestock. Like farming, which is interesting that Khalees has a farm. The farming industry in Africa is gonna. That's already big, but it's gonna go crazy. Africa, I'm speaking about Africa as a continent because it's all over. Right. But the sub Saharan, there's a need for vegetation in the world, and Africa is, is, Is going to play a major part in the world's food source moving forward. And that's something that people have already started to pay attention to.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

And that's. That's not being talked about enough. But mega farms, like thousands of what they call hectares a hectare.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Is 1.5 acres.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep.

[Rashad Bilal]

So you're seeing people buy 300 hectares and 400, 500 hectares and growing everything from fruit, vegetables, tea. Tea farm. We saw it. We saw it. Acres, acres and acres of teeth. I never saw a tea farm before. They had tea farms in Kenya.

[Ian Dunlap]

You got it. So, like Kenya is very unique in the sense of its elevation is. And especially around Nairobi and surrounding areas, the soil, how fertile it is, obviously the temperature, the rain, the volcanic ash, that helps. It's very ideal for farm. So, like, you just. You're just driving, you're seeing nothing but farming. Farming vegetation, onions, potato, tea everywhere. And it's like, oh, this is a skill set that number one the locals have and they're willing to teach, but it's something that we should be learning as well. Like, it's very different here. I remember when we were trying to figure out farming in. In New York, and that was for a whole different product, but it was like, wait, where do we even get these skills from? Who's supposed to teach us? You know what I mean? It's very different.

[Rashad Bilal]

I'll say this too, about the farming thing. So in Kenya, you know, 80 of the roses that come that are in Europe come from Kenya. So they said during Valentine's Day this year, so many roses that go from Kenya to Europe, that they have a private airport just for roses.

[David Shands]

That's crazy.

[Rashad Bilal]

Just for roses. 80% of the Valentine's Day roses in Europe came from Kenya, Italy or France. Like, they literally sent planes full of roses to meet the demand. To meet the demand.

[Ian Dunlap]

All you love bombing.

[Rashad Bilal]

Who even thinks about something like that, right? Who? Who? Who knew who?

[David Shands]

The businesses that are most lucrative are ones that are hidden and no one really talks about this is happening. FBO for roses is crazy.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. They have a. Their own airport for roses.

[David Shands]

Wow. Shout out to Stefan Diggs earlier.

[Ian Dunlap]

Love Bomber.

[Rashad Bilal]

It just, just confirmed my suspicions.

[David Shands]

We're gonna talk about the.

[Rashad Bilal]

The love bomb.

[Ian Dunlap]

How much you.

[David Shands]

How much you love me and a money flex. I got more money than you flex, too.

[Rashad Bilal]

And. But that's something to think about. Just because in Ghana, they have cocoa.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep.

[Rashad Bilal]

And they. They produce, like, between Ghana, I think Ivory coast, they produce 80 of the world's cocoa. It's crazy amount of cocoa that comes out of Ghana. So agriculture is going to be the new oil in the next 50 years.

[Ian Dunlap]

There's a post about that. And that's. That's one of those things when we talk about the content, we talk about a lot, but everything that you need to survive, they have everything. Literally.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's why the Europeans came in.

[David Shands]

And now the Chinese are trying to infiltrate everything.

[Ian Dunlap]

Everything you could think of, they have.

[David Shands]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

I should tell you something.

[David Shands]

Wow. Put out the propaganda to demonize the continent. Everyone's going there to invest.

[Ian Dunlap]

They're already there.

[David Shands]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

They're already there.

[Rashad Bilal]

Heavy. Heavy. Shout out to everybody that purchased. You deserve to be rooked. You deserve to be rich. Barnes and Nobles released their their top books of of 2025 so far and you deserve to be rich was on the list.

[David Shands]

That's fire, y' all too cool. Smile and be happy. Yo.

[Ian Dunlap]

I said, yo, I appreciate. That's love, man. Yeah, everybody in Ghana. Shout out to everybody on the continent that was really tapped in and was like, yo, I have it. I can't wait to get it. We need more bookstores out here so we can have it. It's dope, man. It's dope.

[David Shands]

They won't say it when you do your little review. Review that.

[Ian Dunlap]

Please.

[David Shands]

Go review that.

[Rashad Bilal]

The review play.

[David Shands]

Yes.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay. Okay. Let's talk about tech stocks.

[David Shands]

Yes. So one of my favorite areas, you.

[Rashad Bilal]

Got Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft. Are they still reliable long term investments? Are we seeing peak earnings mass by buybacks and accounting tailwinds?

[David Shands]

Everyone put in chat. I will hold for a five to ten year period. These companies aren't going anywhere. Shout out to my guy Sloss, I talked to you earlier but even meta, hell of a move. They plan to automate all of the ads with AI by the end of 2026. Now for those of you who have ever tried to write an ad or create the copy or do an image, no, it's not perfect yet. But imagine if they get this down. They already are the number one ad platform I think for small businesses. But if they can make it more efficient. Once again, everyone, Earth is your competitor. You're playing a return on advertising game now and not availability of inventory game. So if, if Zuckerberg can say hey, for every small business owner, I know we're having an issue in the economy, but the AI is designed to get you a 30 to 60% return on investment. That's an hell of an idea to have. I know in the 90s and early 2000s it was software is eating the world, but AI is going to eat up a lot of the software space. But this is a hell of an innovation. Despite Apple missing a boat on a few things, they're still giving a great return. Amazon's doing a great job. So and I was saying that this weekend, past weekend at Teach Jam, like technology runs our world. Whether it's Google, whether it's YouTube, Meta, Microsoft, open AI which is owned by Microsoft, you can't avoid like there's no natural gas play to invest in that is going to trump the technology space. Just hold for a five or ten year period.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I'm with you. And I actually put those in order. I think Microsoft obviously is going to leave. When we look at the news last week of OpenAI and the deal that they've done in the UAE, that just speaks to me about data center revolutions again and that speaks about that 49 ownership that they have in it. They've had investment inside of the cloud space. Copilot is starting to monetize. Amazon, as you know, has always been my favorite. Even them advertising has grown Meta strong. Like you said, the avenue that they have grown in is, is the, is from advertising. They still, this is crazy because the Metaverse is still in their books and so the reality labs that was responsible for that, that's still a debt that they're still dealing with. So again, that's why we talk about five to 10 years, because eventually that will come off the books. Meta's in a strong position. Apple, I mean, they will figure this out. They will figure this out. I know we talk about stock buybacks, but usually when you, when you hear stock buybacks, people should look at it as. Most of the times companies are buying that because they're looking at their, their company saying, we're undervalued, we're going to buy it here. That's confidence, looking into the future of what we're going to do. In terms of innovation, man, we can say it over and over. We still haven't seen the product. And so those margins on services, they're gonna have to carry it for a while until that, that new innovation comes. But they're all four strong. They're all strong companies. If I had to rank them in order, I go Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and.

[David Shands]

Then Apple and Zuckerberg and Palmer took a picture together. You robbed the boy and the boy got so good that you had to go make up for him. We had to. Great partnership between Andrew and Matter, though. And the new move for sure is to get out of consumer tech and go into government hardware. Hell of a partnership. Like or do both at the same damn time.

[Ian Dunlap]

The same damn time.

[David Shands]

Well played. You, you have to give it to him. Zuckerberg is an elusive opponent to be able to kill like you. You have to give it to him. And kudos to Palmer for agreeing to the partnership as well.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, young, young entrepreneurs doing it at the highest level.

[David Shands]

Like we always said, there's no money in beef. A lot of y' all take the angle. Boy, that look 22 cent per click. It does not work, bro. I'm telling you, like I know Carl Icon and had the little moment of CNBC 15 years ago. There's no. There's way more money in collaborative collaboration and strategic partnership opposed to I have opposition like bro. It's not the way he literally stole Oculus from him and he came back and did a partnership deal anyway.

[Ian Dunlap]

There's no business, there's. There's no money in that. It only brings police.

[David Shands]

Yep.

[Rashad Bilal]

Ask questions if put put some questions in chat. We are live for sure. Maybe we can get to to a few questions from the audience perhaps. But yeah, put some questions in chat if you have questions.

[David Shands]

Did you see Justin Bieber? You better get your act together. Did you see Haley Bieber's line got acquired by Elf?

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep.

[David Shands]

One billion that makeup span. We talked about Elf a couple years ago. But that beauty space despite having some pullbacks is a definitely a good one to look into. They they've had definitely a rougher year but that gap up was pretty nice from 50 to 113 77. So for those of you who are interested, that cosmetic space is a very interesting space to look at and invest in. And it's still relative.

[Ian Dunlap]

That celebratize influencer. We've seen it now five times from influence to celebratize two billionaire. Right. We saw Rihanna do it. Selena Gomez has done it. Kylie Jenner has done it.

[David Shands]

This boy about to drop the ball dry twice with Selena and Haley. You better while scooter taking all your publishing. You better send them roses. Hey, what's the address for Kenya? Boy, you better go to Kenya.

[Ian Dunlap]

I forgot he was with both of them. That's a fact. Haley has now done it and Lady Gaga is on her way. So five times. Celebrities create beauty brand. And Kim, we talk about skins but she had the skin layer skin care line as well. We've seen it over and over. Right. If you have influence and you have celebrity prowess, you can use that and turn it into business. Especially when people are watching you and admiring how you look. You can use that to your advantage. And so we we've seen it six times already in the past five years.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Somebody in the audience said what's your thoughts on mgk? That's Vanguard Mega Cap Growth Index Fund.

[David Shands]

I thought they was talking about the rapper.

[Ian Dunlap]

I don't listen to him.

[David Shands]

This is actually one that is pretty good. That is not talked about a lot. 330, 107 is where I would like to enter the stock and then worst case scenario if it gets to 309.75 that's where I would like to buy in but MGK, I like it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Somebody else had a question and said what's your thoughts? We talked, I think we talked about this before. But Michael Berry, he sold all of his Nvidia and he's loading up on Estee Lauder. He's bullish on Nvidia. He's bearish on Nvidia and bullish on.

[David Shands]

Estee Lauder over what time horizon before I. Because I, I like Michael Burry a lot. Big shortage, shout out to Stevie Smith. He whatever Elon on. He got a bad batch of that too. I'm gonna just say it like. And this is why not to toot my own horn. That's why I'll be telling y' all like. Like listen to me, I got you in the video early. Continue to hold that. I, I would. Okay, this is a sector discussion. Would you in your right mind swap out of tech and enter into cosmetic beauty knowing that the margin is not high enough because Essay Lauder is not going to get a 600 billion dollar investment from Saudi Arabia.

[Ian Dunlap]

Why would it?

[David Shands]

No.

[Ian Dunlap]

Look at his performance over the past five years.

[David Shands]

He needs to recalibrate the strategy or insights that he is currently having.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I would be interested to see what he's basing that off of. In December of 2020 of 2021 it was at $366. As a peak over the past five years. It is currently trading at $66.

[David Shands]

Yeah. And it has probability of going to 27 worst case scenario. No, he knows a wrong sector. Yeah, you can't move out of the wrong sector. So tech is driving gdp. Thirdly, Estee Lauder is not even a okay for the women. What products from Estee Lauder do you currently love? Just like the white diamonds of the category. Like shout out to Estee Lauder and everybody in management. But no, this is not the route I would go. It's like picking Nike over Microsoft right now. But shout out to Mike will love you. Talk to you at Invest Fest or after or before. I'm on cleanup mode today.

[Rashad Bilal]

What? Oh man.

[David Shands]

Just like picking chicken over chicken salad. I'm not gonna lie, I'm gonna keep it a buck. No, no. But it is a good lesson if you are rotating. That's why I'm. I hate sector rotation. If you rotate too much, you'll end up having a portfolio that you have to completely liquidate and start over. He may be saying I won't invest in Nvidia because the cost basis is too high. Kathy did the same thing Cost basis is too high to enter. So while it's affordable, I can. I can see him getting it in and maybe hoping it goes back up to 89, but it's just the wrong.

[Ian Dunlap]

It's such a. Such a drastic. Like, this isn't Apples and Origins. I don't even know what to compare this to.

[David Shands]

Yeah, it's like not streaming on YouTube and putting it on a mixtape CD. Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Vine or something like that.

[David Shands]

That's not the way to go. But kudos to Mike. I like him a lot.

[Rashad Bilal]

So let's do one more question before we get back to the regular schedule program, and then maybe later on so we can do questions again, because we get a lot of good questions. But shout out to everybody on chat. 6, 000 people appreciate y' all.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yo, yo.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, yeah, chat. Yeah, chat. We back. We back at it. Okay.

[David Shands]

I miss doing a live show. I'm not gonna lie. See if we get all the penthouses by each other in Kenya. Go room to room like Duke Dennis.

[Ian Dunlap]

Shout out to ddg. Man, he was out in Houston. They try to line him up, you know.

[David Shands]

Yeah, I saw it.

[Ian Dunlap]

He was on. He was streaming. They were like, yo, get out of the restaurant. They line you up behind you. Got right out of there.

[Rashad Bilal]

They try to rob them.

[David Shands]

Shout out to the chat.

[Ian Dunlap]

The chat was like, yo, they're lining you up behind you, bro.

[Rashad Bilal]

Chat, chat, chat.

[Ian Dunlap]

Saved his life in there.

[David Shands]

For real.

[Rashad Bilal]

Chat.

[Ian Dunlap]

Shout out to Htown.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay, so this is a question from the audience. This is one of these stocks that's going up 50 in a month. So I think it's got a lot of attention. But the name of the. The ticker is APLD.

[Ian Dunlap]

APL.

[Rashad Bilal]

APLD. Applied Digital Corporation. Choppy waters for 10 years. Choppy waters for five years. Chubby water for two years. Choppy waters for one year. Choppy waters for six months.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, but it's one month.

[Rashad Bilal]

Looks good.

[David Shands]

Yeah. One more time.

[Ian Dunlap]

There's a reason it. It happened today. They. They signed with Core Weave for AI lease agreement. So we spoke about Core Weave. Shout out to everybody that. That has invested in Core Weave. I know that's one of the things when we talk about IPO that we. You know, we're gonna wait at least six months. If you didn't wait six months, I mean, you're making a killing right now. I think it IPO'd at 39. It's in over 130 right now, or hit up 130. And so today, they announced an agreement with Applied Digital to help them Build out the data center. So this is one of these data center plays where Core Weave will provide it with AI high performance computing infrastructure with Nvidia. So that's an Nvidia partner. They're going to provide it rather and we talked about this, the cost analysis that it would take for somebody to create their own data center to put the racks and to put all the infrastructure inside. Corweave is now, now put it at a space where you can now actually run rent. Right. Rather than purchasing it. Nvidia has partnered with it to give it gpus and you can rent the space and apply digital. It has just announced that partnerships which they went up 48% today. So that's why you saw this move.

[David Shands]

If you got in around five bucks I would take some profit, maybe 30%. If you're looking for entry back into it, I will wait to maybe 550 or 564.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[David Shands]

And re enter. It's going to pull back some. Normally historically when it got to 11 anytime, it always pulled back. So I would wait for probably 564 to re enter. But I would definitely take some profit.

[Ian Dunlap]

I would even suggest that you look at Court Weave instead.

[David Shands]

Better investment, right.

[Ian Dunlap]

The company is actually pricier but better investment has caused it to have such a. Because more companies are going to say we can't afford to create our own data center. We what is the next option? And Core Weave is now in position to help companies small to mid tier companies actually participate in this AI revolution. And so Core we. It was on our list when we came back from the Nvidia conference. We said what are the companies that they're talking about? What are the companies that they're talking about? In every slide that Jensen brought up great investment brought up every single slide. And so that would be a company again. We mentioned it when they ipo, but rather than try to take a risk with applied, look at the company that actually helped him appreciate like they did today.

[David Shands]

Yeah. But if you got in, great job. Absolutely. Great job.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay. All right. Let's talk about Palantir. Palantir landed a 795 million dollar federal contract.

[Ian Dunlap]

Surprise.

[Rashad Bilal]

IRS and Social Security. Is this a long term moat building moment or just a headline driven speculation on federal AI use?

[David Shands]

Shout out to Alex Carp. Shout to the architect and Peter Teal. One of my concerns is, I mean they wrote it out. Basically you have Big brother at scale that will begin to target Americans in the country. Hey baby, I'm broadcasting. I'm. I'm broadcasting. I love you, you, you love making man is the most goofy, crazy man. Am I? Okay, how about this? No, no. Illustrative moment. You know what's goofy? Not playing Madden for four months.

[Ian Dunlap]

Damn.

[David Shands]

I want you to come back. I want you to come back. Come on. Come back wherever you act up at. That's what I'm gonna demonstrate that. Four months, my boy. Okay.

[Ian Dunlap]

Hey, yo, you just lost Madden 26, man. Shout out to Saquon. You're on the COVID So if I.

[David Shands]

Do this with my son, when y' all get to talking to the comments, I'm gonna demonstrate the same way when.

[Ian Dunlap]

Your son calls you this man, you know?

[David Shands]

Oh yeah. Just. You just. You don't got to do all. Just one time. Pow, pow.

[Ian Dunlap]

Damn.

[David Shands]

So like Palantir. I'm a surveillance. Beat that ass. No, I'm joking. These are jokes. Allegedly. But no Palantir is going to surveil Americans at the highest rate we've ever seen. And this is my issue with black and brown people. I'm going to be very serious in a lot of dei. How can you be pro Palantir when that weaponry is going to be used against us?

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[David Shands]

So here we are. Investment is good. But if you wouldn't invest in chattel slavery or other things, I don't know how you would invest here.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, I, I feel like it is a long term moat building moment as they, I mean we already spoke about the government contracting. How much of a percentage of the revenue comes with that. But you're starting to deal with irs, Social Security. I mean you, you, you build extreme targeting. Yeah. Like who else do you need? Right? Like you're already dealing with the defense. You. Now you got. They start just dealing with every government agency. You, you really can't compete with that. So the moat just got bigger. We're talking almost a billion. A billion dollar federal contract. Another one.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

Who can facilitate that type of infrastructure and deliver. And I mean obviously they are, they were at the right time, in the right place with the right technology. So here we go again. We said the street when we were in the mountains in Switzerland and we went to see what palta and we were talking to the people, they were like, this is what's coming. This. Here it is. Here we are. This is enemy of the state type technology.

[David Shands]

And black and brown people wanted this for return. It's too late now. We got all the little data. It's tough.

[Ian Dunlap]

You'll know your breakfast.

[Rashad Bilal]

What do we feel about China? You know, they worked out the deal and then two days Ago, Trump said that they, they grossly violated the terms of agreement. He didn't actually give any explanation. Yeah, we said they grossly violated terms of agreement. Is this political pandering or is this a sign that the China situation could actually get a little worse?

[David Shands]

I just think we don't have any leverage and there's not a lot of respect there. They even brought out with the taco trade, like you're going back and forth, you're going to say 100 tariff, then it goes down to 50 or 200. Now it's a hundred. It's a little bit of gesturing. I don't think that he's maybe necessarily pandering, but as we, we've highlighted before, I don't think he's done a great job with sticking to a plan. I don't think it was completely thought out by him and everyone who may be in office and what the blowback can be. So we have no leverage. We need China, China needs us. But they're willing to stay informed a little bit more on their decision.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, they said they're going to speak one on one at some point this week, which is a good sign. Yeah. So when the headline read today, I'm like, oh my gosh, here we go. Expect to see a pullback in some of these tech companies and definitely detect stocks again, obviously with the, the 145 tariffs that were put in place and then pulled back and 90 day suspension. So at some point maybe we'll get some certainty around this. Right. If they talk face to face, maybe they'll, they'll figure something out. But yeah, I feel like it was a bit of a panda because if they were going to meet already, you know, this is just that first headline until something else happens.

[David Shands]

It's not a good thing to say going into a meeting either.

[Ian Dunlap]

That you just.

[David Shands]

And if anything he's going to give us consistent uncertainty.

[Ian Dunlap]

Consistent uncertainty.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's interesting. We want to, the situation might even have to just go out there some for some investigative journalism because there's so much conversation that we've been having about China for the last five years. Yeah, I think, I think, you know, it's time to just see what's actually happening in China. I'm interested.

[Ian Dunlap]

Pay my visit.

[Rashad Bilal]

I'm interested.

[David Shands]

You gonna see Gigi, perhaps? Gotcha.

[Rashad Bilal]

Stay tuned, stay tuned. Stay tuned.

[David Shands]

Ladies and gentlemen, speaking of China, Jamie diamond said China is a potential adversary, but I worry more about the enemy within. What do you think about his commentary and Jamie starting to speak more freely about the concerns of America.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well, he also said that America shouldn't be focused on buying bitcoin. It should be focused on buying guns.

[David Shands]

Jimmy want to be on blackout so bad.

[Ian Dunlap]

Say what I want now.

[Rashad Bilal]

Guns, military, artillery. What else did he say? He said guns, military, artillery. And he said a third thing through.

[David Shands]

It's another good sign coming from one of the preeminent leaders in the banking space. But he ready to go. He's ready to go? Like go? What do you mean leave J.P. morgan, you think? Yes. Run for president and you're gonna get shellacked. You better go get Bernie. The democratic side is not working, my boy. You better go. Wait. Now if he was pro bitcoin and then ran. See, that's why I like all the. America shouldn't. You should have backtracked. America needs bitcoin and guns. The bitcoin party would have got it done.

[Ian Dunlap]

I would like them to find who the enemy within. Is.

[David Shands]

This the part in the enemy of state where we like get thrown in the back of the van? We can't have the conversation.

[Ian Dunlap]

Not on Google's YouTube if you like. If you like to speak freely. No.

[David Shands]

You know what?

[Ian Dunlap]

Before, when he brought up China, it just hit me. We were talking to a lot of the, you know, the people in Africa. One of the things they talked about was evs. The EV market came up and we were just kind of questioning like what's the EV that everybody's looking for? And they were like, it's not even close. Byd. Not even close. Like there's not even a second thought like it's byd. And I'm like, well, what is it? What, what about it? They were like, it's efficient. He apologize, it's too late. He just saw that, that Saquons on the COVID of 26. The affordability.

[David Shands]

Go to the hole.

[Ian Dunlap]

Pause. How we would. How is engineer? It makes more sense for. For the environments. And I was like, well, what about Tesla? They're like, nobody wants a Tesla. Africa wants to text that. Everybody is looking. If it's going to be an EV on the continent, from what this. What we're hearing is, it's byd. It's Chinese.

[Rashad Bilal]

But why, why would they want byd?

[Ian Dunlap]

Well, he was, he was. The cost was the first thing, right? Yeah, you can get a twelve thousand or a sixteen thousand dollar car. Whereas Tesla, the starting price is forty thousand, fifty thousand. Right. Then they would like the modifications of it. I don't know. That was one of the knocks against Tesla. How much can you modify it Chinese. Then there's a few other models, but the BYD was another one. They're like, it could be modified. It's use case is much easier. We even got into Uber and with we. It wasn't even a BYD car. But I was like, yo, this is nice. It's spacious, it's clean and it's affordable.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well also, China has invested tremendous infrastructure and influence on the continent of Africa for sure. It's not surprising that their car would, would be prominent in a place that they've already invested billions of dollars in almost every country in Africa. There's no country in Africa that China doesn't have. There's no country in Africa without a Chinatown.

[David Shands]

Told you we haven't been.

[Ian Dunlap]

Have we been to it?

[Rashad Bilal]

Think about. No, no, think about that. America has over 250 military bases across the world in different countries. China has one.

[David Shands]

Yep.

[Rashad Bilal]

China has. There's a Chinatown in every country in the world. You ever see America? America Town?

[David Shands]

Nope.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, they have a different strategy than we do.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

And. And it's, and it's a. And it's working.

[David Shands]

It's working. Yeah. I just saw Stock Club the other day. It's another phone maker. They're dominating in the EV space as well in that 10 to 22 thousand dollar range. And maybe as a leader of a company, you don't tell a continent that you aren't favorable towards black people when you buy a media platform that the world can see. Perhaps like at least Rockefeller and Carnegie, they hit it and that's when racism was permitted. They hit Rockefeller just went on the street and passed out dimes and dollars all day. You want to tell the world? No. No. Then you want to make Europe great again? What's going to hurt your Chinese sales and your Africa sales?

[Rashad Bilal]

There was little. We spoke to somebody yesterday, I was thinking somebody yesterday and they were saying that their parents. So we. I'm pretty sure you saw the video of China. They teaching their kids how to speak Swahili. But Africa has over 300 different languages that's spoken. There's, it's a very complex linguistic landscape. So I knew that they was already teaching kids to speak Swahili on certain levels because that's, that's the most widely spoken language native tongue in Africa, but found out that they was teaching the kids to speak tree and Wolof also. Wolof is a language that's spoken in Senegal. Tree is a language that's spoken in, in Ghana. So they was like, they were saying like when, when they found they was having a fluent conversation with a Chinese guy and he was speaking fluent tree.

[David Shands]

What you say eight weeks ago, it's over, man.

[Ian Dunlap]

We don't see it. We don't see. We went to the ports, we saw the ports taken over in Jamestown. We saw the infrastructure being built, we saw the local fishermen that are probably won't have that position in about two to three years. It's happening.

[Rashad Bilal]

So I, I say that to say, Jamie Diamond. I think that he's, I think he has good intentions, but I just think American strategy has to change. We can't do the same thing that we've been doing for the last hundred years. You have to play differently. Inclusion is important. It's not just about military strength. It's not just about focusing on just America. Make America great America first. Man. This. It's a big world that we live in and there's a lot of things that's happening all over the world and the average American has no idea about it. Because even the news that we digest is only focused on local. It's not focused on things that's happening outside. We're getting left behind and the rest of the world is moving forward at a very fast pace. And if we don't re, if we don't rethink the way that we're actually doing things as far as on the media, as far as on education, as far as on just everyday life, we're going to be in big trouble.

[David Shands]

That's too late.

[Ian Dunlap]

No, we in trouble.

[David Shands]

It's too late. Politics is one of the reasons it's too short sighted. Lobbying plays a factor into that. American media plays a fact into that. Education has been sold off 80 years ago. That's tough. It's almost like they, well, go get your tickets to Invest Fest. Maybe we'll have some solutions for you in the deal room. But international exposure is incredibly important.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's vitally important. It's vitally important. So just take, take that into consideration. Market Monday, you know, it's a stock investment show, but bigger than that, it's a big business show. And it's a show that actually, you know, is proposed to prepare you for the future. So we got to tell you what's going on, but that's just something just to consider. Like you cannot get caught thinking this nationalistic way. It's, it's hard, it's harmful, and it's something that, like I said, I mean, just looking at China, you could say a lot of things about China, but they have a globalistic view of things. And they're. And they're executing this. They're executing a, they're executing a global plan at a very efficient rate.

[David Shands]

Yep. Can't argue with it. Can't argue with it.

[Rashad Bilal]

But you know, what do I know? Just a guy on YouTube. Okay, Spotify. Spotify stock is approaching key brain breakout level. Is this a sign of a real platform momentum or just a short term technical setup?

[David Shands]

I mean, I guess all that time from that paying artist is paying off for the labels. They're 672 right now. They keep hitting new highs. Maybe an entry around 586 would be good. But yeah, Spotify is a good investment long term. Daniel's a great CEO. You can't argue with that. But if you want exposure to the music business, and I've told every artist this, invest in the platforms that are taking all of your rights away. It's the only way you're gonna be able to get any retribution or financial contribution at an equal level back. They may be poised to hit a thousand bucks maybe in like two and a half years.

[Ian Dunlap]

So yeah, they, they actually saw. So they had 615 million monthly active users and their premium subscriptions are up 14 year over year. And so they cut back. Actually, I know we keep talking about podcasts, but they actually cut back on podcast spending. What they saw increase was the audiobook expansion. Because that's original content.

[David Shands]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

Shout out to the audiobook, you deserve to be rich. Go get it now. But that's a place where they, they saw some acceleration. And it begs the question, right, Can Spotify look at the Netflix blueprint and model that for audio in terms of. Yes. You're licensing a lot of the music now and you're licensing even from a standpoint of some of the books and audio, what happens when they create original content long term and they have a sustainable model in that sense? Or you know, could it, could it be in a live space of long form theatrics? Right. I know a lot of people are talking about those crime series where they feel like audio movies. If they can figure out how to cash in on that, a thousand dollars is, is not out of the question because it's original. And you're saving on that cost span of licensing content from the music platforms. What's your thoughts around it?

[David Shands]

Would it be short term audio or a short form or a long form audio?

[Ian Dunlap]

Long form? I think long form as more people are becoming conditioned to listen especially long form podcasts.

[David Shands]

Yeah, these.

[Ian Dunlap]

And I heard it in the crime stories and it was like it almost for sure. Listening to Law and Order, right?

[David Shands]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

Creating that, making it original content around that long term, that's sustainable because.

[David Shands]

And the cost is cheaper not to cut you off then building out a 4 TV show, I was gonna say.

[Ian Dunlap]

And the margins are much, much better going that route even inside the audiobooks. And that's something that we actually learned. Right. The margins that they get on. On the audiobooks, a lot greater. And the cost band, obviously, when, you know, they. They spent a lot of money. They did. On a lot of podcasts and it didn't pan out, but they've. They pivoted and they found another route. So taking that model, I remember when Netflix was leasing all the content and then you had all these streamers, Peacock coming about, and they're like, hey, we want some original programming back. Licensing deal is up. Was like, well, what are they going to now put on it? And they figured out a way to create original content, have it spaced out. And now you've seen they've moved into live events. This is a model that perhaps they could replicate inside the audio space if they're clever enough.

[David Shands]

I agree a thousand percent. Especially in that crime genre. There's a few niche genres that can grow and the cost are not that high to produce an audio show versus fully producing out a set or a series. So I definitely think. I definitely think so. And I think they're going to reimagine podcasts in the future at some point too, given that the Golden Globe thing is in play now as well. Those y' all who criticize y' all, y' all won't be there. But for those of us that actually change the world and add some value, if I made you money, please put yes in chat.

[Rashad Bilal]

Donald Trump, he signed the Larry Hoover. We gonna talk about that on Wednesday. What Interesting.

[David Shands]

For sure. Talk about hedging your bet.

[Rashad Bilal]

Was that a strategic distraction play?

[Ian Dunlap]

Strategic distraction.

[David Shands]

A thousand percent because. Larry, hold your head. Little Larry, hold your head. I mean, if he still has to serve 200 years in state.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, it's.

[David Shands]

And same with Derek Chauvin. He's probably gonna pardon him. I wouldn't be surprised.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, that would be.

[David Shands]

But he still has to serve state time for that as well. So if I get you off your fat case. And then he's looking to solidify his base for sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

NBA young boy.

[David Shands]

Well played. Yeah, you can't say I'm racist. I got a young boy.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[David Shands]

It wasn't fake news. Wasn't fake news.

[Ian Dunlap]

See the CEO of Nikola when we Talk about. So. Oh, yeah, fraud, you know, he owned.

[David Shands]

Yeah. And a few of them who invested in that. That coin, but yeah, that's above my pay grade.

[Ian Dunlap]

What's. What's the dude who had the HGTV show or one of them. One of them networks. The.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, he was talking about how black.

[Ian Dunlap]

Men were treated in prison. Right. You seen that?

[David Shands]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. We gotta talk about that on Blackout.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, for sure.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay. Okay. What about. Okay, is there a hidden recession signal that we're seeing that people might not have been actually uncovered as of yet or.

[David Shands]

No, it's been uncovered. I want to go back to it. The bond market has been in drawdown for 58 months. The largest drawdown in American history. Prior to that, I think was 16 months, maximum 18 months. This is not a good sign. I mean, the sign's all around. The world is at the highest debt levels. We're at the highest debt levels. Credit card rates are at the highest ever. When hedge funds own 20 to 30% of the homes in major cities. There's a bunch of canaries in the coal mine that are telling you when Jamie diamond comes out and tell you, yo, go, go go get the strap, guns and butter. Go get you a Glock. He's talking like a rapper. Go, go get a Draco and lock your doors. When bitcoin has increased in value the way that it has in comparison to the American dollar. And I keep saying it, Most indexes and ETFs are not outpacing the returns of bitcoin. That's a bunch of signs, gold being at the price that it is. Saudi Arabia investing 600 billion into our country and no one has said a word in the paperwork about what's the percentage I give you? 600%. 600 billion? I won Diddy percent to 85. 15. And the royalties and the next project you do. And if you end up on Law and Order Tech ver, I want what no one is mentioned. What percentage of ownership do they get? Do you think they just got common stock? No, no. Wild Saudi Aramico is what, fifth on a market capitalist worldwide. When you got white people going to Africa, you. This is bad. Not South Africa too. They're investing in other parts. Where we at? Yo, I want some Jollof rice and I'm bringing the deck here. Why are you bringing AI to the jaw of Rice place? Scary.

[Ian Dunlap]

Automate the process.

[David Shands]

Scary as hell, yo. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. Even Daniel from Spotify, he working on a new startup. That scares you got something that's working damn near a thousand a share and you're working on another company as a hedge.

[Ian Dunlap]

The recession below.

[David Shands]

Yeah, but will they announce it? That's the interesting part. That's the interesting part. Will they announce that we have hit recession? Yeah, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Stay paranoid, my friends.

[David Shands]

For sure. Did they look at us like a laughingstock, the country, politically, America?

[Rashad Bilal]

No, I wouldn't say in the laughing stock. I would say that there's a lot of uncertainty as far as what's. What's currently happening in the political landscape and political theater of America.

[Ian Dunlap]

But did they laugh while saying that?

[Rashad Bilal]

A lot of people may have questions, but I think a lot. I think a lot of people are still optimistic about America as far as the idea of what it represents. The illusion of it, I think is starting to wear off a little bit. Like, you know, as far as, like, how people used to look at it. Like it's like the promised land. Like, you go there and you're going, you know, become rich. Like, there's a lot of people that we met on the continent that lived in America. The guy that moved that back to Africa. So the guy that we went to, the Messiah, Mara Messiah, it's safari that the Lion King was based on.

[David Shands]

Okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's like the real Lion King. You get a chance to do it. It says like the eighth wonder of the world.

[Ian Dunlap]

The great migration of animals going through it is okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

It happens once a year.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

They have lions, they have elephants, they have white rhinos, which is a very extinct, almost extinct animal. Everything you could think of.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

And they have a very luxurious. They have a bunch of luxury, luxurious suites and resorts there. So we, we had. We had a lunch at a. At a. One of the resorts. And the, the guy that manages the resort is from the tribe. Remember we, Remember we talked about, you get one wife per 10 cows. That's the Maasai tribe, okay. They're one of the few tribes on the continent that still kept every part of their culture intact.

[David Shands]

Okay, that's incredible.

[Rashad Bilal]

During colonialism, after colonialism, like, you go visit them, they still live in the same housing that they lived in 300 years ago. Same tradition, same everything. So the guy that runs the resort is from that tribe. He grew up in that drive.

[David Shands]

Okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

Then he went to college in America. Hpu, Hawaii Pacific University. Now this is where the story gets interesting. Then he goes to graduate school in America, but he just didn't go to any graduate school. He went to Harvard. So he went to Harvard Graduate school. He's obviously very intelligent person. He stayed in America for a few years and then he went back and he's living. He's living back where the tribe lives. He doesn't live with the tribe.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

But he lives on grounds.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

So he was just saying, like, yeah, America was good. It was cool, but why would I want to live there? And that was a common thing. We met a girl. We met a girl, Fatima. She went to school at Wharton, one of the best business schools in the world. University of Pennsylvania, similar story. We met somebody that went to school at usc. A lot of very prestigious education people went to America, lived in America, went to top schools in America and left and have no plans of coming back.

[David Shands]

And if it was not for his mom wanted us to stay here, I would be with Presidente Scheinbaum full time. I've asked many times, can we just wrap this up? And just.

[Rashad Bilal]

So that was. That was a common theme. Yeah, I don't think it was too much of people. Like, people still look at America as a great place, a lot of opportunity, very, you know, inspiring place, but they're just like, yo, man, it's a lot. It's just a lot that goes on over there. Like, you know, I like to be here for five years, but yeah, for eternity.

[David Shands]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

The luster of the. That illusion, that American quote unquote dream. And kind of like why we started the book with that, like, the American dream is a lie because internally we understand it, but for foreigners, they understand it too. When people come back and they're asking us what the experience is like, and we tell them, they're like, really? Is it really like that? And like, yeah, there's a lot of challenges that. That aren't mass. And then we tell them our perspective. Perspective of how the continent was given to us. Right. How it was fed to us. Right? And so there's just a knowledge exchange that's happening. Like, hey, yeah, this is how we saw Ghana, right? We never saw beaches. This is why even yesterday I had never seen kids outside playing in sports activities. And we saw a lot of things. I'm like, wait, let's unpack that. Like, why haven't we seen that? Like, these things exist. We need to show it. When you make sure that people understand that this happened, but then tell them, like, what the experience is like, being black in America and the complexities of that. Because a lot of times we had a conversation yesterday, they were like, there are people, if you go in the northern parts of. Of Ghana, the only time they've ever seen somebody white is maybe on tv. They've never encountered anybody in person.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

And so there's a knowledge exchange that needs to happen and needs to continue happening, which is why it's important that we go back, which is why we get to help shape narrative and explain things. Right. Because, like, these conversations, like, wow, you never came back. Well, what was it that made you come back? And they tell you why they came back and all the opportunities that were presented to them when they came back and some of the struggles with. They tried to do it here in America and as an. As a foreign. Foreign student and some of them on visas as well. But it's interesting, man, that the conversation, the dialogue needs to happen. I know some people in the comments were like, well, how do they feel about you coming over there? And it was like, they don't. They feel welcoming. Right. It's a welcoming thing because they want to know, they want to understand so we can work together. I think that's the common thing. How can you share knowledge with me so that we can now work together despite the propaganda? Yeah, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

And also, I'll say this too about. Because Khalees is another person that said that she's not coming back to America, and she's from America, obviously, you know, America, God bless America. America is great. But what white supremacy does is dehumanize anybody that's not white. And it's. It plays tricks on your mind. So like Troy said, like, we went to a sports facility and we was watching kids. It's like AU programs, like, for basketball and soccer and running, track. And it's interesting because you never thought that that was even happening, which is actually embarrassing to even say that. But that's because even talking to somebody on the continent, they were saying, like, you know, whenever you thought it's a child in Africa, it was Hakeem. Sponsor Hakeem for $2 a day. That's just reality. Right? Like, you saw. You saw a kid with pot belly.

[Ian Dunlap]

And flies on his face, and it's like, yo, for.

[Rashad Bilal]

For $1 a day, you could feed a child.

[Ian Dunlap]

Nobody knows what that child is.

[Rashad Bilal]

What that does is that that plays tricks on your mind. And psychologically, years after seeing that commercial, you never really thought that there was a youth AU program with kids just living and playing. Like, you only equated struggle and poverty. But they're struggling poverty everywhere, including here.

[David Shands]

Absolutely. They're very high levels.

[Rashad Bilal]

But the images that's pushed to the world, when you think of Europe, like, even you see people go To Europe for Europe trips. Right. Like spend the summer in Europe. All the celebrities, all the athletes, they do euro, euro trip. And you go to the best countries in Europe, but you never see anybody do an Afro African trip for the summer.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

There's no backpacking.

[Rashad Bilal]

Why is that so?

[David Shands]

Propaganda.

[Ian Dunlap]

Backpack boy.

[David Shands]

Yeah, propaganda.

[Ian Dunlap]

And there's, there's plenty of things to see. Like we were there for two weeks. Like, think about the things, the things that we saw just naturally within that two weeks. People said, like, you would need a lifetime. Like that would take six weeks to even see some of the things. Whether it was the gorilla track or encountering lions or like you said, the rhinos and seeing tomorrow, it was these things. People, especially in Europe, understand the importance and significance and the beauty of it. We haven't had that narrative. Right. Like, had we not gone to the mar and seen it for ourselves, it was like, oh, this is something that's been hidden when we were in Nairobi. Oh, wow. Like, this is a tech hub. When we were in Kigali. Holy. Like, wait, this is one of the clean cities I've ever seen in any place I've been in the world.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Ian Dunlap]

It's been kind of hidden from us, so I'm glad we got time.

[Rashad Bilal]

Also, it's also like goes back. It's even bigger than the black thing. It's an American thing. Because white people in Europe know all about Africa. They always did. They always did. That's why, that's why they colonized the place. You go there now there's a bunch of white tourism and from Kenya to Rwanda, all over. These are white people that's coming from Europe that's spending $3,000 a night to. To watch gorillas or bird watch or go to the safari. They know about it. We in America is not, is not pushed, but it's not a secret. Chinese isn't there heavy. Europeans have always been there. And they can, they continue to go. They embedded in the fabric of countries. You really look at it like that standpoint, like they, they're embedded in the fabric of. Of of countries. That's how long that they've been there. That's how much land ownership they have. That's how much influence that they have. Middle east people met people from Iran. That's been there for generations. Lebanese, you go anywhere in West Africa, most of the nightclubs are owned by people that's Lebanese. So it's just our part of the world isn't shown certain things, but it's not a secret. We're just not Educated.

[David Shands]

Yeah. We're not informed to the brother in the comments who said a few. America's so bad. Get a flight and be free. I don't know if you know, we already free.

[Rashad Bilal]

Facts.

[Ian Dunlap]

Break a news alert.

[David Shands]

So. And if. Listen, we're not saying in America bad. Your president said that. That's why I said we got to make America great again. Facts for the record.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's a fact.

[David Shands]

So. But what do we know? One day y' all gonna broadcast and hop on live and we're gonna be like, yo, it's been real. I with you, I love you. Ideally, but. Oh, yeah, passport, bros. You should have listened. That's another thing. Whitewashing. Y' all will come to me and say, what do you think about this white analyst take? I'm like, I put y' all in the stock three years before anybody was talking about it. What do you think of Stephen Horowitz? It's the analysts take on where Nvidia will go, okay, I'm gonna take it right to Africa.

[Rashad Bilal]

And they sell you. You. And it's a teachable moment because they sell you that they themselves are not doing. They tell you to pledge allegiance to the flag, to put America first. While they are in Saudi Arabia.

[David Shands]

Yes, yes.

[Rashad Bilal]

While they have military bases in every.

[Ian Dunlap]

Part of the world, they have offshored.

[Rashad Bilal]

Money to the Caribbean islands for years. While they have going to South America for years. While we get 60% of our. Our GDP from foreign countries. They want you to focus on that because you. You can just stay broke and just stay focused on a job. They themselves don't play a domestic game.

[Ian Dunlap]

They said something super, super impactful. And it, like, hit me like a ton of bricks. He was like, think about 25 years ago about the. About the country of Saudi Arabia. Would that even be a place that people would go, let alone.

[David Shands]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

Right. Get investment from 25 years ago in 2000. In 2000, 2001. Right. We obviously know what happens on 9 11, and we absolutely know where a lot of those people, who those terrorists came from that country is now. Where the leaders in the world of technology have all come to, to have a meeting to figure out how we're going to divvy this 600 billion up and launch infrastructure.

[David Shands]

Yep.

[Ian Dunlap]

25 years in our lifetime, that's happened.

[David Shands]

ExxonMobil was probably the biggest. One of the biggest companies in 2000. And now our greatest tech innovations have to go get funding from another country once again. While Saudi Aramico is publicly traded and probably by 2032 could be number three and global market cap. And once again, just like the music industry, nobody told you the paperwork on what percentage they'll own.

[Ian Dunlap]

It's your money.

[Rashad Bilal]

Check his paperwork. That's the real paperwork I need to be checking. Y' all worry about 1090. 1090, Jake facts exposing somebody.

[Ian Dunlap]

Who's that?

[David Shands]

I don't know.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, I need to be checking the.

[David Shands]

For real. The investment play. What?

[Ian Dunlap]

That's a YouTuber.

[Rashad Bilal]

You know Diddy's. You know Diddy's court documents?

[Ian Dunlap]

No updates on that.

[David Shands]

Yep. Interesting.

[Rashad Bilal]

What's important, what you put your attention. What you put your attention to will determine your future. And we all have a choice. You have a choice and a chance. Every day. What you focus on is going to determine how what you'll. You'll be successful in life. You'll either. You'll either be successful at being a gossip queen. You'll be successful about knowing the latest hip hop lyrics. You'll be successful about knowing Diddy's trial like the back of your hand. You'll be successful and being having a high level of street cred for whatever that's worth. Or you'll be successful at international business arbitrage, government. You know, you choose. But you will be successful and you can be a successful failure.

[David Shands]

Hello. But do as you please. Inflation is only going to continue to get higher for everyone who keeps saying the debt is as high. And somebody told me on Twitter you don't know how money printer works. I had the fortune of going to where they actually print the money.

[Ian Dunlap]

I know how it works.

[David Shands]

That's why we're in this situation now. But. Okay, gotcha. I feel you. I hear you.

[Ian Dunlap]

I know how it works on a number of levels.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well, ladies and gentlemen.

[David Shands]

Yeah, we do.

[Rashad Bilal]

We do love you.

[David Shands]

Yep. A lot a time. From the bottom of my heart.

[Rashad Bilal]

It. It's always a pleasure to have Market Mondays the most impactful show of our generation.

[David Shands]

For sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

Appreciate you guys so much for taking time out of your week. It means the world to us.

[Ian Dunlap]

Absolutely.

[Rashad Bilal]

Because you could be anywhere. It's prime time television. And for you to take the time to invest in your education says a lot about your seriousness and that means a lot. Yeah, that means a lot. So thank you.

[David Shands]

America has mastered the art of getting Americans to watch people who are getting robbed. Instead of watching people gonna teach you how to get rich. Shout out to all my actors and actresses. They're going through hell too. Especially with this AI stuff. I was talking about.

[Rashad Bilal]

Tough times for Hollywood right now. For sure.

[David Shands]

Yes.

[Rashad Bilal]

And music. A Lot of musicians are struggling. I saw Jada, Kiss and Fat Joe talking about.

[David Shands]

Talk about on Blackout Living.

[Rashad Bilal]

Check to check.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, there was. We posted that, right? There was the. I think the. Some of the. The. The core three music distribution companies are now merging with AI companies.

[David Shands]

Sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

I mean, that's. That's. That's almost.

[David Shands]

But if you sign your life right away and everything in perpetuity, y' all get tired of me talking about equity and rules, royalty. It's the reason why if you sign up your rights, they can make all the remixes in the world with the AI.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[David Shands]

Y' all let White Jeezy go viral on the Internet. What are we doing? Yo, shout to him, though. But shout out to Jesus.

[Rashad Bilal]

This Thursday, we got Khalees amazing six o' clock. That's gonna be a dope, dope episode. We did it in Kenya. We talk about her experiences moving from America to Kenya. Everything you need to know. How her kids adapted, School system.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yep.

[Rashad Bilal]

Buying a farm, buying land. The process of, you know, getting a lawyer and make sure that she was doing it the correct way. So much stuff to talk about, man. Shout out to Khalees. Visionary, for sure.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah. Shout out to my brother Alvin. On the check in, he said, I can't. I can't believe you're not here. Shout out to album, man.

[David Shands]

We got a great question. I don't know if you guys want to answer it, but you got. EYL has built a media empire without traditional gatekeepers. What's one specific move or strategy that helped you bypass the mainstream and allowed you to still win?

[Rashad Bilal]

Building a community. I always tell people, whether it's social media, they say, like, how do I build a social media? Like, build a community. That's. I feel like we have a community. We had a community before we had even a show. It was a Instagram page with people that was relying on information that we was given. And then people was in comments. They might be debating with each other, they might agree with it, they might not agree with it. And that's still to this day. Market Mondays is a show that we haven't missed. Blackout show that we haven't missed. Like, these are live shows. And you add earn your leisure to that, and you add Invest Fest, which happens every year. We do the live events. Market Mondays, live. So these are communal. It's a communal vibe. So.

[David Shands]

And consistency. Y' all just flew 22 hours, 17 hours back. Most people would have said, yo, we'll be back next week.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's a fact.

[Ian Dunlap]

That's a fact.

[Rashad Bilal]

Never miss market Mondays, no matter what.

[David Shands]

No matter what happened.

[Ian Dunlap]

No joke. My family's upstairs thinking how crazy I am. I'm like, nah, we got the people need it. So, yeah, I was, I, I think you, you got both. Consistency, number one, but building the community. Like, y' all, y' all are the reason that it, it spreads into a base of, number one, trust. I think that's one of the things we kept saying over and over. The way that people trust the information and they keep coming back for it is extremely oppressive. Like when we're on the content, everybody kept saying, like, they've never seen anything like this, right? Like, two black men are giving the information. Three black men on market monies are giving the information that people are relying on and changing their family's lives. Like, never in history has that happened. And so it's because of y' all. Y' all watch, y' all tune in, y' all execute. Y' all tell somebody else. When y' all see us, it's real because we show love and we get love back and we keep doing it on a consistent basis. Like, that's how you grow community and that's how empires get built. So we didn't need anybody to co sign it or like, give us a pound of back of like, yo, here's your. Here's my hand. Let me pull y' all up. Like, we rolls with y' all, shout out to y' all.

[Rashad Bilal]

And it's a great time in human history right now. I feel like technology has empowered everybody. So the gatekeeper era, I feel like, has come to an end. Whether it's music, whether it's media, whether it's fashion, like, you have the opportunity to, you know, reach people all over the world just via your cell phone. And you don't have to get a cosign from anybody. You don't have to, you know, so that's a blessing. So everybody should take advantage of that. If, if you, if you're not, you're doing yourself a disservice. You gotta. You gotta find out a way to reach people. Social media, you gotta find out a way to reach people. It's free and it's still. It's still an effective model. So, yeah, I think that that's, that's an important thing. Before we leave, I will say this. Okc, Indiana, I'm not sure, but congratulations to the New York Knicks. They had a tremendous season. Came up short, but it was a great run for sure. I'm assuming you're going with Indiana.

[David Shands]

Congrats. To the Indiana Pacers. New York. I love you. You know I love being out there. Every part of New York, at some point, y' all gotta stop expecting to win a championship. Yo, don't do that.

[Ian Dunlap]

Don't do that. Yo, you still gotta come out here over the summer, bro. Chill. Don't do that. Don't do that.

[Rashad Bilal]

Listen, they had a hell of a run.

[Ian Dunlap]

The. The n. What you saw over this past few weeks is how New York is unified when it comes to the Knicks. There's Mets fans, there's Yankee fans.

[David Shands]

We gonna talk about this on Blackout. Every other team in New York that won a title.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah. Since the last time. The Knicks one. Yeah.

[David Shands]

What?

[Ian Dunlap]

Including the Liberty.

[David Shands]

The Liberty. The Ranger. Like, what the. What a. You on fire. What he do to Stern?

[Ian Dunlap]

Never in my life have I've never seen the Knicks win. And I'm not even a Knicks fan. But what they do for the city.

[David Shands]

I love so lit energy.

[Ian Dunlap]

You cannot go against the Knicks in New York City. I know Brooklyn Nets play here, but that doesn't. I mean. Yeah, that's like the Clippers in la.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's been a hell of a season.

[Ian Dunlap]

Don't worry. Next. Next year, man.

[David Shands]

Okay. Seeing five, though. I ain't gonna hold you.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay. See, I'm about to say okay. Seeing five.

[David Shands]

Okay. Seeing five, though.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Shout out to the six and congratulations to psg. Unfortunate situation. What happened after the game?

[David Shands]

What happened after the game?

[Ian Dunlap]

No celebration. Three people got killed. Yeah.

[David Shands]

Really?

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. Three people got killed. And one cop is in a coma. So sports fans, man, y got.

[David Shands]

Y' all gotta chill, yo.

[Ian Dunlap]

Celebration was crazy.

[Rashad Bilal]

You can't. Sports is great, but you taking it too far. For real.

[Ian Dunlap]

I actually watched the. The Vinnie Junior. If y' all got on Netflix. Vinnie Junior just dropped a documentary. Probably my favorite player right now is Vinnie junior. He's on Real Madrid, not psg, but okay. He's impactful. He's. He's a. Obviously probably the best player in the world. I think he won the. The. The best player last year. But go check that out on Netflix. I did that on that 10 hour flight on the way back.

[Rashad Bilal]

What Dolan do and Bobby. You gotta make better decisions.

[Ian Dunlap]

My brother for sure now he a legend.

[Rashad Bilal]

You gotta make better. He's a legend. But you gotta make sure lacking. You got to make better decisions.

[Ian Dunlap]

They didn't even make it.

[Rashad Bilal]

Exactly.

[Ian Dunlap]

They will.

[Rashad Bilal]

They'll be back on the team. He left.

[Ian Dunlap]

I know. Last year. Yeah.

[David Shands]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Then he turned down a billion dollars from Saudi Arabia.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

Then he got.

[David Shands]

I Took that one.

[Ian Dunlap]

He took the one. I mean, in his favor. He's still young. He'll.

[David Shands]

They'll realize they just invested in Nvidia. They don't need him now.

[Ian Dunlap]

Real Madrid would be back. And he's won the World cup already.

[Rashad Bilal]

A World cup, not a billion dollars.

[David Shands]

Facts. That cup don't mean a cup cost 35, 000.

[Rashad Bilal]

A big difference between a World Cup.

[David Shands]

Come on, man. What are we talking about?

[Ian Dunlap]

You're not even 20. You're still in the school.

[David Shands]

We have to stop being sold plaques and prestige.

[Ian Dunlap]

Oh, no, I. I get that part. He's. He gonna make the money for sure.

[Rashad Bilal]

A billion dollars is not guaranteed. Life advice.

[Ian Dunlap]

Health is the only way.

[Rashad Bilal]

If somebody offers you a billion dollars, you take it.

[Ian Dunlap]

No, you take it.

[David Shands]

Yeah. Unless you gotta sell yourself for one year.

[Ian Dunlap]

Unless you're gonna sell yourself. A billion in a year is crazy.

[Rashad Bilal]

All right, guys.

[David Shands]

I say something to music plaques. I'm like this plastic and glass.

[Ian Dunlap]

Sell it.

[David Shands]

Some of y' all. This soul ain't worth nothing.

[Ian Dunlap]

As is.

[David Shands]

Stock club call on Wednesday. New York Knicks. Great season. I wanted y' all to win. Shout out to Indiana. Yeah, but I think OKC gonna take it.

[Ian Dunlap]

Yeah, fine. Sga. Mvp. Shout out to the six.

[Rashad Bilal]

Get your tickets to Invest Fest, please.

[David Shands]

Sure. Oh, me ab, Yobi and Tyler's talking about presentation and stage. I cannot wait.

[Ian Dunlap]

Ty, what's up? Shout out to Ty. Ty to him in the DMs, man. Shout out to him. He appreciated the some of the posts.

[Rashad Bilal]

We will be announcing the lineup on Friday.

[Ian Dunlap]

Okay, Be ready, y' all Be ready for that. Y' all be good. Appreciate y' all praying over our traveling mercies. And thank you for holding down New York City in our absence.

[David Shands]

Absolutely.

[Ian Dunlap]

Love is love. We'll catch y' all Wednesday blackout. Make sure y' all tune in 10pm Eastern Standard Time, y' all. Love is love.

[Rashad Bilal]

Peace.

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[Ian Dunlap]

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[Rashad Bilal]

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[Ian Dunlap]

Which is why you can count on.

[Rashad Bilal]

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[Ian Dunlap]

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[Rashad Bilal]

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[Ian Dunlap]

By Granger for the ones who get it done.