Meme Stocks or Manipulation?

Summary

The Compound and Friends: Episode 201 – "Meme Stocks or Manipulation?"

Release Date: July 25, 2025

Hosts: Downtown Josh Brown, Michael Batnick, and Caleb Silver
Guest: Nick Maggiulli, Creator of Of Dollars and Data and COO at Ritholtz Wealth Management

---

Introduction

In the 201st episode of The Compound and Friends, hosts Downtown Josh Brown, Michael Batnick, and Caleb Silver delve into the contentious topic of meme stocks and whether recent market movements constitute manipulation. Featuring special guest Nick Maggiulli, the conversation navigates through market trends, investment strategies, regulatory concerns, and the evolving landscape of wealth management.

Jeff Bezos Buys CNBC

[00:22] Josh Brown: "Jeff Bezos buys CNBC. Good for me or great for me?"

The discussion opens with a light-hearted debate on Jeff Bezos's acquisition of CNBC, emphasizing its significance in the business news landscape.

[00:35] Michael Batnick: "I'll get him."

[01:05] Josh Brown: "Because somebody should own it. And it's not exactly selling at the highest ever valuation right now."

The hosts agree that Bezos's purchase represents a strategic move, potentially enhancing CNBC's global reach without overinflating its valuation.

Collaboration with Chefs and Q Funds

[03:51] Caleb Silver: "Like the NASDAQ cues."

[04:09] Nick Maggiulli: "So they'll say, all right, Chef Apple... Maybe I'll do mussels with a foamy seaweed."

Nick Maggiulli shares insights into his collaboration with Q's, a firm deeply rooted in the chef community, highlighting innovative marketing strategies like creating recipes inspired by ETF components.

[04:32] Nick Maggiulli: "It's a way to illuminate the components of the cues in a content marketing way."

This unique approach aims to engage audiences by blending culinary creativity with financial education, enhancing brand presence at events like Future Proof.

Meme Stocks and Opendoor Analysis

[16:09] Nick Maggiulli: "What isn't?"

The conversation shifts to meme stocks, specifically focusing on Opendoor. Nick argues that while on the surface it appears to be manipulation, it might simply be a result of market mania fueled by a healthy bull market.

[17:57] Caleb Silver: "It's a mania... because it absolutely is a mania."

Caleb provides context by analyzing market conditions, referencing charts from Duality Research that show a significant spread in the 78-day change between cyclicals and defensive indices, indicating a robust yet potentially overheated market.

[18:36] Josh Brown: "Eric Jackson, Open Door... It looks like manipulation on the surface. It just might not be somebody deliberately manipulating it."

Nick defends Eric Jackson's recent actions regarding Opendoor, emphasizing that Jackson conducted his own fundamental analysis without urging others to manipulate the stock, thereby distinguishing it from orchestrated manipulation schemes.

Notable Quote:

[23:10] Nick Maggiulli: "It's a way to illuminate the components of the cues in a content marketing way."

Market Environment: A Return to 2021

[26:45] Caleb Silver: "We haven't had a real economic reset."

The hosts compare the current market environment to the meme stock surge of 2021, noting similarities in high short interest and increased retail participation in volatile stocks. They discuss how high mortgage rates and limited housing affordability have funneled excess capital into speculative investments like meme stocks.

[27:10] Josh Brown: "This is like 2021 territory. Like, we're back, we're back."

[28:00] Nick Maggiulli: "It's working. So won't always work, but right now it is."

The discussion highlights the cyclical nature of market exuberance and caution investors about the risks associated with chasing quick gains in an environment ripe for short squeezes.

Investing Strategies: DCA vs Lump Sum

[75:29] Michael Batnick: "Here's where... strategies are earning..."

[75:56] Josh Brown: "What's smarter? Lump sum investment at one point in time or dollar cost average?"

The hosts explore investment strategies, particularly the effectiveness of dollar-cost averaging (DCA) versus lump-sum investing. They reference Nick's book "Just Keep Buying," which advocates for a DCA approach to mitigate market volatility and capitalize on long-term growth trends.

Notable Quote:

[75:29] Michael Batnick: "The Wealth Ladder is a different thing... figuring out the right strategy is more important."

RIA Lawsuit Case Study

[44:30] Nick Maggiulli: "I think things are going to change really fast here..."

The conversation shifts to a recent lawsuit against a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA). A client liquidated her IRA under pressure, only to fall victim to a crypto scam, losing $882,000. The clients' grievance centers on the advisor's failure to thoroughly assess the client's intentions and recommend against early liquidation.

[47:02] Nick Maggiulli: "You broke the fiduciary rule."

The hosts dissect the lawsuit, debating the advisor's responsibility and the extent to which liability should fall on financial professionals when clients make detrimental investment decisions independently.

Money Market Funds and Their Growth

[52:14] Caleb Silver: "There's $7 trillion in money market fees, funds."

Michael Batnick and Caleb discuss the surge in money market funds, supported by high interest rates. They analyze how persistent elevated rates have made these funds attractive, yet question their sustainability as rates fluctuate.

[53:18] Josh Brown: "What do you think?"

[53:22] Nick Maggiulli: "I totally agree... Maybe it goes down to 5 trillion or 6 trillion."

The dialogue underscores the importance of interest rates in influencing fund inflows and the broader implications for market liquidity.

Crypto and Traditional Finance Integration

[70:14] Josh Brown: "Your argument is even at the current 4 trillion for, for the crypto asset level, it's plenty systemic."

Nick Maggiulli emphasizes the growing integration of cryptocurrency with traditional financial systems, citing partnerships like PNC Bank's collaboration with Coinbase. He foresees a deeper entanglement as financial institutions seek to accommodate the rising demand for crypto services among affluent clients.

[70:47] Nick Maggiulli: "BlackRock has $78 billion of Bitcoin."

The hosts discuss the systemic implications of cryptocurrency's expansion, debating potential risks and the resilience of traditional financial structures against crypto market fluctuations.

Wealth Distribution and "The Wealth Ladder"

[77:01] Michael Batnick: "The Wealth Ladder... Proven strategies for every step of your financial life."

Nick Maggiulli introduces his latest book, "The Wealth Ladder," which categorizes households into six levels based on net worth. This framework aims to provide tailored financial strategies for each wealth tier, addressing the challenges and opportunities unique to each stage.

[78:15] Josh Brown: "What's levels one through six? And where would you put me?"

[79:00] Michael Batnick: "I think the upper middle class is going through an existential crisis..."

The book discusses the shrinking lower economic tiers and the exponential growth in higher wealth brackets, highlighting the pressures and lifestyle changes faced by the upper middle class as wealth distribution becomes increasingly unequal.

Notable Quote:

[78:29] Josh Brown: "These are million to 10 million. You're not ranking people based on where they belong in society. What you're saying, the rungs of the wealth ladder."

Personal Remarks and Book Promotions

The episode concludes with personal anecdotes and promotions for Nick's book. Michael Batnick shares his recent marriage and upcoming honeymoon, while Caleb Silver and Nick Maggiulli discuss their plans and future collaborations, including Nick's university tour with Investopedia.

[85:03] Michael Batnick: "My honeymoon. We're going south of France."

[85:33] Michael Batnick: "I'm looking forward to pictures from Nick's honeymoon."

---

Conclusion

Episode 201 of The Compound and Friends offers a comprehensive exploration of meme stocks, market manipulation debates, and the intricate dynamics of current financial trends. The hosts provide valuable insights into investment strategies, regulatory challenges, and the shifting paradigms of wealth management, all while fostering an engaging and informative dialogue for listeners navigating the complex world of business and investing.

Key Takeaways:

• The distinction between genuine market mania and deliberate manipulation in meme stocks.
• The cyclical nature of market exuberance and its reflection in current trends.
• Importance of tailored investment strategies like dollar-cost averaging.
• Regulatory and fiduciary responsibilities of financial advisors in protecting clients.
• Integration of cryptocurrency with traditional financial systems and its systemic implications.
• Evolving wealth distribution and the need for adaptive financial strategies as outlined in Nick Maggiulli's "The Wealth Ladder."

---

Notable Quotes:

• Nick Maggiulli [04:32]: "It's a way to illuminate the components of the cues in a content marketing way."
• Claley Silver [16:09]: "It's a mania... because it absolutely is a mania."
• Michael Batnick [78:15]: "The Wealth Ladder is a different thing... figuring out the right strategy is more important."

---

For more insights and updates, visit Ritholtz Wealth Management Podcast Disclosures.

Transcript

[Josh Brown]

Nicole, take his snacks away. No food.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, type one.

[Caleb Silver]

They eat in here all the time.

[Josh Brown]

We don't eat in here. Oh, yeah. No food in the studio.

[Nick Magiulli]

Good to see you. It's over.

[Josh Brown]

They eat here every day and then they clean up. Believe it or not, they're a fist. Idiots. They're very neat.

[Nick Magiulli]

Looking good, feeling good, I'm fit.

[Josh Brown]

So Jeff Bezos buys cnbc. Good for me or great for me?

[Nick Magiulli]

Great. Great for you.

[Josh Brown]

It is, right?

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah. Why do you get a trip to outer space?

[Josh Brown]

I don't want that.

[Nick Magiulli]

Oh, don't you think he would?

[Michael Batnick]

I'll get him.

[Josh Brown]

Sorry, man.

[Caleb Silver]

Oh, wow, wow, wow.

[Josh Brown]

That was the mint.

[Nick Magiulli]

He was in his mouth.

[Caleb Silver]

Sasha spit food on the table.

[Josh Brown]

Not food. It's a mint. It's a mint. That doesn't count. I feel like he would like me if he like flipped on the channel for an hour. He'd be like, who's that guy? Keep that guy.

[Nick Magiulli]

He would love you, especially on. Maybe you get your new jet ski.

[Josh Brown]

Isn't that a genius acquisition for him?

[Nick Magiulli]

Yes.

[Caleb Silver]

Why? I don't get it.

[Josh Brown]

It's the world's leader in business news. The channel is on everywhere in the world.

[Caleb Silver]

Why should he own it?

[Nick Magiulli]

It's a message. Cause it's a message.

[Josh Brown]

Because somebody should own it. And it's not exactly selling at the highest ever valuation right now. And no cable TV news is right.

[Nick Magiulli]

It peaks.

[Caleb Silver]

So do you know what the price tag would be? Take a guess.

[Nick Magiulli]

Well, I think last I checked, it was a billion plus in revenue.

[Josh Brown]

Well, it's combined with Golf Channel, msnbc.

[Nick Magiulli]

NBC News, it was doing a billion plus in revenue. Five years.

[Caleb Silver]

What does it go for? Two, three?

[Nick Magiulli]

I think I'm on that type of thing. Audience, five time multiple.

[Josh Brown]

So. So Caleb was like a heavy at CNN Money. Do you. Do you know about that? Yeah, cnn. What was your. What was your title there?

[Nick Magiulli]

Executive producer.

[Josh Brown]

Executive producer.

[Nick Magiulli]

But I'm known for putting Josh Brown on the air.

[Josh Brown]

Is that the greatest thing you really the whole time? Maybe Howard Lindsay. Not me.

[Nick Magiulli]

I peaked.

[Josh Brown]

Putting Howard Lindsay on television was a. Was a big. A big step for you.

[Caleb Silver]

I peaked at future proof. You brought. Who's the food guy you brought? Jeff.

[Nick Magiulli]

Chef Kwame Kwachi. I did. At the last future proof in California, Chef Jose Andres.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Nick Magiulli]

And you know who we're having this time?

[Caleb Silver]

I don't.

[Nick Magiulli]

Colicchio.

[Caleb Silver]

Who is that?

[Nick Magiulli]

Tom Colicchio.

[Josh Brown]

Wait, how did you get him?

[Nick Magiulli]

Cause I arranged a. Did we roll?

[Caleb Silver]

I don't know, the food scene.

[Nick Magiulli]

I arranged a deal. Tom Colicchio is 11. Madison park, food Network, top youth, whatever you do.

[Caleb Silver]

So Google him.

[Nick Magiulli]

Duckduckgoose him.

[Josh Brown]

C O, L, L I C, H I, O.

[Caleb Silver]

So you know I have a brain defect when people, like, tell me numbers and letters.

[Josh Brown]

I can't. It doesn't. All right, so just vibe code.

[Caleb Silver]

Say it slowly. What is it?

[Josh Brown]

C O, L. Yeah. I C, H, I, O. Tom Colicchio.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah.

[Caleb Silver]

Oh, there it is.

[Josh Brown]

What was his restaurant? In the. In the low. In Park. South Park.

[Nick Magiulli]

And he was part of Gramercy Tavern with Danny.

[Josh Brown]

And he has a cooking show with Martha Stewart right now on one of the streamers, which I watch.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yes, he does.

[Josh Brown]

What the hell is that called? It's pretty good.

[Caleb Silver]

Have you been to the. It's Jose Andres.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah.

[Caleb Silver]

Have you been to the bar at the Ritz?

[Nick Magiulli]

Yes. Upstairs, sick. And downstairs. The restaurant's very good, too.

[Josh Brown]

Zaytina, Zaetina.

[Caleb Silver]

Have you been there yet?

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, I ate there.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's quality.

[Caleb Silver]

Oh, wait, upstairs.

[Josh Brown]

No, I ate at the lobby.

[Caleb Silver]

We have to go to the bar. It is so sick. I tried to go.

[Nick Magiulli]

Best rooftop bar, dude.

[Caleb Silver]

It's the best thing I've ever seen.

[Josh Brown]

He owns all the. All the restaurants in that building.

[Nick Magiulli]

A licensing thing with his name, but I think he owns a tank. He's the chef owner.

[Caleb Silver]

I tried going last week with Chris. They wouldn't let us in. So dress code.

[Nick Magiulli]

Let me know.

[Michael Batnick]

The bazaar is. The bazaar is really good. The bazaar in there. I really enjoy.

[Caleb Silver]

Downstairs.

[Michael Batnick]

I think so. Or that's a different location.

[Nick Magiulli]

Second floor.

[Caleb Silver]

We have to go to rest. It is so high.

[Michael Batnick]

This is a.

[Nick Magiulli]

So I did a deal with Q's. The Q's are deep in the chef space.

[Caleb Silver]

Like the NASDAQ cues.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah. Qq, Invesco, qq. They're deep in this. They love fine food and wine.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, they're deep in it. Like, they're into.

[Nick Magiulli]

They're into chefs. They have this video series called Recipe for Innovation, which is awesome, where they have a Chef Jose, Tom Kwame make recipes based on the components of the cubes. Pretty good idea, actually.

[Caleb Silver]

Explain.

[Nick Magiulli]

So they'll say, all right, Chef Apple.

[Josh Brown]

They put in the salad.

[Nick Magiulli]

Chef Mike. Airbnb, Honeywell, and Starbucks. Go make me three dishes based on those companies. What inspires you? Airbnb, Air Water. Maybe I'll do mussels with a foamy seaweed. That right? But I think it's pretty smart.

[Josh Brown]

It's like Honeywell, obviously.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah, it's a.

[Josh Brown]

We'll cook with honey.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's A way to illuminate the components of the cues in a content marketing way. But it's shot like chef's table. It's gorgeous. And so they had this thing, and they're like, we have this beautiful series we paid millions of dollars to do. We pay these. These guys are on the payroll. We can't get traffic to it. They put it on our ETF channel, on Investopedia, and on Food and Wine, which we own with Dash Merida. And they're like, you, Caleb, have a presence at Future Proof. What can we do? And I've been talking to Matt for a while about bringing one of our other brands like Travel and Leisure or Food and Wine to Future Proof with a sponsor. And this was the one that took. I was trying to get, like, United and Travel and Leisure. I was trying to get every. Like I was. And then this came in. I was like, got it.

[Caleb Silver]

Are you excited?

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah, I do. This is be our third.

[Josh Brown]

Wait, did Jose Andre cook something?

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah, we did last year.

[Josh Brown]

I didn't get to see it.

[Caleb Silver]

There was a ton of people watching.

[Josh Brown]

You had a full house.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah, we did. You can't cook because they're uptight about it in Huntington Beach.

[Josh Brown]

Beach, you can't. Like, he can't fire up a stove.

[Nick Magiulli]

No, you can. No, in Miami, it's a little bit different, but you can have, like, you. And also they have a tight catering situation in Orange County. Like, it's. It's all locked up there. So we did. He has his own tin fish, mussels and sardines and potato chips. Okay, so we did fish and chips.

[Caleb Silver]

That sounds disgusting.

[Nick Magiulli]

It was freaking awesome. And I bring the wine that are from food and wine to drink, to serve. Food, wine. So we do a conversation about innovation, food, his empire, wines that go with the food. And I put it all together into an advertising campaign on our sites. And then this live activation experience at Future Proof.

[Josh Brown]

That's a great. That's a great package.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah, it's good.

[Josh Brown]

And you know what's cool for the people at Future Proof that are watching financial stuff all day, it's like a refresher.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah. And it's a power cleanser.

[Caleb Silver]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Here's something relevant to you, but not. Not more fintech.

[Nick Magiulli]

And we're not jamming the Q's at them. We're giving them recipes.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Nick Magiulli]

Literally. Here's the recipe.

[Caleb Silver]

Quiche. Five foods that start with the letter Q. Wait, you wrote a book?

[Nick Magiulli]

Quinoa.

[Caleb Silver]

Yes.

[Josh Brown]

Holy shit. We should talk about it. We should talk about it.

[Caleb Silver]

So I Don't think I told you this yesterday. I want to save for the show. Maybe I didn't tell you this. That book is going to live much longer than. Than Just Keep Buying, which was a smash hit. Just Keep Buying is one of the best selling financial books of all time. I don't need to tell you that inside, left and right.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, it's done. It's done well. I mean, it's better internationally, dude. It's done well.

[Caleb Silver]

Of all time.

[Josh Brown]

Well, what a response.

[Caleb Silver]

He goes, dude, we're on a podcast. Have fun.

[Josh Brown]

Be like, thank you.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. It's very nice.

[Josh Brown]

That's a better book than the Bible. And you're like, but a little more.

[Michael Batnick]

A little more data.

[Caleb Silver]

Do you agree? Like, just Keep Buying was great for what it is. The wealth ladder has, is so much bigger than that. Like, people will give that to people at all ages, at all areas of the wealth ladder, if you will.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I think that that was the point. Right. Like, I just Keep Buying was supposed to be my, like, hey, if I don't know anything about you, here's what I give you. Here's my financial advice. And with the wealth ladder, I said, hey, that's actually not correct. Right. Like, for people that are just starting out, you got to have a different strategy. And for people that are trying to get super rich, that's a, you know.

[Josh Brown]

But it doesn't P500 validate the first book. It builds on it.

[Michael Batnick]

It's a different thing. Right. It's like, where are you trying to go and why? And figuring out the right strategy is more important.

[Josh Brown]

One of the things that you've done very skillfully in selling the first book, and I would imagine you're going to repeat the playbook, you just do every media outlet possible. And that way during this four to six week launch period, every day there are people talking about your book to their own. Like, some of them are big audiences, some of them are micro audiences, but it almost doesn't matter. Doesn't matter because if there are sales taking place on Amazon of this book each day, even if it's three books today, they're keeping you high in the algorithm.

[Caleb Silver]

Dude, you know what?

[Josh Brown]

It's not very, very wise.

[Caleb Silver]

You know what his genius is on the first day and on the second day, he buys 10,000 copies each day to boost the rally.

[Josh Brown]

That's. The people do that.

[Michael Batnick]

I. I think they. So the algorithms changed a lot. The.

[Josh Brown]

They don't let you do that now.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. So that's one of the issues. You can't. If you, if I go and buy a bunch of books, that doesn't, that's not the same as a bunch of separate orders. And they take that into account in the ranking. Yeah, New York Times takes that into account with their like, you know, bestseller list and all that. So it's, it's got to be much more broad based and people have tried to game Scaramuchi.

[Josh Brown]

Scaramucci told me like he put out, he put out like the little Book of Hedge funds or whatever. He's like, if I told you how many thousands of copies of this thing I have in my basement, you wouldn't believe me. But I'm telling you, it's actually even more. But that's another era now I think the algo is.

[Nick Magiulli]

Can I make another recommendation? Yeah. Go around to like the asset managers who have the new associates or the interns and be like, I would love to talk to your team about building wealth for 45 minutes. I'm going to bring a book. Can you buy 20 copies? And we'll give them away and I'll sign them for the kids and you spend. I do this all the time not to sell books, but just to get us out there like a Trojan horse to get us into these firms. And you can literally give a step by step or a nice talk and take Q and A. But they'll buy 20 books as part of the deal. No talent fee, just buy books.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I mean I, I prefer the pot. I appreciate that method. I think it's just kind of tough because I, I work, I have a.

[Caleb Silver]

Job I have to do.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, we don't want him doing that shit.

[Michael Batnick]

A 30, a 30 minute podcast. I can do virtually.

[Josh Brown]

No, he's the chief operating officer of.

[Nick Magiulli]

The firm on Sundays.

[Michael Batnick]

I was talking about if I could do Sunday. Like, yeah, but I'm like, I wish I could just go in.

[Josh Brown]

Caleb has a great idea for you. Are you familiar with the term sabbatical? We're actually extraordinarily busy this summer. We can't have Nick doing hand combat.

[Caleb Silver]

I was asking Nick the other day. I said, it feels like we're busier than we've ever been during this time of the year. Can you pull up X, Y and Z?

[Michael Batnick]

And sure enough, yeah, the horse race chart shows that.

[Caleb Silver]

Or we stole this from Netflix. Netflix used to report their numbers cumulatively, year by year. So they would compare. Where are you in 2019 in April? January through April versus 2018, 2017. So we started doing that and it's A really effective chart tells you all you need to know. A lot of what you need to know. So anyway, Nick has a real job and he's very good at it.

[Josh Brown]

We're going to talk, we're going to talk about the wealth ladder once we get into the meat and potatoes here. I'm going to settle. Are you ready for this? You causing a disturbance, Queen?

[Nick Magiulli]

Did you see that? You see what I did to the slate?

[Josh Brown]

Oh, I love that. Well done, Caleb. All right, what's in the box?

[Nick Magiulli]

I have a gift. When the time is right.

[Caleb Silver]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop the clock. Here's a word from our sponsor.

[Josh Brown]

Today's show is sponsored by Public. Public is the investing platform for those who take it seriously. You can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, assets, options, crypto and more. You can also access industry leading yields like the 4.1% APY you can earn on your cash with no fees or minimums. What sets Public apart? AI isn't just a feature. It's woven into the entire experience. From portfolio insights to earnings call recaps. Public gives you smarter context at every touch point. Fund your account in five minutes or less. Check out public.com/compound paid for by Public Investing. Full Disclosures in Podcast Description.

[Michael Batnick]

Welcome to the Compound and Friends.

[Josh Brown]

All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael.

[Michael Batnick]

Batnik and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the.

[Josh Brown]

Opinion of Redholtz Wealth Management.

[Michael Batnick]

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

[Josh Brown]

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, investors, traders around the world, it is my pleasure to introduce you to episode 201, the world's greatest investing podcast, the Compound and Friends. All right, John is here. Daniel, Duncan, Nicole, two very special guests, repeat guests. So I'm gonna call you guys returning champions. I definitely would. Ladies and gentlemen, directly across from me, Nick Magiulli is the creator of Of Dollars and Data and the Chief of Operating Officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management.

[Michael Batnick]

Thank you.

[Caleb Silver]

All right.

[Josh Brown]

He also just released his latest book, the Wealth Ladder. Proven strategies for Every step of your financial life to tell you all about it. And another returning, another returning champion, Caleb Silver is the editor in Chief at Investopedia. Caleb is frequently featured as a markets and economic and consumer trends expert on NBC, msnbc, cnbc, Fox Business, and many more. Caleb, so great to have you back. Thank you very much for being here.

[Nick Magiulli]

Thank you for having me. I want my own air Horn, though.

[Josh Brown]

You're gonna get one. First things first. Let's just get this out of the way. Nick, you got married this summer?

[Michael Batnick]

Yes, I did.

[Josh Brown]

All right. Like, within the last few days. Almost within, like, a month.

[Michael Batnick]

A month ago.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. We have a picture. The white tux jacket definitely plays.

[Michael Batnick]

My wife selected that for me, so that's smart.

[Josh Brown]

I can't love it more than I love it.

[Caleb Silver]

That's tough to pull off. You did it.

[Josh Brown]

But he did it with the bow. You need the bow tie with that to really do the whole thing.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. She wanted everyone to wear white, and then so, like, all her friends, like, are you sure? Like, yeah, she wants that. So that's what we did. We all went white and we did a courthouse wedding.

[Josh Brown]

I was gonna say. Is this city hall?

[Nick Magiulli]

Yep.

[Michael Batnick]

Went to city hall.

[Josh Brown]

Did it.

[Michael Batnick]

It was great. We were the last, like, session of the day. The last one is quick. You go in there and, like, literally someone from the state comes in. It's less than five minutes. Like, do you take. Yes, yes. Okay. Sign this, whatever, and then you're. You're married.

[Josh Brown]

Did you get your marriage license from city hall? Did you do that with Robin?

[Caleb Silver]

No.

[Josh Brown]

Did you do that?

[Nick Magiulli]

I don't think I did that. I don't.

[Josh Brown]

I did that.

[Nick Magiulli]

Official.

[Josh Brown]

So we. So we live 25 years later, we married. We went down to. We went down to city hall to get the license.

[Caleb Silver]

Did you take a rabbi?

[Josh Brown]

Which, you know, we didn't get married there. We got. Just got the license. But there were people getting married there. There was a whole hallway filled with brides and grooms and some of their family members waiting to get married. Okay. So that's. That was a cool way to do it. Who are all those people on both sides?

[Michael Batnick]

Some of my friends, some of her friends, and then a lot of her cousins. So it was very Albanian wedding, so a lot of her family was there.

[Caleb Silver]

My cousin with mustache.

[Michael Batnick]

I love that guy.

[Josh Brown]

Congratulations. We're so proud of you.

[Michael Batnick]

Thank you.

[Josh Brown]

We knew you'd find the one. You definitely have. She's awesome.

[Michael Batnick]

She's a great lover.

[Josh Brown]

You feel any difference?

[Michael Batnick]

No, it's actually, things are better things.

[Josh Brown]

Lover.

[Michael Batnick]

No, she's great. I love her.

[Caleb Silver]

Oh, my God.

[Josh Brown]

No, she's a great lover, too.

[Nick Magiulli]

Bonus.

[Michael Batnick]

She's great.

[Caleb Silver]

We both heard the same thing.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. Nick, I want to double click on that.

[Caleb Silver]

Wow.

[Nick Magiulli]

Let's do it.

[Michael Batnick]

No, do an instant replay. Have them go back, like, 15 seconds. She's great. Love her.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. We're very fortunate. All of our wives are great. Lovers. All right, so I'm really proud of you. Congratulations. Hard pivot is open door. Stock market manipulation. What do you think?

[Nick Magiulli]

What isn't?

[Josh Brown]

I'm not gonna accuse a person of stock market manipulation in this case. And we'll tell the story why we're asking the question. But it looks like manipulation on the surface. It just might not be somebody deliberately manipulating it. Cuz the crowd is doing is not stock market manipulation. You say it is not stock market manipulation. Why not?

[Caleb Silver]

Who has inside information?

[Josh Brown]

Inside information and market manipulation. Hold on. Things.

[Caleb Silver]

Hold on. That's one of a component.

[Josh Brown]

Disagree. I can manipulate something with no inside information whatsoever.

[Caleb Silver]

Okay, so what is, what is. Eric Jackson was at the center of this. But hold on, I just want to just real quick before we get to. Is it or is it not stock market manipulation? The only way that you have this type of mania, because it absolutely is a mania, is with a really healthy bull market with lots of euphoria. And before we got to this stage of the market, you had a textbook rally, exactly what you wanted to see. So Chartkin made this chart. We stole this from Duality Research who is just putting out killer, killer content. So what we're looking at is for the listeners who are not watching and you should be watching the rolling 78 day change. Why 78? That's the bottom in the Goldman cyclicals versus the defensive index. And you haven't seen this type of advance, this type of spread which is 29% since the bottom in 2009. So you are seeing the leaders leading. You're seeing tech, communications, industrials, financials. And what you're seeing lagging is the opposite. It's staples, utilities, healthcare, real estate. So this is a very, very healthy market in which led to a lot of excess which we are living through right this second. We're hitting all time highs. All time highs in and of itself are not, does not signal excess. But a lot of the behavior that we're seeing, Opendoor, which we're about to talk about is a result of a very healthy market that is now turning unhealthy.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so here's the, here's the heart of the issue. Eric Jackson's a friend of the show. We've had him on the show. Not recently, but he's been on multiple times. And he's been around for I don't know, 30 years. He's a real guy, hedge fund manager, has been involved in activist campaigns at Yahoo. He's a known quantity in the media. He came on our show three years ago two years, 2022.

[Caleb Silver]

The reason why this was possible, this open door mania was possible is because Eric was on this show talking about Carvana. From the business point of view, it.

[Josh Brown]

Was a dollar stock.

[Caleb Silver]

It was a dollar stock and it ran to 150 whatever it did. So he had the credibility. So when I saw this tweet, I thought, hey, maybe I should just put like a couple of grand in there, just see what happens.

[Josh Brown]

You should have. It turns out you should have.

[Caleb Silver]

Just see what happens.

[Josh Brown]

So Eric came on our show and said, you guys are. Everyone's overlooking Carvana. This is not. There's a lot of short sellers in it, but that's not the reason I like it. He said, I actually think it's a good business. And they threw it out with the rest of the excess of 2021. And the stock went from a dollar to whatever. It's a monster stock now. One of the biggest winners of the last three years. So a lot of people remember 330.

[Caleb Silver]

Bucks today, and it was a little bit 330 bucks.

[Josh Brown]

So, like the type of gain that you will never see anywhere. So he tweeted on July 14, over the last month, my X impressions have exploded. Talking about btqqf. I don't even want to look that up. Irin and cifr, because everyone is looking for the next Carvana. We think we just found another at MJ Capital. That's his fund has taken a position in open and we believe it could be a 100 bagger over the next few years. Here's why. And he did a whole thread, and the thread is mostly focused on the fundamentals and comparing the situation with Open Door to Carvana a couple of years back. Again, nothing wrong there, I think because he's saying he bought it. That's number one. Number one, right? He's like, I bought it, I own it. Okay, good. Number two, he's laying out a fundamental story. He's not saying, hey, everybody, tell your friends, let's move the stock. So that being said, this is pissing a lot of people off.

[Nick Magiulli]

What's different about this than Roaring Kitty doing his own fundamental analysis on.

[Josh Brown]

Well, they accused him of manipulation too.

[Nick Magiulli]

Right. But I was never convicted.

[Caleb Silver]

What's different about this than if when David Einhorn goes on stage at irs, nothing.

[Nick Magiulli]

He's got a bigger stage and talking to wealthier people. But this guy's respected. Obviously you've had three things are different.

[Josh Brown]

Three things are different. Number one, it's a dollar stock. David Einhorn doesn't do that. Okay, all right.

[Nick Magiulli]

Fair.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. You can move it. You know what you could do to a dollar stock? Anyone? Roaring Kitty number two. Heavily, heavily, heavily shorted. Now, some would say tough shit for the shorts. Overstayed your welcome. You had a stock go down 95% while you still shorted. Totally legitimate. But still, when you do something like this, when you say 100 bagger of a dollar stock, you know it's going to 10. You know it's going to 10 if you have any influence whatsoever.

[Caleb Silver]

So let me ask you this, because. Fine.

[Josh Brown]

I didn't even tell you the third thing.

[Caleb Silver]

Fine. What is it?

[Josh Brown]

The venue. It's not the Iris OWN conference. It's Twitter. And the regulators just do not like people using message boards to move. Even if you have the best intentions for whatever reason, it's different than standing on stage at Lincoln center at the Irish Own conference.

[Caleb Silver]

But market manipulation is illegal, right? Hard stop. Whether it's inside information or text or whatever it is, that's illegal. I'm not a lawyer. What about what Eric did crosses the legal line?

[Nick Magiulli]

I don't believe anything. And I don't believe that the regulators actually care so much about this type of thing these days.

[Josh Brown]

Probably not.

[Nick Magiulli]

Probably not. So this guy's using his loudspeaker. He's using his platform X in this case. He knows who he's talking to. He's got 68 some thousand followers. He's done it before. I don't see any difference between this and Carvana. This company loses a lot of money and it's in a pretty tough sector right now. But this is his own research. And if people want to follow, they follow. But you know what's also different is we're back in that 20, 21 phase where everything's melting up, right? It's like a soft serve ice cream cone with sprinkles on top. Tastes good for the first couple bites. And then you get to the middle and you're like, what am I doing?

[Josh Brown]

Put this chart up. This is open door one year performance. So it got to as high as almost looks like almost three and a half. And again coming from like sub dollar one. And I think what would really seal the deal is if like Eric blows it out. Now what sells?

[Caleb Silver]

He's not selling.

[Josh Brown]

I don't think so because I think Eric legitimately likes the stock he does.

[Caleb Silver]

Now I would also say I.

[Josh Brown]

But that would be very. That would be very bad.

[Caleb Silver]

I absolutely understand why professional investors absolutely hate this. Because it feels like cheating. It feels like a shortcut. It feels illegitimate. So I fully understand. But at the same time, I don't think he did anything. Anything wrong.

[Josh Brown]

Well, so I don't either. I'm just pointing out the things that people dislike.

[Caleb Silver]

Yeah, I get it. I would dislike it too.

[Josh Brown]

People. People. Including regulators.

[Caleb Silver]

Dude, if I'm a hedge fund manager and I'm competing against him, like, this is just not fair.

[Nick Magiulli]

It feels like you're cheating, and then you fan the flames of social media on Wall street bets and wherever else, and this is what you get. This is where we are right now. So you can hate it, but welcome to invest.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, why is he cheating? Just because he has an audience, Is that cheating now, like, where's the argument? And, like, maybe that is, but, like, he has the audience for some reason that this. This hypothetical hedge fund manager doesn't have.

[Caleb Silver]

It feels cheating in the same way that when Kim Kardashian backs a company, or Sydney Sweeney in this case. That's the way the world works. The audience is the most important thing ever. That's it.

[Josh Brown]

He put an $82 target on it. Quote in a few years was the last tweet in the thread. I think that's the other thing that bothers people. He's arriving there on the fundamentals. He's got a reason for 82. But again, a $2 stock going to 82 is, like, miraculous.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's like Bitcoin.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. Even bigger than. And I'm not saying it won't do that or it can't do that, but I think when you say that out loud, that's the same thing that pisses people off about Cathie Wood when she says her base case for Tesla is 5 trillion.

[Caleb Silver]

All right, so look what happened.

[Josh Brown]

People don't like that.

[Caleb Silver]

Well, what people also don't like is when it appears like you are doing this for your own benefit, and people think that other people are gonna get hurt because of a result of your actions. That's what pisses people off. So this is from Sherwood Open door. Call volumes were over a million the other day. The stock, which is a market cap of less than $5 billion, I think traded more shares more volume than Microsoft. So Matt Levine, as. As only he can do, wrote this yesterday. New meme stocks dropped last week. A reader emailed me. I have a funny AI thing that happened to me this week. My friends and I were talking about Carvana on Tuesday night, which got me curious, and I asked ChatGPT what the equivalent of Carvana today is. Chat GBT told me open Door. So, as any responsible investors do, we both bought a fair share of Opendoor. The next day, the stock went roaring and went up by over 50%. That's the end of the email. Matt Levine wrote. Nice trade for him. Very much not. Investment advice for you.

[Nick Magiulli]

Welcome to investing in 2025. I don't know why we should be surprised by this, but this is how a lot of people are looking at the market. Not everybody is going to the Iris Zone conference. Not everybody's coming into this office looking for really professional and sound advice. They are looking for hot things to buy. They want to make money, fan the flames. And there we go. People want.

[Josh Brown]

So that's a really important reason why it's not manipulation. Eric doesn't control what other people do, number one. And there's a whole conversation that's taken off as a result of him spotting this opportunity that's away from his Twitter feed. It's on Reddit. It's on like Twitter. It's on. It's in other venues that he has nothing to do with. If people choose to read his opinion and agree with it or think enough, other people will agree with it, that there's an opportunity. At a certain point, we have to hold adults responsible for their own actions.

[Caleb Silver]

Nick, how much Open Door did you buy?

[Michael Batnick]

Zero.

[Josh Brown]

I was gonna say you're six.

[Michael Batnick]

I haven't had an individual stock in years. I haven't. Cause I'm sitting on it.

[Caleb Silver]

All right, so back to the market environment and where we are today. Bespoke has a chart showing the 100 most short stocks versus the Russell 1000. A three month performance spread. And we're back in. We're back in 2021 territory. Like, we're back, we're back.

[Josh Brown]

Wait. These are the most highly shorted stocks as like an relative to the rest.

[Caleb Silver]

Of the market net.

[Michael Batnick]

The Russell spread. Right.

[Caleb Silver]

So this is 2020 all over again.

[Michael Batnick]

We're doing it 2021.

[Nick Magiulli]

2021.

[Caleb Silver]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, it's just the meme stock stuff all over again, right? You just said it. I mean, I, I don't know what else there is to say on that.

[Josh Brown]

Why are they, why are they shorting $2 stocks again? Wasn't that. Aren't the memories fairly raw and recent from like three years ago?

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, GameStop, everyone. You start shorting and then, okay, that creates an opportunity for prices to go up very quickly because now these people have to close out their positions and it's just, it's almost the most bullish.

[Nick Magiulli]

Call you can make. These Days. If you see the hedge fund shorting stocks right now, this, the meme stock crowd is all over it. They've been looking for a while for something like this and the right market environment to Michael's point where anything goes right now, melt it up. So they got this, why Krispy Kreme? We're not eating more donuts. I'm not eating more donuts. But all of a sudden this stock's up.

[Josh Brown]

I saw Kohl's. Kohl's was up 36% in a day. The Kohl's did not come out with AI. Like, that's a short. Oh, you only can get that with a short squeeze. I guess the question is like, has no one learned anything? Why are we shorting $2, $3 stocks even if we think they're zeros? Like it's, it's almost like you're asking for somebody on a message board to whip up a mob to wreck you.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, the cost benefit's just not there at all.

[Caleb Silver]

It doesn't make sense to me. Well, how about this? If there's a lot of shorts, if 20% of the float is short a stock under $5. Just don't do that like you're asking to get blown up. Here's another metric showing that this is. By this metric, it's even crazier than 2021. A lot of this is from Daily Chartbook, by the way. Non profitable tech retail investor participation percentage. So I guess that's measuring what percent of these non profitable names, like whatever these dogs should name.

[Josh Brown]

These are publicly traded companies with no.

[Caleb Silver]

Earnings that are losing money. 25% of the volume is coming from retail investors, which is higher than it was at the peak in 2021. And it's working. So won't always work, but right now it is.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, right. So environment, like certain environments lend themselves well to this kind of activity. This is making people way more money than the stuff coming out of University of Chicago. With small, small cap beta. Oh, I can earn.

[Caleb Silver]

I can earn an excess of one and a half percent a year, maybe over time on average. Or I could buy Open Door or I can moon one to three in two weeks. Not in two weeks, in three days.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah, and blowing yourself up. Especially for people that love to trade these meme stocks. It's not a big deal. Sometimes they publicize it. They were doing it back in 2021. I'm taking a flyer here. People love the drama of the bet. That's what people are doing. They're betting. Why are they doing it now the environment is ripe for it. It's not like we have all this stimulus money coming our way. But I think people are just tired of waiting around for the next big thing. They probably miss Bitcoin. They're like, I got to get in on this. Probably miss Gamestop in the early days. I got to get in on this.

[Michael Batnick]

People want the. I just think there's. There's so. And we're going to talk about this later in the show, but I think this is actually caused by housing prices being too high. And so all this money that would have been, hey, I need to buy a house. I need to do that, cosign. It's just money. Just. And this is. I saw. This is not even really my take. I saw this recently. Someone said, I'm unsubstantiated. Take that. Like there's all this money in all these different asset classes because it's not in housing.

[Josh Brown]

Like it normally can't buy real estate. Normally they would.

[Michael Batnick]

Because with rates where they're. And those that even have the money to buy real estate, it's like, well, with rates where they are, I don't. I don't want to do that. So I have this money sitting in either in Treasuries or I have it. You know, I'm going to bet it on things, right? So that's how I see this playing out. It's just there's. There's so much money. And what are the opportunities to chase, right? Housing is not one of them. So it's meme stocks.

[Josh Brown]

And it's not even just rates. It's also lack of supply. Although in certain markets, supply is coming back online. But like.

[Nick Magiulli]

Or it's the question people are asking themselves. Is this the best use of my money? Sinking a million plus into an asset I might sit in for 40 years? What if I want to move the family to Costa Rica for the year? And I think that's a fundamental change, especially for younger investors. That's going to affect the wealth management business too. If all of a sudden that 30, 40% of their capital is freed up to do things and they'll change the equation. Maybe they will. But right now, there's no point in doing it if you can't afford it. And if you have that extra money, take a flyer on a few stocks.

[Josh Brown]

So interesting. Or.

[Nick Magiulli]

Or invest in experience.

[Josh Brown]

So the Fed is indirectly causing this unbelievable. Keeping mortgage rates so high.

[Caleb Silver]

All right, what do you got that.

[Josh Brown]

People are sitting liquid enough to trade meme stocks when they should be making Mortgage payments.

[Caleb Silver]

What's in the box?

[Nick Magiulli]

All right. I brought a gift because I always like to bring a gift to this. One of my favorite podcasts. And you know how I roll. You know how I roll.

[Michael Batnick]

That's nice.

[Nick Magiulli]

I had this made for.

[Josh Brown]

That's a sweet deck.

[Nick Magiulli]

This is a sweet deck. Nick's orange and the blue because that's how we get down. And I'd love for you to let.

[Josh Brown]

Me see the other. Let me see the flip side.

[Nick Magiulli]

Oh, it's green. Sweet.

[Caleb Silver]

Love it.

[Josh Brown]

Were you a skater?

[Nick Magiulli]

You a green?

[Josh Brown]

Were you a skater?

[Nick Magiulli]

No. No.

[Michael Batnick]

I looked like one, but I wasn't one.

[Josh Brown]

Were you a skater?

[Caleb Silver]

He still is.

[Nick Magiulli]

Full lifetime skater.

[Josh Brown]

No. I've seen you on your board. Y. I've seen you on a long board.

[Nick Magiulli]

That's right.

[Caleb Silver]

Did you skate here today?

[Nick Magiulli]

I skated here yesterday to drop on myself. Heading for the airport.

[Caleb Silver]

Oh, thank you. We love it.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yes. And thank you for having me on the show.

[Caleb Silver]

We love it. So, Nick, that's going.

[Josh Brown]

That's getting hung. That's getting hung up.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah, that's gotta get hung up.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Nick.

[Nick Magiulli]

I'll throw trucks and wheels on it and ride all over this if you want.

[Caleb Silver]

Nick is 100% right on animal spirits this week. Ben posed the same question, and I laughed at it. I said, come on. No, ridiculous. We got two emails. Now, two is not a million, but we got two emails saying, actually. And here's one of them wanted to chime in on something from today's episode. Ben asks if people are using their down payments, cash, to invest in the market. And Michael brushed it off for what it's worth. That is exactly what I'm doing. And then he. And then he laid out why he's renting. They have money. They can't buy a house. So he's not the only person that's doing this.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, it's tempting, right? Like, let's say you have 500 grand sitting in an account, and you're sitting in and you're not about to buy.

[Michael Batnick]

A house because nothing's changed either treasuries or your risk assets.

[Caleb Silver]

You take 20 grand or whatever. Five grand.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, yeah. You get a text and someone's like, yo, yo, yo, Eric Jackson, open door. It's like, I was going to buy a house, but it. Let's go. Let's yolo into open door. I guess I could see that phenomenon. I could see people saying, well, the money's just sitting here anyway, and look how good the market is. And look how much action and my friends are talking about all these things they're trading, whatever, I'll take 20 grand, I'll throw it into some stuff, see if I can turn it into 50.

[Nick Magiulli]

I'm a follower and reader of Vanda's research. Vanda track does great research on what retail investors like us are actually doing with our money. And they track how we're investing outside of the defined plans, outside of the 401k, the IRAs, et cetera. And we are back at elevated levels back to the close to the 2021.

[Josh Brown]

Levels in the trenches.

[Nick Magiulli]

And the things that we are buying outside of our just normal allocations to our 401ks, which is all the big funds, all the big stocks are very interesting stocks along AI but you're going to get an open door in there. You're going to get a Krispy Kreme just because that's where the action is in meme stock land right now. So retail investors are back in it, looking for opportunity because they're seeing this big melt up and want to be a part of it.

[Josh Brown]

In the last 30 days I've been buying Solana, Joby Aviation and Archer.

[Caleb Silver]

Oh, they're both mooning.

[Josh Brown]

These are the blue chips of my portfolio.

[Nick Magiulli]

Now to the moon the blue chips.

[Josh Brown]

But like to that point I see my own drift. I wasn't doing that six months ago even. Right, right. And it's just like now I'm entertaining ideas, even flyers, whatever. Like I'm entertaining ideas myself. Saying to myself as I'm doing it, this is so dumb, I almost bought Intel. Talk about a money loser.

[Caleb Silver]

So options chart calls are almost 70% of the total market volume again hasn't been this high since the 2021 meme days. One more, just more confirmation. The equity euphoria indicator. Last week the Barclays equity euphoria indicator, which uses options data to quantify investors giddiness, jumped to its highest level since late December. So I guess if you're listening to this.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, we're there.

[Caleb Silver]

You're listening, we're there. Please be careful. Maybe pump the brakes a little bit. Maybe no more individual positions for a minute. Maybe just let it breathe. Keep doing what you're doing. Your 401k, your buy, your bi weekly by whatever you're doing. But if you're going to entertain new positions, just be a little.

[Josh Brown]

Isn't this the hardest thing when your portfolio value is at a record high and you look at your holdings and in green in your app or on the, on the broker's website, you See, like, you see all your stocks, like, up 80%, up 50%, one after another after another. It's really hard to talk yourself out of how great you are in that moment. And the problem is it's at that moment where most people are like, what else should I buy? Because you're getting the oxytocin. It's like firing all your serotonin, oxytocin, all those good chemicals are firing all over your brain and not just from the money you're making, but from. You told other people and they made money.

[Caleb Silver]

He told me to just keep buying.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, yeah, Nick. No, but so right. Does not apply for individual security danger right now. And people that might normally own 20 stocks are buying like 30 stocks because everything they're buying is working. And they're not looking for the next blue chip stock that could go up 10% now. They're looking for the junk.

[Michael Batnick]

I just think it's crazy we're having this conversation. Like three months ago, April, April was like, the world's ending tariffs are gonna, you know, ruin the world economy. And now we're back to meme stock.

[Josh Brown]

It's like, yeah, but there's an adrenaline factor to a near death experience.

[Michael Batnick]

That's fair.

[Josh Brown]

And I think three months ago, a lot of people looked at their portfolio and were like, oh, my God, this is so horrible. And it, it looks, it looked like, oh, this is really going to be a shitty year because this tariff thing is going to be going on all year and then that goes away a little bit reverses. But we just had a near death experience. Think about in real life.

[Caleb Silver]

Unbelievable.

[Josh Brown]

People get that shot of adrenaline, they start making out with each other. Like, think about like, oh, my God, we almost died. I think you're my girlfriend now. Like that, you know.

[Nick Magiulli]

But the gaps between near death and euphoria are so compressed right now. We talked about this the last time I was on the show. The bear markets are super cute. They last a couple of weeks and then we're back off to the races and then we're back in this concern about a correction and then we're back off. That's because we have no time to catch our.

[Caleb Silver]

We haven't had a real economic reset. No, I know the bottom 10% again, obviously they're hurting always, but especially now. But a real recession that impacts everyone. Not just rolling recessions, which we've had, obviously real estate and tech in 2022, but where everyone's eating it, we haven't had it.

[Josh Brown]

Caleb, brag a little bit about investopedia so you're the editor in chief and I remember when you joined there and you were talking about the opportunity. You have largely came right here to.

[Nick Magiulli]

This office or at the Park Avenue.

[Josh Brown]

That's right. You have largely witnessed that opportunity. Yeah. I mean you guys are super important site. I think everyone at some point in any given month that's searching for investment terms land on Investopedia some way. What are the most search terms that people are landing on this summer and what do you see going on in the platform right now?

[Nick Magiulli]

I'm so glad you asked, by the way.

[Josh Brown]

Monthly. Monthly. Active users.

[Nick Magiulli]

Monthly. We're about 12 million uniques.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. But I think what percentage that America versus rest of world?

[Nick Magiulli]

Half.

[Josh Brown]

Wow.

[Nick Magiulli]

Half US based. These are, I think a lot of self directed investors. Not by definition.

[Josh Brown]

But students, right too.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah. Students is where we kind of started. I'm actually bringing Investopedia back to school next year on a university tour because I think we really belong there. Helping people learn about money before they got out of school with $36,000 in.

[Josh Brown]

Debt and studying kids studying for exams, securities industry exams. You guys are. You guys are like a companion.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah. We are 26 years old. That's like 260 real years, you know, in Internet time. In Internet time. And we've evolved, but we've evolved because financial markets have evolved, but we're still there for people to be like, what does that mean? But more and more. And as I've been there over the last decade or so, it's been about what is and now what. And that's kind of what we want to be, the voice and the. And the guide for the educated investor. But we know a lot of advisors use us to, to either get smart or smarten up their clients. So we play in that space as well. But we also realize that the nature of money has changed for a lot of people. Now some principles will always be there, compounding dollar cost averaging. All that good stuff that we learn, that we teach, that you teach, that's always been important. But we want to be the ultimate resource for all things money, for everybody. And we have a great name, we have a great brand. It's an honor to be the editor in chief and represented and be the face of it, even though I have a great face for podcasts, apparently. But you know, this is. We are lucky to still be here. And I think because the brand is so strong, it's really hard to maintain that in an AI world. I was just looking at a story out of Axios citing the where chat, GPT and the other AI platforms take content from.

[Josh Brown]

Are they. Are they scraping you?

[Nick Magiulli]

Oh, my gosh. Right?

[Josh Brown]

So what do you do about that?

[Caleb Silver]

Dude, on my screen, I have this. I was just going to go there. I hit EBITDA and Gemini gives me the answer. And you obviously are the first link, but I got it. Now I have to scroll down to get you.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yes, and that's a problem.

[Caleb Silver]

They're your shit up.

[Nick Magiulli]

That's a problem. And we're doing whatever we can to protect ourselves from crawlers. We just announced a partnership with a site that protects that. But we also have, through our parent company, Meredith, a deal with OpenAI that's been well publicized, where there's a licensing fee.

[Josh Brown]

And they say, yeah, like Reddit's getting paid, New York Times are getting paid. Money has to change hands.

[Nick Magiulli]

And our leadership, God bless him, has been behind that 100% since the start from. From our chair, our chairman and CEO at IAC on down to our CEO@dot-merith. We have to protect ourselves at the same time. We can't just sit here and say, oh, no, AIs is eating us up like Pac Man. We got to find other ways to deliver content and experiences to people. We were talking earlier about these live events that I do now at Future Proof. We've been doing a lot more in video, obviously on various platforms. I just took my podcast to Vodcast Live because I want to find other ways to engage audiences where they are. But we still have to be building the right educational experiences for investors for 20, 25 and beyond, because we can't just sit here and let it happen.

[Josh Brown]

You got to have. You have to evolve too.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah. So back to the question of what have people been looking for? I was just looking for the past six months, and obviously we had a lot of people looking up bear markets when we were darn close. Market call options. What are those best inverse ETFs?

[Josh Brown]

Oh, that's great.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah, that's a. That's always a good sign.

[Josh Brown]

Not ETFs. Inverse ETFs.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah. We had people looking up Bitcoin for the first time. If they hadn't looked it up before, what is it? How is it mined? How many will ever be mined? Like, what is this thing that just keeps exploding? If we're going to be the crypto capital of the world, they want to make sure that they understand that as well. Smoot Hawley, we went back in history to teach them about smoothie. Yeah, The Smoot Hawley tariffs. Why Are they important? And then obviously around Buffett's, you know, announcement of his resignation, he's super popular on Investor pd. A lot of people looking at that, but people are, you know, you could see the full spectrum pretty much of America really, but the world but what they're worried about. And you can see the people at the on the bottom who are struggling. Can I. What's a hardship withdrawal on my 401k? What's the best personal loan to take right now? Should I tap my Roth IRA to How do I leverage those?

[Josh Brown]

Other strategies are hitting investor PD because.

[Nick Magiulli]

We have it all. We have 40,000 pieces of content on the site. So it's everything from how do I protect myself to how do I get promiscuous and take advantage of this upside and take advantage of this meme stock rally or this crypto rally.

[Caleb Silver]

Do you guys have a fear grid index?

[Nick Magiulli]

We have the anxiety index which tracks traffic to fear based terms. Fear based terms like recession, like correction, like.

[Caleb Silver]

So I'm sure in April it went.

[Nick Magiulli]

All the way screaming like a two year old toddler in a toy store when it's time to go home. And for good reason. But then it switches just as quickly as our emotions switch with the market. So if you look at price, price is a great indicator of interest. Volatility is very good for us because people get worried and they're concerned and they want to do something, learn first, then do something. And that's kind of the way I want Investopedia to evolve, come to learn and then we're going to help you.

[Josh Brown]

Do you have the data on that anxiety index? The spikes on. I assume it spikes.

[Nick Magiulli]

We have that going back to the financial crisis.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, years ago.

[Josh Brown]

You should give that to us and let us plot the plot different markets against it. I'd love to see if it, I'd love to see if it's earlier than other Fear Greed index.

[Nick Magiulli]

Years ago.

[Josh Brown]

That's what matters.

[Nick Magiulli]

Ago. A hedge fund came to us and did that very, very study and they found that it does precede the vix.

[Josh Brown]

Was it Scott Basin?

[Caleb Silver]

I'm sure yours is better than Bull Bear. The AI stuff that is always quoted that feels.

[Nick Magiulli]

That's a survey.

[Caleb Silver]

Yeah, that's a survey also. It's older people.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's older people. And, and ours is. If you think about it, when you get freaked out, what do you do? You Google something or you look it up, you're like, wait, what is that?

[Caleb Silver]

What's called, what's it called?

[Nick Magiulli]

The anxiety index? The Investor PD anxiety Index. So we have it going back to the financial crisis because that's when, you know, we started waking up to that. I wasn't there at the time, but thankfully we started tracking that data. Being around 26 years, having as many visitors as we do, as many readers and as much content gives you a ton of data. We have an incredible data team that helps us analyze this stuff.

[Josh Brown]

We want to talk about dumb money.

[Caleb Silver]

I would skip it.

[Josh Brown]

We're going to skip that.

[Caleb Silver]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Nick Magiulli]

I thought that was my segment.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. Where are we going? Where are we going next, Mike?

[Caleb Silver]

Sure is the personal responsibility thing happened here, so.

[Josh Brown]

All right, let me tell you a story. This is a true story. This just happened. And a lot of advisors are talking about this and love to hear what you guys think. A client tells her advisor, it doesn't matter what firm it is. It's a big, big ria. Client tells her advisor, I want to liquidate my ira. The advisor claims that they try to talk her out of it because there are taxes and penalties. And the client says, just tell me what the taxes and penalties are in the ira. Yeah, like to liquidate it early.

[Caleb Silver]

Oh, like get their money out.

[Josh Brown]

Give me my money liquidated. So like at the end of the day, the advisor is not the boss, the client is the boss. So you can warn a client, this is not a great idea. The client doesn't tell the advisor what they're doing with the money either, which I think is a really key part of the story. The client takes that money, $82,000 out of her IRA. Also somehow has another $800,000. And this person is listed in the article as a cashier at a retail store. So I'm not 1000% sure how, how, where that money came from. Anyway, the client gets sucked in by somebody in her DMs who's running a crypto scam. It's someone actually impersonating someone else who she trusted. And it's a crypto scam and she puts all her money in it and $882,000 goes to zero. Okay, horrible. We all agree. Nobody, nobody, nobody would say something as callous as serves you right or tough shit like you have to have compassion for people cuz this person's not getting that money back. But here's the thing. Now this person is suing the RIA. And by the way, only 82,000 of her loss came from the RIA. The other 800 grand came from somewhere else. But this person needs money. So her answer is, well, I'm going to sue the RIA because they should have talked me out of this.

[Caleb Silver]

All right, that's over the one.

[Josh Brown]

I think that's, like. I think it's, like, outrageous, but I don't think the judge is gonna throw it out. I feel like this suit, either it'll. Either they'll settle it just to get it over with.

[Caleb Silver]

Which. On what merit? What is she claiming?

[Josh Brown]

She's claiming that the advisor did not. Here, let me. I'll tell you. Exactly, and then you guys tell me what?

[Nick Magiulli]

You broke the fiduciary rule.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Nick Magiulli]

Come on.

[Josh Brown]

According to the lawsuit filed in New York federal court, the woman believed the firm, quote, would have her best interest at heart when operating as her financial advisor. Instead, the firm recommended a liquidation of her account to meet her objectives when it knew or should have known its recommendation was unsuitable because of the purported investment with the fraudster. The advisor doesn't know about the fraudster. The client is not saying, yeah, I want to put it all into this crypto thing that somebody DM to me. So, like, at a certain point, I understand the frustration. You lost all your money, but what do you want the advisor to do? Like, hit you over the head with a. With a pan?

[Caleb Silver]

Well, what we would have done, we would have just delinked. We would have said, you're not our client. Like, this is.

[Josh Brown]

Obviously, that is the right answer is to say you're not taking our advice. We're not. We're not taking money.

[Michael Batnick]

I think it depends on. On how big. Okay, 80 grand. How much other money do they have with you? If that's, like, all her money, you don't know the full situation. I read the article and the advisors basically saying we were strongly against this. We told this to the client. Like, as long as you have that recorded somewhere, and I'm sure they do timestamp, then, like, I feel like you're going to go scot free. At the end of the day, the client made that decision. Should you have pride? The client more possibly. Should you have advisors that are more, like, better at doing that coaching? Of course. But at the end of the day, like, if someone's like, no, I want this money, I want to pay the fees. What are you. They are the boss. You're right, Josh.

[Josh Brown]

Here's the boss. Here's the complaint. Quote, this is the plaintiff. What they're saying. Despite the rising prevalence of pig butchering and cryptocurrency scams, no representative ever inquired further as to why Blank's investment required an early liquidation of her retirement account.

[Caleb Silver]

The complaint, I find that hard to believe.

[Josh Brown]

Instead, the firm asks no further clarification or explanation of plaintiff's investment purpose and only asked how much she wanted withheld for federal and state tax deductions and mentioned the penalty fee for early withdrawal. So she took out most of her money in June. Didn't take long to lose it all. I don't know. I think the advisor has to. The advisor has to say a couple of things, like, don't do this, or, I really don't think you should do this, because. But if the client's not telling the advisor what they're doing with the money, how strenuously can you say no to someone whose money it is?

[Michael Batnick]

I think it's just going to come down to how good is the documentation? Because, like, maybe, let's say the advisor's super busy and like, this client says, I need to take this money out. And this person's not really pushing back. They're like, sure, take it, whatever. Like, what do you need? Okay. They just want to get it done. They're not really thinking through. If there's no recommendation to not do anything with it, then she might have a case.

[Caleb Silver]

Oh, you're right, because the advisor might be like, oh, it's an $80,000. I don't have time for this. Just fine.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Imagine this client has another million with them. I know. 80 gr, in the grand scheme of the relationship is not that large. It's what, it's 8%, right. Basically. So you're like, okay, yeah, whatever. No big deal. Just sign it off. And now they're saying, hey, I should have that money back.

[Caleb Silver]

The bigger issue is this type of stuff is exploding, these scams. And it seems so obvious to us, like, how does this keep happening?

[Josh Brown]

This is on tick, by the way. This is a DM on TikTok, which is incredible.

[Caleb Silver]

So how do we. How do we, as an industry and as a society do a better job of protecting these people? How loud do we have to scream, do not give money in. DMs. People aren't like, how do we do it?

[Josh Brown]

You could do whatever you want. They're not gonna listen.

[Nick Magiulli]

They're not gonna listen. But you could also have rules in your portfolio that would not allow this. And if, you know, I mean, I'm sure her advisor was like, what are you doing? If they knew, I'm not sure.

[Caleb Silver]

The impersonation and the specificity and the precision is going to get so bad that the scams are going to explode.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, yeah. They're worried, Sam. Altman had a big conclave with leaders from financial services this week. Of course, he's pitching, you know, OpenAI services, but, like, cybersecurity in the age of AI. You know how you log into your brokerage account? It's a face ID on the app on your phone that could obviously be faked. Voice print is another way. Like, when I call into Fidelity, I don't have to tell them anything about myself because they identify me based on me answering a question. All of that can be faked very easily. And I think Sam Altman's message to the people from the banks and brokerages whom he met with was, like, like it or not, we opened Pandora's box. It's open. Like, this is what. This is what it's gonna be.

[Caleb Silver]

We need Theranos to take the blood from our fingerprint to validate.

[Josh Brown]

Speaking of, I think what you said is right. If there are contemporaneous notes in Salesforce, I don't know what CRM this advisory firm uses. If there are contemporaneous notes or, God forbid, an AI note taker from a zoom call, which would be amazing, where the rep is telling this woman, do not do this. That's open. That's like, case closed. Just give it to the judge. Why are we even talking about this?

[Michael Batnick]

But you also think what it. Because you really need those details. Without that, it's really hard to know, because you're right. If it's like, oh, it's a small piece of their portfolio, like, okay, let me just get this done. I'm busy. They don't.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nick Magiulli]

Who cares?

[Michael Batnick]

Fine.

[Josh Brown]

Tease your money.

[Michael Batnick]

It's like, okay, I don't recommend that.

[Nick Magiulli]

She had an extra 800 grand, apparently.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, yeah, so maybe she had a lot more money. You don't know.

[Caleb Silver]

All right, guys, switching gears. There's $7 trillion in money market fees, funds.

[Josh Brown]

Hence the. Hence the crime wave.

[Caleb Silver]

And hence open.

[Michael Batnick]

Yep.

[Josh Brown]

What?

[Caleb Silver]

What?

[Josh Brown]

Look at this.

[Caleb Silver]

How does this. How does this line go down? What would have to happen for this line to go down?

[Josh Brown]

Houses get more affordable.

[Caleb Silver]

Is it just interest rates come down and people buy houses? That's probably the most obvious one.

[Michael Batnick]

Literally, either houses should happen one, one of three things. Either house prices come down, interest rates come down, or both. That's the only way it's going to allow these. These. These dollars to go. So I'm telling you, I'm in this line here. I have some. I have some treasuries and this waiting to buy, but this won't go from.

[Josh Brown]

7 trillion to 2 trillion. Yeah, but it'll go from 7 to 6.

[Caleb Silver]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Brown]

The trajectory will only change if and when there's something else to do. I told. What do you think about that?

[Nick Magiulli]

I totally agree. And I think a lot of people who fear the stories that we've just been talking about are just like, I'm fine here at four and a half percent, I'm just fine here. Or maybe this is the older crowd that is retired, that wants to de risk a little bit, take some off the table or keep it in savings. I think it's a lot of that. I don't necessarily think this is a shift where all of a sudden this thing flips on its head. Maybe it goes down to 5 trillion or 6 trillion, but it will be because of the big asset purchases. But it's not going necessarily into the s and P500.

[Josh Brown]

Last year when the Fed started cutting rates, we thought it would be a new rate cutting cycle. It was just a couple of rate cuts. Michael said, I really don't think people are pulling money out of money market funds unless we get to 2% and people really get antsy, they'll probably stay put. And that's exact. Not only did they stay put, you could see the number go up. The money just kept pouring in, I guess. I'm curious what you guys think. At what fed funds rate does this materially change? Is it like what's the magic number in the mind of the investor?

[Caleb Silver]

I think it's low.

[Nick Magiulli]

I think it's lower.

[Josh Brown]

It's not 4%.

[Caleb Silver]

No, I think it's under 3.

[Nick Magiulli]

Under 3?

[Caleb Silver]

Yeah.

[Nick Magiulli]

Because 4% is pretty comfortable for a lot of people that just don't like taking risks. And if people are still scared and they should be, of scams in the market or big crashes like we had, you know, for a minute during COVID.

[Josh Brown]

4 is still high. 4 is high relative to recent history.

[Nick Magiulli]

And then, you know, what's the equity risk premium for, you know, big institutional managers? Like, where was the. They got to protect capital. They are paid to protect capital for rich people and then find alpha whenever they can. Right now it's not so hard to find it. But I think plenty of people are very happy with the bulk of their savings, especially older people earning four, four and a half percent.

[Josh Brown]

What do you think?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, even, even after inflation, you're basically flat for the year. And so people are like, yeah, I can deal with that. So.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, like if you, if inflation is 2 points, what is it now?

[Michael Batnick]

Just 2.9 over the last point 9 with 4. So, like, in theory, there was a real return.

[Josh Brown]

People.

[Caleb Silver]

You think of real returns, people.

[Michael Batnick]

I know they don't, but it's still, I'm still. You can make the argument right now that if you buy Treasuries, you're basically getting, like, no return. I mean, yes, technically, according to last year, we got a real return. I, I, maybe inflation's higher than we think, and so maybe it's only, you know, it's just flat for the year.

[Nick Magiulli]

Plus, and I know you guys probably talked about this, and I'm sure you saw it more for 1k millionaires than ever were printed last year. And you talk about this as well. I've heard you talk about, you write about it in your books. A million bucks sounds like a lot was always the number that a lot of people wanted to get to. A million bucks isn't a million bucks anymore. But for a lot of people that got there, they're like, oh, I got there. I want to stay here. And this is a way to stay.

[Caleb Silver]

I saw something from American Express's earnings call that I wanted to talk about it. And I know American Express serves an affluent consumer, obviously, but this stood out to me. They're talking about the year over year growth, and they break it down by Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and baby boomers. The year over year growth for gen Z was 39%, which is wild.

[Josh Brown]

What is it?

[Caleb Silver]

But what is 39% in terms of service services build business. So spending. Equally remarkable is millennials. People my age make up 30% of all spending on Amex on the consumer side, which is more than baby boomers are spending. So millennials are doing all right, and Gen Z is doing all right.

[Nick Magiulli]

This is the experience economy. People are spending it on experience, not on the homes. They want to have that ultimate Instagram photo at that special place with that special chef and that special drink.

[Caleb Silver]

And so, Nick, you're younger than us. I want to give this to you in a sec. But the next chart shows Millennials and Gen Z. It compares the delinquency of American Express customers versus non, and it's 4.4% for millennials and Gen Z. Those are 30 days past due. Okay? And for Amex customers in this age cohort, it's only 1.9%. And there's a similar spread on Gen X baby mover side. So again, amex, I know, is not representative of the entire economy, but for these people, they're doing all right. And Nick, you are these people you spend time with These people, what do you see in terms of experience, services, spending?

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, I think this, a lot of this. Once again, it's, I keep repeating the same point, but it comes back to housing and like the whole idea of the American dream is you're supposed to buy a house and do all this stuff. I think the American dream has changed in a lot of ways. And people are traveling a lot more. TSA throughput is hitting records. Right. And so if you think about like, like I think about my parents, when they were young, they did not get on airplanes often. I'm guessing your parents didn't either. Right. But now it's like very common for people. Like, my sister went to Japan and she does not have a very high paying job. It's like people say, you know what, I'd rather not own all rent and I'll travel the world and see stuff. And so you're right. Everything Caleb said, Instagram generation, that is more important to have that photo versus just like, oh, I own a house.

[Josh Brown]

Right. I actually think it's smart though. Here's where it's. Where it's not that smart is they are. If you live In a top 20 city, you're throwing away a lot of money in rent. Some would dispute that characterization. You're not throwing it away, you're consuming it. Okay, we agree, but you are not building equity in an asset. That's fine. You don't have to. Or maybe you work for a company that's comping you with stock options and you are building an asset you just built. It's just not in a physical. That's perfectly fine too. I know that's more common than ever. So that's where it's, to me, not that great, but where it's really great. These are the times of your lives. These are times of our lives. I should say. Like, what's more important than how you spent your life? I spent my life going out and doing and seeing the things that I wanted to see. Not anchored to a pile of bricks in a suburb somewhere. I kind of find that to be really admirable about the way millennials and Gen Z are carrying on. I'm sure a lot of them wish it were the opposite and they didn't have to go out and look for so many. Because when I watch Instagram video of people standing in two hour lines in Montauk, it just looks dumb as shit to me. But I was also that age and I'm sure I was doing things equally that dumb. I just wasn't Doing stuff like that. We were cut the line kids. We knew the promoters. I come from a different world but like I sort of get it. In the absence of the ability to buy a house, well, yeah, we should be in Montauk waiting online to get into a bar.

[Nick Magiulli]

I also think there's a little of this going on. I have 19 and a 21 year old, two daughters and I talk to them and their friends about investing in this whole thing. They know that, they know what I do and. But a lot of them just reject the premise. Not like why, you know, they understand what investing is and why you can build and how you can build wealth that. But I get a lot of the time from them. The question that I can't answer and I think I've asked you this before, why does this keep working? What's this, this stock market, this, you know, why do investments continue to grow? Why should I? You know, I know it's worked forever and it's worked for the last hundred years or so, but they reject the premise of the fact that this market is just going to keep going up, companies are going to keep generating profits. The stock market is the place to generate returns. So if they don't believe in that, less and less younger people are may not believe in that. They see the get rich quick schemes, whether it's crypto or meme stocks or whatever and they're maybe not as invested in the investment process as we were taught to be in the financial services, media and the market has taught us to be. Maybe they just reject it and they're like, I'm going to spend it on.

[Josh Brown]

Their role models though are super involved in business. This Gen Z's role models are all creators and influencers and people that have built companies. They look up to people like kai Sanat and MrBeast and they look up to like Alex Cooper and Alex Earle and these are people that created their own lane for themselves. They built their own platform, their own content. They hire their friends to hold the cameras. Ishowspeed is a kid surrounded by his old friends that he grew up with, traveling the world, doing stunts. But it's a business. So I do think that Gen Z is enamored with business. But to your point, I think they look at the stock market like another casino. Oh, there's no sport on I want to bet on. All right, maybe I'll do some crypto, maybe I'll do some stocks. That part I agree with you. But I don't think they dislike the premise of capitalism and business.

[Caleb Silver]

They don't like corporate capitalism.

[Nick Magiulli]

I think the question that could be the. I think there's a. There's a lot of that as well. And they're also, you know, a lot of them going into a job market where they're fearing and they're hearing that AI is going to take every job anyway. So what's the point of it all?

[Josh Brown]

Why even buy into this if it's all going to come crashing down?

[Caleb Silver]

This is a really nice segue to my answer to why does the stock market go up and why will it continue to go up, hopefully forever and ever? Positioning and obviously, you know, with bear markets in between and lost teches and all that sort of stuff is greed, in a good way. We are all greedy. It is never enough for each of us, and it is certainly never enough for any of us. And at the corporate level, people are motivated to get up, improve their financial situation, and all of that shows up in earnings per share. And that is what drives the stock market ultimately. It's really that simple. So in 2018, I tweeted this pie chart and I said the market cap of the top 5s and P500 companies were equal to the market cap of the bottom 282 companies. And seven years ago, this seemed out.

[Josh Brown]

People lost their shit when they saw this. By the way, I remember that I was on Twitter then.

[Caleb Silver]

People seemed outraged that how could this even be?

[Josh Brown]

Look at this.

[Caleb Silver]

It does not compute how. Please make it make sense. Well, here we are.

[Michael Batnick]

It's way worse.

[Caleb Silver]

Seven years later, and they're equal to the bottom 411 companies.

[Josh Brown]

Top five. The top five have the same market cap.

[Caleb Silver]

No, no, no. The top five.

[Josh Brown]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Caleb Silver]

The top. I know what we're looking at. Just look at me for a sec. The top five are now equal to the bottom 411. Look at me.

[Josh Brown]

I'm the captain now.

[Caleb Silver]

The mag seven. The mag seven is equal to the bottom 432 companies. It's just unbelievable.

[Josh Brown]

That's a great argument for index funds if I've ever seen one.

[Caleb Silver]

All right, last thing to kick the hornet's nest a little bit before we move on to Nick's books. Last week, JC was in that chair talking about how $2 trillion is around the air, $4 trillion for crypto is around the air. And I'm like, dude, come on, it's Nvidia. It's not nothing. It is a lot of money. You're sounding ridiculous. And I was thinking about this yesterday, and I was telling Josh, hey, wait, A minute. It's not actually $4 trillion. And the reason why it's not actually $4 trillion is because it's not a market cap. We have transposed this idea of, okay, coins outstanding times price is market cap the same way we do with the stock market. It's not the same thing because hypothetically, if everybody went to sell, Nvidia just everybody wants to sell. And I know there's buyers for everybody, sellers. But if everybody want to do that, at some point, either Nvidia would buy all of its stock back, or more likely, private companies, private consortium investors would come in, whether it's at 2 trillion or 3 trillion or 1 trillion, and say, Whoa, whoa, whoa, we'll buy the whole thing. We'll take all of it and give me the $90 billion in revenue. We'll just take it all. There is a floor for these businesses because there's cash flows and fundamentals. Similarly, there is a theoretical ceiling because at some point, the numbers don't make sense. With Bitcoin and crypto, these are not real numbers because bitcoin can theoretically go to a dollar. If everybody truly went to sell and Michael Saylor was the only buyer, nobody would want it. He's not going to want all the Bitcoin if nobody else wants a bitcoin. So the 4 trillion is what leverage.

[Josh Brown]

Would take him to zero. It's artificial.

[Caleb Silver]

There's no floor. It's artificial. Similarly, the cap or the ceiling for which we're thinking about these numbers, as crazy as this sounds, it might be a lot higher than we think, because not only does everybody not want to sell, but it's a race to buy Bitcoin and there is a fixed supply. And so it might get. If this argument. If you're listening to me and you want to strangle me and this is pissing you off, it might get a lot stupider.

[Josh Brown]

What part do you think would piss people off that there's no ceiling?

[Caleb Silver]

The part that I'm saying that $2.

[Josh Brown]

Trillion, $25 trillion, because it's not. Because it's the last thing I can't.

[Caleb Silver]

Because it's not actually $25 trillion.

[Josh Brown]

Well, that is the bull case from an investing standpoint is that there's no ceiling, but there is a limit to the amount of bitcoin that. That's literally what the bull case is.

[Caleb Silver]

Correct.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, this is true of any stock.

[Nick Magiulli]

This is true.

[Michael Batnick]

Any individual stock.

[Caleb Silver]

No, it's not.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm saying, like, if everyone goes to sell, pick a stock. If everyone goes to Sell that stock, it's going to go down. And the only. Just to play devil's advocate, I more agree with you than disagree.

[Josh Brown]

But he's saying the fundamentals would create a floor.

[Michael Batnick]

But I'm telling you, if there's. If everyone's selling Nvidia, I mean everyone, and it's going to 1 trillion. The fundamentals don't exist.

[Caleb Silver]

But you're being literal.

[Michael Batnick]

But I'm.

[Josh Brown]

But they do exist. The company continues to sell chips.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, but in what situation is Nvidia down 75% and that is like not a fundamental, like the chips.

[Josh Brown]

The chips went down 70% in 2022 when the crypto market crashed. And I know that because I owned it. But the fundamentals of the business, they might have been up and down, but they were still earning revenue and profits.

[Caleb Silver]

Yeah, I hear what you said.

[Michael Batnick]

Trust me, I support, trust me, I support asset ownership versus like an income producing asset, like a business over crypto. I get that. I'm just saying in what world does that happen where this is like, you know, Nvidia's off 80, 90% or something.

[Caleb Silver]

Pick any business. My point is the cash flow support a floor, wherever the floor is.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I agree. There's no floor to bitcoin.

[Josh Brown]

The insight is what I gave you yesterday. It is. I said invert. You must always invert. No, what I said was we are borrowing this term market cap from the stock market world because it's all we know. It's like a skeuomorph. Like Apple made the icons on its desktop, the filing cabinet, the clock. Because we're comfortable with that iconography and we understand. File cabinet. Okay. I put files in there. That's why we use market cap. What it actually is, is supply, like a dollar. We don't talk about the market cap of the US dollar, we talk about the dollar, supply. With Bitcoin, we should really be saying supply. We should not be saying market cap or shares outstanding because it's not a corporation. But too late. That ship has sailed. And I think we're stuck on this market cap mentality for the end of time.

[Caleb Silver]

What do you think?

[Nick Magiulli]

I think things are going to change really fast here. I was at Bitcoin 2025 in Vegas about a month or so ago and I've been to a few of these. This was very different. There were entire aisles now of bitcoin lenders that'll give you fiat currency, legal tender for your bitcoin. There are of plenty, plenty of multimillionaires, millionaires out there. That don't own a single share of stock in the S&P 500, don't own a single treasury, have very little money in a savings account. But they have $10 million in Bitcoin. No, because they started buying because they heard somebody on some chat group, you know, who knows where, back in 2014. They're in the system and they're borrowing against it. You can now buy a home with bitcoin. You could buy, put down money for a mortgage and as soon as you're using it for leverage to access legal tender, inflation, fiat currency, more inflation coming. Right, more inflation coming our way. But if it goes to zero, what happens then?

[Josh Brown]

There are real assets now tethered to the value of bitcoin. Right.

[Nick Magiulli]

So when J.C. and I heard him say it on your show, if it goes to zero, nobody's going to care. There's about 50 million people that are going to care because they own bitcoin in some way, shape or form. Now there's probably about a million that own most of it. We all know that.

[Josh Brown]

His point, his point was systemically, systemically in the capital market, bitcoin can't bring down Citigroup.

[Nick Magiulli]

He's right about that. Not until Citigroup gets into the. Yeah, we'll take your bitcoin and give you a mortgage.

[Josh Brown]

So let me ask you a question then. That's a really great point. I'm glad you made it this week. Just an acceleration in tradfi. I hate that word. In regular financial institutions doing deals in the crypto world, we saw PNC bank do a tie up with Coinbase. PNC bank has customers that are multimillionaires that want a solution to crypto in some way tied in with their regular bank account. This makes so much sense. Of course we're going to see more of that. Coinbase is rapidly emerging as like the legitimate way for traditional financial institutions to link the traditional financial assets of their customers with their crypto holdings. If you had to bet, you would definitely say, over the next six months there'll be way more of that.

[Caleb Silver]

It's just starting.

[Josh Brown]

It's just started.

[Caleb Silver]

Every single early call had questions about tokenization and stablecoins on the financial side. Every single one that I listened to, yeah.

[Nick Magiulli]

And you had Rick Edelman on here and he was just talking about everything is going to be tokenized. So there's going to be a proxy for everything else out there, but a lot of it is going to be based in this crypto world. So I understand it would not affect the Capital markets necessarily not yet, but it's coming creeping deeper and deeper into our capital markets.

[Josh Brown]

Your argument is even at the current 4 trillion for, for the crypto asset level, it's plenty systemic.

[Nick Magiulli]

Yeah. BlackRock has $78 billion of Bitcoin.

[Josh Brown]

Yes. Zero would hurt. Zero would hurt. Yeah, for sure.

[Nick Magiulli]

I think it would hurt. And it would be also people who have grown up with this as the next way to make money or the best performing asset they've ever seen in their lifetime and best performing asset in air quotes that we've ever seen. This would be not only that, it'd be like a confidence ripper. Be like ripping the rug out from under a lot of people who believe that this is the future.

[Josh Brown]

We asked, imagine the lawsuits we asked.

[Nick Magiulli]

People in our recent survey. What asset class do you think will perform best over the next four years under this administration? Stocks. Stocks number one, US Stocks number two. Crypto.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I actually, if you told me the order were flipped, I believe that's, it's.

[Nick Magiulli]

Pretty close, I'll tell you that.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. Can we talk about. Just keep buying the original Nick Maggi book. Okay, let's do it. It aged exceptionally well. So you put the book out in 2022, sold 400,000 copies.

[Caleb Silver]

That's insane.

[Josh Brown]

You definitely did not buy most of those. The book is a huge hit, dude. 80% of that is non us. So let's start there. Why do you think this book translated so well to investors around the world in a way that most finance books in America really don't? What do you think it was?

[Michael Batnick]

I think it was just the data I put in there because if I'm being honest, like just keep buying is not like, and I mean the name is I guess original. But like the idea of oh, you just, you know, dollar cost average over time, that is an old idea.

[Josh Brown]

But to a new generation of investors it's brand new.

[Michael Batnick]

But I also put a lot of, I think the new piece was the data and like I basically proved it. I was like, look, this is, you know, the subtitles proven strategies. Right. So like I wanted to prove this like undeniably. And so that's, that was the point of the book and that's why I did it. And that translates all the data and all that. You're not going to really find that in many other books. That is talking about these types of things. And so because I had all of that, it translates. But there's a chart I put in here I think is very useful. So you know, the biggest countries I've sold in are Japan and Taiwan. I have over a hundred thousand sales in each of those countries. And I think one of the reasons.

[Josh Brown]

By the way, dude, we sold a hundred thousand books in Japanese and in Chinese in Taiwan.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I mean, it's great. I the Taiwan, like I knew about.

[Josh Brown]

Japan selling investing books in a communist country. It's unbelievable.

[Caleb Silver]

Wait, what about Thailand? You get paid in dung?

[Michael Batnick]

No, I don't actually think I have a. No, there's no Thai version yet. It's in production, but it's being delayed. Long story. But I'm saying, look, this chart I think is very useful because there's a lot of Asian investors buying US assets. 42% of their assets are actually in US assets of their broad assets, foreign assets. So. And that's US Stocks and bonds. And so these float. This is a, this from a Bloomberg article. And these flows are happening. And so like when I'm thinking about, well, how is this impacting me personally as like an author, it's like that's how it's doing it. But everyone's like, they want to keep buying US Stock market.

[Josh Brown]

What caused this?

[Nick Magiulli]

I didn't cause it, Julie effect ironically.

[Josh Brown]

What if you did?

[Michael Batnick]

I joke that like, you know, I was born in November 1989, that you know, the Nikkei peak the next month. And then like my book came out in Japan in June 23 and it peaked seven months later, like in early 2024. Right. Or they, I'm sorry, it re reached those highs from 30 years ago. Right. So like at a 30 year drawdown, it finally, you know, 34 year drawdown, it came back. And so no, I'm obviously not causal at all. I mean in some very, very marginal way. But no, this is, this has been happening for a long time. The Chinese are buying a lot of homes here in the United States. The apartments in New York City. You can think about all these things where there's a lot of money in Asia that's coming in here and I think that's a big piece of it. There are a lot of Asian retail investors.

[Josh Brown]

There's a couple of things I love. One of the things is that the repudiation of your message, just keep buying, has always been, now do Japan. And you can say, all right, I'll do Japan, mother. New record high for the Nikkei this week. What else you want me to do?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, and I put it in there.

[Josh Brown]

What else you got? We have stock markets around the world now breaking down.

[Caleb Silver]

But you did Japan the Dumbest thing is like people went all in in 1989, they never bought another single share. Yes, Japan sucked, it happened. But what if you dollar cost average in Japan.

[Michael Batnick]

And that's what I did. I have a chart in the book where I say if you had $, I put a dollar a day into the Nikkei. Right. And of course, you know, with currency fluctuate, there's a lot of other things there. But let's just say a dollar a day in there, you would have kept pace with inflation, which is not great. But that is typically what you see in the like in the worst from like 62 to 72 I think or 62 to I think 82. In the US which is like one of the worst like 20 year periods it was something similar. Like if you just kept buying dollar cost averaging over that period, you would have basically kept pace with inflation, which is one of the worst periods in U.S. history.

[Josh Brown]

What's so funny is like you, one of your most known blog posts was where you answered the question with data the way that you do. What's smarter? Lump sum investment at one point in time or dollar cost average? Don't put it all in now, but put it on over time. Definitively the right answer because markets trend higher over time is the lump sum wins out over most time periods and you proved it. But the message of just keep buying is a DCA message. And the reason it's necessary is because most of the people reading it don't have all the money they're ever going to make. They're going to make more money next year. So it has to be a DCA message.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. And also, I mean those are two different. I think there's a definitional issue here. So there's two different definitions for DCA which we both use all the time. And so like we're talking about like oh, everyone just calls, you know, we call bitcoin market cap. The same thing is the issue with dca. So when you're doing like dollar cost averaging, the original definition, it means like you're just buying over time, but you're buying when you get paid. So if you think like your 401k, you don't say oh yeah, I'm lump summing every two weeks and my K. Yeah, but that's what you're doing. People call that dollar cost averaging but you're actually making lump sum investment because you're buying as soon as you have the money. That's the important piece. Like when are you buying? If you're buying when as soon as you have the money to invest, that's like lump sum.

[Josh Brown]

The 401k contribution is a lump. Looks like a DCA because it's periodic over time, but it's a lump sum because you're not getting the withholding. Yeah, you're piecing it into the market. You're just throwing.

[Michael Batnick]

You don't take 15 grand out of my. I mean, no one has a 15 grand first paycheck. But like, you don't just say, hey, I'm going to donate, you know, or contribute 15 grand, take that in my paycheck and I'm slowly going to put it in. No, you just take it out throughout the year. Right. That's a. I mean, that's technically a lump sum investment, which speaks to what.

[Nick Magiulli]

We were talking about earlier. Why does the market keep going up?

[Josh Brown]

You talk about this is a really good answer.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's the relentless bid. Every two weeks we do the same thing. We don't change our allocation. That's you credit to you. Relentless bid is great, but you're right about that. And we don't change our behavior at all. First of all, your books are terrific. Just Keep Buying is an amazing title.

[Michael Batnick]

I appreciate that one.

[Nick Magiulli]

This book is incredible too. I've recommended it to people already. And you're great at taking the data and storytelling with it in a way that makes sense to educated investors.

[Josh Brown]

So let me see, Let me see this.

[Michael Batnick]

The Wealth Ladder.

[Josh Brown]

So camera two, I'm showing you Nick's new book. This is called the Wealth Ladder. Proven strategies for every step of your financial life. Now, you did something in here that's getting traction on social media. You broke people up. It's not a caste system. I saw somebody say that.

[Michael Batnick]

I didn't see that yet. Off the lookout.

[Caleb Silver]

You'll love it.

[Josh Brown]

You'll love it. It's not a caste system.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's rungs.

[Josh Brown]

You're not ranking people based on where they belong in society. What you're saying, the rungs of the wealth ladder. Right. So you're saying like the lowest rung, but you're not using that term. You're saying levels.

[Michael Batnick]

I use levels. A lot of this is marketing. If I had called my first book dollar cost averaging, no one would have bought it. Just keep buying is a better thing. I call these levels.

[Josh Brown]

What's levels one through six? And where would you. Where would you put me?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. So this is household net worth. So it's households. And then net worth is all your assets.

[Josh Brown]

It's not income. It's not common Income, this is literally assets minus whatever debts.

[Michael Batnick]

We'll get to this chart in a second. But this for the levels just straight up. Level one, less than ten thousand dollars. And this is for the US less than ten thousand dollars in net worth. Level two is ten thousand to one hundred thousand dollars. Level three is a hundred thousand to a million dollars. Level four is one million to ten million.

[Josh Brown]

You're calling these things something? Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, no, I, I, oh. In the tweet online I said I'm gon that these are all different economic classes, which I'll get to at the end.

[Nick Magiulli]

Level five.

[Caleb Silver]

Wait, hang on. I know you have to draw the line somewhere. These seem a bit wide. The bands.

[Michael Batnick]

They are wide.

[Josh Brown]

They are million to 10 million.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, they're wide.

[Josh Brown]

With a net worth of a million, does not have the same lifestyle as somebody with a net worth of 10 million.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I agree. Those are. But the one at a million is closer to level three and the one at 10 million is closer to level five. I'm saying the people four and six are basically identical.

[Caleb Silver]

I know, I know. You have to draw.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm saying like 4, like 4 million, 6 million are basically identical. Like you're saying that's $2 million, but that's person is not going to spend 2 million. They're going to have a little bit more income. They're going to maybe have a vacation. They're not flying private. Like your lifestyle changes with massive, like a 10x logarithmic jump. That's where you're starting to see that.

[Caleb Silver]

Was your big insight.

[Michael Batnick]

That's my big insight. And, and the whole reason I came up with this levels framework, because a lot of people have done levels of wealth, a lot of different people have done it. The problem is there, there's no easy way to memorize this. And so by using the logarithms, it would just made it so much easier doing 10x. So hey, if I know that level, 300,000 to a million, if I know that's like the middle class, which it is. In the United States, 43% of households are in.

[Josh Brown]

What's the middle class? Level three.

[Michael Batnick]

Level three, which is 100,000 to a million.

[Josh Brown]

100 to a million is 40% of the country.

[Michael Batnick]

40% of the country, US households.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, but then you talk about the difficulty in getting from one level to the next. And of course most people don't ascend into level five.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, that's less than 2% of households ever make it to level five. And level six, which is 100 million plus, that's, like, you know, less than point 00 now.

[Josh Brown]

Do you have to fight a main bad guy at the end of each level?

[Nick Magiulli]

No.

[Josh Brown]

You sort of do, though.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, I guess there's, like, the. The bad. The. The thing to look out for.

[Josh Brown]

Like. Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

In Level five, Like, it's, like, it's over. Concentration.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, I was gonna say. I was gonna say the end of Level five is a mistress. Oh. Like, there's no.

[Michael Batnick]

There's that, too.

[Josh Brown]

I mean, there's, like, the personal temptations that come along.

[Michael Batnick]

Of course there's. That's everywhere.

[Caleb Silver]

At Level three, it's the irs. Level four is Powell.

[Josh Brown]

All right, so congratulations. The book came out this week.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, came on Tuesday.

[Josh Brown]

All right, so you're doing a ton of shit. Yeah. Can we get you on Caleb's podcast?

[Michael Batnick]

I love. He gives me the best intro. So I love your.

[Josh Brown]

I know you're going on Jill Schlesinger, and she texted us to find out the most embarrassing thing about you that nobody knows.

[Michael Batnick]

I should just send her that photo of me in high school maybe.

[Nick Magiulli]

That's.

[Michael Batnick]

That's pretty good. But I have a photo.

[Josh Brown]

I have to be honest. She might have that. She might be in possession of that photo. You are metalhead.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I know. Ozzy. I mean, the other. I mean, crazy. Like, I'm supposed to be celebrating my book and everything. Ozzy dies this week. And so for me, that's like a big.

[Josh Brown]

I know that's a big deal if you're Ozzy. If you're a metalhead, Ozzy is your Jerry Garcia or Kurt Cobain or he's.

[Michael Batnick]

Or is your Aussie, basically. So he was there before all. I mean, I guess. I don't know. Jerry Garcia was, but in the timeline.

[Josh Brown]

But you know what's interesting? Ozzy's biggest songs all predate you basically being born.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Oh, for sure. I mean, yeah, he was, you know, early 80s with Sabbath. Sabbath was the metal band. They started metal in the 70s. That is. They started that entire genre. Right.

[Josh Brown]

The Beatles actually started heavy metal.

[Michael Batnick]

What song?

[Josh Brown]

Helter Skelter.

[Michael Batnick]

I say it's more rock, not really Beatles.

[Nick Magiulli]

The Beatles were a rock band from Liverpool.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, no, I know the Beatles are. Thank you.

[Josh Brown]

Helter Skelter's the first heavy metal song.

[Michael Batnick]

Some have said. Stepping Steppenwolf, Born To Be Wild. They say that's the first metal song. This has been debated. Trust me, I've thought about this a lot. This has been highly debated.

[Caleb Silver]

Have you quantified it?

[Michael Batnick]

I have not quantified It. But I think it's born to be wild by step. He says heavy metal Thunder. You know, when he's.

[Josh Brown]

What was it that attracted you to metal when you were a teenager? Was just the people you around were into that.

[Michael Batnick]

It was high energy. It was high energy. Yeah. There's a lot of high energy to it. I just like the sound of it. I mean, you know, I started growing my hair and I just. I liked it.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's fun for a metalhead. You quote a lot of great rappers in this.

[Michael Batnick]

I know. Well, I love that you're also high energy. Right.

[Caleb Silver]

I got you watch. Did you watch the Billy Joel doc yet?

[Nick Magiulli]

No.

[Caleb Silver]

Yeah.

[Nick Magiulli]

Worth it?

[Josh Brown]

Not yet. I'm going to watch it this weekend.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's a requirement for Long island people. Right.

[Caleb Silver]

Come on.

[Josh Brown]

Well, what were your. I'm guessing your music was like. She was skater. You're like one generation older than her. Okay. Clash.

[Caleb Silver]

Pearl Jam.

[Josh Brown]

Are you the Clash? What, reggae?

[Nick Magiulli]

Reggae. Pure reggae. Dance hall reggae, roots reggae. I had a reggae show in college. Wow. If I wasn't doing this, I would probably be a reggae entertainer at Sunsplash.

[Michael Batnick]

Wow.

[Josh Brown]

All right.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, wait, can we do the white.

[Josh Brown]

Another white guy with dreads.

[Nick Magiulli]

That's what the world.

[Michael Batnick]

Can we do that chart real quick? Because I think it's important.

[Josh Brown]

So throw it up.

[Michael Batnick]

This is showing. This is the snapshots of wealth over time from the survey of consumer finance is the Federal Reserve. I've broken this into the levels, right? So the level 1, less than 10k, level 2, etc. And what you can see that bottom, dark blue. And level four, that's the big story here, which is in 1989, which is the first bar, it was 7% of U.S. households. And by the way, this is inflation adjusted. Well, so this has already been adjusted for inflation. In 1989, that's 7% of households. Today it's 18% of stock market. It's stock market, home prices. A lot of different things have contributed debt. There's just more wealth than ever before.

[Josh Brown]

It's not just stock market, though.

[Michael Batnick]

It's compensation, equity, home equity compensation.

[Josh Brown]

And stock market.

[Caleb Silver]

Level one is shrinking.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, level one was 25%. Now it's about 20%. So that like the poorest part of society is much smaller. And this is once again, this is inflation adjusted wealth. And so those are shrinking. And there's more, you know, in the upper middle class, as I call it, 1 to 10 million, which is supposed to be location agnostic. Obviously, if you have like $8 million and you're in Alabama, you're definitely upper class. But like I was trying to say, even in New York City, like, I'm trying to be location agnostic here. I think this is the big story here because there's more people in that bottom bucket, and that's creating a lot of competition for these resources. I wrote about this recently and for stocks. Yeah, I mean, for stocks. I mean, house prices. You know, as I said, the AMEX lounge is overrun right now. It's crazy. Like, you go, there's. There's lines to get in there. There's more people with these cards than ever before. I think the upper middle class is going through an existential crisis, and I think we're going to see this play out over the next few years.

[Josh Brown]

Right. The system is not built for this much affluence. This many people experiencing affluence, everything is buckling. There are no more VIP experiences. Everyone's a vip.

[Nick Magiulli]

Turn the travel rewards and the credit card rewards business on its head. If you watch what the airlines are doing with reward points, it's not what it's working on.

[Caleb Silver]

The AMEX call, all they asked about, they' Sorry to keep belaboring the point, but it was all about competition with cards and rewards.

[Michael Batnick]

Yep.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's a new game.

[Josh Brown]

Agreed. All right, guys, did you have fun on the show today?

[Nick Magiulli]

What?

[Michael Batnick]

Loved it. Loved it.

[Josh Brown]

I gotta tell you, you're two of my favorite people to talk to. This is just a dream episode for me. Thank you. The deck, the book. So proud of your investopedia. So proud of you coming out with your newest book. This is just an awesome time to. To have you guys. I want to just say thank you so much for being here. We end the show by asking people what they're looking forward to. So obviously, I know selling a million books is on the list for you.

[Michael Batnick]

My honeymoon. We're going south of France.

[Josh Brown]

So tell me what, Tell me what you're doing.

[Michael Batnick]

We're doing. We're going nice for four nights, and then three nights in Paris, and then we'll be back.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, that's a sick trip. What do you do, what do you do in Nice's beaches? Right?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, we do a little bit of that. You'll go to Monaco. You can go down to Saint Tropez. There's a bunch of different stuff you.

[Caleb Silver]

Can now or Monaco.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, Monaco. Yeah. All right, we'll call it that.

[Josh Brown]

Now, famously, your wife is a renowned lover. You shared with us. So is four nights in Nice enough?

[Michael Batnick]

That's a great. This is a Great question.

[Josh Brown]

All right, well, we'll ask her.

[Michael Batnick]

We'll do after. After we turn off the.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, maybe we'll have you back on after the honeymoon.

[Michael Batnick]

We'll have her come on and we'll get an interviewer.

[Josh Brown]

What are you looking forward to, Caleb?

[Nick Magiulli]

I'm looking forward to pictures from Nick's honeymoon. Beyond that again, I'm to arrange a university tour for Investopedia. Take us back to school.

[Josh Brown]

Where do you want to go?

[Nick Magiulli]

Some of the biggest schools throughout the country.

[Josh Brown]

In the process of planning this.

[Nick Magiulli]

In the process of planning it, looking for partners that want to be a part of it. But I, I, I have this dream of making us a, A real part of young people's complete education, because I don't think they're getting it. So that's one big deal. But also, future proof's coming up. Shout out to that. We're going to have some real fun there. Got some great panels coming up and.

[Josh Brown]

We'Re thrilled to have you guys there.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's. It's really an honor for us. And this has been an honor too. But right when I'm outta here, I'm on my way home to New Mexico to see the parents and see some old friends. So I will be in the land of Enchantment when this airs.

[Josh Brown]

Good for you, Caleb. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Michael. What are you looking forward to, my friend? Oh, shit. That's what I should say too, right? Our kids are at summer camp. Oh, nice. They're at a sleepaway camp. And this is the third weekend, which is when you go up and see them and bring them, bring them food. What do you got? What do you have to bring him? What's the snack list that he asked for?

[Caleb Silver]

She's not like a big eater, so I don't know.

[Josh Brown]

He doesn't care, really.

[Caleb Silver]

Not a huge eater.

[Josh Brown]

I think the nugget wants me to bring him a porterhouse and Peter Luger's.

[Caleb Silver]

Stop.

[Michael Batnick]

Wow.

[Josh Brown]

No, I bring him like an Italian hero. He's thrilled. You know, they're not babies anymore. They're not asking for candy. Oh, Smith Street Deli again. It's the only deli that's open on time.

[Caleb Silver]

I know they are. Sherry, my hero. She said no.

[Nick Magiulli]

It's closed.

[Josh Brown]

It's closed. Yeah. So we'll hit the deli, we'll hook him up. All right, guys, it's been a pleasure. Hey, shout out to. Shout out to all the listeners, all the viewers. We appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for coming to tune in, please make sure you check out of Dollars and Data, which is Nick Magiulli's blog. Buy his new book, the Wealth Ladder, at fine booksellers everywhere. Check out my friend Caleb Silver's website, Investopedia, and make it. What the. Are you going?

[Michael Batnick]

He's gone. He's already.

[Josh Brown]

All right, you know, visiting days tomorrow. Right. See you later, guy. Can you imagine.

[Michael Batnick]

A podcast?

[Nick Magiulli]

He's going to buy some open door.

[Josh Brown]

I think what's funny is this is our 201st show. Like he knows how this is supposed to end. I've lost my train of thought. Good night. Goodbye.

[Michael Batnick]

Thank you. Thanks for having us on.

[Nick Magiulli]

Thank you.

[Michael Batnick]

Irish exited a podcast.