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Morning Brew Daily
Is Tech In an AI Bubble? & Why English Teachers are the Best Investing Mentors
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- [00:02]
Public Investing Announcer
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- [00:51]
Neal Freyman
Brew Daily Show I'm Neal Freyman.
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Toby Howell
And I'm Toby Howell.
- [00:54]
Neal Freyman
Today, a special holiday episode for Labor.
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Toby Howell
Day, Brew Markets host Ann Berry dropped by and you're definitely going to want to hear her take on Jim Cramer. It's Monday, September 1st. Let's ride.
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Neal Freyman
Good morning and Happy Labor Day. I hope you are all enjoying the day off and honoring the American labor movement by relaxing on your couch.
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Toby Howell
We have Anne Barry in the studio today, a name that might be familiar to some of you as she stepped in to co host the MBD podcast over the last few months.
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Neal Freyman
And LinkedIn is longer than the Irishman.
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Toby Howell
She's been a CEO, founder, broadcaster on TV channels like Bloomberg, invested billions of dollars as a private equity dealmaker, and now hosts two shows for Morning Brew, including Brew Markets, which you should definitely go and check out.
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Neal Freyman
We sat down with and last Wednesday to see if AI is a bubble, chat about her new show and hear why your English teacher could be your most valuable investing mentor. But first, an ad for our sponsor, Roku.
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Toby Howell
Neil, what do Americans love more than anything else?
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Neal Freyman
Ooh, hot dogs and all day breakfast.
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Toby Howell
Close. But I was thinking TV and Black Friday shopping. Now it's easier than ever for brands to get on the streaming platform. Americans spend the most hours streaming on Roku with Roku Ads Manager Just in time for the holiday season, Roku Ads.
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Toby Howell
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Neal Freyman
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Toby Howell
Right now, our listeners can get a $500 match on their first $500 spent with code BREW500@ads.roku.com that's code B R E W500@ads.roku.Com Terms apply. And now for our interview with Ann.
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Neal Freyman
And you've filled in as a host on Morning Brew Daily. You now host your own show, but our listeners may not know who you are, what you're about. Besides that, you' British and more articulate than me and Toby. So tell us a little bit about your career path. It has not been a straight line.
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Ann Berry
It hasn't been a straight line. And gosh, where do you want me to start? Backwards? Or should I start at the end to go back or start at the.
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Neal Freyman
Beginning and go Christopher Nolan style backwards? Yeah.
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Ann Berry
Okay, so here I am today. I do have a podcast. It's called Brew Markets. And it drops every afternoon at about 420. And just to set the stage for what it is and what we try to do, and then I can explain why my career has led me to sort of position it with the team the way that we have done. So 4:20 every day rolls around. We start filming at about 3:50. So we are literally filming as though live right as the bell rings at the market close. So we're capturing the day's news. We're honing in on some of the biggest reasons that the market moved. And we're really focusing on the why. Why did the story matter? And we try and focus on what are we able to say because of our backgrounds that other people aren't talking about. So, for example, and this is something you and I talked about, Neil, when we were covering, I was covering for Toby, who was gallivanting around on vacation. We were talking about Target CEO leaving. And one of the things I've done in my career is I've served on boards, I've been on public company boards, I've been on private company boards. And I have lived through the process of exiting a CEO and I've lived through the process as a board member of trying to hire a CEO and figuring out what kind of leadership is appropriate for a company at a particular point in time. And so in that conversation, you and I talked about, was this the right decision? What was the board thinking? Is this really going to drive any change? My opinion was probably not. And my background is the reason I think probably not. It's not sort of coming out of nowhere. That's what Brew Markets is Trying to do, we're trying to bring the facts. We're rigorous about research. We fact check very rigorously. We do our own primary research. You know, during the day we're calling people, we're reading the underlying filings. We can. I'm a nerd. I go into the numbers and we're very rigorous about that. And then we say, now let's put some real life experience around that.
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Toby Howell
So what got you interested in investing in markets to begin with?
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Ann Berry
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, if you go all the way back in time, I didn't think I was going to be interested investing in the markets. I absolutely did not grow up. When I was a little girl, no part of me was going, one day I want to grow up and be an investor. Absolutely not. I wanted to be a writer or a journalist. And it just a side note for anyone who's listening or watching, who's an English literature major or an arts major, when I actually ended up in investment banking. And I'll go back to answer your questions to how that happened. A couple of years in, I wrote a letter to my English literature high school teacher. And so I just want you to know the best training I ever had for being an investor was English literature. Because when someone puts in front of you a poem or a play or a piece of prose you've never seen before, and you need to figure out what is it saying and what is it saying to me specifically and argue the facts around why you have that perspective. Nothing comes closer to the investment decision process than that, right? Looking at a company from a cold start, getting through the facts and coming up with an opinion, it's exactly the same process. So look, I ended up being one of those kids who, I enjoyed math and I also enjoyed the arts. And I wanted to find a way to bring those two skill sets together. And so I ended up doing economics. I was always fascinated by public affairs. I'm a complete politics junkie. I wanted to know what was going on in the world, wanted to know what was moving things globally, did economics sort of, you know, Goldman Sachs turned up at college and said, you know, we have a great analyst program. One other thing I would say, I came from a family with absolutely no money. I was the first in my family to go to college and financial security was really important to me. And I'm the eldest child and, you know, banking turned up with a path to a potentially lucrative career. And I was like, I need to do that not just for myself. I have a whole family. I want to look out for.
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Toby Howell
Is there a moment that you look back on now in your career as it's unfolded where it was an inflection point where you said I'm really hitting my stride now or I know what I want to do now?
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Ann Berry
Yeah, you know, the inflection point was a moment where I started to hit my stride. But at the time it definitely didn't feel like that. And so to get to that point, I, after college I went to Goldman Sachs, had a great time there. I also went to business school, which I can also talk about. And I was in investing in private equity and buying companies control positions for a long time. And I left Goldman to start a private equity fund and I was a partner at a firm and I ended up becoming CEO of the biggest company we owned. It's a long story around how but this happened in late 2019 and what this business does, actually it's thriving today is provide services for hotels and restaurants and spas. Well, no one told me that four months into the gig Covid was going to happen and shut down the literally 99% of the business. So I'm a first time CEO pretty early in my career. And talk about an inflection point. This was just drinking from a fire hose. And I had the most unbelievable board to go back to. The conversation Neil and I were having of extremely seasoned CEOs. One, a gentleman called Larry Bossity, who I was devastated, passed away recently. He was a very famous CEO. Another woman called Gail Mandel, who'd been very senior at Wyndham. And I returned to them and said being a CEO is an incredibly lonely job. And being a CEO through a crisis, when you have got to keep moving, you've got to make decisions, really hard ones every single day at scale that are going to impact people. The homes that they go home to, the energy that they bring to their families, the income levels that they have or in that case do not have because of the pandemic. It was an extraordinary inflection point. And to answer your question, Toby did hit my stride in terms of realizing I had the capacity to do something really challenging and to throw my energy into it and be drinking from the fire hose and learning something new every day. Then I hit my stride. It was the fastest, most incredible learning I've ever had to do in my life.
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Neal Freyman
How big was this company?
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Ann Berry
We had 6,000 people until the moment we did it, which was quite soon after March 2020.
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Toby Howell
Yeah. Wow. That is truly a drink from the fire hose moment. I do want to Pivot now to another company and CEO that has kind of become the de facto CEO of the market in recent times. That is Nvidia. We are recording this just a few hours before Nvidia reports earnings, which has become one of the most important events in the financial markets these days. Some analysts have been warning of an AI bubble and tech stocks have been a little bit wobbly for the last few weeks or so. So there is a ton at stake. What is your read on the AI trade right now?
- [09:40]
Ann Berry
Oh gosh, the crystal ball. So I'm going to be really honest and when you host a markets daily show like I do Brew Markets, this is like not only honesty, it's real vulnerability. In the last couple of months there have been many, many days where I've woken up, looked at my personal portfolio. We don't give an investment advice, but I do sometimes talk about things I've invested in that have gone really well, like Netflix for example, and things where I'm like, oh gosh, we've really got to figure out what to do. And over the last couple of months there have been more days than not where I've woken up going, I think I should just sell everything, I think I should just take profits. You know, I look at my Nvidia holding, I do own Nvidia, I look at my Microsoft, I look at my Alphabet, I look, I met and go, ah, this could go away, right? And I am nervous that we are in not just an AI bubble, but an AI driven bubble for the entire market. And here's the specific reason why. When you look now at the expected returns on US US equities, when you look at the concentration in the MAG7 or just sort of tech generally, the equity risk premium, I'm going to explain what that is, is tiny. It's practically zero. And so just to bust through the jargon for a second, you've got different kinds of assets, you've got less risky assets. And the closest thing to being riskless in theory is the U.S. treasury. And then you take a look at equities at stocks and shares and they typically trade in a way that the return get is at a premium. It's more than you would get from Treasuries. That difference is your reward for taking the risk of owning equities. And typically that difference, that reward for risk has been meaningful. It's almost nothing right now. And it just cannot be in my mind that owning a share in Palantir, which I do by the way, or owning a share in, in workday, Which I do is the same level of risk as a United States government bond. That does not make sense. That's a very long way of saying, yes, I do think that we are in bubblicious territory.
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Neal Freyman
Well, if you've sold any Tech St stocks over the past 30 to 40 years, you have probably regretted that.
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Ann Berry
Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I'm tortured by it. Why we're all tortured by it. Right. It's why I wake up in the morning, go, should I sell today? And the answer is I haven't. I haven't for exactly that reason.
- [11:47]
Neal Freyman
So after Nvidia reports, that basically wraps up earnings season. And you've listened to a lot of calls and heard a lot of CEOs say a lot of things. What are your major takeaways from what you've heard over the past few weeks and what companies are saying about the economic environment and how their businesses are.
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Ann Berry
Doing So I would say that the strength of the US consumer in the aggregate has surprised me to the upside. So the places that I go to to try and figure that out, and there are so many of them for the following reason. There is no such thing as the US consumer or a US Consumer. We've got so many different demographic groups with different income levels, with different employment horizons, with different needs about providing for a family with different regions. Right. The diversity that we've got in in the US is extraordinary. And so the diversity of businesses that we need to serve all the different populations of consumer is huge. Which makes earning season, when you're in my seat, a complete nightmare because every day we're just flooded with data and we try to sort through that on Brew markets. When you look at things like credit card information, it looks as though most consumers are doing all right. People aren't defaulting on their credit card debt as much as was feared because interest rates have stayed up for as long as they have. When you take a look at some of the retailers, not just the Walmarts of the world, but that, you know, Kohl's just released earnings before recording today and it's done pretty well. A couple of the home furnishings businesses have done pretty well. So that that has surprised me. The other place I've been impressed is for companies and businesses that have taken seriously the tariff threat. And I know that both of you are really concerned about and you turn out to be exactly right. Both of you were really consistent towards the end of last year when I listened to you talking about your concern about tariffs that were likely to come, the ones who took it seriously, the ones who moved quickly, the ones who diversified their supply ch and had a plan and focused on executing, have done really well and they've been rewarded. And you see that.
- [13:41]
Toby Howell
I do just want to zoom in on one of those particular consumer cohorts that you were mentioning and that are people who eat, you know, $18 sad desk lunches. We like to call it bowl slop. Those companies have not done very well. I'm thinking of Chipotle, Kava, sweetgreen. They kind of got wrecked during this last earnings cycle. What do you see on the horizon for those bowl slop companies?
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Ann Berry
I think it's going to get really difficult. And just because the contrast. Who's done really well, Chili's done really well. Yesterday I had a conversation with the CEO of Potbelly, and back to my point on execution. Potbelly, which is a small market cap business, has been very attentively going out to customers and saying, but which products do you want? How should we price it? How can we give you bang for your buck? How do we give you a prime rib steak sandwich, which I ate yesterday in preparation for my conversation, and pack it full of calories so you feel you're getting a good outcome? I think. I think the sad salad group are going to have a tough ride for the following reason. Are you going to save your money for dinner with your friends or for something when you can have a sandwich at your desk? I think it's gonna be difficult. The second thing I would say is, and I loved sweet green. A lot of it tastes the same, right? I don't care what the salad's called, but at the end of the day, it kind of tastes the same no matter whether it's chicken with. With, you know, sweet potato or whether it's something else. Carver and I say this, and Carver, if you're listening, please don't pull sponsorship. We love you. It's just not as flavorful, I thought, as it used to be. And I was. I love Mediterranean food, and it's heavy, it's dense, and it just doesn't. It just doesn't excite me in the way that it used to. It's tough. They've got to do something new.
- [15:16]
Neal Freyman
Toby's a big pot belly guy.
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Toby Howell
I love pot belly. Well, I love them all. I literally love kava and I love sweet green as well. But pot belly was slept on for so long, so I'm glad they're kind of getting flowers.
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Neal Freyman
It's one of the few fast, casual chains that actually report Reported same store sales growth.
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Toby Howell
Yes.
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Neal Freyman
This past. This past quarter. Another theme of the business world this summer has been marketing fails. Seen a number of recent marketing campaigns receive a lot of pushback thinking. American Eagle, Sydney Sweeney jeans ad, Cracker Barrels now nixed logo change. As an executive, how do you know when to pivot because of criticism or when to block it out and just charge ahead with your strategy?
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Ann Berry
That is a really great question. And I think, well, no, I'm sort of stumbling over my words. Not because I don't have an opinion. I'm trying to make sure that the answer that I would give to that is different, depending on what the mistake relates to. Okay. So if it's a marketing error, I think you own that as quickly as human, humanly possible. I think Cracker Barrel, to its credit, said, we got this wrong. We're gonna. We're gonna turn this around. And they made that decision very quickly. It is very hard for people to say, I got it wrong. I got it wrong. It's hard for them from an ego perspective, and it's hard for them because they feel as though it's a sign of weakness and that they can be held up as a weak leader. So when I think they do it, it's a sign of strength. When I think about the Sydney Sweeney situation, I think that is different. I don't think that was a decision that the company was trying to make around did they make a mistake or not. I think it's a decision around whether they wanted to make a statement that certain motivations for criticism was going to change their behavior or not. And that brings me to a broader theme, which is what do you do when your shareholders start having a more emotional reaction to what you're doing than thinking about you as an investment in. In a business? And that brings me to the issue of meme stocks, because I don't think that Cracker Barrel has become a Meme stock. I do think it's become a highly emotional stock. But I think we're starting to see more and more whether it's Krispy Kreme. We saw it with Gamestop. We've seen it. I think with Open Door. What happens when you've got retailers wanting you to do things as a business person you just don't think is the right move? And do you want that job? I would not want to be the CEO of a Meme store. I think it's a miserable job.
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Neal Freyman
You've. You've interviewed a lot of CEOs, and they will say in interviews that they don't pay attention to the stock price. Yeah, but do they?
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Ann Berry
Of course they do. Absolutely they do. And here's why. Lots of CEOs like Toby, we're talking about what it's like to be an athlete. They're really competitive people, right? The barometer of their success is the financial performance. Performance, the rear revenue and the revenue and earnings. And usually again, take meme stocks out of it. The correlation between your share price performance and your financial performance historically has been pretty close. If you're competitive, you want to be a winner. You want to see your share price going up, right? That's number one. Number two, your employees want to see your share price going up. If you want to get the best talent, you want to get winners. They want to be part of something that's rising as well. The third thing I would say is money, right? The cash, the dough, the ends in their pockets, the motivator in American capitalism. Public company CEOs are explicitly compensated using stock, stocks, shares, options. They are highly motivated for that share price to go up because their net worth is on the line. So you bet. If anyone says, I don't pay attention from one day to the next. Yes, I believe that. If they say, I wish I didn't have to pay attention from one quarter to the next, hundred percent agree, but I never look cooling bs.
- [18:46]
Toby Howell
I love that. Let's put yourself in the shoes of another CEO that's been put in a tough position recently. The US government. Government just took a 10% stake in intel and signaled it wants to do that with a few more companies in the future. What do you make of this administration's interventions into private companies?
- [19:04]
Ann Berry
This one's tricky. This one's tricky for lots of different reasons. And I'm going to share, again, being very honest, what my reaction was intellectually. So read Business Response and then viscerally for a couple of these examples, because there's actually been more than one. Before intel, we had MP Materials, right? The Pentagon becoming now the biggest shareholder in the rare earth miner. Rare earths, for those who are listening, really important component in military items, in phones, in mobile devices. It's critically important in the US has historically been extremely dependent on China to get a hold of them. And you know, the negotiations for trade with China are happening now. Like we know it's happening now. It's not getting a ton of coverage. People are traveling to go meet each other right now. And this is on the table as a massive issue. When I saw that the Department of Defense was becoming a major shareholder in this particular company, the economist in me, the classically trained economist in me, the Wall street trained banker in me, the private equity investor in me, the public company shareholder in me thought this was the beginning of a new chapter that I have concerns about. Because this kind of interventionalism, interventionism is, is, is not something that you think of when you think about the US economic model at all. And I think newness can be very disconcerting for the market. But the politic, the policy wonk in me, the kid that grew up wanting to know what makes the world go around and we looked at that and went, we need to do something about securing supply to these critically important components. And I, my visceral reaction to was to it wasn't as negative as my intellectual one was. I do understand a play for this, but here's just to go back to intel, because you brought up Intel, I want to answer your question. Intel is a struggling company. Intel, intel got it wrong. What I worry about different from MP Materials is that this becomes propping up companies that frankly should be forced to be held accountable for poor performance.
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Toby Howell
So if you are an investor looking at this deal, should you be chasing these interventions or you should be staying away from them?
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Ann Berry
Okay, so this, this is a controversial piece and this is where there's a difference between trading and investing. Okay. I think somebody who's day trading all day, I thought about it. I mean I really thought about it. I saw Howard Lutnick come out and say, oh, we may want to start picking up positions in defense stocks. And I sat with my producer John for Brew Markets. I just watch, they're going to rip. Defense stocks are going up. Should I buy just to trade? That's the trading part of my brain. I didn't do it because I'm an investor. Back to Neil's point, I want to hold these stocks for as long as possible. And my fear is that we see a short term pop because we see that's what happened with intel, we see that's what happened with MP Materials. But at some point we have an election, right, and policies reversed. Or at some point the market says, oh wait a second, we don't feel quite so confident anymore that market forces are going to dictate the outcomes of this businesses and poor performance is going to be changed or forced to change. Are we going to go into a world where government contracts can now prop up the stocks of these companies because the government's now a shareholder? We don't know the answer to that. And if those things happen, I think these stock gains remove. So the trader in me wants to nip in and start, you know, looking out for posts on Truth Social. The investor in me is like, no, I actually want to know what the playing field's going to look like.
- [22:20]
Toby Howell
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- [23:05]
Neal Freyman
If you've done any online shopping before, odds are you bought from a business Powered by Shopify.
- [23:10]
Toby Howell
Wondering how you can tell? Close your eyes and picture that purple shop pay button you see at checkout. It's the one that makes buying so.
- [23:18]
Neal Freyman
Incredibly easy, and it's also the telltale sign that you're buying from a Shopify business.
- [23:23]
Toby Howell
If it's not ringing a bell now, you're bound to start noticing this purple button everywhere. And for good reason. Shopify makes it incredibly easy to start and run your business, so it's no wonder so many businesses sell with them.
- [23:35]
Neal Freyman
Get your very own purple button by signing up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com/morning brew. That's shopify.com/morning brew. Let's talk about private equity. You've been a longtime investor into private markets, which regular folks like us typically haven't been able to access.
- [23:55]
Ann Berry
We should talk about that.
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Neal Freyman
Yeah, but that is changing dramatically. 401ks are now adding private assets like crypto, real estate, pre IPO companies to their holdings in addition to classic stocks and bonds. Is this democratization of investing or a risky path to go down?
- [24:10]
Ann Berry
It's both at the same time, and I want to start with the democratization piece of it. Because if you go back to before the pandemic, if we go back to prior to 2020, 2021 and this extraordinary run that we have seen in the US Stock market initially driven initially, and I say before all the AI news popped and captured our Attention, the way it has done, low, low interest rates was a huge, huge driver of what, of what pushed up the stock markets. If you go back further in history, private equity funds, the good ones, not all of them, the good ones have outperformed the stock market and for the following reason. I believe, and I'm going to own the fact that I feel some bias on this point, because when you've seen it done well, you know that the following happens when a private equity firm owns a business. They lean in. And I'm going to say what that means. They hold the CEO accountable, they drive change. We can debate good change, bad change. The change is made public. Companies struggle to make change. They struggle to change their management teams. They take years to exit this, years to exit their CEOs, even if they're not performing. Or they turn around and bring them back, right? So that doesn't tend to happen. The patience for that doesn't tend to exist. And so as a change agent, private equity is there. So when it's done well, and it is not always done well, it can drive outsized returns. Now, one thing that Fed Chair Jay Powell said on Friday, I know you covered it, Jackson Hole. Buried down in the bottom of his comments was the following statement. I'm paraphrasing. The neutral interest rate, meaning the interest rate we should all expect to be around for long term, is going to be higher than it has been and it's, it's going to be higher than we saw the pandemic. So he's basically saying rates are going to be higher for longer, no matter where they end up. In that environment, private equity tends to do quite well because they double down on making operational change. And so it's a long way of saying, if we're back to a sort of quote, more normalized world, do I want everyday investors, pension investors, pension fold holders, people working hard, Do I want them to get access to those better returns all day, every day? Absolutely I do. I think the democratization of that is fantastic. Where I worry private capital can look different. I'm talking about private equity that I've been in. Big, mature businesses, cash flowing, stable, hopefully not going anywhere if they're well run. Venture capital is a different beast. And we've all fallen in love with venture capital. We all want to find the next SpaceX, we all want to be the early seed investor in the next, you know, pick your glamorous in the next OpenAI highly unlikely, highly unlikely. And a lot of venture capital funds fail. And the vast, vast, vast majority of early stage investments fail. I've made them look, I've got some that done really well, some that haven't. I am worried that please I do not want people to use their retirement funds as lottery tickets and that's where I worry. I think it's both at the same time.
- [27:04]
Toby Howell
What about SPACs? We've kind of seen a SPAC resurgence recently. Chamath, the king of spacs as he likes to call himself is back in the game. Where do you see that road kind of leading?
- [27:15]
Ann Berry
Gosh, anytime you've got someone who's self anointing titles you're in a tough spot, Right? So here's what I say about SPACs. They've been around for a long time, they've been around since the 90s and I am lucky that I've spent time with folks who are around does that that first generation of SPAC innovators. And in theory SPACs can be a good thing. They've gotten bad raps and I'll come back to why. But in theory, here's how they work. So just to explain what a SPAC is, it's a shell entity, it's, it's a legal entity, it doesn't have an operating business in it. So you can have the Neil and Toby spac and what the Neil and Toby spac will do is go set up a legal framework, go make itself public and then I can turn up buy a share in the Neil and Toby spac. You take my cash, you stick it in a trust and then you guys have got two years to go find an actual operating business to go buy. So what am I doing as the investor? I am basically buying a share in the Neil and Toby spac because I trust that you two have got great judgment, great experience and you're going to find a really good company to go by. That's what I'm buying into. And I don't get the right to ask many questions around that. I sort of stand by and watch till you've done it. So anyway, if you go back, SPACs, you know, lifted off in 2020 21. It was the halcyon days of SPAC. A bunch of deals that didn't work out so well meant that businesses, perhaps the diligence doesn't wasn't as good or when these SPACs happened the Neil's and Toby's equivalents were getting special equity which meant they were perhaps motivated to get a deal done. That's why things sort of went wrong and then they went away. So now they're back. Here's why I think they're not terrible in practice. What SPACs can do if they're done well is give the opportunity for companies to go public where for whatever reason it perhaps you know, the market at a point in time just wasn't allowing them to go to go public. It is a way for a retail shareholder to partner with really good investors and really good deal makers. If it goes well, that's not a terrible thing. And at the end of the day, if that SPAC doesn't do a deal, I get my money back with some interest. So the problem is what happens if deals go poorly? Well, the new generation of SPACs, they're being structured a little bit differently. A lot of them now have the feature that you can't have this quirky incentive piece around it so that the Neil's, Toby's in the SPAC get like special Viv, right? If they get a deal done, I think the level of skepticism is high enough people would do more work. That being said, you've got to do your homework on who the spac manager is at the end of the day. And all said and done, that's it. If you trust that spac manager has a track record, a history of getting things right, go at it. If they don't, I don't understand why you'd go put your money.
- [29:48]
Toby Howell
Would you trust us? I just need Toby.
- [29:52]
Ann Berry
Toby.
- [29:52]
Toby Howell
I don't think so.
- [29:53]
Neal Freyman
All right, all this newsy stuff is great, very interesting. But just to finish up the podcast, let's get a little dessert here. And we want to turn back to you as a person who is an investor or a business leader that you look up to.
- [30:05]
Ann Berry
Who's inspired you, I would say, gosh, there's so many of them. I'm going to say this. There is a business leader and I'm going to focus on the word business as opposed to leader. And in my statement, I do want to talk about Elon Musk for a minute. He's wildly controversial. I don't like the stuff that he, he puts out there on social media. That's unpalatable. I will say that very clearly. There's a book I read that really stuck with me. I read Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk and someone wrote into Brew markets the other day and said, what should I read? And I said, I think you should read this for the following reason. For anyone who's been inside a fast growing company or who's run a business or has just stood there going, what Is it that this guy does that's just so different and out there? I was fascinated by the fact that Elon Musk has been able to not only come up with the ideas for, but actually go make happen and bring to life in this world as many different successful businesses at the same time as he has done it is extraordinary. And the fact that he is able to stay as leader of all of them with the vision and the passion to stick with it for as long as he has is extraordinary. And here's the last thing that caught my eye because though I look up to it kind of, and I think he's the only person who's allowed to do this when he's got an issue at one of these companies, let's say he's got an issue at X. He'll go find engineers at SpaceX or Tesla who can drop in as a SWAT team to go figure it out. And here's why I like that he is unafraid of something I have learned works. Go find great talent, go find great problem solvers and have some confidence that even in a different environment, a different company, they will go figure it out.
- [31:43]
Toby Howell
You know what it reminds me of is you stepping in to co host daily. You are that executive talent that we are looking for. We are going to finish off the podcast with a fun segment that we're just calling Overvalued Under. Oh, basically, we're just going to give you something. Maybe it's a company, maybe it's something else. And you give us a little spiel on why you think maybe it's overvalued or undervalued or properly valued. Or properly valued. So, up first, Palantir.
- [32:11]
Ann Berry
Palantir. Overvalued. Can't help myself. Board a lottery ticket just in case FOMO kicks in.
- [32:18]
Neal Freyman
Jim Cramer.
- [32:19]
Ann Berry
Jim Cramer. Fairly valued. And here is why. Now, as I do what you guys do, doing a Daily show, and these guys are nodding. You can't. If you can't see the camera, they're nodding. If you can't hear them, you can hear their nod down the microphone. Doing a Daily Show. Fresh ideas, bringing the energy to do that day in, day out for as long as he's done it. He may not get his stock picks wrong all the time, no one does. But I got to tell you, just for sheer longevity, fair value.
- [32:45]
Neal Freyman
His energy is unbelievable. I was watching his show last year and I'd never seen it before, honestly. And the amount of energy he brought to the table and the fact that when I'm. When we are up at 430, and I'm scrolling through Twitter to see what happened. He's been tweeting for an hour already.
- [33:00]
Toby Howell
He definitely kind of puts us to shame on us. We got to step it up a little bit. Okay. The original Cracker Barrel logo.
- [33:08]
Ann Berry
Oh, gosh. Well, the market has just spoken and said it was undervalued, so I'm going to go with the market.
- [33:17]
Neal Freyman
How about Dubai Chocolate?
- [33:19]
Ann Berry
Oh, okay. So I love Dubai chocolate. I love chocolate in general. I love going to Dubai. You put the two together, I think that's a winning combination. I think it's still probably undervalued, and here's why. I think there is a world in which we see a lot more Dubai Chocolate ice cream. It's. It's. It's under penetrated. I want to go into Target, into Trader Joe's. I want to open up the ice cream thing. I want to see Dubai Chocolate.
- [33:40]
Toby Howell
I cannot believe the penetration it's achieved at bodegas in New York City, where I am seeing some awful combinations. I don't know. I'm saying that's way overvalued. Now I'm getting involved. Let's go with another trendy item, Labubus.
- [33:56]
Ann Berry
Oh, Labubu's. Okay, so this is where to go to get. Once upon a time, I talked to a bunch of people who were senior in retail, and one of them is Mickey Drexler, who was behind the Rise and rise of J. Crew. And I said, mickey Drexler, what's your superpower? He goes, because it's merchandising. When I look to buy stuff, I don't think about, do I like it. It's being able to put my shoes in the shoe myself in the shoes of the customer and say, well, they like it. That takes an amount of an imagination, creativity, and empathy that is hard for most people. I don't have it, which is why I don't get the boo boos. I don't understand it, but I appreciate that. Lots of people love them. I do. See Naomi Osaka rocked out onto the US Open with her sparkly shining. She said, it's not Billie Jean King, it's Billie Jean Gling, which I thought was super cute. So I'm going to say that they're fairly valued. But I say I don't personally understand it.
- [34:46]
Neal Freyman
Okay, here's another one. Stainless steel cookware.
- [34:49]
Ann Berry
Oh, undervalued. I love stainless steel cookware. But can I say, do you know what's even less appreciated? That's copper. Don't you love walking into a kitchen and seeing fabulous copper.
- [34:59]
Toby Howell
Everyone genuinely cannot cook with stainless steel, though. I have tried.
- [35:02]
Neal Freyman
I only did this so Toby would bring this up.
- [35:04]
Toby Howell
I just can't make it not stick. Like, I know you're supposed to do the water test. I know you're supposed to get it to the proper temperature, but I put a salmon on there and it doesn't come off salmon. I don't know what I'm doing.
- [35:12]
Ann Berry
You're definitely an air fryer guy. I feel like I'm looking at an air fryer.
- [35:16]
Toby Howell
I'm gonna take that at face value and say you're 100% correct. I don't have anymore, though. Yeah. You need to please give us a cooking lesson. Neil knows how to do it.
- [35:25]
Ann Berry
But.
- [35:25]
Toby Howell
But I'm rough.
- [35:26]
Ann Berry
We love to cook. We'll do that. We'll get a team meal.
- [35:28]
Toby Howell
Any others, Neil?
- [35:29]
Ann Berry
Yeah.
- [35:29]
Neal Freyman
How about Thomas Tuchel?
- [35:31]
Ann Berry
Pass. What's up?
- [35:32]
Toby Howell
He's the new man. English.
- [35:34]
Neal Freyman
The new manager for the English football team.
- [35:36]
Ann Berry
Oh, that's so mortifying. And you do not have to edit this out. You have my permission to send that out as well. Do you know what the great irony is here? Last time I was in London, I love to go to the theater, and I went to the National Theater. Go check it out next time anyone's over there. And there was a fantastic play. It was funny about Gareth Southgate as manager of the English football team. So I clearly tuned out when Gareth left. That's my. That's my excuse. England I love. I'm a very patriotic football soccer supporter.
- [36:01]
Neal Freyman
Well, then, on that note, here's. Here's a one. The West End.
- [36:05]
Ann Berry
The West End of London.
- [36:06]
Neal Freyman
Yeah.
- [36:07]
Ann Berry
I think it's undervalued, and here's why. I think that going to the theater in the US And I'm going to talk specifically about New York, which is where I live, and we all are. I find it heartbreaking how expensive it is to go to the theater now. And I say the same thing about museums. And when I think about young people, particularly if you grew up in a family like mine where there was no disposable income, you can't afford to go and see Hamilton, which is one of the. The most fantastic shows I've ever seen. Tickets are hundreds of dollars. If you're lucky to get a lottery one, you know, the odds are just not in your favor. The West End. To go to see the same play or theater musical in London costs a fraction. I'm literally like 10% of the cost. To go see it here in New York. So I think the West End is not only undervalued, I think it's a treasure. And I just, we I wish there were more of it.
- [36:52]
Neal Freyman
Another great part of the West End is there's a great pre show tradition of just hanging out in the lobby and.
- [36:58]
Ann Berry
Yes.
- [36:59]
Neal Freyman
And drinking and hanging out. That just doesn't exist here.
- [37:02]
Ann Berry
Well, that's true of football games here. That's true. That's a tailgate. You guys do it theater.
- [37:05]
Neal Freyman
We do it for football games.
- [37:06]
Toby Howell
And let's start it for podcast listeners in here early 4:30 in the morning.
- [37:11]
Ann Berry
Irish coffee in the morning.
- [37:12]
Toby Howell
Have a pint.
- [37:12]
Ann Berry
Yeah.
- [37:13]
Toby Howell
Well, and thanks so much for joining us. Always fun to hear your perspective on investing life and I guess the West End as well. If you want any more. And go listen to Brew Markets anywhere you get your podcast. It drops after the market closes every Monday through Friday. And thanks for stopping by.
- [37:30]
Ann Berry
Thank you. Are you looking for a daily dose of market news without the jargon and the noise? I decided to go take a look and see what those analysts are saying and who those non institutional investors might be. I'm Ann Berry, investor, CEO and board member. And my show Brew Markets dives deep beyond the headline lines to break down the stories of stocks with insider insights. So a really powerful chart there. You see just massive deviation. Well, it's the lifeblood of trade. There's just one chapter in there which really struck me because, you know, I've been a CEO of business. You'll come away from each episode of Brew Markets able to ask the questions that help you strengthen your market knowledge. New episodes drop every weekday afternoon, so tune in to Brew Markets wherever you get your podcasts.