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- [00:00]
Tastytrade
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- [00:59]
Canva
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- [01:30]
Thrivent
Can help you plan your finances for the people, causes and community you love. What makes Thrivent Different Financial services and generosity programs are combined to help you build a financial roadmap for the future, while also creating opportunities to give back along the way. Visit thrivent.com to learn more. Thrivent Where Money Means More.
- [01:51]
Bloomberg
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News.
- [02:07]
Joe Weisenthal
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.
- [02:12]
Tracy Alloway
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
- [02:13]
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy, what do you think the rich people are doing these days? You know, like, I know there's a lot of like big business people lining up or who have lined up behind the Trump administration, but they have to be kind of anxious, right? Because things like mass tariffs and so forth talk about reducing the role of the dollar and global trade. It has got to make them kind of anxious.
- [02:35]
Tracy Alloway
I actually know the answer to this.
- [02:37]
Joe Weisenthal
Oh yeah, as a rich person?
- [02:39]
Tracy Alloway
No, no, because the New York Fed publishes a survey of consumer sentiment where you can break it out by pay bracket. And so the highest pay bracket, it's probably not the super super rich, but it is pretty rich. And yeah, they're getting worried for all the reasons you just laid out.
- [02:58]
Joe Weisenthal
But I do think if you exist in a pay bracket that already sort of suggests that you're not, that you're.
- [03:03]
Tracy Alloway
Not that rich, you're not the real.
- [03:04]
Joe Weisenthal
You'Re not the real, you know, you're getting a pay.
- [03:06]
Tracy Alloway
What high standards do you have, Joe?
- [03:08]
Joe Weisenthal
But anyway, I think these are really interesting times, needless to say, for the globe, for people who have money, for people who have feet around the world where they want to bet. You know, one of the things I wrote about it last week or recording this March 25, you know, one of the big trades that really had been characterized for the last 15 years is like bet on the US literally against.
- [03:31]
Tracy Alloway
Everything else right by the S&P 500.
- [03:33]
Joe Weisenthal
Just you know, you get no payment for global diversification. You didn't make any money in China, you lost money, you didn't get any pay for em, you didn't really get anything in Europe at least for a couple weeks. So far this year that's reversed pretty sharply. And so one question is like if you want glory, should you look outside the US borders these days?
- [03:51]
Tracy Alloway
Right. Diversification finally potentially paying off. Although again it's only been like three weeks.
- [03:57]
Joe Weisenthal
But be careful with this.
- [03:58]
Tracy Alloway
We have seen a lot of people, in fact we've recorded episodes about this talking about how this is a huge sea change in global politics, potentially in global markets as well. This big moment similar to the fall of the Soviet Union. Something that could forever alter Europe's economic, economic and political and security path.
- [04:17]
Joe Weisenthal
So we'll see big things are happening. Like Germany is like we're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense which they really never done. That's a change. So anyway, I'm really excited about our guest, someone I've known and talked to numerous times over the years but we've never had on the podcast Luminary in the worlds of Journalism, previously a financial journalist, an interesting guy who suddenly popped up. He started posting again recently and so that'll I was like oh maybe he in New York City these days we're going to be speaking with Nick Denton. He used to work at the FT where used to work and he wrote a book and many most people would probably know him as the founder of the Gawker family of websites. He currently has a new thing called a Futura Chiado which is going to be some Sort of journalism trading kind of hybrid. Maybe we'll find out what that is. Nick, thank you so much for coming on Odd lots.
- [05:08]
Nick Denton
It's going to be fun. I can tell already.
- [05:10]
Joe Weisenthal
I have a question. I've known you for a long time, but I've never asked you this. I actually don't know the answer to this. How would you describe your political ideology? And the reason I ask is that.
- [05:20]
Tracy Alloway
You know, like, starting with an easy question.
- [05:22]
Joe Weisenthal
No, I'm just gonna like, say like the most awkward intro to a guest ever. Your former company, Gawker, was put into bankruptcy in large part due to Peter Thiel. But then I've talked to you, I was like, I kind of think he has like some like, tealite sympathies at times, which is a weird thing to say, but I'm like, oh, I'm sort of picking up on some of that, but I don't know if I'm wrong. Are you like quietly based? How would you describe it?
- [05:44]
Nick Denton
I remember a conversation with you, actually, on Twitter. I mean, a DM conversation in maybe 2016, 2017, at the end of which you said, oh, maybe preference falsification is happening on a very, very wide scale. So I think you may have been surprised back then. At the time I would call myself a libertarian back in Gorka days, but I don't think that's really accurate.
- [06:07]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay.
- [06:08]
Nick Denton
Because I think.
- [06:09]
Joe Weisenthal
So what are you now, just a liberal?
- [06:11]
Nick Denton
No, I'm probably an authoritarian, growth oriented follower of Lee Kuan Yew and to a lesser extent, but not Deng Xiaoping. Deng Xiaoping.
- [06:22]
Tracy Alloway
Benevolent authoritarianism.
- [06:24]
Joe Weisenthal
I get it. Full context.
- [06:26]
Tracy Alloway
All right, Tracy, so Joe mentioned that you are a longtime journalist, a veteran journalist, and I think you started your career in 1989 covering the fall of the Soviet Union. And as I mentioned in the intro, a lot of people are kind of reaching for that analogy in describing this moment in Europe. Do you think that holds? Are we seeing a shift on that kind of scale?
- [06:50]
Nick Denton
Well, I guess Naya Ferguson's piece we are all Soviets now was the one that got people thinking in these terms. And then, yes, I was in eastern Europe in 89 and that was a very classic empire, Soviet empire, and a very classic uprising against it. Demonstrations, unions, protests, and eventually a complete collapse of legitimacy. This American empire is definitely more subtle and been around twice as long.
- [07:20]
Joe Weisenthal
Did you say more subtle?
- [07:21]
Nick Denton
More subtle.
- [07:21]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay, keep going.
- [07:22]
Tracy Alloway
A hidden empire. In fact, I think there's a book.
- [07:24]
Nick Denton
With that name 80 years rather than 40. You know, it's been a lot longer. It didn't end immediately with the fall of the Iron Curtain. And I think it's been in all our heads as Europeans for a long time. You know, I come from. My father was an Atlanticist. I was an Atlanticist. I saw the United States as being an extension of Europe, a place where Europe had gone to seek new adventures and new continents and new industries. And that dream is utterly gone.
- [07:55]
Joe Weisenthal
Hmm. Because you still, you know, you have the world economic forums of the world. Does anyone believe it anymore?
- [08:03]
Nick Denton
I mean, I guess the polls. The polls still seem to believe it for a while, the polls and, you know, and some English. But I think for me, the two key incidents, not the abuse of Zelensky in the Oval Office, but the abuse of Denmark, a loyal, small but loyal American ally that love, a country that.
- [08:29]
Joe Weisenthal
Actually is arguably very much in alignment on immigration policies.
- [08:33]
Nick Denton
Well, if you're going to talk about civilizational suicide, I don't exactly know how you fit Denmark into that, where the Social Democrats have actually stolen the entire agenda of the, of the right wing in Denmark. And as a result, there is really not much of a right wing resurgence anymore in Denmark. So Denmark totally shows the way for a lot of Social Democratic parties in Europe. So there was that. And then there was the abuse of Radek Sikorsky, one of the prime Atlanticists in Poland, calling Elon Musk, with an assist from Marco Rubio, telling him to be quiet, little man. Now, that might just seem petty on my behalf to focus on that, but you're talking about somebody who was absolutely in the American camp. And so if they're abusing somebody like Radar Sikorsky, they clearly don't care at all about the Western Alliance.
- [09:21]
Tracy Alloway
And you're actually leaving the US Now. Right. Why?
- [09:24]
Joe Weisenthal
But have you been here?
- [09:25]
Nick Denton
Sorry, yeah, to some extent. I've been gone since the end of 2016. We came back for family reasons, and now we're going for good, selling the apartment, you know.
- [09:36]
Tracy Alloway
How come?
- [09:37]
Nick Denton
I mean, I was 100% in US assets pretty much in January, both in terms of stocks, real estate and everything. And now it's pretty much for stocks that are 100% China and Southeast Asia.
- [09:53]
Tracy Alloway
Wow.
- [09:54]
Nick Denton
And the real estate, we just got a nice lovely little house in the Buddha Hills.
- [10:01]
Tracy Alloway
So you're, you're diversifying in your portfolio and in real life, I guess the.
- [10:06]
Nick Denton
Diversified portfolio would be something like, I know, US, 15%, China, 50%, rest of the world, 35%, something like that. So I'm obviously not, not doing that because I think the adjustment is going to be an opportunity for people to make money. So I guess it's going to end up more or less where electricity production divides up in the world. I come from an emerging markets reporting background too, where you couldn't really believe any of the statistics. You couldn't believe the GDP numbers. The only numbers you could really believe, maybe output and tradable sectors, electricity output, that kind of thing. And so that tends to be how I've looked at the markets now.
- [10:46]
Joe Weisenthal
So you're gonna be living full time. The Buda hills looks very, very nice part of Budapest. Who should I believe about Orban? Should I believe Tucker that he's a great defender of civilization, or should I believe the liberals that he's completely corrupt and not a friend at all?
- [11:03]
Nick Denton
I mean, something in between. I knew Orban a bit early on, back in 89, when I was with the FT for whatever for four years in Budapest. And he was always the most talented of his generation as a politician. Clearly knew how to play the game and clearly knows how to play the game now of having channels open to China, Russia and the United States and playing a small country's hand really rather well. There's a giant BYD factory in Hungary. There's a giant Catl factory in Hungary. If it actually comes down to it, I think most of Hungary's economic interests are actually China aligned. So I think that's where they'll end up forced. But there's no harm in maintaining channels with the other powers.
- [11:48]
Tracy Alloway
Just going back to the intro we were talking about whether or not let's call them the global elite are feeling anxious at the moment. I think it's fair to say you probably move in some of those circles, ultra wealthy. What are people saying right now? Like, what's the mood music that you're hearing?
- [12:07]
Nick Denton
Well, are we going to talk about antisemitism or not?
- [12:10]
Joe Weisenthal
Definitely.
- [12:10]
Nick Denton
Okay. It's a free space. So when globalists get the blame for what was actually at that time, I think only a 5% or 7% correction. When Trump blamed globalists, I think there's a foretaste of what will happen if there is a significant repricing of assets in America. The globalists, quote, unquote, globalists. Or is. Is it like four brackets? I forget what the code is.
- [12:38]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, the three. The three parentheses. Yeah.
- [12:40]
Nick Denton
So the cosmopolitans, the internationals, the quote unquote European Wall Street Journal, like any. Anything that seems international, anybody who's ever been to Davos or maybe just the Swiss Alps, full stop, is going to come under suspicion and they are going to be. Their life is going to be uncomfortable in the States. I think it's going to be uncomfortable. They're going to be attacked from the left for being capitalist and they'll be attacked from the right for being unpatriotic. And I think people are going to find, as they did during the kind of the looting phase of the 2020 protests, that there is no real sympathy for the Soho loft dueller in an environment like this, when people are actually asking, so where did all the money go? Where did all the money of the last 25 years during the, during this period of American exceptionalism, when America was really the only place to put your money if you wanted to invest your time or your money in the future? So where did it all go? What was left at the end of it? Where's the high speed rail network? Where are the new companies? And I think those questions are going to be very hard for people to answer.
- [13:46]
Joe Weisenthal
These are the thoughts that I have, like late at night, scrolling at my phone and then I wake up and I'm like, oh, I make my kids breakfast and I go to work and it's fine, it's fun. I love coming in here. And then like 10 o'clock at night, this is like where my mind drifts to. So like I was hoping, you know, I wanted.
- [14:03]
Nick Denton
Have you spent much time just playing around with AI?
- [14:06]
Tracy Alloway
Yeah, he spends so much time playing around with AI, so much office time.
- [14:13]
Joe Weisenthal
What were you going to say?
- [14:14]
Nick Denton
Well, under normal circumstances, I'd say, like this transition would take a good long time. You know, historically it takes decades, not years. But since January 20th, and I don't mean the Trump inauguration and I don't mean the Roman salute by Elon Musk, but I mean the deep sea drop since January 20th, I think it's actually clear that AI is universal. It's going to be everywhere, in every country, on every chip. And one of the first things that people are going to do with it is they're going to ask how to make money. And then they will ask more sophisticated questions and have more sophisticated methods of working out how to make money.
- [14:52]
Tracy Alloway
Oh, you're doing something with this, right? Like you have a new venture where you're using, using AI to trade or to research for trade.
- [14:58]
Nick Denton
Yeah, I started actually doing a simple analysis of the electric car market, projecting forward BYD and Tesla sales to 2030 just to see where it would end up and to look at who was in the lead at every single level of the value chain. And then when you've Got an army of researchers at your beck and call and you know how to manage them well enough. You can get pretty robust answers pretty quickly. Answers that then lead you to make trades that maybe you wouldn't have had the confidence to make otherwise. And I think I'm not the only one. So I think it's recursive. So we all know that we're all working more and more like this. And as we recognize this in other people, so the feedback loops accelerate and so system changes that might have taken decades get compressed into months or years. That's my theory.
- [15:49]
Joe Weisenthal
I'm actually not still totally convinced. You know, like I, I use AI Tracer. Wasn't kidding. I mean I do and I've used like deep research and many of them. I still think there's just a tremendous amount of garbage. And I don't say this, but I also want to. It's funny when you are answering, when you're talking about AI, I could only imagine if ChatGPT had come out in like 2013, what you would have devised to torment Gawker writers about making them compete with AI. And very, you know, because all media orgs have this like anx, well, this is actually pretty good at writing stuff. And then the journalist like you would have loved, you would have loved torturing your writers in some way by making them compete.
- [16:29]
Nick Denton
I actually prefer to torture the AIs to compete with each other.
- [16:32]
Joe Weisenthal
But you would have, they, you would have gotten a kick out of it, I feel like, and they would have really hated you for it. Okay.
- [16:38]
Nick Denton
I think that some kinds of journalists, I wouldn't say you're absolute run of the mill journalists, but some kinds of journalists are extremely well equipped. I don't think they recognize the talents they have and their ability to ask good questions or to play games with somebody else who actually has information that you want to get out of them. That their skill in playing that game is actually, is a very, is very powerful right now. That they could be traders if they wanted to be. Especially you.
- [17:05]
Joe Weisenthal
No, especially not me. I don't have the gun.
- [17:23]
Tastytrade
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- [18:22]
Thrivent
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- [18:52]
Oracle
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- [19:36]
Nick Denton
Right now, Oracle can cut your current.
- [19:38]
Tastytrade
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- [19:41]
Nick Denton
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- [19:51]
Tracy Alloway
What's been your best trade so far this year?
- [19:54]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, good question. Let's talk training.
- [19:56]
Nick Denton
I guess BYD and Zomi.
- [19:58]
Tracy Alloway
So and that was based on your AI research?
- [20:02]
Nick Denton
Yeah, look, I've been into electric cars for a while. I'm a gadget head. I look at things from a consumer standpoint, not a producer standpoint. That's always what we sought to do with Gizmodo and Kotaku and Jalopnik and the other consumer technology properties that we had. And you look at these Cars side by side, especially when you're talking about the SU7. Not a BYD car, a Xiaomi car. BYD was a battery company and Xiaomi a phone company, and they both come into the car sector. Xiaomi's very first car out the gate is really quite exceptional with a very nice design, totally automated or as automated manufacturing process as you're likely to get. And anybody who's had their hands on it, including the CEO of Ford, does not want to let it go. It is clearly either half the price for the same quality or twice the quality for the same price. But we're not talking about 20% Japanese advantages as they had in the 80s, but we're talking about 50 to 100% advantages in many areas. And the lead of the Chinese manufacturers is extending. So that seems pretty obvious to me.
- [21:07]
Joe Weisenthal
Why do you think? Now? One of the interesting things, like I just pulled up a chart of Xiaomi and BYD is a little similar. I wrote about it for a long time. For, like the last 10 years, Chinese stocks have kind of been dead money. So even though, like, the rise of Chinese manufacturing dominance has been a story that's existed for several years, I wrote about it this week in the newsletter, too. It has not redounded to the benefit of Chinese shareholders. This is a phenomenon. There's actually been this incredible amount of, you know, they talk about like, overcapacity and I don't really like that term, but, you know, things that have not benefited shareholders. Do you think something's changing on that front, such that the lead that these companies have now developed will be monetized in a real way?
- [21:52]
Nick Denton
There are signs that China is opening up its capital markets. Small signs to begin with, but, you know, they've got mainland funds investing in Hong Kong stocks. You've got the anointing of various Chinese companies by Xi Jinping at the meeting that they had whenever it was three weeks ago, four weeks ago. You have the, I think, recognition on social media that the strongest PR that China has, aerial nighttime videos of cyberpunk cities, which cannot be argued with, and YouTubers going for a ride in the SU7 and being blown away by the acceleration. I actually don't think it's a total accident. There's black YouTubers who seem to find it easiest to embrace the quality of Chinese products. But I think you're going to have two different debates. You're going to have the Tesla narrative, which seems to be almost exclusively political at this point. At this point, there's very little product content in the pitch at all in fact, the only photographs you see of Tesla products usually involve them being in flames. And I'm talking about Elon Musk's own account. Meanwhile, the CEO of Xiaomi is, you know, is posting up product porn all around the clock. And just in terms of a product battle, in terms of features and in terms of marketing, in terms of price point, the Chinese have won. It's as simple as that. And if you don't recognize that, well, you're just not paying attention.
- [23:17]
Tracy Alloway
How do you actually go about valuing political risk or trading on political risk? Because when I think about journalists potentially trading, the competitive advantage isn't really number crunching, right? It's kind of looking into the company and feeling the vibe and figuring stuff out that no one else has seen yet.
- [23:37]
Nick Denton
It's a multidimensional approach. So I mean, I assume that the earnings forecasts are priced into the stock already. So there's no point reanalyzing that. You might as well just. Might as well just take that as a given. The question is, what do you see that other people do not? And journalists tend to have an idea of the momentum of a story. So, for instance, right now I would say, speaking as a journalist and editor, that the fall of Elon Musk is the greatest business story of my entire life. Absolutely worth getting out of retirement for. Because here you have somebody who was real life Iron man, you know, absolutely, genuinely has three world beating major achievements under his belt. I don't care whether other people helped him do it, but he made it happen more than anybody else in the Western world. But the problem is there's only one of him. And he's up against a lot of Chinese competitors in cars, in robotics, in batteries, in mobile phones, in a whole bunch of different fields. And I think he's gonna lose.
- [24:37]
Joe Weisenthal
We should sit on this for a sec, or we should stay with this for a second because I think there are a lot of people kind of like the people who have called for, let's see, Trump wriggle out of this one again, like, who have convinced themselves that actually this could never happen, that Trump will always wriggle out, that Elon Musk will always wriggle out, that he's always able at the last second to find something because of his cult of personality or genuine managerial skills, or the genuine managerial skills of the people at right below his level. You say the story now is that this is the fall.
- [25:12]
Nick Denton
I mean, I think this is the fall. I think he may have a couple more tricks up his sleeve. But if you think about the gap between the Tesla fundamental value now as an electric car company, that is X growth, just think about that. Think how much the valuation depended on extrapolations of growth and the interruption of that growth and what that means to any net present value calculation. The international markets are plainly being torched by Elon Musk himself with all of the PR and propaganda that he puts out that might shore up the MAGA base. But every single thing that he does, every single pitch in front of the White House is turning off both natural Tesla buyers and the big blue cities.
- [25:56]
Tracy Alloway
And also the international alienate. Everyone.
- [25:58]
Nick Denton
Everybody except for the MAGA base, you know, so you're gonna.
- [26:02]
Tracy Alloway
Who probably don't buy that many EVs anyway.
- [26:05]
Nick Denton
Well, apparently they are buying some. So, like, it's not entirely. It's not entirely a fiction, but every single one that they buy further cements this image as the MAGA mobile and kills the international story. An international story which is in any case in trouble because Tesla in China doesn't have very exciting cars compared with the ones that its competitors come out with. So I don't think the international market's going to work, which means that it's pretty much all down to robots. And he's pretty much put all his chips on the Optimus, which seems incredibly dangerous to me, and the mark of somebody who's really desperate and putting it all behind a very, very risky race in which he is starting from behind.
- [26:50]
Tracy Alloway
How did you get so into cars?
- [26:52]
Nick Denton
Out of curiosity, how do I get into cars? Isn't that just something that just is.
- [26:58]
Tracy Alloway
You were born with an interest in.
- [27:00]
Nick Denton
Cars, but like the Cybertruck, I mean, I was very disappointed when I saw the metal panel. I thought somehow, I guess I didn't research enough. I thought it looked like it had been forged somehow, like a single. And then to see. So I think the most damaging thing for Tesla, the most damaging video for Tesla, apart from the I love speed video, but the most damaging video for Tesla is actually seeing the metal panels come off because the glue isn't. They didn't use the right glue. And that just sort of kills the mystique of something that was sort of pitched as a Mars rover that you could.
- [27:33]
Joe Weisenthal
Like a tank almost. Yeah.
- [27:35]
Nick Denton
So I, I think the, you know, the Optimus hasn't been seen since it was a video they put out in December of it rather gingerly working its way down a slope. Little bit better than Joe Biden, but not that much. And meanwhile, if you follow it, the pace of videos released onto Social media by Unitary and other Chinese robot makers.
- [27:58]
Joe Weisenthal
Oh God, another conversation about. I know they're beating us. I'm aware. No, no, keep going. I know it's a big deal.
- [28:03]
Nick Denton
I mean you can't spin that one. Yeah, it can't be spun like a demo is a demo and they're doing demos and those demo, they're kicking ass. They're doing side flips. There's a race in Beijing next month, like a humanoid robot race. If Musk was really feeling it, he'd have an entry. There's no way that Optimus is going to go up against however many hundred robot competitors there are in China that are going to show up to that. The race is lost already.
- [28:34]
Tracy Alloway
It is crazy though. Even with all the social media evidence and demonstrations of what the cars can actually do, you still have people who are kind of conspiratorial about the social media videos. So I remember one came out two or three weeks ago. It was Tesla versus, I think it was BYD.
- [28:54]
Nick Denton
There was a Tesla Xiaomi SU7 race, maybe. Was that it?
- [28:58]
Tracy Alloway
Well, this one, it was a YouTuber who was driving a Tesla into a fake wall to test the self driving technology. And the car just went right through it in a very dramatic fashion. And you had all these people, I assume Tesla fanboys and Musk fanboys saying that the video had been faked and that no one should believe it and that Tesla's technology is great.
- [29:21]
Nick Denton
It's very. Right. I mean it is very hard to kind of to tell truth from fabrication these days. Some of the Chinese videos, well, one of them had to be repeated in front of a mirror just to kind of prove that it was real. But I don't think anyone's really questioned. There's one where there was like a slightly smaller humanoid robot that was actually dancing in sync with a couple of human dancers. Oh yeah, I saw that. And that one looked completely impossible. It was from two different camera angles and that was impossible to fake. So it's going to be hard for anybody really to compete with that. That's my view. And if that's the whole of your story after the collapse of the international car market, then what remains beyond that in terms of the Tesla story, apart from maybe military contracts, you start to get little bit more science fiction. Like if you're looking for exit ramps.
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- [32:52]
Joe Weisenthal
You think about the dominance of US Internet companies? Because that was actually maybe even more than Tesla, right? Like the story of the 2010s, you know, Facebook Meta. And when you get out of the United States, did they still have a sort of lock or still like deep competitive moats the way they were perceived to have in the 2010s.
- [33:15]
Nick Denton
That's a great question.
- [33:17]
Joe Weisenthal
TikTok exists, so that's a problem for them, but it's provable that a non US company can have a gigantic social media. But what do you think this is where the money is?
- [33:27]
Nick Denton
Well, I think the tech platforms are extraordinarily vulnerable and they're vulnerable for the same reason Tesla is vulnerable. Tesla's biggest factory is in Shanghai. Tesla could be, you know, it could be kind of crippled with a signature on a piece of paper.
- [33:45]
Joe Weisenthal
The US tech giants never like to their benefit. They never had a Chinese business they don't have, you know, like they never made. Facebook's never made money in China.
- [33:53]
Nick Denton
Apple makes all of its phones in China and hasn't and has had almost no success in diversifying its supply chain to India or Vietnam.
- [34:02]
Joe Weisenthal
Right.
- [34:02]
Nick Denton
And I mean, look, don't take my word for it, the people I pay attention to are the right wingers. Palmer Luckey's recent interview. He has a long 5 minute spiel all about Apple and how easy it would be for the Chinese government just to basically seize the factories and become the dominant supplier of smartphones to the world. The most valuable company in the existence of the United States could go up like that with a couple of decrees. And I don't think that kind of risk is actually priced into the market. So I have a short on Apple as well as Tesla. So I think that there are some companies that are less vulnerable than that. But even the companies that have no industrial dependence on China. A company like Facebook or X. Would it not be reasonable for Europe to say tomorrow that X in Europe should be divested as TikTok was that Europe is tired of American politicians interfering in its internal affairs and the full spectrum of free European speech should be absolutely given a platform. But there's no reason why outsiders, non Europeans should either participate or should actually have ownership, have control in such companies. I think that would be a very reasonable, consistent thing to do. And what about Facebook? There isn't a huge amount of European antagonism towards Facebook right now because Facebook really does comply with local regulations. But all of these companies are very much dependent on goodwill and on the Western alliance continuing to exist in some form.
- [35:42]
Tracy Alloway
So speaking of Europe, I mean there is a sense that Europe is way, way behind when it comes to technology certainly versus a place like China. Do you have faith that that's going to reverse or is it the case that like maybe they get good at something else, something non tech? What is driving some of the optimism here.
- [36:02]
Nick Denton
I'm not actually invested in any European stocks right now. I do think that Europe is sort of a side story here, but the ratios are all off. I do not believe that magically in 2008, the United States economy started to perform brilliantly and Europe just slipped into stagnation. I think it's actually much more likely that Europe went through austerity and has been pretty much going through austerity ever since in some shape or form until the recent decision by the German government to finance rearmament. And the United States has basically avoided austerity at every possible juncture. 2008, rather than being a purge of Wall street in the way that the dot com crash was a purge of Silicon Valley, instead of that being a purge of Wall Street. The economy was immediately reinflated and it's been reinflated after every single minor correction ever since. And so we've basically got 25 years of bubble.
- [37:02]
Joe Weisenthal
Could you see a world, you mentioned that in the end it might just make more sense for Hungary to just throw in its lot with China. That's where the future is industrially, that's its biggest trading partner, etc. Could you see, I mean, like that be, you know, 20 years from now, Germany making the same calculation like core Europe?
- [37:23]
Nick Denton
I mean, I don't think it's going to be 20 years.
- [37:25]
Joe Weisenthal
Okay, so sooner.
- [37:26]
Nick Denton
But, you know, it's axiomatic if Europe is being bullied by Russia and the United States, sometimes in concert, they want different things. You know, both have territorial demands. And the United States is also trying in a rather belligerent fashion to renegotiate, to negotiate a debt restructuring. It's a strange kind of negotiation which involves insulting all the people that hold your treasuries. But it is a kind of negotiation.
- [37:53]
Joe Weisenthal
But in some way it ends up where China is a friend.
- [37:56]
Nick Denton
I think the United States has kind of lost Germany already. I don't know whether even if the tune changed, whether the German Atlanticists would revive. I think a kind of trust has been broken and a face of America has been revealed. It will be hard for people to forget. And there's also been, you know, there's been a nationalist resurgence in Canada, in Mexico, in China and in Europe. You know, the people, the Chinese don't, you know, the Chinese joke that, you know, Trump is the great nation builder, you know, the great nation builder of other nations. And when Donald Tusk says reminds people that Europe is 500 million people who don't need to be begging 300 million American for help dealing with 100 million Russians who can't even handle 40 million Ukrainians. When you start to look at it a little bit differently, I think some of that European gravenness falls away.
- [38:50]
Tracy Alloway
So you mentioned the post 2008 reaction in the market. And I do think there is a tendency on the part of policymakers to reinflate as quickly as possible. And we've seen this over and over. 2008, 2020, they moved very, very quickly to get the market back up. And it does seem like a very idiosyncratic characteristic of the US's political economy is the importance of stocks and asset prices. And this idea, it really feels like everything kind of rests on your portfolio of financial assets. So your retirement, your education, probably the things you buy, housing, basically everything. Are we just doomed to be kind of forever tangled up with the stock market? Or is there a realistic path for the US to kind of move away from that, to disentangle itself from financialization?
- [39:49]
Nick Denton
I mean, you're totally hooked. You're totally hooked. It's been at least 25 years, been longer. You look at general electricity, the idea of shareholder value, which seems so modern.
- [40:03]
Joe Weisenthal
You know what, can I just. I got a new fridge this week. This is ge. I was like, oh, I didn't even know GE still made fridge. It's a ge. Keep going.
- [40:10]
Nick Denton
It's a badge or it's actually made.
- [40:12]
Joe Weisenthal
I got a new fridge. I didn't really look at it. Then I was like, oh, it's a GE logo on there. I wonder who makes it anyway. Keep going.
- [40:17]
Nick Denton
I mean, ge. Jack Welch's GE is the warning. Yeah, it's the warning of a company whose earnings were massaged carefully up so that it actually acted like a pension fund rather than a company. And people warned about the growing importance of GE finance and the financialization of America's prime manufacturing company. And the whole conglomerate was left as kind of a husk at the end of the process. So that is the warning. I don't see how America kicks the habit. China had a policy of hiding its light after Deng Xiaoping, arguably right through up until 2010 or so. Arguably, his companies have hidden their light subsequently, too. You look at their market values, you look at their stock trajectories, it's nothing that impressive. But now we've got a moment. When you've got America pumped up through marketing and financialization, and you got China that has quietly built and produced, and they are now being compared directly with one another in BYD versus Tesla in Xiaomi versus Apple. And the comparison is pretty devastating.
- [41:33]
Joe Weisenthal
Are your children learning Mandarin?
- [41:35]
Tracy Alloway
No.
- [41:36]
Joe Weisenthal
No, I'm serious. Because some people are doing that. Not yet. I just have one last question. You know, I joked that if AI had been around, I think you would have found a way to torment the Gorka writers. But you did do that, because it wasn't AI but you had this belief that, like, oh, the commenters. That's where the real action is, and you're gonna make the writers compete with the commenters. And if the commenters are creating better content, then, hey, so be it. They're better than the writers. And I feel like for several years since then, you've always sort of clung to this belief that that's where, like, the real action is in various ways. It's like, yeah, like, the people tell us a little bit about what you're building now. And does it tap into that spirit?
- [42:11]
Nick Denton
I guess I've taken two lessons from the Goku experience and just the experience of seeing watching Flame wars on the Internet since God knows when. Echo chambers are very, very dangerous. And arguably the Gorka writers were in an echo chamber from maybe 2011 through to 2015 when it all blew up. And when I see Elon Musk on Twitter or Joe Rogan in the podcast world, it all looks extremely familiar that, you know, here you have somebody who's basically paying a little bit too much attention to the most engaged members of the audience. Audience capture is real. It's real. And that's actually why I don't think that Musk is capable of getting out of this vortex that he is trapped in, because he's playing to that gallery, playing to a gallery of basically extreme right wingers, and they are going to lead him and each other off the edge of the cliff.
- [43:11]
Joe Weisenthal
Nick, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lodge. That was one of the gloomiest episodes. I really think so. I really think so. But I really appreciate you coming on. It was fantastic, and I'm glad we made it happen. While you still have a foot. While you still have a foot on.
- [43:25]
Tracy Alloway
Before you see the country.
- [43:40]
Joe Weisenthal
Well, that was grim.
- [43:42]
Tracy Alloway
It was a fun conversation. It was fun, but the subject matter was grim. You know what I realized as we were sort of reminiscing about Gawker? I totally forgot. I wrote, like, a freelance piece or just a contribution to. Do you remember iO9?
- [43:57]
Joe Weisenthal
Yeah, there's Sci Fi1.
- [43:59]
Tracy Alloway
Yeah, yeah. And so I wrote this article about, like, some Russian billionaire that is trying to, like, reach eternal life through robotics or something.
- [44:08]
Joe Weisenthal
Obviously, you wrote that for io9?
- [44:10]
Tracy Alloway
Yeah.
- [44:10]
Joe Weisenthal
I didn't know you wrote an io9 piece.
- [44:12]
Tracy Alloway
Well, I'd totally forgotten but obviously, you know, like more than 10 years later, we're still waiting for immortality. So tech can only go so far.
- [44:22]
Joe Weisenthal
I think we're going to be waiting a lot longer than 10 years. I mean, I think there were two things, two, three things that I found bracing. One is the industrial divide is massive and growing right between the US and China. That seems real. That's really worrisome to me. The description of the ways in which the current administration has insulted even stalwart allies. Why mock Denmark and so forth? That seems like a really big deal. And then obviously, you know, the impulse to, you know, you get a little bit of a wobble in the sell off and you blame the. And I'm doing the parentheses, the globalists. That is disturbing.
- [45:03]
Tracy Alloway
Well, the other thing I was thinking about was, you know, Nick mentioned China starting to open up some of its capital accounts and it's kind of interesting slash ironic that is happening at the same time that the US seems to be, you know, they haven't done it yet. But there does seem to be like this isolationist will when it comes to capital markets. Like maybe they don't want as much foreign capital coming into the country. Like you get that sense. Right. And so they're the US and China kind of moving in opposite directions and then also like doing some of the same stuff. It's interesting. Like building out manufacturing. Right.
- [45:42]
Joe Weisenthal
You know what I like about Nick? That he is a journalist who can actually just like talk stocks. How many journalists. No, seriously, because there are journalists who are in their specialty can say things but how many of them could just like BS with you a while about like stocks. Nick can actually do that. It's actually really impressive.
- [45:58]
Tracy Alloway
I think you need to be careful about saying that in an office full of at least like a few dozen journalists who can. Yes. On stocks.
- [46:05]
Joe Weisenthal
No, no, for. Right. I feel like you're right. I. It's more the like say like I'm short that or I'm long that and they're like actually have a confident trading position. No, look, a lot of people could tell you a lot about stocks whether the like, I mean, I. Well we can't, we can't short stocks obviously at Bloomberg. But like most journalists I've ever talked to generally don't have like yeah, I'm short Apple and Tesla. I'm long BYD and Xiaomi, like you know, and just sort of buy the index anyway. I really enjoyed talking to Nick.
- [46:34]
Tracy Alloway
It was fun to reminisce and also think about the very grim future. Shall we leave it There?
- [46:40]
Joe Weisenthal
Let's leave it there.
- [46:41]
Tracy Alloway
This has been another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
- [46:47]
Joe Weisenthal
And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart. Follow Nick Denton. He's at Nick, not Ned. And check out his new endeavor, Futura Chiado. It's at Futura Chiado Fellow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmenarmen, Dashiell Bennett at dashbot and Kalebrooks at Kalebrooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to bloomberg.com oddlots where you have all of our episodes and you can read our daily newsletter and you can chat about all of these topics 24. 7 in our daily discord discord, GG.
- [47:17]
Tracy Alloway
Oddlots and if you enjoy odd lots, if you like it when we talk to journalists who actually have opinions, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our content absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg Channel on Apple Podcast and follow the directions there. Thanks for.
- [48:11]
Bloomberg
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