Good Game: WBD, Tricolor, TAE

Summary

Money Stuff: The Podcast

Episode Title: Good Game: WBD, Tricolor, TAE
Hosts: Matt Levine & Katie Greifeld
Release Date: December 19, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this final podcast recording of 2025, Matt Levine and Katie Greifeld dive into four eclectic finance stories closing out the year—ranging from the behind-the-scenes drama of the Warner Bros. Discovery merger battle, the eyebrow-raising fraud indictment at Tricolor, Trump Media’s unexpected foray into nuclear fusion, and new South Korean regulations on leveraged ETFs. True to Money Stuff’s signature tone, the episode blends technical explanation with sharp wit, candid industry insights, and memorable quotes, making sense of the month's most bizarre and newsworthy money tales.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) & Paramount Merger Drama

[04:00 – 11:01]

• Deal Intricacies & The Larry Ellison Question:

  • Paramount is vying to acquire Warner; drama has shifted from typical media merger topics (regulation, creative control, Trump involvement) to fine points about closing certainty and merger agreements.
  • Paramount’s bid backed by a $40 billion commitment from Larry Ellison’s personal trust; WBD questions whether the trust will have the money at closing—“the trust can be like, I don’t have any money. I’m just an empty shell.”
    • Quote – Matt Levine: “The incredibly weird thing that's happening here is that the commitment papers are all apparently being signed by the trust. And Warner says, well, but you could take all this stuff out of the trust. … I think that's right. I think that as a technical analysis is right.” (05:04)
  • Ellison has previously signed deals this way (e.g., Musk’s Twitter buyout), but WBD wants a personal guarantee.
  • The easy solution seems to be for Ellison to sign directly—so why hasn’t he?
    • Quote – Matt Levine: “Paramount, so far, I don’t know, they’ve said no, but they haven’t said yes. So that’s where we are. Yeah, it’s very weird.” (06:59)

• Market Pressure & Kushner Exits:

  • Oracle stock (Ellison’s wealth base) recently took a hit, raising questions on funding.
  • Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners withdrew from the deal—political undertones fade as Kushner exits.
    • Quote – Katie Greifeld: “With Jared Kushner on Paramount side, there’s some enhancement to that argument. And if him gone, it's like, oh, maybe that argument's off the table.” (09:28)

• Advice to Paramount:

  • Matt’s take: “They should probably have Larry Ellison sign a personal guarantee for the deal, which seems—Sign the paper, Larry.” (09:55)

• Banker Perspective:

  • Big deals mean working over major holidays—paralleled to NBA players working on Christmas (Investment banking as high stakes, high reward).
    • Quote – Matt Levine: “When the NBA players play on Christmas Day, nobody says, our holidays are ruined. … This is as good as it gets for investment bankers.” (10:22)

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2. Tricolor Subprime Auto Scandal

[13:11 – 17:56]

• Fraudulent Loan Practices:

  • Texas-based subprime car lender Tricolor filed for bankruptcy after double pledging loans.
  • CEO Daniel Chu indicted for more than just double pledging; they marked delinquent loans as ‘current’ in Excel, failed to update the balances, and borrowed more against them.
    • Quote – Matt Levine: “If the loan is current, then it’s getting paid every month, which means that it goes down. The balance goes down every month…They didn’t decrease the amount because they weren’t getting paid, and they just marked them current to trick their lenders.” (14:07)

• How They Were Caught:

  • Junior analyst at lender Waterfall Capital spotted unchanged balances and asked questions.
  • Internal panic and recorded calls as executives scrambled for cover—jockeying for cooperation agreements with prosecutors.
    • Quote – Matt Levine (quoting Daniel Chu): “If we were trying to commit fraud, we wouldn’t be so stupid as to keep the same balances on there. Nobody would be that stupid.” (16:03)

• Enron Comparisons & Defense Strategies:

  • Executives joked about comparison to Enron, even floated blaming banks for “ignoring red flags” as negotiating leverage.
    • Quote – Katie Greifeld: “Chu likened Tricolors meltdown to Enron…He even discussed the idea of pinning the blame on banks for allegedly ignoring red flags, a threat they hope to wield as leverage.” (16:51)
  • Matt: “It’s a real high wire act to be like, we’re Enron, but we’re not going to prison.” (17:18)

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3. Trump Media Buys a Nuclear Fusion Company (TAE)

[17:56 – 22:21]

• The Bizarre Merger:

  • Trump Media, operator of Truth Social and an ETF business, merged with TAE, a legitimate, well-funded nuclear fusion startup.
    • Quote – Matt Levine: “It’s a $3 billion public company that runs a social media site and…they bought a nuclear fusion company…Why not? Really? Why not?” (18:03)

• Nuclear Fusion 101:

  • Matt briefly explains fission vs. fusion, why fusion is seen as a holy grail for power generation. TAE appears legitimate, funded by Google & Chevron, pictured reactors.

• Logic for the Deal:

  • Ostensibly “America First” energy strategy, but real reason: Trump Media has a lot of capital (from meme stock fervor), TAE has a capital-intensive project—each brings what the other lacks.
  • Matt: “If you have a lot of access to capital markets…use your access to capital by other businesses. Because then at the end of the day, you have a nuclear fusion company.” (20:41)

• History of Meme Stock Pivots:

  • Other meme stocks (e.g. AMC buying a gold mine) have pivoted outside their original sector to use inflated stock value to buy real assets.
    • Quote – Katie Greifeld: “You point to AMC buying a gold mine. There is some tenuous precedent for this.” (21:27)
  • Final judgment: “Nuclear fusion also, you gotta give it to them.” (22:18)

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4. South Korea's New Rules: Watching a Video Before You Can Trade Leveraged ETFs

[24:53 – 29:40]

• Background:

  • South Korean retail investors have been actively speculating in US and Korean leveraged/inverse ETFs, products which are often poorly understood and risky.

• Regulator Response:

  • Starting this week, brokers will require investors to complete a one-hour online training (and receive a certification code) before trading such products.
    • Quote – Matt Levine: “As of this week, brokerages will…block investors wanting to put their funds into leveraged or inverse ETFs [unless] they…completed a one-hour online training.” (26:07)
    • Katie: “One hour?” (26:08)

• Reactions & Commentary:

  • Matt approves: “I love this…Yes, absolutely [there should be gated access].” (26:45)
  • Speculates on workarounds (“aftermarket in those codes”), but emphasizes the move covers the regulator’s responsibility.
    • Quote – Matt Levine: “If you…buy the ETF…‘why did you let me buy this? I didn’t even watch the video’…The regulator is like, ‘you’re a problem, man. You should have watched the video.’” (27:36)
  • Katie recalls US FINRA’s similar (and highly unpopular) proposal to quiz buyers of complex ETNs/ETFs.
    • “Apparently when I wrote this…Finra had received 12,000 comments on this proposal. For context, usually they get fewer than 20 comments.” (28:22)

• Matt’s Summary:

  • Investors don’t love friction to trading, but Matt (deadpan) would “love to take the quiz”—and even offers to make training videos himself.
    • Quote – Katie Greifeld: “That would be fun. If someone had one, I’d be interested in taking it.” (29:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Paramount-WBD Battle:

  • Matt: “If I knew what it would be, it wouldn’t be that weird. It wouldn’t be that exciting. It wouldn’t be delightful.” (03:05)
  • Katie: “Sign the paper, Larry.” (09:55)

• On Tricolor Fraud:

  • Matt (quoting Chu): “If we were trying to commit fraud, we wouldn’t be so stupid as to keep the same balances on there.” (16:03)
  • Katie: “Enron has a nice ring to it, right?” (17:11)

• On Trump Media & Fusion:

  • Matt (sarcastically): “Trump Media brings the stock raising ability and TAE brings the possibility of nuclear fusion.” (20:33)

• On South Korean ETF Rules:

  • Matt: “I really want to record the library of ‘don’t buy these product’ videos.” (28:13)
  • Katie: “I would love to take the quiz though. I think that sounds fun.” (29:29)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:10] — Intro: Hosts banter about avoiding the usual “year in review” format
• [04:00] — Paramount & Warner Bros. Discovery merger deal mechanics
• [13:11] — Breakdown of Tricolor fraud and insider calls
• [17:56] — Trump Media buys TAE, a nuclear fusion company
• [24:53] — South Korea requires investors to watch training video before trading leveraged ETFs
• [29:40] — Episode wrap-up and holiday well-wishes

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Episode Tone

Conversational, irreverent, sharp, and very much in the spirit of the “Money Stuff” column—deadpan humor, affectionate mockery of financial eccentricity, and approachable analysis leaning into industry in-jokes and real-world oddities.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• The year’s biggest finance stories are as much about legal minutiae, egos, and technicalities as about actual business performance or strategy.
• Fraud can be staggeringly unsophisticated—and often unravels in extremely human ways.
• “Meme stocks” create real capital that sometimes gets leveraged to bizarre ends (and sometimes, just for fun).
• Regulators struggle to balance protecting individual investors with letting them take risks—sometimes resulting in simple but controversial fixes like mandatory training videos.
• As ever, the finance world remains a stage for both the deeply serious and the laughably absurd.

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Next episode returns January 2, 2026.

Transcript

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[Matt Levine]

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[Commercial/Ad Voice]

Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts Radio News.

[Katie Greifeld]

Our last podcast recording of the year. Yeah, it's been an interesting year.

[Matt Levine]

Has it? One thing I never do.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah, I know.

[Matt Levine]

You don't know is any sort of year end wrap up or look forward, which is so good. Among the best parts of my life as a media person is just not ever doing that. But people want that. People are like, oh, would you like to contribute to 20 themes for the year ahead? And I say no, no, no, get away.

[Katie Greifeld]

I'm sorry for introducing a hint of reflection.

[Matt Levine]

No, it's okay, it's okay. We can reflect about my lack of reflection.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah, that's good.

[Matt Levine]

How about your themes for next year? What are you looking forward to?

[Katie Greifeld]

Looking forward to the introduction of multi share classes.

[Matt Levine]

Boy, see?

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah, that'll be pretty.

[Matt Levine]

Aren't I glad not to be Looking forward to.

[Katie Greifeld]

Hey, could be big. What are you looking forward to next year? Oh, I wasn't supposed to ask you that.

[Matt Levine]

But I'm looking forward to coming in each day.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

To find weird news and write about it delightedly. And if I knew what it would be, it wouldn't be that weird. It wouldn't be that exciting. It wouldn't be delightful.

[Katie Greifeld]

It wouldn't be there wouldn't be as much mirth.

[Matt Levine]

It wouldn't be the spontaneity and joy that I bring to my job every day.

[Katie Greifeld]

Fair?

[Matt Levine]

Doesn't it sound like it? Hello and welcome to the Money Stuff podcast, your weekly podcast where we talk about stuff related to money. I'm Matt Levine and I write the Money Stuff column for Bloomberg Opinion.

[Katie Greifeld]

And I'm Katie Greifeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and an anchor for Bloomberg Television.

[Matt Levine]

What are we talking about today, Katie? It says on my script shoot.

[Katie Greifeld]

What do you want to talk about first? We actually have four topics today.

[Matt Levine]

Four topics. You know, the winner situation.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah, it's pretty. Yeah. Remember you were reluctant to talk about that.

[Matt Levine]

Well, okay, so here's the thing. It went from being like a big media merger with like a lot of moving pieces and a lot of like stuff that people cared about in terms of like antitrust and like creative direction of Hollywood and like the Trump involvement and who alone CNN and all these things. And it went from that to being a really drawn out fight about closing certainty and merger agreements, which is much more my area of interest. And it's kind of wild, like what is happening, which is that there's some debate about who has the higher bid. But Paramount are pretty sure they have the higher bid. They also think they have a better regulatory path, but Netflix has said no to them for a number of reasons including bid valuation. But what they really leaned on in their most recent, like they made an official filing telling Warner shareholders to reject the Paramount tender offer. And the Warner board really leaned on the fact that Paramount's money you empowerment doesn't have money. Right. Paramount, much smaller company than Warner and it has debt commitments which are, you know, fairly standard debt commitments. And it has some equity commitments from like Middle Eastern sovereign wealth people that Warner is kind of casting aspersions on. But really the equity is backslashed by a $40 billion commitment from Larry Ellison's personal trust. Larry Ellison, the dad of Paramount CEO David Ellison and fifth ish. Richest person in the world. $250 billion of Oracle stock. But it's all in this trust. And the incredibly weird thing that's happening here is that the commitment papers are all apparently being signed by the trust. And Warner says, well, but you could take all this stuff out of the trust. And then when it comes time to close, we'll go to you and we'll go to the trust and be like, all right, we need the 40 billion. And the trust can be like, I don't have any money. I'm just like an empty shell. And I think that's right. I think that as a technical analysis is right. And the Paramount people are like, this is crazy.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

You know, Larry Ellison is good for the money. He has signed other big merger commitments as the trust, Right. Like he committed to Elon Musk's Twitter deal and to the Electronic Arts deal. But he was not the principal there. He's not the person on the hook for the whole deal. He's like, yeah, he's committing to Elon's deal. And so basically, Paramount is like, look, this is fine. This is a crazy technicality and you're misleading people by saying that this matters. And Warner's like, no, no, no, we really need you to commit your money. And the solution to this seems so easy that I don't understand what is happening. The easy solution I think Warner has asked for this is in the piece of paper where instead of saying, the Larry Ellison Trust signs this deal, you just say, larry Ellison signs this deal and then he owes the money. And if he takes it out of his trust or any other personal vehicle, he has to close the deal. And I don't understand what is happening, because orders are like, yeah, just sign it in your personal. You know, personally, I did. And Paramount, so far, I don't know, they've said no, but they haven't said yes. So that's where we are. Yeah, it's very weird.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah. A tangential thought I had is that you mentioned Larry Ellison, the fifth wealthiest person in the world. Oracle stock has gotten pretty flattened over the past couple of weeks. It's just gotten rocked. I wonder how that factors in the.

[Matt Levine]

Right. So, like, I don't think that it is reasonable for Warner to think this guy with, let's say, $250 billion of Oracle stock less than it was a few weeks ago. But, you know, $250 billion, I think it's reasonable for them to think he's not good for a $40 billion chunk. Right. You know, it's a meaningful chunk of his wealth, but it's 20% LTV. The thing that I'm struggling to understand here is if you're Warner, the situation that they're positing is kind of absurd. Right. The situation they're positing is like, Paramount or Ellison change their minds, and they don't close the deal and Warner sues them, and Paramount is like, we don't have money. And then Larry Ellison's like, oh, no, it's the trust. And the trust doesn't have any money anymore. Right. Ha ha, ha. It's a crazy thing for them to do. And I think part of what Paramount is saying here is kind of like, that would be a crazy thing for us to do. And just as a reputational matter, you shouldn't worry about it.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

But I think they're, like, ever so slightly maintaining the legal flexibility to do it if they really have to. And you could imagine that being part of a story of Oracle stock flatline. And you can imagine that being like, if things get really bad, will we yoink the shares out of the trust and stiff Warner? Yeah, maybe. Right?

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

And like, that's a. You know, if your stock is riding high, that's a different story than if you're getting slammed in the market for having too much AI lease obligations.

[Katie Greifeld]

Well, to add insult to injury, did you also see that Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners is withdrawing from the battle altogether?

[Matt Levine]

And it's a little interesting, right?

[Katie Greifeld]

It is a little bit interesting.

[Matt Levine]

Generally, you're like, oh, this is such a great deal. We really want to win it. And then you're like one random equity partner saying it's a bad sign somehow.

[Katie Greifeld]

The statement from the firm was that with two strong competitors vying to secure the future of this unique American asset, affinity has decided to no longer pursue the opportunity. We continue to believe there is strong strategic rationale for Paramount to offer.

[Matt Levine]

It's just weird.

[Katie Greifeld]

It's very good luck.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah. One thing that people really commented on about the affinity involvement early was the deal environment is so politicized. And the sort of subtext of Paramount's bid was Netflix will not get antitrust approval, one, because it raises antitrust concerns, and two, because we're friends with Trump and he'll tell them not to approve the deal. Right. And with Jared Kushner on Paramount side, there's some enhancement to that argument. And if him gone, it's like, oh, maybe that argument's off the table.

[Katie Greifeld]

So where does this leave Paramount?

[Matt Levine]

I feel like I said this last week, they should proudly raise their bid because they have said in public on television that their bid is not best and final. And then they should probably have Larry Ellison sign a personal guarantee for the deal, which seems.

[Katie Greifeld]

Sign the paper, Larry.

[Matt Levine]

It seems very easy. And I'm very puzzled that it's not as easy for him as we thought. As I think. Can I talk about one other thing about the Warner dealership?

[Katie Greifeld]

I really want you to.

[Matt Levine]

There's a great Financial Times story about the advisors who. You know any big merger, right? It's like the sell side advisors are going to get paid and then like one buy side team of advisors is going to get paid an ocean of money and the other one is not. And so, you know, it's a bitter battle. But they also quit people talking about how this is a deal that like kind of got negotiated over Thanksgiving and is now heating up into Christmas. And they like one of the advisors saying, when the NBA players play on Christmas Day, nobody says, our holidays are ruined. They say, isn't it great you're in the NBA? This is as good as it gets for investment bankers.

[Katie Greifeld]

It's like a perfect quote.

[Matt Levine]

It's a perfect quote.

[Katie Greifeld]

It's also so true.

[Matt Levine]

I was nothing special. I worked in high stakes every day. And one way you know it's high stakes is you're like working all night on holidays, right. And it's like you feel cool about it. It's as good as it gets for investment bankers. And that happens to me. And it happens over Christmas.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

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[Katie Greifeld]

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[Katie Greifeld]

And dark chocolate curls together is the best place to be at Starbucks. Do you want to talk about Excel sheets?

[Matt Levine]

Yeah.

[Katie Greifeld]

So Tricolor.

[Matt Levine]

Tricolor. I think it's a tricolor, but I don't know.

[Katie Greifeld]

Can we just call it Tricolor?

[Matt Levine]

Tricolor. I'm going to call it Tricolor.

[Katie Greifeld]

We're in America.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah. It was a subprime auto retailer and lender. So you could like buy your car from Tricolor and then they would lend you the money to pay for the car. And they went bankrupt this year because they ran into some trouble with their creditors. The creditors had some complaints, and when they went bankrupt, the story was kind of they were like double pledging loans, which makes sense. Right? They make a bunch of car loans, they put them all in an Excel file. They send the Excel file to one of six lenders. And, you know, if you send the same Excel file to two different lenders, then you can borrow twice as much money. That's kind of what people were talking about and what they assumed. But this week, the CEO of Tricolor, Daniel Chu, was indicted by federal prosecutors. And the accusation is, yes, a lot of double pledging, but also sillier stuff. The one that I think everyone really enjoyed is that so they make a lot of, like, subprime auto loans, and a lot of them are not current. Right. Like, people don't make payments. And so the way that their deals with their lenders work is that you can't borrow against the loan that's more than 60 days delinquent. Right. Like, if people haven't paid in two months, then you can't use that as your borrowing Base to borrow from your lenders. And they had a lot of those loans and they needed money, and so they're just going to pretend those loans are current. So they marked them all as current and they could then borrow more money against them. But they made a little mistake, which is that if the loan is current, then it's getting paid every month, which means that it goes down. The balance goes down every month. Right. Because each month you make a little payment on your car loan and your car loan goes down. But. And they didn't decrease the amount of these loans because they weren't current, they weren't getting paid, and they just marked them current to trick their lenders. And this worked for a while. And then the reporting from Bloomberg is that it's. A junior analyst at Waterfall Capital was.

[Katie Greifeld]

One of their lenders, very fitting name for this situation.

[Matt Levine]

Looked at these Excel sheets and said, why are these balances not going down? And so the lender called them called Tricolor and like, hey, what's up? And so, like, two things happen there. One is that Tricolor and like, Daniel Chu are like, scrambling to. Or allegedly scrambling to tell the lender some story.

[Katie Greifeld]

Right?

[Matt Levine]

But the other thing that's happening is that, like, the people who are marking the spreadsheet are like, oh, I need a lawyer. So there are calls, the indictment says there are calls among the Tricolor executives that one or more, some of them were recorded by two different people on the call. Because everyone is like, I need to be able to bring something to prosecutors so that I get the cooperation agreement. So I'm not the one who goes to prison on this deal. Which is really, like, quick thinking. So there are all these recorded calls where they say wild things. Including Daniel Chu allegedly had a call with Waterfall where he was like, oh, no, no, this is some sort of systems problem. I don't know what it is, but we'll fix it. And he said, quote, look, if we were trying to commit fraud, we wouldn't be so stupid as to keep the same balances on there. Nobody would be that stupid.

[Katie Greifeld]

Which is just like, it's perfect. Yeah, it's hiding in plain sight.

[Matt Levine]

Right? I said in my column, like, nobody would be so stupid as to do fraud this way. I was like, it sounds appealing, but it's not a good argument because there are a lot of stupid frauds out there.

[Katie Greifeld]

I mean, the defense did work for a little bit.

[Matt Levine]

He says on the call that it worked, but the thing unraveled pretty quickly afterwards. I don't think it worked. Worked.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah. I also love this detail. This is from the Bloomberg News story that by late August, Chu was plotting with other Tricolor executives, including co defendant David Good game, another great name, and Jerome caller on how to settle with JP Morgan, etc. During the call, Chu likened Tricolors meltdown to Enron, the energy giant failed by accounting fraud. He even discussed the idea of pinning the blame on banks for allegedly ignoring red flags, a threat they hope to wield as leveraged.

[Matt Levine]

Right.

[Katie Greifeld]

You're like, it's bold.

[Matt Levine]

Hey guys, what if we were Enron'd?

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah, well, he did say Enron has a nice ring to it. Right? Chu said Enron raises the blood pressure of lenders when they see that.

[Matt Levine]

He added, yeah, yeah, really a high wire act to be like, we're Enron, but we're not going to prison.

[Katie Greifeld]

And also, perhaps this is your fault. It's a difficult needle to throw, but.

[Matt Levine]

The this is your fault argument is like, we were so blatantly committing fraud that I can't believe you didn't catch us. So when you think about it, it's your fault. Yeah, like you gotta make that argument to then settle with the banks and have them not go to the police. And then.

[Katie Greifeld]

It's tough.

[Matt Levine]

It's tough. Doesn't seem to have worked here.

[Katie Greifeld]

Really charming though. This was a nice December read.

[Matt Levine]

Yes, yes. You know what else was?

[Katie Greifeld]

Tell me.

[Matt Levine]

You know what else has a real. I was gonna say end of year vibe, but really more like end of civilization vibe.

[Katie Greifeld]

Oh, God.

[Matt Levine]

Trump Media, the $3 billion public company that runs a social media site and also like an ETF business of some kind. I can't say it with a straight face. They bought a nuclear fusion company.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah, they sure did.

[Matt Levine]

Why not? Really? Why not?

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah. This was very sign of the times. I'm not going to pretend to really, really know what nuclear fusion is.

[Matt Levine]

Nuclear fission is when you like smash two atoms together and they go flying out and they produce energy from like breaking apart. And nuclear fusion is when you smash two atoms together and they. And they produce even more energy from staying together. Nuclear fusion is what powers such notable sources of power as the sun.

[Katie Greifeld]

Oh, sure.

[Matt Levine]

And not a ton of commercial nuclear fusion generation currently.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

But a lot of people have thought about it because it would be pretty good source of power. And some of the people who thought about it work for this company called Tay, which is a nuclear fusion company founded in 1998. Like, yeah, real people. Sorry. I can tell from their investor presentation they seem to have first of all raised over a Billion dollars in funding from people like Google and Chevron. And secondly, to pictures of reactors. Right.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

Maybe they're on their way to commercial grade nuclear fusion, but in any case, they merged with Truth Social.

[Katie Greifeld]

Paint me a picture of a world where this makes sense. What could be the logic here?

[Matt Levine]

I want to just make sure that we keep my laughing intimate. But no, I mean, okay, there's a press release. You can read the press release. One thing in the press release is like one thing they say about their mission is it's to free the world of big tech censorship, which not applicable to nuclear fusion, probably. But another thing is, oh, it's America first strategic. It all kind of fits in a vague strategic America. Nuclear power. Yeah, sure. But the other reason for the deal, which is also in the press release, is they say in the press release the deal is to combine TMTG's access to significant capital and Tay's leading fusion technology. So one way to put that, one way to rephrase that.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah, help me out.

[Matt Levine]

Trump Media has raised a lot of money, has a big stock price, isn't doing a ton with that stock price. Stock price was higher, now it's lower because people had high hopes, they bought the stock and then, yeah, it's like social media, ETFs, whatever. And there's not been a ton of exciting news and the stock has drifted off. But they have a lot of access to capital. They announced big news. The stock will go up. The stock was up a lot on Thursday. And one thing you might do if you have a lot of access to capital and not much of a profitable or revenue generating business is use your access to capital by other businesses. Because then at the end of the day, you have a nuclear fusion company.

[Katie Greifeld]

Right. Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

You've used your access to capital markets to acquire real assets. Right. Which you know, like the truth, social is an asset, you know, $3 billion of assets. And then from Tay's perspective, if you are building nuclear fusion, react. You have a lot of need for capital. And if someone has a lot of access to capital, then that's a good trade for you. Trump Media brings the stock raising ability and Tay brings the possibility of nuclear fusion. But it's a very strange combination because it's like people whose business is somewhere between running a social media company and being friends with Donald Trump and now they're in charge of nuclear fusion. It's just a strange pivot.

[Katie Greifeld]

You point to AMC buying a gold mine. There is some tenuous precedent for this.

[Matt Levine]

Is there precedent for meme stocks Getting into unrelated businesses. Because the point of a meme stock is that your stock is really high without necessarily the underlying business justifying it. So you're like, well, okay, I'm going to use this high stock price to go buy an underlying business. That justifies it, right? There's totally precedent for that. GameStop was playing that game for years. You know, there's definitely a precedent for trying that. For trying it.

[Katie Greifeld]

GameStop never went out and like bought anything. Super cool though, right? No, I just revealed that I think buying a gold mine is super cool. But that's fine.

[Matt Levine]

It's kind of unarguably cool. Like it's cool.

[Commercial/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

Like whatever else it is. Like that was a cool. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. Amc buying a gold mine. That's good on you. Yeah. Nuclear fusion also, you got to give it to them.

[Katie Greifeld]

Got to give it to them.

[Matt Levine]

I was not expecting that. And I was like, oh yeah. All right, all right.

[Katie Greifeld]

Good game, Good game. Not, of course, the co defendant in the tricolor. Good game.

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[Matt Levine]

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[Katie Greifeld]

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[Matt Levine]

Should you talk about watching videos?

[Katie Greifeld]

Yes. Tell me about this. So South Koreans, right?

[Matt Levine]

South Koreans, they love. I didn't know this until recently. They love, love crazy trading in American financial products.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

Probably also South Korean financial products.

[Katie Greifeld]

But like there's especially ETFs too.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah. And so like levered ETFs. Great. Back up the trade. And so there's a big boom in South Korean retail speculation on stuff like levered ETFs, which we've talked about. They're a product that sometimes loses people money. And that how it works is not necessarily intuitive to everyone who looks at it. I mean, in particular, the way levered ETFs work is they provide 2 or 3x the daily returns. And so they don't provide necessarily 2 to 3x the yearly returns as discussed. Yeah. If you buy and hold a levered etf, it might. Might rip your hand off, might hurt, might not. Might be great.

[Katie Greifeld]

There are some examples.

[Matt Levine]

Not investment advice. But anyways, the South Korean regulators are sick of this. And so they've said, like as of this week, brokerages will. This is from a Financial Times story. As of this week, brokerages will automatically block investors wanting to put their funds into leveraged or inverse ETFs and who cannot provide the certification number given to those who have completed a one hour online training.

[Katie Greifeld]

One hour?

[Matt Levine]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Katie Greifeld]

Okay, so I didn't read the FT story.

[Matt Levine]

Click through an online, like an hour long online.

[Katie Greifeld]

I was thinking like the little video ad you get before a YouTube video where it's 15 seconds and then you can click through.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, right. USR YouTube channel has a little this like with like options, you know, like you have to click some forms to be approved to trade options. Right. And like an hour is aggressive.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

Someone emailed me to be like, there's going to be an aftermarket in those codes. You watch the video, you write down the code, you send it to Your.

[Katie Greifeld]

Friends for money can make an ETF out of that. Yeah, Levered a few times.

[Matt Levine]

But I will say I love this.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah. Because you think that there should be gated access to these products.

[Matt Levine]

Yes, absolutely.

[Katie Greifeld]

Wow.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, I'm a gatekeeper.

[Katie Greifeld]

Wow.

[Matt Levine]

I think there should be gated access. I also think that if you're a securities regulator, one real bind that you have is that when stuff is going up, if you are ever like, we don't want people to be able to invest in this stuff, people get really mad at you because you're standing in the way of the fun. And then when this stuff goes down and it's like, oh, this was a terrible product, they come to the regulators say, where were you on stopping this terrible product? And if you're the regulators, it's an unpleasant bind to be in. And you can't really do anything other than try to put the decision on the retail investors and try to give them as much information as you can and also make it not your problem. Which means people email me, there's going to be an aftermarket in those codes. Yeah, People are going to trade these ETFs without watching the hour long video. But that's not a problem because from the regulator's perspective, those people can't complain. Right. If you like didn't watch the video and then you buy the ETF and you go to the regular, oh, why did you let me buy this etf? I didn't even watch the video. The regulator is like, you're a problem man. You should have watched the video. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I think it's a good move.

[Katie Greifeld]

I have some practical questions. Is this before every single purchase that you make or is it just like.

[Matt Levine]

To get turned on to trade leverage ETFs?

[Katie Greifeld]

Oh, interesting.

[Matt Levine]

But I do think that like if it works, you could have a separate hourline training video for all sorts of products. I really want to like record the library of like don't buy these product videos.

[Katie Greifeld]

People would actually watch the video then. That would be fun.

[Matt Levine]

We should turn this podcast into that we almost have.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah, we can monetize that. This reminded me of sell it to the SEC. An episode in 2022 when FINRA apparently opened a consultation on whether complex exchange traded products should be basically curbed. So complex in their world means leverage and inverse crypto, certain crypto funds and the some of the things that they were considering were enhanced disclosure and a knowledge check for retail customers. So basically like a little quiz was the understanding at the time and I was taking a look at my reporting from the time, apparently when I wrote this. In mid May, Finra had received 12,000 comments on this proposal. And for context, usually FINRA notices get fewer than 20 comments. So it met violent opposition in the US but I think it would be fine.

[Matt Levine]

I assume that's not, like, mostly from brokers being like, I want to sell stuff to rubes who don't understand it. I think it's mostly from retail customers being like, I don't want to watch a video before I buy stuff.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah. Or like, I don't want to take a little quiz.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah. I have to say I'm not surprised that it met with violent opposition. I just like it.

[Katie Greifeld]

I would love. I would love to take the quiz, though. I think that sounds fun. If someone I don't know had one, I'd be interested in taking it. Someone could check our knowledge.

[Matt Levine]

Good game.

[Katie Greifeld]

Good game. Have a great holiday season, everyone.

[Matt Levine]

We'll see you back here.

[Katie Greifeld]

Well, they'll see us on January 2nd.

[Matt Levine]

Yeah, I was gonna say we're off next week.

[Katie Greifeld]

Yeah.

[Matt Levine]

But probably back the following week with a mailbag episode. Unless something happens, something goes wrong, unless it gets deleted.

[Katie Greifeld]

Whoop.

[Matt Levine]

And that was the Money Stuff podcast. I'm Matt Levine.

[Katie Greifeld]

And I'm Katie Greifeld.

[Matt Levine]

You can find my work by subscribing to the Money stuff newsletter on bloomberg.com.

[Katie Greifeld]

And you can find me on Bloomberg TV every day on the close between 3 and 5pm Eastern.

[Matt Levine]

We'd love to hear from you. You can send an email to moneypodloomberg.net Ask us a question and we might answer it on.

[Katie Greifeld]

You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now and leave us a review. It helps more people find the show.

[Matt Levine]

The Money Stuff podcast is produced by Anna Mazarakis and Moses Ondahm.

[Katie Greifeld]

Our theme music was composed by Blake Maples.

[Matt Levine]

Amy Keen is our executive producer, and.

[Katie Greifeld]

Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.

[Matt Levine]

Thanks for listening to the Money Stuff podcast. Only one movie answers the call.

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[Matt Levine]

For the biggest comedy event of the holiday season. Do you know what the best part is?

[Katie Greifeld]

What is it, Patrick?

[Matt Levine]

No, I'm asking.

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[Matt Levine]

Janice Torres here, and I'm Austin Hankwitz. We host the podcast Mind the Small Business Success Stories, produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks.

[Commercial/Ad Voice]

We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners.

[Matt Levine]

The big thing about working at tech.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Is that it's ever evolving, ever changing.

[Matt Levine]

Everyone's a rookie.

[Katie Greifeld]

That's how fast the industry is changing.

[Matt Levine]

So what I'm really excited about is to be part of that change. So listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.