Nvidia’s $100B OpenAI Deal, Trump’s H-1B Visa War, Disney's Kimmel Saga, & Apple’s Big Comeback

Summary

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Market Mondays – September 23, 2025

Episode Theme

Overview:
This episode dives deep into the rapidly shifting landscape of tech and investing. The core focus is on major moves shaping the markets: Nvidia’s transformative $100B partnership with OpenAI, the economic and workforce implications of Trump’s proposed H-1B visa fee, Disney’s crisis-management after the Kimmel saga, and Apple’s surprising resurgence. The hosts also tackle AI’s disruption of the music industry and answer a range of live investment questions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nvidia’s $100B OpenAI Deal

(See: 09:26–16:37, 43:53–57:22)

• Nvidia's $100B investment in OpenAI:
  Nvidia is partnering with OpenAI to build massive data centers, requiring 4–5 million of Nvidia's GPUs (46:24). The initial $10B will be deployed for the first gigawatt of infrastructure. The deal is set to generate $250–$300B in Nvidia GPU sales, with profit margins above 50% (49:00–50:26).
• Market Position:
  Nvidia is called “potentially the greatest company we've seen in our lifetime” (47:41). Its moat, unrivaled product, and geopolitical savvy make it the single essential AI company, considered akin to Microsoft in the ’90s (57:22).
• Stock Outlook:
  Even at all-time highs, Ian and Troy argue Nvidia is “still undervalued” (51:20). “If you hold for five years, you’ll be okay” Ian (51:46).
• ETFs/Industry context:
  SMH is flagged as a great catch-all way to gain exposure to the chip sector—Nvidia is its top holding (95:19).

Notable Quotes:

“Jensen [Huang] is putting on a master class in hedging and geopolitics. OpenAI is being set up to get all the infrastructure run correctly so when they IPO, American hedge funds can attach their returns to OpenAI.” – Ian (46:24)

“You only need four great companies. You could build an empire just off investing in four amazing companies if you don’t deviate from them.” – Ian (56:12)

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2. Intel’s Lifeline & Competitive Dynamics

(09:26–17:17)

• Nvidia’s $5B investment into struggling Intel:
  Hosts are skeptical. It’s framed more as a hedge and a way to keep U.S. chipmaking competitive domestically, given Intel’s faltering innovation relative to AMD and TSM.
• Long-Term Outlook:
  Despite investment, Intel won't catch up; other companies “are just outperforming at scale.”
• Key risks for Intel:
  The manufacturing gap in nanometer specs and execution slowdowns remain unresolved.

Quotes:

“Is Intel better than Nvidia? No. Better than AMD? No. Better than other chipmakers in their class? No.” – Ian (11:07)

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3. Trump’s H-1B Visa War

(18:30–36:01)

• Trump’s proposal:
  A $100,000 annual fee for each H-1B visa could devastate U.S. tech by cutting off “America’s secret weapon”—imported top-tier talent (20:27).
• Economic & Political Analysis:
  The group unanimously agrees that this policy, if enacted, “would lead to the collapse of Silicon Valley” (22:46) but assigns a “0% chance” it will be implemented (27:03).
• Skills & Education Gap:
  America’s declining education system means it cannot fill its own skilled tech pipeline. The hosts lament the U.S. lagging in STEM.

Quotes:

“There’s not enough educated people in the United States of America to fill those [tech] jobs. That’s 100% fact by design.” – Rashad (21:59)

“Microsoft does not run [without immigrants]. We had 10 years of Ballmer; the stock was flat.” – Ian (29:51)

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4. Apple’s Big Comeback

(36:41–43:18)

• Stock Recovery:
  After a period of lagging the “Max 7” tech stocks, Apple rallies on iPhone 17 release and brisk upgrade demand (over 315 million users haven’t upgraded in 3–4 years).
• AI & Innovation:
  Critique remains that Apple is “one step behind” in AI compared to Nvidia and OpenAI, and software innovation will define sustainability.
• Long-Term Prospects:
  Still a fundamentally sound blue chip, in the “2 Tech 2 Index,” but is forced to play strategic catch-up.

Quotes:

“The truth is the demand for this is not what it used to be … I just don’t think they have innovated, and to be fair they opened up at $248.93 and are currently at $256 while every other tech stock has overperformed.” – Ian (39:32)

“They are doing something very strategic: slow and steady … It’s a plan and coordinated way to approach AI.” – Troy (41:48)

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5. Disney’s Kimmel Crisis & Streaming Woes

(58:45–69:04)

• Saga Recap:
  Suspended Jimmy Kimmel after controversial comments (against the backdrop of a merger), only to reinstate him after Disney lost $3.8B in market value in one day due to backlash.
• Streaming Model Analysis:
  New ESPN app (ESPN Unlimited) launched, but high costs and legacy assets put Disney in a bind. Bundling Disney+, Hulu, ESPN Unlimited now costs more than cable.
• Challenges:
  Trouble monetizing sports rights, theme parks slow to recover, competition from Netflix/Warner, limited content diversity.

Quotes:

“If we can learn anything from this debacle, it’s the only thing power truly respects is money.” – Rashad (60:16)

“They [Disney] haven’t invested enough into the new form of content which is podcasting and streaming. … Your #1 thing has to be focusing on what can kill my brand every day.” – Ian (68:09)

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6. AI’s Disruption in Music & Media

(104:01–129:09)

• AI Artist Signed for $3M:
  The group analyzes the implications of generative AI in music (with president of Warner Records, Steve Carlos, as a guest). They explore who gets paid when AI-created songs go viral, the legality, and where opportunities (and threats) lie.
• Historical Parallels:
  AI as the next Napster/Pixar/streaming revolution—facing lawsuits but ultimately ushering in new industry norms.
• Cultural & Economic Impact:
  Debate over tech “colonizing” Black IP/data and the need for creatives to embrace/own tools, not be left behind, and for more diversity in tech.

Quotes:

“Where there’s chaos, there’s opportunity. … This is the first time I’ve ever seen all the quote, unquote, major music groups publicly traded on stock exchanges.” – Steve Carlos (113:06, 116:18)

“If they get this off in music, it’s going to expand. … I always worry about when tech is involved with music to take parts of our [Black] culture.” – Ian (123:29)

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7. ETF & Broad Market Strategies (SMH, Micron, Uber, Lyft, Quantum, etc.)

(95:19–100:19, 72:59–82:05)

• SMH ETF:
  Highlighted as a diversified, sector-focused way to capture the chip/AI growth theme. Allocations regularly update—Micron climbing to #4 signals industry shifts; Intel declines (99:45).
• Micron:
  Projected to crush earnings; lauded for high-bandwidth memory essential to AI buildouts (97:11).
• Uber vs. Lyft:
  Uber “reigns supreme,” having totally disrupted livery, food delivery, and now logistics. Lyft’s Waymo robotaxi deal is significant but makes Lyft a distant second (73:01–81:07).
• Quantum Computing:
  Enjoying an early surge (e.g., INQ, RGTI), seen as more for short-term traders than long-term investors.
• Build-A-Bear:
  Lighthearted segment but underscores importance of niche, overlooked growth stocks (100:21).

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Live Q&A & Community Insights

• Market Timing:
  On pullbacks – “The market is rigged to stay up. Pullbacks are shorter and less frequent. … The opportunities that used to last weeks now last days; you have to be faster.” – Ian (71:22)
• How many stocks should you own?
  “You only need four great companies – Nvidia, TSM, Broadcom, maybe Micron.” – Ian (56:12)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "If you want to have a proxy investment into OpenAI while they still have their marriage going strong, invest in Microsoft." – Ian (54:42)
• “America’s model is to keep people ignorant… There’s no way we should be the richest country in the world and not be in the top 30 in education.” – Rashad (34:23)
• “Sometimes it’s the moment—in, we’re here.” – Ian (57:22) [On Nvidia’s dominance]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 09:26 – Intel vs. Nvidia, manufacturing gap
• 18:30 – Trump and the $100K H-1B visa proposal
• 36:41 – Apple’s iPhone 17 launch & stock performance
• 43:53 – Nvidia’s OpenAI deal and profit math
• 51:46 – Advice for investors worried about buying at the top
• 58:45 – Disney’s Kimmel saga and business implications
• 72:59 – Uber/Lyft analysis, robotaxi & drone delivery
• 95:19 – SMH ETF and sector rotation
• 104:01 – AI music industry disruption w/ Steve Carlos (Warner Records)
• 129:09 – Career & ownership insights from Steve Carlos

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Tone & Language

The hosts maintain their signature dynamic: direct, insightful, sometimes playful, but always focused on wealth-building, economic power, and community empowerment. They blend granular investing detail, market rationale, and long-view macro analysis with cultural and tech commentary.

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TL;DR

This episode expertly breaks down:

• Why Nvidia’s OpenAI partnership is a seismic shift for tech and investing (and why it’s not too late)
• Why Intel’s government-backed lifelines likely won’t close its competitive gap
• How Trump’s anti-immigration moves threaten U.S. innovation (but probably won’t pass)
• Apple's resilient comeback, and how to think about buying high-flying stocks
• Why Disney can’t afford to lose loyal users in their streaming pivot
• What the arrival of AI-generated artists means for the music industry and creative ownership
• Why focusing on sector ETFs like SMH or category-killer companies (Nvidia, Uber) remains a sound wealth-building strategy

Advice: Stay focused on quality, long-term positions in proven tech behemoths, understand industry ETFs, and embrace (not fear) technology as a path to economic empowerment.

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For more details, consult the listed timestamps or dive into each section above.

Transcript

[Troy]

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[Ian]

I'm.

[Troy]

No tech genius, but I knew if I wanted my business to crush it, I needed a website. Now, thankfully, Bluehost made it easy. I customized, optimized and monetized everything exactly how I wanted with AI. In minutes, my site was up. I couldn't believe it. The search engine tools even helped me get more site visitors. Whatever your passion project is, you can set it up with Bluehost. With their 30 day money back guarantee, what do you got to lose? Head to bluehost.com that's B L U E H-O-S-T.com to start now. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. Come on, man. Oh, wow. That's pre production stuff, man. We live now.

[Ian]

Be the combos.

[Troy]

Yo, good people, what's going on? Happy Monday. We are back in the place. It is. It's almost October, man. We almost there. It is a beautiful day in New York. We've been. I can't front, man. This weather has been absolutely incredible. It's been absolutely incredible. Hopefully it's been incredible where you are. Yeah, hopefully everybody is here watching this safely in the comfort of their home or they tapped in at work on their headphones or they. Whatever you're doing. We got a treat for y' all today. It's going to be a. A jam packed episode of Information. I'm excited. How y' all feeling, fellas?

[Ian]

Amazing. Happy to be here. Y' all looking regal. Did they throw the flowers on the ground when y', all, you know.

[Troy]

Shout out to unstoppable Africa. It is the U. N. General General assembly this week here in New York. So, you know, we made our rounds a little bit today. We, we were awarded with a global icon award for the work that we've been doing on the continent.

[Ian]

No, we gotta make some noise for that. Ain't no playing humble.

[Troy]

More work to be done. More work to be done. So stay tuned. Yeah, man. We appreciate all the love and Support, definitely when it comes from the continent. You know, a lot of the countries that we've been to, we actually ran into some of those people today and they were talking about the impact, but I'm like, there's so much more work that we got to do. So. Yeah, shout out to everybody on the continent. Shout out to everybody we ran today. And shout out to again, Unstoppable Africa for, for giving us that award today.

[Ian]

And I was excited to see the series come out. Master Pill, kudos to Chase. Great first episode. Go, go check it out.

[Rashad]

Appreciate it.

[Ian]

Yeah, of course. And I think it just highlights how important investing is, knowing about credit, especially for those who are, who are creators. Amazing first episode, though.

[Rashad]

Thank you.

[Troy]

Appreciate that, man.

[Rashad]

Yes, yes. Four part series that we did with, in partnership with Chase, Freedom Rise and Mass Appeal streaming on Hulu. Disney's not canceled no more.

[Troy]

So safe, right? We safe. Come on, protect us.

[Rashad]

We can watch Hulu. It's called, it's called Foundation Forward and yeah, yes, it's dope episodes with, you know, young people talking about credit, the importance of credit, kind of walking through their journey and it's a very high level production. So check it out on Hulu if you can. If not, it's on our YouTube channel as well. But man, shout out to Chase, shout out to Mass Appeal and yeah, man, appreciate that. Thank you.

[Ian]

Of course, Shout out Bixby. Y' all get to hear some tunes.

[Troy]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't even know people was up on him. I've seen the comments. People like, oh, big speed. Word.

[Rashad]

Yeah, he's one of the ones.

[Troy]

Talented, man. Talented young dude, man.

[Rashad]

One of the ones, man. So, okay, we got, we got a lot to talk about for sure. First and foremost, earn your leisure. We back. We got jam packed week as always. We got blackout at 10 o'. Clock. We got a special guest off a Blackout, my Guy Fontaine. He's one of the, he's one of these creators that's. I really follow on Instagram and has become a. A comedic philosopher of sorts. So that'll be some interesting conversations, I'm sure. And then Thursday we did the nil panel on Saturday, shout out to everybody that took part of that.

[Troy]

Yep.

[Rashad]

So we're gonna put a segment of that on as an episode. So, man, it was great, man, shout out to Greg Barnett, NFL agent. Shout out to Matt Middleton, entertainment lawyer. Shout out to Tiny Morton, legendary coach in New York City on the grassroots level. And it was, man, it was jam packed session, man. They answered a lot of Questions in regards to the state of college sports right now. So much money being thrown around out there. So if you were interested in the nil situation, check that out at 6 o'.

[Troy]

Clock. Yeah, I was in attendance for it. And the first response was, this is the most information I've ever heard about NIL in one body of work. So kudos to the panelists. Shoddy was moderating it. Kudos to him. His dad was there, was. It was dope. It was so crazy that I, I almost raised my hand for a question. I really had a question, but I was like, I don't want to be selfish with this time. I'll let everybody ask it. But it was jam packed. You had high schoolers in there, you had collegiate athletes in there, you had athletic directors, we had legendary coaches that was in attendance. A lot of community was out. And it's an interesting time because where are you supposed to get the information? Especially if you got a young athlete in any sport. Right. I know a lot of times we talk about basketball, we talk about football, but you know, even brought up yesterday that, you know, we, we had a young lady, Ms. Kennedy, out in Texas Tech, who got a million dollars in softball from nil. So it's an interesting time. And who's giving them information about what they should do when they get this money and how they should prepare for it. I thought it was. It was amazing programming. Shout out to. Shout out to Norfolk State. Since we're talking nil. Shout out to Michael Vick. I wanted to support him if, you know, Eyl alum. So he got. I think he's doing this for the school, man. Shout out to him and our hometown. Shout out to Jameson went to Woodlands High School, our high school. He's actually down there playing football for Michael Vick. So. Shout out to Norfolk.

[Ian]

Oh, that's amazing.

[Troy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rashad]

Shout out to Norfolk. So, yeah, we're gonna get the show going. I won't say this. We're gonna be.

[Troy]

We.

[Rashad]

We gonna hit the road. It's time to hit the road back again. So this week we will be in Montreal. Montreal. You know, we love you guys so much, man. We're gonna be in Montreal. Check us out. Go to LS La Creme's Instagram for information. Pull up on us on, on Wednesday. But we're gonna be in Montreal this week and then this weekend we're gonna be in Las Vegas. I'm gonna be at the Barber Expo. And then we both will be at the. The event with Shark Tank.

[Troy]

Yeah.

[Rashad]

On. On Saturday on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Clovers. So yes, Clovers on Sunday and also the Las Vegas Barber Expo on Sunday. So Sin City will be in your area, Las Vegas.

[Ian]

And do some investigative journalism. If Las Vegas falling apart like I keep reporting it now, that's what I'm there for.

[Troy]

The we're getting there early for the investigative journalism part business on Sunday. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rashad]

Yes, sir.

[Troy]

Stay tuned.

[Rashad]

Meet me by the one that starts at G up, please.

[Troy]

Please bet 50, not dollars either and.

[Rashad]

Anything you would like to say. Yeah.

[Ian]

Stock club call, Wednesday, 5pm central blackout, 9pm central. If I made you money, please put yes and check. Let's have an amazing show. We have a lot to get to. And please stop texting me or sending me messages asking if you should shorten video. Clearly the answer is no. Are you wrong about Intel? Should we shorten?

[Troy]

Stay locked in at all times, Please, please, please. Well, folks, you know how this works, man. Before we do anything, we got to give you out of disclaimer. Do your own research. Our content is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It's 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 and verify any information that you find on our show and wish to rely upon whether for the purpose of making an investment decision or otherwise continue to do the research. Share the research. Share it. Like really share it though. Like I know a lot of y' all are having a lot of wins. The market has been great. Share it. Let everybody know how you're doing, but stay low and keep firing. That's how we build wealth. That's how we build community. Let's keep doing it really quick.

[Ian]

Housing prices need to fall 40 while incomes rise 60 to get back to the 2019 levels. Investing is the only way. I don't think home prices are going to fall 40. And for sure, incomes are not going to raise be raised 60. So the only way to close that gap is from investing and holding long term, please.

[Rashad]

Yes, for sure. All right, so let's talk about Intel. Intel Stock was up 22% after Nvidia announced the 5 billion dollar investment in a struggling chip maker. So is this the lifeline that intel needed or is it just a flash in the pan moment?

[Ian]

Whoop de do. I know. For some reason people want intel to thrive, but it is an inferior chip maker. If you look at the class of chip makers, Nvidia's business is to make sure that they are operating at the highest level. And one way to do that is to build a moat. And we saw with Elon going to tell Trump, I miss you and that's sweet. It's better to have a great connection with the President than not. So the investment into intel is a hedge to make sure that Nvidia stays in the lead. Also a term that many people need to learn mean reversion. So it got up to 32.39. It is currently at 28.76. I think it would drop back to 24 within the next month and a half. Does it breathe some life into it? Yes, but only because the United States government has investment in intel, were wise enough to invest into an American investment while they for the moment have lost investment into China. So this was a hedge. Is intel better than Nvidia?

[Troy]

No.

[Ian]

Better than amd? No. Better than other chip makers in their class? No. So I know some of you think that I have a personal vendetta against Intel. I don't. I think they just have lost their way. And even though Nvidia is investing into them, it does not make them a world class company.

[Troy]

I agree with you. I'm gonna take your quote and I'm gonna say this, that everybody in your space is your competition.

[Ian]

Yep.

[Troy]

And I'm gonna take a little different approach because I do agree with you. I think it's both a hedge and I think it is both a way to keep give them a lifeline. We've seen this now three times over the past two years within with intel getting life first with the infrastructure bill and then being the largest allocation for that infrastructure bill. Then we saw the government deciding that they're going to take 10 of that company. And now we've seen good investment. Exactly. So this is three lifelines that it's been given. This is bigger than an intel situation. When we talked about intel and who their direct competitors were, it wasn't a GPU market we were talking about, it was a CPU market. And we talked about AMD being the new leader inside the CPU market. And so does that hurt their business? Well, if Nvidia is helping it from an infrastructure standpoint, yeah, it could, it could hurt AMD slightly. But what it does say is like that second place spot in GPUs, that was also AMD. Right. And so if I want you to focus on something, another core piece of your business, I'm going to help with your competitor to make sure that you stay in that spot and you never crash the market share that we have. Which is now up to 90%, I believe. And so I think it's a, it's a, it's a, one of those things. Let, let me hurt my competitors in terms of AMD when I'm talking about Nvidia family ties there. So it's really interesting, I think the part. And I got a lot of text messages. Troy is the time to invest in Intel. Troy's in time to invest Intel. I know you guys saying it's dead. It's on a lifeline. I'm not invested in Intel. The major thing that I said about intel, and I'll repeat it, and I still didn't hear an answer even with the $5 billion allocation, is who is going to solve the manufacturing gap that intel has?

[Ian]

No one.

[Troy]

Right. If, if all these other semiconductors are downsizing to 7 nanometer, 5 nanometer, 3 nanometer and you're still at 10, who is helping that manufacturing gap and how fast can they make that happen? I didn't hear one thing about that. Perhaps that's what Nvidia has now come on board for. But that is going to take some time, especially with a company like this. And as you're trying to get better, companies are already here and they're better and they're going to get better. So it's a tough proposition. I'm not, I'm not sold on Intel. I won't be sold on Intel. There's too many opportunities, too many companies that are ahead of it right now and that are going to thrive for me to say, let me move money here and allocation here in hopes that it catches up.

[Ian]

TSM is better. AMD is better. Nvidia is better. Also, we told you Broadcom is better. Broadcom is better. Meta is better. It's just a, it's 30 or 40 companies that are better than Intel. I also told you a few months ago that they were going to invest into intel as a hedge. And if you look from an operational standpoint, like from a brand strategy standpoint, not only do they have the best product, but one way to eliminate competition is to also invest into you in.

[Troy]

Case you do well.

[Ian]

Microsoft did this with Apple when Apple was on their deathbed as well. The difference is Jensen isn't going to take his eye off the ball and isn't going to give up Elite the way Ballmer did when he took the reins over at Microsoft. And the other issue you're going to work out for you lose Kawhi for the record. So I know everyone wants to like, yo, intel has A chance. Intel is PS4 when we're going into PS6 generational type run, they won't be able to catch up. Really quick. For everyone out there who has a computer, do you have an intel anything in your computer right now?

[Troy]

Right. And there isn't a business switch yet. Right. Like we literally watch Oracle change their business structure. Right. Like we, we're watching Dell fundamentally change their bits. The structure.

[Ian]

Dell is better. So you can name a bunch of companies who are just outperforming at scale and don't think that Nvidia with investment. Because the bad part about a competitor investment to your business, they get to see some of the operational systems that you have in place. Don't think that they're not coming for that CPU market. It's like when I put the pillow over your face when you're in on life support years, Nvidia is going to get that CPU market as well.

[Troy]

Yeah, clear sign. And we saw that when they had their announcement. I think it might have been right after GTC when they had those core CPU processors. We're like, damn, they're back in this space again. Like there's really no let up from them. So yeah, this, this is one of those situations where it's like, all right, I see the competition. We're already leading here. We watched them take their lead. Man, let's go get some market over there too.

[Rashad]

Yes, sir.

[Ian]

Super Micro is better than Intel.

[Rashad]

Well, speaking of intel, and this is live, ladies and gentlemen, so we probably will be answering questions at some point during the show. So. Okay, speaking of intel, if you've made money from investing in tech stocks over the last 18 months, put some fire in chat. Actually, don't put fire. Put which tech stocks you invested in. Push which text stocks you invested in. Because I'm pretty sure that a lot of people have invested in technology stocks that they listen to Market Mondays and I'm pretty sure that, you know, you've, you've made some money on that. So let's list palantir. Okay. Nvidia CrowdStrike, Google.

[Troy]

Nvidia ASML is up there. We got meta. Okay.

[Rashad]

Qqq.

[Ian]

No one's mentioned Intel. Yeah, we'll tell. No punishment.

[Troy]

I'm gonna speak Nico, I'm gonna speak on Corey a little bit later.

[Rashad]

Yeah, Profile.

[Troy]

That's a good one.

[Rashad]

Okay. That's a good one. Okay.

[Troy]

Crowd strike. Wow. Wow.

[Rashad]

Well, the common denominator. The common denominator is that AMD Palantir, Google Meta. The common denominator is that no matter what you invest in, up 480% on Nvidia. The common denominator is that no matter what you invested in in the tech space, you had to make money. Unless you invested in some no name tech company that we never heard of before. You've made money, right? If you've, if you've made money. Put yes in chat. If you have made money. Hello, watching Market Mondays, Investing in technology companies.

[Ian]

There we go on the back. And, and the interwebs of YouTube.

[Rashad]

A hundred percent.

[Troy]

So there we go. Celestica.

[Rashad]

Okay, Mark, so with that being said, this brings us to our next topic because.

[Ian]

Well played, President.

[Rashad]

President Trump.

[Ian]

Okay, this is great.

[Rashad]

Donald Trump has signed a proclamation requiring companies to pay an annual fee of a hundred thousand dollars for each H1B visa, a move that could significantly impact the US technology sector, which heavily depends on skilled foreign workers. The H1B visa program allows US employers to hire temporary workers in specialized fields such as technology, engineering, education and healthcare. Government data shows that about two thirds of HB H1B roles are computer related. The first half of 2025, Amazon received over 10,000 H1B visa approvals, while Microsoft and Meta each had more than 5,000. The program currently grants 65,000 visas annually, with an additional 20,000 for individuals holding advanced degrees. The new fee could increase hiring costs, particularly for small tech companies and startups. So the reason why I said the tech world has obviously been booming, which is why your stocks are going well. But this H1B visa situation is something that we've talked about before and as I saw somebody on social media say, it's been, it's been America's secret weapon for decades now that very few people are fully aware of the genius visa where America had a really brilliant idea to drain pool the world. So the smartest people from all over.

[Ian]

The world import their talent, come to.

[Rashad]

America and there's an easy pathway for them to, to get a visa, to stay if they are smart, if they're, if they're, if they are tech geniuses, right? This helps the technology companies because all of their top talent is coming on these visas. Like I said when we went to Meta, only people that was there was the Chinese people. That's a fact. So India, China, Taiwan, Japan, they're flooding, they've, they have flooded Silicon Valley and they, they've helped make all of these tech companies the magnificent, the magnificent seven, the qqq. This is why your portfolio is actually performing the way it is, because of these immigrants that have come from these different countries.

[Troy]

And there's a, there's a big piece inside of all of that the amount of money that they're paying them. Right. The wage that they're paying them. Yes. Is. It's substantial. Right. But it's far more substantial than when they, the countries a lot of times where they came from. Does that mean it matches the actual wage transferably of what it's supposed to be? Right. For a computer engineer? Not always. And so if you can pay somebody who is equally, if not even more skilled a lower wage that helps your bottom line as when you were talking about how you make revenue and how you're paying to get that revenue.

[Rashad]

Well also it's a thing of. There's not enough talented people in America to even compete for those jobs. So I don't. It's not even necessarily a thing of like they get to pay foreigners less. There's not enough educated people in the United States of America to fill those jobs. That's a fact. That's 100 fact by design. By the way, American society is getting dumber. Has gotten dumber and ranks not even in the top 30 in world's education. So yes, they can pay people less money. But Even if numerous CEOs have said this, if, if there was nobody coming into this country, there would be no Silicon Valley.

[Ian]

There will be a collapse of almost 100.

[Troy]

If you look at it just by from a geographical standpoint, the state that has the largest number of H1B visas is California. Surprise. Silicon Valley. Surprise. Home of Meta. Surprise. Home of Apple.

[Rashad]

Okay, for the people that say it's a false narrative. How. How is it a false narrative when the smartest people in the world have already backed this? When the graduation rates of computer scientists has only gone down in America and going up in China. When our math scores have only gone down in America. The America won the math Olympics for the first time in 20 years high school and the whole team was Chinese Americans. Look, I'm. I'm not like sometimes in life you just gotta, you just gotta face the facts. Nobody wants to admit these things, but these are facts. A hundred percent. Why you think they trying to push the STEM program? Because we're struggling in stem. It's a fact.

[Ian]

The talent in. Yeah, it's easier to have lion's share equity positions. And the startups that matter if they come in from another country.

[Troy]

The wealthiest man in on the planet came from an HB1 visa from South Africa.

[Ian]

Yep.

[Troy]

Right. So when you listen to Jensen, we need to have the smartest people in the world be a part of this. They're looking at it from a global standpoint, like, yes, we need the smartest talent. I guess kind of what the administration standpoint is looking at is like, yes, again, it's make America great. Right. If we raise the price of this, then it forces us to find talent from within and hopefully we find that town within and it's great.

[Rashad]

Or you just, oh, you just raise more money. You also decide is that they got Microsoft rich enough. Met is rich enough. Apple is rich enough. They just got to cut into their profits and they're gonna have to pay more money. You want. If you want the top talent, you got to pay.

[Ian]

That's not gonna happen.

[Troy]

Yeah, the, you had the Amazon 10,000. Microsoft 5200. Meta 5100, Apple 4200.

[Rashad]

But then also to look at, okay, 10,000 for Amazon, but the average salary is $150,000. That's average salary. That's average salary. Ernest & Young 8600. The average salary is 140, 43,000. Google 7600. The average salary is 178,000. Microsoft 6600. The average salary is 163,000, which is a steal. Salesforce, Salesforce 1900. Average salary 186,000. Apple 2500. The average salary is 202,000.

[Troy]

But here's the other part. This is the part you raise the price for the, for the visa, right? But you know that artificial intelligence is going to replace a lot of these jobs. So then there's that piece of it. Now that pool becomes even smaller. So now what?

[Ian]

He's gonna flail on this the same as he did terrorists. This will be an act of economic terrorism if he did this. And also if you look at the technocracies, the return on employee, whatever number they're being paid, they're making a multiple in some cases of 9x for what they're being paid per employee as high as 16x in some cases. This is never going to go through.

[Rashad]

So, okay, what if, what is the chances that this does go through and what does this do to technology companies as far as their bottom line? Because the UK came out and just did the exact opposite once this was announced. The UK came out and said, we just, we're going to make the easiest pathway possible for smart tech people to come to this country free. Does this have any. Will the QQQs be affected by this?

[Ian]

0% chance.

[Troy]

0.

[Ian]

I want to be clear on record. 0%. 100,000 per employee when I'm Sure. Y' all got texts and calls this weekend too. The sentiment was, this is laughable from the people I talked to this weekend. Snowball's chance in hell is.

[Rashad]

So why would, why would he sign a product? Why would he, why would he, why would he do this? If it's, if it's not, why would he. Yeah.

[Ian]

Trump is. Historically, has his leadership style been short term thinking or long term based? If you look historically, most of the decisions that he's made in the past 12 years have been short sighted at best. The idea, just like the tariff idea, is good on paper in terms of execution is mapped out incredibly poorly. So I think it's a way. And the battle that he's fighting is how can I get debt to GDP down? How can I get American debt down? How can I bring capital back into America? Amazing thought, terrible execution and how to go about it.

[Troy]

Yeah.

[Ian]

You think that you're going to raise employee costs for the people that help get you in. They'll make political shifts in the country and put in a new president before we have that happen. Now if this was China, I'll have a totally different take. India, different take. But in America, where tech, America runs on tech, not Duncan.

[Troy]

And we're talking about mega caps. Right. What does that say for like the companies in the Russell.

[Ian]

Oh, it's over with.

[Troy]

You can't, you won't have a company.

[Ian]

Impossible.

[Rashad]

So you don't think it's gonna happen?

[Ian]

Great job on the Spanish video. Settle. No, no. 1% chance if we want to, you know, spice it up. But no, I, I think it's a great idea on paper. The execution of it is highly unlikely, especially for those who was with him in England having dinner and doing Scottish footwork over the weekend.

[Rashad]

So, so Gil, Gil, he said, keep the immigrants away.

[Troy]

Oh, I'm like, who's Gil? I'm thinking about Arenas in the chat.

[Rashad]

Gill, in the chat he said, keep the immigrants away. That's his. That's his. What's your thoughts on that?

[Troy]

We need as much talent.

[Ian]

Country. The country would not run. And that goes for every industry. But if we're just looking at tech, Microsoft does not run. We had 10 years of Ballmer. The stock was flat. He was handed a monopoly and ruined it. And if you add inflation, it ran net negative for six years. I would argue without immigrants, we wouldn't have a max 7.

[Troy]

If you look at, I mean, look at the CEOs of those max heavens. Look at, look at Google CEO.

[Ian]

Like what? Like, come on, take away political insight or take that away just talent base by design. America has ruined the education system. Once the Rockefeller family bought or institution bought into it by design had degradation of education over the last 30, 40 years to then import other talent. The costs have gotten high. But now you're in a conundrum where you either pay the talent fee portal, that's the real transfer portal from India and China to over here or American education is so behind like Rashad said, you can't even have people to fill the positions for a small task, let alone.

[Rashad]

But then Devin Devin says or you can just train Americans how to do the job of people doing the H1B visas.

[Ian]

But what. Okay, listen close. They don't want that to happen. If they wanted that to happen, they would have retooled the country 30 years ago. That's why always bridges waterways. American education system. We'll talk later. Music rights, all that has been sold piece by piece, brick by brick to other countries and other entities.

[Troy]

Yeah, I mean if you, if you.

[Ian]

They don't want.

[Troy]

I think if that was the case then we would have been equipped. Right. STEM would have been something that would have been put at the forefront coding 20 years ago those things would have been at the forefront of the educational system. It clearly is not even now. Like I was went to back to school night the other night they were talking about artificial intelligence in my daughter's school. But I know school districts that. That's not even taking place in.

[Rashad]

Right.

[Ian]

And it's not the educator.

[Rashad]

Yeah.

[Ian]

It's not the educators who don't want. It's the power structures above and it's the.

[Troy]

It's the same thing like financial, financial literacy. Yeah. We know that if we wanted people to be equipped and trained and well off.

[Ian]

Even if you offer for free. That's the crazy part. And I don't know if we can even talk about that. If you install into a school for free, there's pushback on it and, and yeah.

[Rashad]

Shout out to the brother. He said Americans are more than capable of learning skills to do. No they're not. No, you're not. No, they're not. Well, if we start young, the society is not capable of handling that. American society is a junk food society. Not just from a diet standpoint, from everything we consume. So our society is not built on discipline like China. Our society is not built on a hundred year planning like Japan. Our society is not built around respect part of society, every part of society. That's why that said this, this is not a black issue. This is an American issue. You go to these companies, there is no white people. There's no. There's Chinese people. Like, yes, we have smart people in America. For sure. 100. Everybody that watches the show is highly intelligent. We're not talking about just a few people. We're talking about masses. Like I said. They said if they go to China right now, they could fill a football field with graduate school students. That's in computer engineering. They said they go to college in America, they're going to have a hard time filling the classroom.

[Troy]

I'm only asking because. And not to cut you off, but I'm only asking because what somebody may argue. Aren't American Chinese? Isn't that a society inside of our country?

[Rashad]

No, because they've already carried their values and traditions over with them, brought it.

[Troy]

Here, of course, and created.

[Rashad]

That's why they have. That's why they have Chinatown.

[Troy]

That's what I'm saying.

[Rashad]

So they're not fully assimilated.

[Troy]

Not a part of American society.

[Rashad]

Well, Chinese Americans.

[Troy]

That's. That's what I'm saying.

[Rashad]

Okay. Yeah, if you want to be technical.

[Troy]

Right.

[Rashad]

So Chinese Americans, I mean, they want.

[Troy]

They want our math competition for us.

[Rashad]

Okay. Technicality, diversity.

[Ian]

Hasn't the American business model always been to. To capitalize off of talent and underpay.

[Rashad]

And to keep America's. America's models. To keep people ignorant. You know that.

[Troy]

Yes.

[Rashad]

You know that. So in order to. To face the problem, you got to admit that you have a problem. We have a problem. There's no way in the world we should be the. The richest country in the world, by far human history, and not be in the top 30 in education. That's a problem. How is that possible? How are you the richest country in the world and your school system is barely trying to make it to the top 50 in the world.

[Ian]

Did that change after the Institute bought it or.

[Rashad]

No, that comes back to morals and family values and societal values and media and a variety of different things. How does Indonesia have a better school system than we have? How's that possible?

[Ian]

No, but anytime you want to. If we get too.

[Troy]

No, no, no, no. Somebody said the greatest, far from the greatest. The wealthiest, for sure. Not even close.

[Rashad]

You can argue the greatest. I mean, hey, we, you know, we gotta be honest. It's not.

[Troy]

That's. That's opinionated.

[Rashad]

Yeah.

[Troy]

The wealthiest is not. But that's not an opinion.

[Rashad]

Greatest. I mean, yeah, nobody's really accomplished what America has accomplished. Let's just be honest. Just because you did. There's faults in it for sure, but I mean, it's still. It reigns supreme over any other country. That's a fact. But no, we're not. We're not educated society. Of course not.

[Troy]

And that's why I think he's like insane by design.

[Ian]

Yeah.

[Troy]

Right. So in order to have that disparity, somebody has to remain at the top while majority of the people stay here.

[Ian]

We funded too many international causes as well. But that was also a hedge in case things did not work out here for own selfish interest. China is not going to sell majority of their mainland to any American tech CEO regardless of what price he'll pay. That's not true here.

[Troy]

Yeah. Somebody said the system is not broken. You're right. It's working exactly how it's supposed to.

[Ian]

And Rashad, you good though?

[Troy]

Huh?

[Ian]

It felt like an episode of scandal for a second.

[Rashad]

I was like, oh, no, no. We good?

[Troy]

Yeah.

[Rashad]

Okay. Apple, the resurgence of Apple.

[Troy]

All right.

[Rashad]

Apple is on the rise. And a lot of people made money if they was invested in Apple over the last couple of days.

[Troy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rashad]

The let the release of the iPhone. It got. It got good reviews, Zeke. Good reviews. And I think it was up $10 today. I think it was up like $8 a day before. It's moving. Apple's stock is on the rise.

[Troy]

Yes, it is. I think we had this conversation last week about some of the things that. Yes, in being critical, but some of the things that we have to give them credit for. And it kind of panned out, obviously with the release of the 17. It was that. That cycle now is it a super cycle like I. E. The iPhone 6 when it was just revolutionary and it's like, oh, there's no. But we don't. I don't. I don't know yet. I don't know because this is an issue. When you have a great product, you keep that great product. They said, and these are the numbers, this is according to Webush. They said that hundreds of millions of iPhones hadn't been upgraded for three to four years. Right. That number was the equivalent of 315 million users. So 315 iPhone owners hadn't upgraded in three to four years. So that's a large base of customers. In addition to that, they were saying that the increase. The demand for the 17 was up 10 to 15% ahead of the 16. So those are good things. Right at the start. Right. We're off to a great start. They put out the new iOS. I'm not really sure if I like it yet.

[Ian]

I kind of like It, I'm not gonna lie. The look of glass.

[Troy]

I don't like it. And this is the key because I don't have a phone that can take advantage of that iOS system.

[Ian]

Got you. Okay.

[Troy]

You see what I'm saying? So like I have the. I think this is the 12 or 13. In order to fully have the Apple intelligence and to really maximize that new iOS system you have to have the 16 and above. And so now as we get further into AI it becomes a thing. Oh, your phone doesn't work, you don't have that. Oh I. Oh, it's time for me to upgrade. Right. And so that cycle is starting to work. Will it be long lived? We will see. I think how they use the software. Software will determine if it can have longevity. Right now it's off to a great start and we know the fourth quarter is when people start hey it's Christmas season. We know Apple banks on that fourth quarter. Right. Just like most tech companies do. The release is great. Longevity will depend and be determined by the software that comes with that phone and that device and services is doing well too. You go Ian.

[Ian]

I agree the thing I want to first highlight. I never said that Apple was out of the 2Tech2 index matrix nor has has it been removed out of Stock Club first. Second however even though I do like the iOS a lot, this isn't my take. This is general consensus from the masses who can buy the phone there feels like there is not a lot of innovation now on the software side. Yes, but did they miss the investment into OpenAI? Of course missed it do have they been able Now I'll say this now that I got some other Intel Timothy Cook. I didn't know what battle he was facing and acquiring the AI company. Forgive me for my sins Hefe I'm sorry but they've had some challenges in buying an AI company but I think they've misstepped. But the truth is the demand for this is not what it used to be. So just because I'm critical of it does not mean then I'm anti Apple. I just don't think they've innovated and to be fair they opened up at 248.93 top of the year. They are currently at 256 while every other stock that is in tech has over performed. So I'm glad that they finally broke above where they opened at for the year. But we're not going to act like this was the game 6 Jordan Tech moment for Apple phone solid,OS I actually like A lot. But I do still think they have some challenges to overcome. I'm interested to see what the AirPod sales are going to be like that. I like the innovation there, I like the innovation on the wearables but I just think they may be one step behind where they need to be. Still a great company. Still one of my favorites of all time. Still in two Tech two index. Are they open AI or Nvidia?

[Troy]

No, Dan Ives, he raised his target price to 300. I mean he's always been bullish on, on Apple but it's good to see it moving.

[Ian]

Me too. Yeah.

[Troy]

Yeah.

[Ian]

Same 29555 by April of next year. Yeah, I can see that.

[Troy]

Yeah. It's, it's just the way it had been performing all year when you, like you said, when the rest of the, the AI space and the Max 7 had moving. Maybe not Tesla so much. I've actually put Broadcom in that the, the Max 7 I've removed Tesla out. It was just kind of like yes, when is that? When are they going to have their moment? I think it's a, it's a bright light. It's not the moment yet. Right. Like when I was hey, Oracle's gonna have a moment. I don't think Apple is, that's not this but like again the software will determine how that moment plans out and I think they, they are doing something very strategic. It's slow and steady. Right. We've said they're behind, they continue to be behind but I think it's a plan and coordinated way to approach AI. Watch the playing field, see what they can attack. And we know that they tried to acquire some companies that didn't work. The more will come available and I think they're going to be in prime position to do something they still have. It's still over 100 billion in the Treasure Trust so you got to deploy.

[Ian]

It also to this other side of the battle. We got to stay close, have to not make enemies. That's why he went back and kissed the ring. You have to be allowed to deploy the capital too.

[Troy]

Yes, blocked.

[Ian]

This reminds me of Meta when Zuckerberg was always on Congress and they were stopping him from acquiring certain like tick tock. One move would have changed the directory of Apple, but you also have to be allowed to. I still think they've underperformed but I'm looking to see what the plan is for the next three or four years.

[Troy]

So.

[Rashad]

Hit the like button and share if you have a question. Put some questions in chat. We'll Be talking to you guys live and direct. Okay. So speaking of the tech world, a company that, you know, we've talked about a lot, Nvidia, all time high right now. Yeah, yeah, Nvidia is back at an all time high. If you're invested in Nvidia, put some fire in chat.

[Ian]

Some fire inside.

[Troy]

Oh my, oh my. Yo, it's interesting. Last week I think Shoddy posed a question. There's all this noise around Nvidia and they might not be able to sell to China. And I think like, what should we do? Block out the noise. It's a distraction. Then everybody the next day was, hey, then China is saying they're not going to allow a video to sell chips. And you saw a downtick down to like 270. You're like, don't pay attention. It's a distraction. Yes, it hurts the business. It's not the only business. And then boom, Monday happens and here we are again all the time.

[Ian]

And it's really a great negotiation tactic on the part of China to say we're going to invest into our ecosystem as they should, but at some point they'll come to an agreement on a deal. And this is the part about when you create a moat for a brand, the main tenant has to be is the product or service better? There isn't a company on earth right now that can say, I can make a chip that is comparable or better to Nvidia. It's Nvidia than everyone else. Remember Deep Sequence? It was supposed to be the, the great Nvidia killer. We're not there yet. We're not there.

[Troy]

Meanwhile, they were buying their GPUs. Now it's Alibaba and it's Badu. And these companies are prominent companies, like big companies in China. Yeah, it's just not there yet.

[Rashad]

So the latest thing that, that made Nvidia pop was they announced that they're going to invest $100 billion in strategic partnership with Open AI. Open AI Again, all the money right now, all over. So Nvidia has announced plans to invest up to a hundred billion dollars in OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership for focused on building large scale data data centers powered by Nvidia's AI processes. OpenAI intends to deploy Nvidia systems requiring 10 gigawatts of power, which Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong equated to between 4 million and 5 million GPUs. The initial 10 billion investment is planned for deployment upon completion of the first gigawatt of infrastructure, with the additional investments following based on Future valuations. So OpenAI partnership with Nvidia 100 billion dollar pipeline. Nvidia stock is at a all time high. Sam Altman running around.

[Ian]

With the exception of LeBron James. Have we ever had a better rollout of who is next? They're telling you who is next. He's next to Trump. Notice even Apple hasn't been permitted to do a partnership like with open AI, but Nvidia has. Nvidia is putting on a master class in hedging and how to handle geopolitics. Open AI is being set up to get all the infrastructure run correctly so when they do IPO that American hedge funds and business can attach their future returns to open AI. Because equities need an instrument that can get higher returns or almost as high as Bitcoin. Apple can't do that. Open AI potentially can. All the signs are there and I told you a partnership with them would come. If I made you money, please put.

[Troy]

Yes in chat and there's more money to be made. I'm gonna go through a little math lesson, so if you're listening live, take out a pen, take out a pad, because a lot was said just now. I want to unpack it for people so they can have a clear understanding when we're talking about potentially the greatest company that we've seen in our lifetime.

[Ian]

Absolutely.

[Troy]

We'll be leading for the next five years. So Jensen said that the 10 gigawatts. Let's just break down what that is. So a gigawatt is a unit of energy, right? So that is the energy that is going to be needed. And for everybody in eylu, our next class, make sure y' all tune in. I will be breaking down the next energy play. 10 gigawatts of energy, right, which is equal to between 4 to 5 million GPUs. Whose GPUs? Nvidia GPUs. Now that sounds like a lot. But the money that it takes to get those GPUs is even more impressive because Nvidia GPUs in fact, Blackwell, they range between 30,000 to 40,000 per GPU. That's 4 million times 30,000. You do the math on that. Hold that number though, after you do the math. Right. In August, Jensen's told investors on an earnings call that building 1 gigawatt of a data set of capacity costs about 50 billion to 60 billion. We'll take the low end, right? So to build 1 gigawatt, that unit of energy is going to take 50 to 60 billion of that 50 to 60 billion of 60 billion, 35 billion of that goes to Nvidia's chips. So you're building the data center. Right.

[Ian]

Say that one more time.

[Troy]

Right. So you're building the data center. One gigawatt of energy, right. Costs 50 to 60 billion of that. 50 to 60, 35 billion of that cost go to Nvidia's chips and systems. Come on, one gigawatt, let's break that down. So if you got one gigawatt, let's take the low end number. That's $50 billion. One gigawatt. They're saying that they're going to build a 10 gigawatt system with OpenAI. That is the equivalent of $500 billion of which is going to be spent on Nvidia's GPUs. That means that they're going to spend half of that. Right. If we say about half, a little bit more, 250 to 300 billion is going to be spent with Nvidia. Now that sounds like. Well, that's a really large number. But what's important to know about Nvidia is its profit margin. We, and we always talk about profit margin. It's important to know the profit margin. Right? So 300 billion Nvidia's profit margin is 51%.

[Ian]

And this interesting point, as they scale, they keep projecting that they may find ways to increase Profit margin by 3 and 4%.

[Troy]

This deal alone. Right. On the low end, if the 51 profit margin on 300, 250 to 300, they're going to make or they made $170 billion in revenue off this deal today.

[Ian]

Yep. And net income margins may get up to 56.4 while having a moat. So when we talk about, I always say you want to invest in the companies that move the GDP of America, meaning which company is so great that it has the potential to knock up revenue for America to get us out of debt? Nvidia is that deadly company head guard Silicon Valley Nvidia.

[Troy]

The scary part is this, Ian and everybody listening. This is just the open AI deal.

[Ian]

Yes.

[Troy]

That'S just, that's just one deal.

[Rashad]

So the question is, okay, Nvidia and then the stock market in general, you know, stocks are very high right now. So.

[Ian]

What I would argue that Nvidia is still undervalued.

[Rashad]

I'm just saying that a lot of, a lot of stocks at their all time high right now.

[Troy]

This is true.

[Rashad]

A lot of stocks at the all time high.

[Troy]

True.

[Rashad]

So what's the advice for people that have money that want to start investing but they don't necessarily want us put all. They don't want to. They don't want to invest at the top.

[Ian]

Don't invest at the top. But more importantly than investing at the top is Horizon in which you hold. So if you hold for five year period, seven year period. I know you get tired of me saying it but it doesn't change the truth. You'll be okay. 168.84 is a level that I like Nvidia. If it falls back there I would invest at that price but. And then I will load up and get as many shares as I can. The issue is like we have moments like April. There's too much pessimism around if I should invest in from that time in April. Remember when I was like yo, 98.93 and I got that. Now we are at 183 3. You have to load the boat when asymmetric risk to reward ratio presents itself. And then if you're holding for a five year period we are a okay. If you're a red Panda, you made money. Or if you made money off Nvidia, listen to Market Mondays. What percentage are you up? Put in Jack. So if you don't want to invest at a high weight until it drops back to that price and then you'll be A okay and but look to hold for three or four year period and everything will be fine. My 34 year price we should be at 292.88 and I think even at that price Nvidia still incredibly undervalued.

[Troy]

Yeah. Somebody, somebody asked why didn't it move like Oracle? Well, Oracle had a projection of a 1200 dollar 1200 increase. Right. With the forward projections you got to understand that Nvidia is a 4 and a half trillion dollar company and Oracle is not even a trillion dollar company yet. It's on pace. It will be there. I firmly believe that it'll be the next trillion dollar company it hasn't gotten.

[Ian]

You just missed the move. Respectfully.

[Troy]

Right. It did exactly right. We were saying this in I mean I don't know how many years.

[Ian]

22 I talked about in 2122 shout out to Edwin talked about enrolling our article in 20 exactly. On the show we have talked about Nvidia, the ecosystem, the importance of AI automation and I get it. Sometimes you'll miss out on the move and not be aware. But this is why I say a lot of times, especially to our community when they're pumping out noise about back in the day GameStop AMC like the companies that are not going to move the world, they're doing it to use us as liquidity. Meanwhile, the companies like, talk about it later. Dale, There are companies that are just executing quietly and being better and Nvidia is one of them. They went from 10.81 adjusted for split to now at 183.61 and keeps investing into quality companies. If you want to have a proxy investment into open AI while they still have their marriage going strong, invest in Microsoft. Told you about Oracle, Apple. Like it's not that many great companies to even invest in to have this much divergence about what to invest in.

[Troy]

Linwood, I'm going to answer your question maybe a little bit later because we, we know tomorrow Micron will be reporting. I'll get to that before we leave here tonight. I got you. I got you. Yeah, but we, we said this, we said Nvidia was undervalued, obviously. We watched it go up to over a thousand and split ten to one. Like you said, we've said this about TSM when it was 93. It's undervalued. We set, we said this about ASML. Are we just not going like we.

[Ian]

Said this then probably is the most undervalued stock in the last 10 years. Given the geopolitical issues. Like they didn't have a geopolitical issue. They would have been a video for sure.

[Troy]

They needed. And I told you, even in the ecosystem, it's interesting how these things are playing out. Like, I think that's what this show is that important. It really is that important. We literally broke down and spoke about ASML last week. And now analysts have said they raised their price target and they talk. But we've been telling that every to everybody and now it's over 973, something like that. And they're like, oh man, when should we get in?

[Ian]

Put it in chat. You only need four. Can I ask y', all, from a media standpoint, most networks, how many amazing shows can you have on a network that actually moves? Like, if you look at the history of cbs, mtv, bet, Netflix, Paramount, there's a cap on alpha returns in any genre. You only need four great companies.

[Troy]

Man.

[Ian]

You could build an empire just off investing in four amazing companies if you don't deviate from them.

[Troy]

Yo, can we put a fire in chat for Calvin? Calvin is up 1800% on Nvidia. 1800%. Oh, my shout out to you, Calvin.

[Ian]

Somebody asked PayPal. PayPal is, is not an amazing company. They are a good Company that had the best of years behind them. But is PayPal better than Bitcoin? JP Morgan? Well, all the all stars left.

[Troy]

Can I ask y' all a question? Because I know how y' all gonna answer it. Tito said, what's the next one?

[Ian]

Nvidia. There's only one Jordan. There's only one LeBron. There's one Brady. There's no. There's only one. There's only one Troy Miller. There's only one Ian Dunlap. The. The one that's here is one Patrick Mahomes. Even though they got off to a slow start one Jalen hurts. There is no next one.

[Troy]

It's here. It's here.

[Ian]

Watching Nvidia now has to be what people felt like in the 90s investing in Microsoft. Nvidia is right on the edge of being a monopoly, but made the investment into intel and others partnerships in play and good relationship with president. They'll be fine. And Jensen is loved amongst the legal community as well. This is the closest thing you're going to get to a monopoly. There is no other. There's no other. Sometimes it's the moment like in we're here.

[Troy]

Yeah, we're here. And it's here. And rel. Shout. Shout out to rel. He said, let's talk about Quantum. We spoke about Quantum when it was. I mean, Quantum's having a moment. We can't and we shouldn't run from that. Quantum is having a moment. If you looked at a lot of the Quantum stocks, I know I and Q has had a run. I told everybody the only one that I really like because I like to have ones that companies that have not a moat but they service across the entire energy rigetti which was rgh. It's rgti. Rgti yeah, it's having a moment. But I think those are stocks that just are running right now. I think we're still too early, but they are running. I if people are making money trading that congratulations to you.

[Ian]

They're trade not a great investment right now.

[Troy]

Same open door you just said. I was just gonna say that, man. Thank you.

[Ian]

Great mind stick.

[Rashad]

Yes, sir. All right, all right. So let's talk about. Hit the like button and share, please. Let's talk about Disney. So pretty whirlwind of events that's happened. If you hadn't been following following Charlie Kirk's death, Jimmy Kimmel said a few things and I guess it wasn't to the liking of Donald Trump and a lot of other people. And he was suspended indefinitely from his show abruptly caught a lot of people by surprise. Then today they, they announced that he's coming back tomorrow. So, okay, this is interesting from a few different standpoints. We're going to talk about it from a stock standpoint as far as Disney stock. But, you know, I, I said one thing on Instagram. I said, next, Next Star was trying to complete a 6.2 billion dollar merger with T Gun. So they took Kimmel off the air when the powers that be threatened to deal. Then ABC, Disney lost 3.8 billion in market value in one day due to backlash. And boy, so they brought Kimmel back. We can learn anything from this debacle. It's the only thing power truly respects.

[Ian]

Is money is money.

[Rashad]

That's it. Focusing on anything else in the name of change is a waste and won't work.

[Ian]

Hello. No, in a statement, and y' all.

[Troy]

Asked me about Disney last week. Yeah, it's, it's, it's great. After we, we did the show last week and I was, I think I was. And you know, I told you this. I was trying to figure out what are they doing with espn, Right? Because I keep seeing the commercials with John Cena. I'm just like, I'm not sure what's happening. There's a, Is there a new ESPN app? And what does that mean? And then it felt like they must have been watching the show because as soon as I got home, it's for the second Monday night game, I couldn't log into espn. And I said, oh, wait, something happened. I went to my other tv. I couldn't. They turned off my espn. I went to hoop. They turned off my Hulu. I'm like, oh, what's happening? Then I looked and I realized that, oh, wait, they want you to pay for a new subscription. Right. And so this was the issue with Disney. They had ESPN as an asset, but it was an asset that was costing them billions of dollars and they couldn't figure out how to make money from it. Yes, people watch espn, but ESPN spends a lot of money. Well, Disney spends a lot of money on sports licensing. Obviously. The NBA and the NFL, they have NCAA games, they have nascar. So they spend a lot of money. How are they generating money when people aren't subscribing to linear television anymore as part of a sports package? This is how they got ESPN Unlimited, which I had to find out last week.

[Ian]

Yeah.

[Troy]

So now Disney plus is a price, Hulu is a price, and Disney, ESPN Unlimited is now a price. It's now, it's a singular app that they can now generate revenue from. I think it's like 12.99. Right. So the total package is like 35.99, which we talked about last week of how putting these streaming services together and it's going to end up costing more than cable in the long run, which will lead to another income. Well, a new sector entire in terms of how we're going to stream. People were just starting to figure out that they had to make this single entity and how it was going to make money. And people were subscribing. Then this happens and like you said, you start to see people creating campaigns where unsubscribing from Disney, you just figured out how to make one of your assets profitable. And now you have this tailwind where people are saying, we're leaving, we're leaving, we're leaving, we're leaving, we're leaving. Follow the money. Right? You're trying to make an asset profitable. It just launched two weeks ago. You started to see an uptick. Now this. People are leaving. This felt like an easy decision for them in terms of money. We can't have people leaving. We've made our loyal customers upset. We've made even some of. Not even our loyal customers. We've made people upset from the decision we made because of the business. Like what you alluded to. How do we try to get that back? Oh, wait, Monday's here. Well, he's back on air Tuesday.

[Ian]

I'll ask the chat. You want honest commentary or you want a politically correct answer? In the interim, Disney opened up at what, 111.87. It is hovering around that price currently. I think media is having really. Only Netflix has really mastered this new media model. If we're talking from a publicly traded standpoint. I've had my thoughts on Disney. I think Rashad, what you illustrated, never mess up the money. I think Jimmy just got caught in a crossfire of a deal potentially being done and you don't want any threats on the table to getting that deal eliminated. I think and the interesting part, for a media company, Disney has good margins. I think their margins, like net margins, 22.8%. They just have missed the mark on a couple of things. But and also too, in a era when we're like in a era of high gains. This is like the BALCO era of baseball. No one wants nominal returns anymore. People want phenomenal returns. And I don't know if Disney's going to be able to do that. And they need to figure out the asset structure. And like you said, with all the apps combined. You're paying now more than what you used to pay for cable. And I don't know if it's worth it. So especially as there is a economic tightening and compression in finances, I don't know if this model is the best model to. To pursue.

[Troy]

You lost ufc. You gained. Yeah, you gained the wwe. But the WWE is so intelligent that they spread out their brand across all premium services. So it's on Peacock Move. It's on Netflix Flex.

[Ian]

Yep.

[Troy]

Right. It's on Fox. It's on all of them.

[Ian]

And they made rough losers just for them. But that's not a premier WWE event.

[Troy]

What they do have is football. They do have Monday Night Football, and they do have college football. And we know what is king in America when it comes to sports and live sports. Well. Well, unless it's the Netflix boxing model, because that will probably generate more people in the super bowl watching.

[Rashad]

Well, to be fair, Netflix is. Netflix stock has been trash for over half a decade.

[Troy]

Whoa, hold on.

[Rashad]

Five years. I mean, Disney. Disney.

[Troy]

Hold on, bro. Now I'm about to disagree.

[Ian]

Sorry if we don't wake it up. Let's wake it up. Yeah.

[Troy]

He met Disney. He met Disney.

[Rashad]

Disney. Disney stock has been in the dumps for half a decade.

[Troy]

Not trash. It had a run in the. During the pandemic, which I was like, yo, I can see a pathway forward. And then the esp. The debt that it was taking on was just too much. Parks would just reopen. And they weren't reopening at the same speed, people. The cruise pandemic got in the way of, obviously, the cruise.

[Rashad]

And they got hit with the woke. They got hit with the woke. They got. They was one of the first companies to get targeted by the Trump administration last. Last time that he was president with the woke, with the whole WOKE movement in the.

[Troy]

In Florida.

[Rashad]

In Florida and. And all of that. So they've been struggling for a long time.

[Ian]

But that issue is a very big one. And then are you going to be media and real estate with the parks, or are you going to split them and focus on one and maybe sell off the assets of another? And I don't know how you structure all of that.

[Troy]

And they were in. They were in peak season. We always forget, like, we think Disney, we think the parks. We. We. We are now thinking streaming. Before that, we were thinking Hollywood. Yep. We were thinking the. The big box office movies. They were in that run. Right. So 2018-21, you get end game, you get Black Panther, you get the new Avatar. Came in, in the last couple of years. These are billion dollar brands. But when people aren't going to see him at the same rate, I know they're starting to see an uptick now. I think Deadpool did pretty well, but Warner Brothers started kicking the door down on them. Right. They had the Barbie one. So the way that people were starting to see the content, it changed. And then it became, hey, I want to see this content in my house. I don't want to go to the movie theater. And so like how does that. They gotta. They were trying to figure it out. They. Bob Iger. I'm interested to see the statement that he'll release. I know that obviously he's still the CEO and the co chair. They decided to bring Kimmel back in this moment. I'd be interested to see the, the statement that he has to say about it. But they're slowly trying to bring this back. I know they, they put out the release for Doomsday, which I'm, I'm sure would be a billion dollar movie. They have assets. They got to figure out how to turn the streaming into something that's profitable or it's nothing, it's not going to work.

[Ian]

And I keep saying, I know Disney is a clean cut brand, but they have not invested enough into the new form of content which is podcasting and streaming. I think the model of paying a bunch of money for content to wonder if it's going to get a return, especially in a company like Disney thrived when quantitative easing was pushing money into the market. Once you see constriction like I think as an executive or CEO or leader of your company, your number one thing has to be focusing on what can kill my brand every day, day. And I think they took their eyes off of the threats in the business thinking that the environment will never change and environments can change incredibly fast, especially given leadership who was in office and who went to war with them. So. But Disney's had trouble for a long time. Definitely not in my favorites list.

[Troy]

Yeah, they, they were in my favorites list and I actually showed people breaking up with them. Well, I sold my shares a couple of years ago because they were. The struggle was so real in the Disney that we know and we grew up on obviously as 80s babies is that was for your kids and as you had kids, you watched it. But in this world of streaming, it can't just be kid content.

[Ian]

Right?

[Troy]

Like it has to be a little bit more diverse. Especially I should. YouTube.

[Ian]

That will, that'll work.

[Troy]

Right. And even some, some shows on Netflix will work. But Disney doesn't have the diversity of hat. Well at the time didn't have the diversity of going anything other than PG, right. Like it was struggle to get PG 13 on there. Now they went to rated R, but you have to have like a code. And so they're that family friendly brand that people aren't like, I'm going over there. Like Netflix will have narcos and you can watch that. Oh, they had Ozark and you can watch that. Right. And then they got Wednesday. Like these shows are synonymous. Like I know they had the Mandalorian, which is a big show. Yeah. But the, the base that grew up on that, that, that star, Star wars fandomonium. Where are they?

[Ian]

Yeah.

[Rashad]

So, okay, Darcy, Darcy in the chat said. Darcy in the chat said, are we gonna see a pullback in mid October or the market?

[Ian]

Every month? Every week.

[Troy]

Yo, I'm, I'm convinced though. I'll be honest with you. I'm convinced. I'm glad. That's a great question. I was convinced we was going to see a pullback on Friday and we kind of saw like a slight one, even though on Thursday, because this was quadruple witching. We were saying that for the past three weeks. Right. Like this is a time when people are taking profits and new contracts are being created and a lot are expiring in the options, derivative market in, in futures, commodity, those things like, I don't know what stop. What's going to stop the market? We've seen conflict after conflict. We've seen political turmoil, we've seen administration change, we've seen tariffs. And at the end of the day, the market just becomes more resilient.

[Ian]

I've always said the market is rigged to permanently stray up, to stay up. Hedge funds, pension funds, funder funds have to deploy capital. So they're gonna like. So are we going to have a pullback? Pullbacks happen every day, every week. That's why I said on stage, go to your month week daily chart. Find the areas in which you want to buy. You'll see them there. They just don't last as long as they used to. You have a smarter retail investor, smarter retail trader. You have quants there before, but the quant movement has exploded even more. The AI trading revolution is starting to kick in. And then the hedge funds are getting better. So those opportunities that used to lay there for two or three weeks are now two and three days. You have to be faster to your execution. And then when you have moments like April and then May where the Market was still at a lower. You have to put a lot of capital in because you aren't going to see those kind of pullbacks. But for the record, or even if you go to your hour chart, you're. You have a pullback every day. It's up to you to take advantage of it.

[Troy]

Viz said this is the first time that they've made money in the market on quadruple witching. First time. It's unusual it the market. I don't know.

[Rashad]

Put yes in chat. Okay. Hit the like button and share 6, 000 people want to check in.

[Troy]

Somebody chat.

[Rashad]

We're live chat.

[Troy]

Where we going? Because somebody's asking about Uber.

[Rashad]

We could talk about Uber.

[Troy]

Let's do the lift one. Let's do the lift joint first.

[Rashad]

What's. What's the left joint?

[Troy]

Where's it at? I got it right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Lyft announced. Yeah, they announced their deal with Waymo. We talked about Waymo a few times. To bring Robo Taxis to Nashville. The stock was up 20. What's our thoughts on that? Because I, I'm tie all this all in. Yeah, I'll let you go.

[Ian]

I think it's a great partnership. We'll lift pullback some. Yes. But I think the king in that space definitely is Uber. Even though, because it's really a battle of profit margins and executives. I think the lift CEO is a good one, but I think Dara is just better. And especially since April, they've been incrementally climbing higher week over week. Like since May, they haven't had a negative week. And I think they're just hitting on all the right cylinders at the right time. Great move by Lyft. It puts a lot of pressure on Tesla and the Robo Taxi as well. But I think for now Uber is king in that space. And if you look at the, the long term chart, Uber has done a hell of a lot better in comparison than Lyft.

[Troy]

Yeah. If you look at lift chart since 2021, I mean it's been, it's been a tough climb. I think the, the Waymo deal is important. I think it's significant from a standpoint of saying that we're serious. Right. Like we're serious. Obviously Uber is the king of the space, but we want to be a serious piece of this autonomous vehicle, robo taxi sector and having Waymo as a partner, specifically in Nashville, which is, I mean, a city obviously in the south. But we've seen Waymo and Uber already do this, so kudos to. I Think Waymo is the winner here. Obviously, if you haven't been watching what Google's been doing, go look at Google's chart. They hit an all time high. They're the winner here. But I think again, it validates the space, but it validates Lyft as a partner that will now participate. If you read Dara's comments, CEO of Uber last week he had some interesting things to say about the role that Robotaxi is going to play and potentially why Tesla should partner with them, which is something, it's interesting. Why did the Uber stock go up today? And it was trading around 100 to 1 this morning. I know it pulled back down to like 99. They announced a new type of service and that was their autonomous drones, right? So their drones, they, they launched a deal with flytrax, which is a drone based delivery service. And so they're going to start using that for Uber Eats. So now drones will be able to deliver your food and flytrax has a license for a lot of the FTA to actually fly in specific zones, which is interesting. So they agreed to do that with Uber Eats. They're going to pilot the service in the US and they're going to have it in specific markets by the end of this year. So that's a new way to add revenue and, and have the base grow. Which is interesting because when I thought drones, I'm like, wow, that's interesting. Drones were in the news on Friday and Saturday as well. You know why?

[Rashad]

Cardi B, there you go, Uber.

[Troy]

But Cardi B. So I'll let you go. Cardi B just said a Guinness Book world record for most drone deliveries in a single day for her album. So she connected with Wing, which is a goo. Another Google company, to deliver her album via drone, which is again, that's innovative. They're using the technology. So when I saw that, I'm like, oh, wow. Now here's Uber announcing their delivery service for food. But this is going to be something that we're going to have to, to, to obviously deal with in the near future here.

[Rashad]

Salute to Barty.

[Troy]

Barty gang. Yes. What up?

[Rashad]

Did it again? Yeah, Uber reign supreme because they've, they've disrupted three industries.

[Ian]

Transportation.

[Rashad]

So that when you come out and you. And there used to be a time where, you know, you, you had a thing called a cab and you called the cab number and, and you would wait outside for a cab to come and then the cab took you in. The cab had a meter and you had to watch the meter to know how much money you was going to have to pay. That's, that's the cab model completely disrupted by Uber. Then there used to be a thing called delivery man, you call dominoes. And some people still do it like my mom still does it. But you call up, you call, you call the restaurant, the restaurant has a guy that has a car. You over the phone make an order, they give it to their in house guy like their nephew that's just runs back and forth delivering stuff and that's how you motorized bike, that's how you do, that's how you got your deliveries. Ubereats has shattered that for sure. And now they go into freight freights and, and logistics for Uber freight. And I feel like.

[Troy]

You saw who they signed the deal with for the Uber freights. Who Tesla. So the Tesla semi, the first deal that they signed, this is the, this is how you follow the money. The first deal is Uber phrase. Let's see how this relationship works. We got the semis out there, we got Uber using. This is the first sign of relationship building problems. Track this relationship.

[Rashad]

So now they got the freight. So man, Uber, Uber has really revolutionized industries time and time again. So nobody's catching over nobody. Nobody, nobody.

[Ian]

You gotta invest in a king maker. The category you say I'm getting, not a lift.

[Troy]

Yeah, yeah. And the, the, the, the ride share is important but I, I think that they would even argue their logistics is even more important. The technology that they have to track, to follow, to vet is just superior which is why and it, their brand is so trusted. I always talk about the analogy and I'll use the cab one again. Imagine 20 years ago you're putting your kid in the car of a stranger and being okay, yeah, you would never do it. You would never do it. Probably two to three times a week now you call an Uber for your kid to take them to the mall, take them to school, pick them, you do that and you don't even blink.

[Rashad]

I wouldn't say that because you can track. Well, most people, I don't, I don't. A lot of people, I would not feel comfortable putting my kid in the Uber.

[Ian]

You don't, but a lot of people do.

[Troy]

A lot of people do. I put my, my kids in the Uber.

[Rashad]

I, I'm just saying me personally, yeah, I wouldn't feel comfortable. My son, now, of course he's 14 years old, but if I have a daughter, my niece, I don't feel comfortable putting her in an Uber.

[Troy]

At what age?

[Ian]

No, me. You both suffer from paranoia.

[Troy]

Well, here's the thing. Even, even if. And again, this is true. Right. And that's why they have their star service and all those type of things and ratings and all that. But people will.

[Rashad]

You.

[Troy]

You will do it. It's not a lot of people do it. You think about it before as opposed to like that's not even a question. It's never going to happen. Like, I'm not letting a stranger get my kid get in the car with a stranger. Right. If they have. No way. You. You may call Uber. It's an option for you really quick.

[Ian]

Uber holds a 75 of the U S ride hill and market share and 25 of it globally, worldwide. Lyft is a very distant second. Invest in the one who leads the category is always a great investing lesson.

[Troy]

Right. So that. And that's the part. It's like they have a trust that they've developed with their customer. Right. Like you trust your food to get there. Right. When you order Uber eats you. You trust that it's going to get there now. Exactly. You trusted. Like if you, if you catch an Uber, you're trusting that you're going to get to a place.

[Ian]

Yeah.

[Troy]

Right. And you can try and somebody can track you and the logistics work. If we said the same thing, like, hey, I'm gonna call you a Tesla, you might not feel the same way.

[Rashad]

I'm gonna call you. But Teslas are Ubers now.

[Troy]

Well, that's why I'm saying the partner long term partnership. Tesla's can't. Teslas have their own autonomous. They're using their own logistics. So like when they try to get the robo taxi that would be on Tesla's plat, you're gonna have to use their app to get it right. Now there are Teslas that will come pick you up because they use Uber. What I'm saying is when they turn the Robotaxi into an autonomous vehicle in their freight, that changes the game. That's a game changer. That is the way to extreme profitability.

[Ian]

The variable is how long will you stay focused.

[Troy]

Oh, that the elon.

[Ian]

That boy hit Trump with that. I miss you. Whatever you got to do to get them coins back, my boy, I ain't mad at you.

[Troy]

But I think if he thinks profitability, he'll be focused enough to get this done.

[Ian]

I hope so.

[Troy]

I think he's always thinking profitability.

[Rashad]

I do also want to say Invest fest. This is our last VIP webinar that we're going to do for the VIP people this Wednesday at 7:00.

[Ian]

Clock.

[Rashad]

And it's with Alicia Little and it's on artificial intelligence. So if you're an invest fest VIP ticket holder, take advantage of it. This is the last one we're going to do of this series this Wednesday, seven o'. Clock. Alicia Little. And it's gonna be a good one. Yeah, for sure. I will say this if, if we can too. I do want to, I do want to say something because we did do something that was pretty cool last week. So we went inside of the federal penitentiary and we spoke with, we spoke with inmates and it was, it was a pretty, pretty, pretty amazing experience. So I'll just briefly explain the situation to you. So when you. In the federal, in the federal jail system there's different tiers. There's the camp. So the camp is like when the wolf of Wall street went and he was playing tennis. That's, that's very low level. That's like with Martha Stewart. That's, that's low level. Like they making quilts and playing tennis and it's whatever. Then you got to step up from that, which is like minimal. At the highest level possible is the penitentiary, which is maximum. That's maximum pen. This is very dangerous people. Bank robbers, people that was like on RICO K, like the head of the RICO, like those type like high level criminals. People serving 120 years and in jail 87 years. Extremely dangerous place. One of the, one of the dangerous places in America. We was in Canaan Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. It takes two and a half hours to get there. We had to leave at 5:30 in the morning. We got there 8 o'. Clock. They told us when we got there, like, look, if you get, if you get taken hostage, don't fight. That was the prep talk that they gave us.

[Troy]

Prep talk was crazy. Prep talk was great.

[Rashad]

But we got in, we walked the yard. We had, they had to walk us through the whole yard. It was like prison break. They had to walk us through the whole facility. We saw the different units and we spoke to a group of men. There's probably like 80 of them, 80 or 90. And then they're in a special program of like emotional intelligence program. And it was spearheaded by my cousin and it was us and Elton Brandt, NBA legend and another former warden of mdc. And we spoke to them about financial literacy, about life choices, assets over liabilities. A lot of the guys already had the book you get, you deserve to be rich. So man, it was, it was, it was really dope, man. It was very receptive. They were just happy that we just like Took time out of, like, they was just amazed that we. We even, like, came. They said it was unprecedented. He said, like, that the program like, that we did has never been done before in jail. Like, in that jail. Like, unprecedented. So, like, for the prisoners, like, they was just so appreciative that, like, we came, and it was a really dope experience. So I wanted to just thank the staff that made that possible. Todd, my guy Todd, who worked with us, my cousin Khaled, who organized it on the inside, Elton Brandt for taking time out of his schedule, and everybody else, Maureen, everybody that took part in that. Man, it was very humbling experience. It was a very humbling experience, for sure.

[Troy]

I want to personally thank Shoddy, because a lot of times he'll say, let's do something, and I'll have no idea. He'll just say. And I'm like, all right, let's do it. Like, if he's saying, we're gonna do something, let's go do it. When I got there, this is my first time ever being to jail or being to a penitentiary. I realized the magnitude of why we were there. He, like, he. That he. The. The magnitude of being there meant more than anything. I think when we got in front of the. The gentleman there, the most important thing that I wanted to convey to them was that they were important. Because a lot of times they're forgotten about and they're written off by their families, and they're obviously written off by their communities. But when I looked out, I'm like, they're. The only difference between us is a decision. Like, literally one decision is the difference between us speaking to them and them sitting there watching us speak. Yeah. And it was extremely humbling to hear his cousin speak and to see the growth. A lot of the guys did come up and they were talking about assets over liabilities and the book. And then Saturday, the next day, we got an email and. And shout out to Todd, who helped put it together. And again shouting. He put this together. I was just like, yo, I'll go. Whatever you want me to do, I'm doing it. He sent us an email and he said, I want to thank you guys for being phenomenal men. What you did is going to impact these guys lives forever. The consensus is this is the first time that they felt like they weren't in jail in years.

[Ian]

That's deep.

[Troy]

And we were only. We were there for two hours. It was the first time that they didn't feel like they were in jail. And that just stuck with me. Like, you know, One decision can change your life. But these people are still human beings that they obviously have made mistakes, but they're still human beings and they still have families and they're trying to get better and they're working to get better. And the unit that his cousin is leading, we actually got to go in that unit and see how they live. And it was, it was an eye opening experience. It was a powerful one. So I want to thank you personally for allowing me to be there for that. But yeah, if you have anybody that, that's incarcerated, I, I encourage you to, to reach out if you can. And let's just let them know, like.

[Ian]

We, we care now.

[Troy]

We love you. And the fact that they're studying. I know there's one. I forget the gentleman's name, but he, he wanted to talk to me about stocks. He was like, I hear y' all talking about the Mag 7. I'm into real estate. Which one should I do? I'm like, oh, this, this is Market Mondays now. Like, this is crazy. So, I mean, the, to, to have that level of mindset, to be focused, to know that, hey, I could still be productive. I know this dude was like, I'm, I'm telling my kids to watch y'. All, I'm opening up, I'm telling them how to open the brokerage account. I can't invest, so I'm telling them the things to invest to when we're on our calls. It was powerful, man.

[Ian]

Yeah, and send them JP's too.

[Rashad]

Yeah, extremely powerful, man. So, yeah, I just wanted to say that because that was a, that was a, a moment worth telling. That was a story worth telling. And I won't say this too, man. Like, you know, we really gotta be careful what we glorify because there's, there's a. When you see, when you see things on the outside, like you might see people on Instagram taking pictures in jail and you know, and then even the young stuff. Like I said, I don't wanna, I don't want to pal on young thugs. I actually, you know, I appreciate his words. But when he was like, you know, the thing that went viral, like if we go to jail for the rest of our life, whoop dee doo. I could tell you from being with people that's in jail for the rest of their life is not, that's not the sentiment. That's not the sentiment. You know, I mean, so we just got to be careful of, of like how we portray things and how we glorify things. Because a lot of this comes down to economic decisions comes down to the money. So, like, if you had an opportunity to make money the right way, you wouldn't have to go down the other path. So a show like Market Mondays is really life changing because it is providing people with a new avenue to make money. Way more money than they made.

[Ian]

Sure.

[Rashad]

Illegally. Right. Just trading stocks or investing in stocks and holding stocks or buying real estate or starting a business or using your credit. So vitally important that we get that message to young people, especially young people that's at risk. That is extremely important message because unfortunately, sometimes, you know, you don't want to wait 30 years to learn your lesson. Like, it's better to learn it when you're 16, as opposed to learning it when you're 47 years old.

[Ian]

It's powerful messages. I agree 1,000%.

[Rashad]

All right. Okay. On a. On a lighter note.

[Troy]

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.

[Rashad]

Okay.

[Ian]

Now it's just a blessing to have your freedom meant to be like, freedom.

[Rashad]

Is a must, must.

[Ian]

You know, if you know anybody behind the wall, just, like, just enjoy being able to have a bad day and walk around and go outside and.

[Rashad]

Oh, yeah, can I tell one more story too? Because I do want. I do want. Not to go up on too much of a tangent, but this is important because there's been a lot of talk about this young thug situation of who ratted, what gun. It said all of this stuff. So I thought this was insightful. When my cousin said this, so he was talking and he was just like, you know, when he got to the. To the. To the pen. So if you're in jail, there's like, you kind of have to be part of something. Blood crib. You gotta.

[Troy]

You.

[Rashad]

You can't really be like, by yourself.

[Ian]

Yeah.

[Rashad]

So one of the strongest units in jail is, like, the Muslims, right? So he was already Muslim. He was born Muslim, so he didn't have to convert. But when he went to jail, he was like, yo, what you gonna do? Like, you would. You would us with the bloods. He's like, I'm Muslim. So long story short, they take him to the head of the Muslims and he hands his paperwork. Like, look, this is my paperwork. He like, he threw his paperwork on the floor. He's like, why you throwing on the floor? He's like, what is this for? He's like, this is to show you I didn't rat on nobody. My record is clean. He's like, this doesn't mean anything. He was like, this. This isn't good. This is showing me that you committed crimes. And he's like, this doesn't speak to your character. You didn't tell on nobody. But you could be a terrible person. So I think that that was just real insightful for how he, how he broke that down. Because it's like we spending hours talking about who ratted, who did this, who did that. You could still be a terrible person. And even like what you did is not good. So you can't, you can't. There's nothing good that can come from bad. No matter if you, you can't be an honorable criminal. Like you started off on the wrong foot to begin with. So that mentality that we have is like, yo, I'm, I'm stand up. No, you can't be a stand up dude. If you so crack to your neighborhood, you're not a stand up person.

[Troy]

Yeah. And the powerful line he said was when he looked at the papers on the ground, he said, that doesn't tell me anything about your character. That just tells me who you were. I want to know who you are now. Who are you gonna be now? Because that's your past, right? So who are you now? That's what's going to define you.

[Ian]

And if you're out of the street, not in the street, stay out of street business. 100 different type of code. It makes no difference. I see a lot of people who work a Dynafi talking about gonna rally. I'm like, for what? You've never even been to Atlanta last four years. Mind the business that pays you 100 perhaps ever.

[Rashad]

100. So I just, yeah, we just gotta be really, really careful of what we glorify. Shout out to sue, surf. He was in there. Free to wave.

[Ian]

Free to wave.

[Rashad]

All right. Yeah, yeah. Be home soon. Okay. Can we talk about, can we talk about smh? SMHS is one of these funds that have all of these chip companies in it. So you see SMH at almost all time high. And we talk about the reason why I want to talk about SMH because we talk about all the chip companies. We've talked about Nvidia, we talked about Oracle, we talked about intel, we've talked about Taiwan Semiconductor. Well, SMH is the hub. SMH is the hub for all of that. So we always say like as far as, if you want, you know, the etf play, the benefit with that is that you get a package deal, right? You get a lot of companies in one particular sector without having to pick individual stocks. So looking at artificial intelligence and the chip play specifically, that's a Benefactor of it. And if you look at their stock price, like I said, I mean I think it's, I think it's at an all time high. SMH is one of these things that as long as these, the chip stocks are, are running, SMH is going to be a benefactor of that.

[Troy]

Yeah, I mean we, we done said that this is going to be an AI revolution. It's going to be a daily revolution. That's what we've been teaching on for the past two years. And I think the beautiful thing about it is that you don't have to look too far. If you go inside his allocations, you can see where the money is moving. Nvidia is leading that 20 allocation. TSM is number two at nearly just over 11 Broadcom. And lo and behold, you know what number four is?

[Ian]

Tell us.

[Troy]

Micron, a company that no one was talking about two years ago, a company that nobody. Oh wait, hey, they're the number four allocation inside smh. And that's for a reason. And we talked about it plenty of times where they're going to lead in high bandwidth memory. They've moved to number four. They replaced what was formerly number four, which is amd. And so if you understand the, and that's why I always stressed, understand how this works, right, how this economy works when we're talking about semiconductors, how AI works and what each company represents and does is so important. These are the reasons why. And if you can't figure that out, then yeah, the ETF like SMH makes too much sense. It makes too much sense.

[Rashad]

Well, it also gives you safety because yeah, in the event you do make a mistake with a company, it could real, the ETF reallocates itself. So like you said, micron is now 4. That means it moved up the ladder, of course. So it's like it's, it's the, the best analogy that you can give is, is if you, you coaching a team and if you have a player that's the seventh man, but he's coming in practice every day and he's killing the first string, then that power forward is going to get moved down and the seventh man is going to get moved into the rotation. You obviously can't do that with an individual stock because everything is just riding on that one particular stock. So that's the good thing with the ETFs, that they are flexible and they, they are changeable based off of performance.

[Troy]

I think this is a telltale sign. Like I said two years ago, three years ago, this probably would have been a 1% allocation. The fact that it's number four inside of ETF like SMH tells you something. So a lot of people keep asking the chat. So yes we do. I think about Micron going in tomorrow I think they're going to blow out their earnings, I really do and we've seen it leading up to it. Right. This is a stock that was at $89 a few months ago. We're sitting here now I think we're at what, 160 did we get to 170? 164 it's already up $2 after hours it's at 166 tomorrow open. I, I, I wouldn't be surprised if I see it cross 175 at 4:30 tomorrow. But just because of the demand like every time they've reported over the past two years there's been yes, the AI story is coming to play. We can see it's spaced inside of the AI revolution in terms of data center that has seen plenty of growth. The CPU hasn't seen so much growth but this data center demand has really grown for it. So every time we talk about Nvidia chips being sold and we know that they're one of the leaders inside of who's going to be the highest bandwidth memory for Nvidia that is promising. When we see Oracle, all these American companies we talked about the infrastructure play with with Cheryl McChisney I think they're gonna have a hell of a a quarter I think and tomorrow we will see it reflect that. So that's my thoughts on Micron obviously we've been in this for two years. Shout out to everybody, put fire in the chat if you got Micron calls we've actually added to the stack. So I told you last time we like to stack our calls. So yeah once we pass the 100 threshold we're going to get the 110 right? Oh we went up to we're going to get the 120 so we're going to stack them. We've done that all the way up to here now at 160. So yeah we might stack a little bit more before closing bell tomorrow.

[Ian]

2 Tech 2 Index no stress number one holding of SMH Nvidia second Taiwan Semiconductor third Broadcom fourth Micron fourth it's AMD 6, Land Research 7 ASML KLA Corporation is 8 and intel is 9. So you don't have to take my sentiments on it. Van Eck is telling you at 9th you went from top 10 and almost not mentioned at all at one point in time, they would have been the top 3 or 4 allocation. If you look at all the funds who are looking in the space, intel is not top four in any of them. Even with the infrastructure deal and even with the investment from Nvidia. So the signs are there. But two Tech two index.

[Troy]

Yeah, you spot on right there. Even Qualcomm was a company that was in the top five. Now we see that even lower than. Than Intel. So when we're talking about follow the money, this is how they're literally telling you.

[Ian]

What?

[Troy]

Yeah, this is how you follow them with their dollars. Exactly. What are institutions doing? Nvidia is leading at 20. That makes sense. Taiwan is that. That makes sense, bro. That makes sense. Those are all trillion dollar companies. Micron is not even there yet. But it's the number five allocation that's telling you something.

[Ian]

Yep.

[Rashad]

Build a beer up 2000% over the last five years. I was watching the news. They're talking about Build A Beer. And if you, you have a kid, I'm sure you're familiar with Build A Bear with what that is, but man, Build a beer up 2000% over the last five years and this year the stock is going crazy. Wow.

[Troy]

What's going on over there?

[Rashad]

Build A Beer.

[Troy]

You ever that one? Huh? You ever had one?

[Rashad]

Build A Bear. Yeah, they going to Dr. For the build A Beer.

[Troy]

Hello.

[Rashad]

Eskimo.

[Ian]

Any lie?

[Troy]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[Ian]

Or Miami, but yeah, for sure.

[Rashad]

Allegedly.

[Ian]

Or the bundle.

[Troy]

The Bundle.

[Ian]

House edition, eight weeks.

[Troy]

Build it how you like.

[Rashad]

85 South. These are just jokes ran by 85.

[Ian]

So for sure, for sure. Build a Bear. One of the great wonders of the world. A lot of people sent me this like, yo, they're on par with Nvidia. Kudos to you who got into it. I don't know if I would attach my freedom to this company, but the returns you can't argue with. They've done a great job of being incredibly focused. But I personally would not attach my wealth to this company unless I was an executive there. But you can't argue with the return though.

[Rashad]

You can't.

[Troy]

Yeah. Shout out to build a baby.

[Rashad]

Can we do something special? I want to do something. A surprise. This is the surprise guest. Surprise segment.

[Ian]

Dr. Miami.

[Rashad]

What's up, my brother?

[Steve]

What's going on, brothers? How you doing?

[Troy]

How you feeling, bro?

[Steve]

Man, it's a. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, guys.

[Rashad]

Steve, Carlos. So the president of Warner Records, A r a good friend of ours, legend in the music game was with Nick early and often. He actually is responsible for getting a shine when we did the Art Basel. He's been behind the scenes of a lot of people. Extremely influential in the music business. You know what? I want to do something. I haven't even told my co host how I want to do this, but I just thought that it would be a good. I want to do something. You know, we bring guests on and we have conversations and we interview them. Like I asked a question, Troy asks a question, Ian asks a question. But I want to do a topical based conversation and I want to make it more like a sports debate show conversation if we can. So first and foremost, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it.

[Steve]

Anytime. My brother's up. I love y'. All. Pleasure.

[Troy]

You know how we do.

[Steve]

Yeah, let's go.

[Troy]

Yo, is that Optimus prime behind you?

[Steve]

Oh, no, that's Voltron.

[Ian]

You got a bunch of books back there. What's your favorite top three in that collection?

[Steve]

Oh, man. The Operator by Tom King. About David Geffen. I got a lot of. I got a. Creativity Inc. Is one of my favorites.

[Ian]

That's a great book.

[Steve]

And I mean, I read a lot, so I got a lot of. I got a lot of top 10.

[Rashad]

So you deserve to be rich.

[Troy]

Oh, yeah. We were wondering how that didn't make.

[Steve]

That up for you because I got that up there.

[Troy]

I know you wouldn't do us like that.

[Steve]

Pull it up for you.

[Troy]

Hold on.

[Rashad]

No, it's all good. It's all good. I appreciate it. So. All right. So the reason why we have Steve here. This is a extremely timely, relevant conversation for business. So, okay. News came out last week that AI artist got signed to a 3 million dollar deal. It went viral online. Kalani posted about it, and then I made a post about it. And then when I made a post about it, I spoke to two people. The first person I spoke to was Steve. And I spoke to Steve for like 40 minutes and he gave me a great education on everything. Then the next person I spoke to was Timbaland and I spoke to Timberland for an hour and he gave me his education and we had a great conversation. So we've been saying AI for the last two and a half years. We've been saying how disruptive it was going to be. Now we have an AI artist. Can we play. Let's just play some of the music so that people can have some level of perspective and then we can have the conversation.

[Troy]

I asked for so little and still godless didn't want Your money, just your.

[Steve]

Respect didn't need diamonds Just some damn.

[Troy]

Consistency and it's crazy how cheap I priced my piece I gave you my heart all you had to do was hold it but you kept dropping it like it was stolen Wasn't asking for more much But I guess even that was too heavy for the hands you.

[Ian]

Had.

[Rashad]

All right, I ain't gonna hold. I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you. It's fire. Like, it's actually fire if we're honest. If we're being honest.

[Troy]

Sounds good now. I do sound good.

[Rashad]

No, it's. It's actually fine, but. All right, Steve, can you. Can you give us the education you was giving me? The education on the. On the companies and then the lawsuits? Can you give me. Can you give us an education on everything?

[Steve]

All right, yes, I'll try to start. Well, since generic generative AI has come into play, there's been a big question, which is ethical and also just structural, about how AI impacts copyrighted music. Right? So the big argument and debate amongst the creative community is that obviously AI is replacing or taking the space of said artists, creators, songwriters, and these companies are looking at it as they're adding more tools and kits to the diaspora that can give us more opportunities to do music in an enlightened way or give users that aren't creative the opportunity to be just as good as other creatives that are professional. That sparked a bunch of controversy, and because of that, there's a lot of AI music generative companies out there, but there's really two that's talked about a lot in the zeitgeist of it all. And those companies, the big debate amongst those is that. Or what everyone is accusing them of is that they're out modeling copyrighted material that's already been out on streaming platforms for a set amount of time. And what that is and what that leads to is a conversation about who gets paid, how it gets licensed, who does that go to. Do people get to just, you know, basically use these tools without any level of responsibility or moral ethic compass? So, you know, that's really the backstory of where it's at today and why it's such a hot button.

[Rashad]

So the two companies is so the sono. What is it?

[Steve]

The two leading in my purview was like, Suno and Yu Gio, Yuio and.

[Rashad]

Yurio has the lawsuit over the or the BBL Drizzy song.

[Steve]

No, no, no. So from what I understand, from what we read, is that the three major music groups have taken on all of the music generative AI companies, more so they have singled out or they've attacked both SUNO and UDO with lawsuits that extend, you know, copyright infringement cases. Right. And put them in litigation. And the most, the most stunning thing about why these things are coming to the forefront, because during that epic battle, you know, there was a version of BBL Drizzy that went out, which is a UDO platform developed AI generative thing created by a gentleman named Walonius. Shout out to Wallonius. That record kind of went viral in the zeitgeist that was going on with that beef. So to see where that had kind of originated from as a tool and as a creative outlet for Malonius and how it kind of got thrown into the Kendrick and. And Drake debacle was pretty interesting and actually ended up charting on. On the Hot 100.

[Troy]

So that, that, that's the interesting part because it did chart and it was viral. So I mean, you kind of alluded to it. Who's getting paid? Is it the person who created the generative AI programming is the person who potentially wrote it? How are people getting paid? Because we just saw this AI artist get signed for a multimillion dollar contract. How does that even work?

[Steve]

Well, I guess I don't know. You know, I don't have clarity on that part of it because, you know, those deals are usually confidential. But from what I understand about the new artists is there was a songwriter or poet who created this new act and couldn't do the vocals themselves and went into Suno and kind of created this opportunity and created this artist and created the vocals and kind of prompted everything themselves and made it copyrighted, I guess I'm assuming. Copyrighted. I'm not an attorney, but created this, this asset that ended up being marketed into the digital landscape, goes viral and then multiple competing record companies fighting to sign it.

[Troy]

That's wild.

[Steve]

Who gets paid? I'll. I can probably lean in and assume a little bit better than what happened with BBL Drizzy.

[Troy]

Right.

[Steve]

But I think this young lady, forgive me because I don't know her name, but whoever created this AI artist has total control and oversight of that digital asset.

[Troy]

I believe her name is Talisha Jones.

[Rashad]

And that. I just wanted to say one thing because that's important for the chat. So this is educated, this market Monday. So we always try to educate you guys. So a lot of people got real emotional like, damn, how is the AI artist gonna get signed? And that's taken away opportunities from people that really do this Right. People that's been struggling and going to jazz clubs their whole life. But what if I told you that the. A black woman who is a spoken word poet, right, for whatever reason might not just want to get in front of a camera, is the person that's actually pinning this, this music and, and just has that as an alter ego singing it. You probably will look at the situation differently now.

[Troy]

Perhaps. Right, Perhaps.

[Steve]

Yeah, that, that, that's a true point. Again, it's hot button. You know, I'm always aligned. I'm a representative and a, a warrior for the creative community, protecting their rights, making sure they get paid, get their money, control their assets, control division, outlook. That's everything that I've stood for. But, but on the other side, I try to value this with AI now in our society today as an opportunity because I'm gonna be, I'm gonna previs it. I'm a guy that's always glass half full. And to me, where there's chaos, there's opportunity. Now you guys talk about it a lot here on this platform and you gotta watch for that. And while I do understand the pains and the gripes of the creative community, I just implore everyone to say, let's look beyond and find out how to work with this thing, because the genie's out the bottle and it's not going back in. You know what I mean? And I can remember, you know, I've been around through many iterations of the evolution of the record business. Not as much as my predecessors or some of my colleagues, but, you know, I just remember how technology has always disrupted every iteration of our business. You know, I mean, when I came in, I'm an avid mixtape fan and you know, mixtapes were controlled by the DJs and those were quote unquote, unsolicited pirated leaks. Right? And then you get Napster, and then that changes the entire way of how those leaks or those said exclusives or unreleased material that aren't fully copyrighted through commercial distribution chains are now distributed worldwide and there's no control over until they get control over it. You know, I mean, I watched that. So does that mean that DJs no longer have a meaning on the street culture of what mixtapes mean? No, it just means it's changed drastically. You know, I mean, and I've also seen that happen when, you know, itunes came into, before even itunes came into the, to the, to the, to the lens of everything. It was like we were downloading this stuff from like, again, dad Piff for free. We were doing that until someone like Steve Jobs came and revolutionized that. So I just, you know, all of those things kind of erase Tower Records and Sam Goodies and Coconuts and we dealt with it and we survived it and we evolved through it. And I find this to be no different. It's the opportunity for us to see it and here's where, here's where it's at. And I don't believe these artists, these digital or these AI characters are going to do anything except make the human experience that much more special.

[Troy]

Right.

[Steve]

That much more important. Because the uniqueness of doing something that can translate digital and be experiential, these digital opportunities can't do that yet.

[Ian]

When would the music industry stop letting tech bros who don't care about culture or the music business run the music industry?

[Steve]

Oh, until people like us decide that we want to go out and revolutionize and figure out how to build it on our own rather than try to be in the boys club. And I mean that with all due respect. You know, our business is over 100 years old and it's kind of kept its shape and form pretty, pretty relatively the same since, since the beginning of time before as it went from sheet music to records and singles and 45s and, and phone anyway. But you get my point. Yeah, I really think it's about how we embrace it. And to answer that question, I think this is an opportunity where it could be done so using these opportunities, these companies, these softwares, these generative platforms to not help us make music, but redesign how we feel about how we sell, how we connect and how we do our business.

[Ian]

You think in light of the lawsuit, if they win, they will invest into said technology to be able to control it, opposed to kind of like how they did with Spotify? Or do you think that Suno and the likes will win the lawsuit and it's going to be a battle of AI versus the music industry going, going forward.

[Steve]

Honestly, I don't know who gets to win. I don't know what a win is in this. I know that technology is entering the arena and we have a system throughout the entire ecosystem of the music business that's dated and is trying to evolve depending on what company you want to talk about. Everyone's in a different phase of where they're, where they're evolving. And the real question is really is how can we all coexist? And I think to the example of Spotify, like you pointed out, that's a huge, huge understanding. It's like, okay, once the big three get to come in and say, you know, how do we share for our artists? How do we protect our community, quote, unquote community. You know, we get to understand like where the, where the, where the waters will settle a little easier than what they would be as contentious as if, you know, there's no regulations on what's happening here, right? So, you know, I look at it as, in my lifetime, this is the first time I've ever seen all the quote, unquote, major music groups publicly traded on stock exchanges.

[Ian]

Hello. And Spotify, 700 and something bucks. We're in very even with that. I don't know if you guys saw the new licensing agreement. They can make reiterations of what's been created on that platform. What do you think about them doing that, Spotify doing that?

[Steve]

Listen, man, I look at everything as a storefront, right? Spotify is a store, Apple's a store, SoundCloud's a store. Everyone got their own rules, regulations, Everyone got their own policies, everybody got their own products. So how they do it, I have no comment on it. Right. In the same token, as much as we villainize these platforms, as much as we want to villainize the major music groups, you know, each iteration has created an opportunity that's extended the life of musicians, artists, creators. So I have to again, be glass half full and look at it as an opportunity, right? Because when I've been in the business when it was Dire Straits and distribution was collapsing and nobody was buying records in 12 inches and CDs and tapes and it just wasn't buying that, right? And you get to the place where streaming kind of put that back in place and gave people like myself opportunities, jobs, abilities to go and continue and extend the life and legacies of our favorite creators. So, you know, like, for me, it's like, it's hard when you get everyone in. It's like everyone's arguing, but for me, everyone's just. Everyone's just leveraging for their own personal interests and that's okay too. But again, I just feel like there's an opportunity in all of this and I'm very open minded to AI, the companies and the tools that can be used to kind of help assist the creative community.

[Rashad]

So let me just pose a question for the group because I do feel like it's very important that we educate our audience in our community on artificial intelligence. Because. Because like the gorilla's been using artificial intelligence. It's not even thing. It's not something new, right? We don't know who they are, okay? At Some point in time, animation comes along and Snow White and the Lion King and all of these things, these are cartoons, right? It changes the landscape. But for actors on a certain level, right? When Steve Jobs. Pixels.

[Troy]

Pixar.

[Ian]

Pixar, yeah.

[Rashad]

That doesn't kill Hollywood. So what I'm saying is that having digital artists, because, let's be honest, most of these artists on Tick Tock, we don't know what they look like anyway. We don't have emotional attachment. We don't even know who they are. The. She was a fairy. She was a fairy. I heard that song all summer. If I saw the person that sings that song, I don't know what they look like and I don't know the name of that person. So it could. That song could be an artificial intelligent person. Like, it's not like I'm like studying these Tick Tock artists anyway. So I don't think that this is something to be fearful of. I think that it's something that we should embrace, because if we don't embrace it, we're going to get left behind and we're actually hurting the industry because it's not going to be able to move forward. And if you don't move forward, you're only going to move backwards.

[Troy]

It. I mean, it's a good point. I. I don't. Do we embrace it all? It's kind of like the question because I would say, like, in some cases, I understand the use of it, right? So, like, you know that Beanie Seagull is my. One of my favorite rappers of all time. He had a serious injury, right? He was shot. He lost part of his lung. He doesn't sound like he did when I grew up listening to him. He's now putting out an album with Jadakiss where they use artificial intelligence to get his voice back to what it sounded like. And when I heard it, I said, oh, wow, that sounds like Seagull again, right? So, like, in that case, I'm with it. There's another case that I just saw today where Whitney Houston's about to go on tour. Now, Whitney Houston has passed away 13 years ago. They're using AI to take some of her vocals to match it.

[Rashad]

Hologram.

[Troy]

She's going on a symphonic. Like, she's got a live symphony. They'll probably do the hologram. And now Whitney's going to be on tour. That is a. I don't know. I'm not sure.

[Rashad]

I'm not sure how to feel about it. I don't know. All right, you. When you was Telling me, Steve, you was like, yo, the only thing they don't have yet is like, you can't go on. Even though Tupac did the hologram. But when Timberland says, look, have you been to the Spirit in Vegas? He's like, you should go to wizard of Oz. He was like, yo, you can have an immersive experience in 3D. And so imagine that as a concert.

[Troy]

You don't.

[Rashad]

You don't need to have a physical person.

[Troy]

That's what I'm saying. If we grew up. We know Whitney Houston and like, Steve, I'd love to hear. And we grew up in that. Like, we know Whitney Houston. We know what she sounds like. To now have her go on tour, see her on tour, is.

[Rashad]

That's fire.

[Steve]

Listen, you know, the same rules that this platform was birthed off of is the same thing that's going on now. There are no rules. And when people get that through their mind, they'll let it go. And it's here and it's not going nowhere like they did. There was no such thing as laptops like, 25 years ago. Like, people had, like, computers with, like, three pieces to it. What I'm just saying is, is like, it's here we was before we was on Startax and. And two way pages and we was beaming. And then we went to BlackBerry and QWERTY boards, and now we on. We on smartphones. I never would believe I'd be on. I thought phones with all glass was. Was weird. You feel me? But you know what happens? You evolve, you. You adapt, you get with the times. And it's a, you know, depending what your taste and perspective is, you know, you get with what your program. And to me, you know, it's just like I look at my grandmother. I remember being in my room, I had a picture of Nas over my bed. Nas is my favorite rapper of all time. And they would tell me like, yo, you can't listen to that devil gangster music. Tell me, like, this is like poor poison street gutter nonsense. And here I am, you know, 25 years later, signing drill acts. And all my peers, colleagues and contemporaries tell me the same thing. This is garbage. This is terrible for the community. This is this and that. And, you know, my answer to those people in light of this conversation is just like, you know, this is what reflects society in this time. Get with it. You know what I'm saying? And just because you don't like it don't mean that it's not meaningful. And because you don't get it doesn't mean that it's not important and because you don't want to accept it, don't mean that it's not going to continue to evolve. So the choice is yours and I'm choosing to be on the side of history and it ain't gonna leave me behind.

[Ian]

I always worry about colonization of our IP and data from tech bros who don't care about us. And usually the first inflection point is through the music industry. So while I agree there's great use for it, if they get this off in music, it's going to expand. I mean, Spotify and because people don't read terms and conditions, just download terms and conditions, put them in chat GPT and ask them to explain they have irrevocable license to recreate anything that's uploaded there in perpetuity. I always worry about when tech is involved with music to take parts of our because it's gonna be fun. Until Vlad get on Suno.

[Rashad]

But tech's always been a part of the music though. That's when he said Steve Jobs.

[Ian]

Steve Jobs up the music industry.

[Rashad]

Some.

[Ian]

Some might say on his Lauren, he fucked up the music industry.

[Troy]

So Ian, in that vein, do you think because it's not going. I agree with Steve. Do you think that labels should distinguish whether the artist that they're listening to is AI or not?

[Ian]

I'm not Lucian or Steve.

[Rashad]

We eat artificial food.

[Troy]

Like, yeah, they're not telling us that they gotta put on the label. Right.

[Ian]

It's right on the packaging.

[Troy]

They gotta tell you. Right. That's what I'm saying.

[Rashad]

Allegedly.

[Steve]

I mean, I wanna, I don't want to sound like that, but look, man, Ian, you right, the tech bros should.

[Ian]

Not have any say over not them.

[Steve]

Oh, but, oh, but history always tells us always them, right? So the real question is, where, where are we at? I'm not trying to be on no Malcolm X or Martin Luther King. I'm just, just posing a question, you know, so, you know, while the entertainment business has changed the course and trajectory of my life and my family's life, right. I have so much appreciation for it. You know, I've been able to create a destiny and create my own way and live really well. You know, I really challenge my kids. I want to push them in other categories and other verticals. Right? But I know in those verticals, I was reading somewhere that, you know, know those other verticals where people that look like us, you know, they put, they put the cost of entry a little higher, incredibly high. They put the hurdles a little Higher, they put the opposition a little tougher. So again, the question goes back to someone has to break through, right? And when you look at sports and entertainment, it seems like people like us, that's, there's no, there's no bar to entry there. You know what I mean? Anyone off the street can be great and go do it, but it ain't a that thing. It's just more of how many of us are willing to go and endeavor and go into the engineering spaces, into the science spaces, into the tech spaces. So like even this platform is going to broach a new generation of financial minded individuals where, you know, as long as I've gone, I didn't get really fiscally and financially literate on the corporate side until maybe the last four or five years ago. You know what I'm saying? And you know, it's, it's damning. And when you see these things and you understand how it flows and how it really works, you know, you'd make different decisions and you could tell the dynamic of change between who's really doing well and who's not, just simply off what you understand. So, you know, I think again, I put that onus on us and we have to endeavor and you know, but you know, being on TV and being on the radio, being on streaming and on Instagram and social media, it influences people. But I'm trying to challenge folks like, let's get to the baseline of those industries that don't have a lot of people that look like us or come from where we come from, but we're more than capable, more than able to make inroads and, and iterations there that you know, and then we won't have to have the conversation about. It's just the tech bros. It might be someone that actually loves our music and love us and can create things with responsibility that can go into the, the far. The ethos.

[Ian]

The interesting part is one of the people that funded Troy, real quick.

[Troy]

Yeah.

[Ian]

Who funded Suno Lightspeed, great venture capital company, but Daniel Gross, who was at Apples, Apple's Intelligence music division. Follow the money.

[Steve]

I love it, man. You know, I just, you know, I'm just trying to use my abilities, my relationships and my platform to kind of push hard in these places. I think it's necessary, I think it's important I'm alongside y'.

[Ian]

All.

[Steve]

I think being financially literate, being tech savvy or being creatively inclined are the most important things of tomorrow's generation because you got to connect those things to kind of decide and create Your own destiny. So I'm really. I'm really an advocate for that. And, you know, that's why, like, conversations like these are. People don't really have color and context of what's happening or why it's happening. Like, I see the feedback, and everyone has a. Everyone has a right to feel and see and understand because, you know, it's hard to be an artist. It's hard so to know that it just. Something gets inputted and then it gets shared on social media. And now we're talking about it today just kind of let you know where our world is. So it was like, we've got to get with the program and. And just get into it.

[Ian]

Would you tell an artist that they need to use AI to have increased output?

[Steve]

I'm gonna tell the artists, do anything you got to do to be great. And what I'm saying, there's no rules, like, no one you. How to do anything, you know, like. Like being with Hustle all them years. Like, I remember we went to our label and asked him in, like, 2014, like, yo, we want our advance in bitcoin. And they were like, I mean, the. The head attorney at the time. I mean, he chuckled so hard, I thought he was going to fall off his chair. You know what I'm saying? And here we are ten years later, and what's happening?

[Rashad]

Did you get the advance in Bighorn?

[Steve]

Hell, no. You know, we asked for it, but that was just us being egregious because we just knew it wasn't plausible. And then the next one was like, it was Ryan Leslie. I did a deal with him, and he was pushing really hard for that. Like, pushing. And they were just like, we just have no way. So it's either you take it to a bank account or you take it as a. As a paper check, but we're not doing that. And I'm just saying, like, there are people out there, and there are people that are curious, and I think you can. You could push your way around. You can get there. I'm just saying, like, you can do. It's a way to get it done, you know, I mean, I just bring that up to just show, like, people are really in it. They just got to be brave about doing it.

[Rashad]

Steve, my brother, man, thank you for joining us. Appreciate you, man. Last minute, you know, you came in before you leave, just telling people how they, you know, you somebody that works your way up the ladder as far as, you know, being an executive at one of the most powerful, you know, conglomerates in music can you give some just motivational words to anybody that's listening as far as like, you know, your career path and how, how you've been able to achieve success?

[Steve]

Yeah, I just don't believe in the word. No. First generation Jamaican immigrants here in the States. I barely finished high school. I really attempted to go to college. I don't have that piece of paper and I've gone really, really far just based off ambition and determination and really a lot of relentless self belief. So any one of y' all out there could be done. Educate yourself, find yourself, come to places like this, read books like, you deserve to be rich, get in tune, be aligned, talk to your folks and share your information, do anything you want, design your path.

[Rashad]

Appreciate you, my brother.

[Troy]

I appreciate you saying coconuts. That lets me know that you were 914. I appreciate you.

[Rashad]

Appreciate it, man. Thank you. Always a pleasure, man. Thank you, bro. All right.

[Troy]

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, like we always talk about like movies will prepare us, technology is kind of prepared. And I was having a child, the bull, he was like, are we ready for it? I'm like, well, think about the digital artists of this generation. Like, we talk about gorillas and we never knew who they were. But think about what Fortnite did with Travis Scott and had 10 million people watching digital artists, right? He wasn't physically there, but people watched him perform. 10 million people. Think about what Party Next Door just did a few months ago. Like, you've been trained for this. Kids have been trained for this, to have that type of artist to be digitized and say, oh, that, yeah, we can listen to that. It's the music sounds good. And we're in this fantasy world. It's the reason why Roblox exists is why Minecraft was a blockbuster movie. They prepared for these moments. So this is not even gonna feel away to them as it gets introduced at a large scale. We still don't know who that is. Yeah, they did. They. I mean, they did it with the Beatles. They had, did a whole album with John Lennon. They got his voice.

[Ian]

I've been trying to get that off for a minute. It reminds me, not that not the same as NFTs, but to find a way to create value out of nothing. And now you don't have any pushback because if you buy the rights to all the AI, it's going to lead to interesting place in our world. Former Wondering exec Janine Wright is leading a new firm, Inception Point AI, who plans 5, 000 podcast shows, releasing 3, 00, 0 episodes per week.

[Rashad]

Artificial intelligence.

[Troy]

Wow.

[Rashad]

Podcast is already.

[Troy]

That's out there.

[Ian]

It's already taken off. They're going to flood the market. And now you don't even have to pay anyone. And also too, whenever a contract says irrevocable or in perpetuity, it's truly not in your favor.

[Troy]

I meant you don't. You don't pay the. The creators or the talent of it. Let's say that it becomes hugely popular. You will get the ad dollars for it, though, for sure.

[Ian]

You will do that capped rate for the writers.

[Rashad]

All right, man. Well, market Monday's overtime, man. Yeah, a lot. Yeah, you guys, a lot of information. Check out blackout this week. Check out Mark. Bring Alicia glasses.

[Troy]

I'll text you after this. My guy.

[Rashad]

Montreal, Vegas. We be would be in the area this weekend. This week. Love is love.

[Troy]

Yeah. Be good to each other.

[Rashad]

Yes. Hulu right now streaming on Hulu Foundation Forward Unlimited series with chasing mass appeal or on all platforms right now.

[Troy]

Yeah. Shout out to Peter, shout out to John, Shout out to Nas. Helping us get that done. Appreciate y'. All.

[Ian]

Wednesday stock club qualify PM Central. If I made you money, please put yes in chat. Stay focused on the money.

[Rashad]

Follow it at all times.

[Troy]

Follow it.

[Rashad]

All right, y'. All. It's been real. Peace.

[Troy]

All right, y'.

[Ian]

All. You gotta go. No.

[Steve]

From the Cascades to PDX to your kitchen, we recycle like we live here. That's why governments, brands, and recycling companies are all joining together to bring change.

[Troy]

To make recycling better.

[Steve]

As in trusting that your recyclables end up in the right places to be made into new things and having brands help fund the cost of recycling. You can find the Latest [e-mail] Oregon. From Mount Hood to the bin under your desk, together we can do this.