Memory Is a Bubble, Nvidia’s Blow-Out Quarter, SpaceX Is Coming With Jan Van Eck

Summary

The Compound and Friends – May 22, 2026

Episode: "Memory Is a Bubble, Nvidia’s Blow-Out Quarter, SpaceX Is Coming"
Hosts: Josh Brown, Michael Batnick
Guest: Jan Van Eck (President & CEO, VanEck)

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Episode Overview

In this lively and insightful episode, Josh Brown and Michael Batnick are joined by returning fan favorite, Jan Van Eck, for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of business, markets, investing, and society. The trio dives deep into Nvidia’s record-breaking results, the coming SpaceX IPO, the enduring dominance of megacap tech, structural changes in the market (focusing on AI CapEx and ETF indexes), government debt concerns, the productivity vs. job loss debate, market bubbles, capitalism, and wealth in America.

The podcast effortlessly blends market anecdotes, history, personal stories, and hot takes, reflecting the energetic, conversational tone that "The Compound and Friends" is known for.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening Banter: Podcast Culture, Ties, and Knicks Games

• Jan gifts the annual "themed tie," sparking playful banter about historical figures and financial history references (00:00-01:25).
• Michael shares stories of meeting Josh during career lows at Knicks playoff games, with reflective anecdotes about memory and how missed moments become part of personal mythology (01:41-05:20).
• Quote:
  • Michael: "I've been to, what, 300 match, four days of my life. I will never see that again.” (05:13)
  • Josh: "You deprived a real Knicks fan of the opportunity of a life." (06:18)

2. SMH, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and ETF Construction

• Origin story of SMH ETF: acquired from Merrill Lynch, originally made for commissions, not fees.
• Discussion on ETF index construction quirks, the history of sector "holders," and how construction influences returns (09:00-14:36).
• Notable takeaway: SMH’s outperformance due to high concentration in Nvidia, contrasting with equal-weighted sector ETFs.
• Jan explains how index rules matter – cap weighting vs. equal weighting, inclusion rules, and why momentum has favored large caps.
• Quote:
  • Jan: "The main differential on performance is because of Nvidia; the other ETFs have smaller weight plus they own all those mid-sized companies that really... went sideways." (14:03)

3. Structural Shifts: Megacap Dominance, Antitrust, and Network Effects

• Modern network effects and lax antitrust allow giants to horizontally dominate industries, raising questions about the fate of small caps and market structure (17:00-18:25).
• AI, the internet, and scaling advantages are making large companies’ moats more durable.
• Josh: "We stopped enforcing antitrust 25 years ago...in that environment...why would you think there's going to be any sort of durable advantage to small caps?" (18:25)
• Jan agrees today’s market is about "earnings growth"—and tech giants are "lapping everyone else."

4. AI, Tech, and Reflexive Wealth Creation

• AI CapEx driving nearly all positive market action. More than half the S&P 500—by Adam Parker’s count—are positioned in the AI infrastructure buildout (29:07).
• Wealth “flywheel” from IPOs like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI—cash from liquidity events flowing to real estate, consumption, and back into the capital markets (29:37-31:30).
• Discussion of ETF, index inclusion, and the NASDAQ’s rapid adjust to the coming SpaceX IPO.
• Jan: "It's very reflexive and it's all based on one thing. The wealth that's going to happen from these SpaceX and anthropic IPOs..." (29:37)
• Josh: "It's recursive. It's a circle. It's around and around we go." (30:06)

5. Government Debt, Rates, and Macro Risks

• Jan voices long-term US debt concerns; rising budget deficits, future impact on treasuries, and how markets ignore these risks—until they don't (22:54-26:21).
• Michael quotes Warren Pies, highlighting robust projected sales growth and nominal GDP; argues rising yields could reflect strong economic activity, not just stress (26:33-27:29).
• Jan: "If Trump spends all this money on defense, it's going to have a six handle again...when the markets lose confidence, the Fed has no control over the 10-year." (23:13)
• Josh: "Almost everything happening that's positive is directly related to AI CapEx build out..." (28:47)

6. Fed Policy and Chairmanship Transition

• Context: Trump appointee Kevin Warsh expected to be less active and less vocal than Powell (36:16-40:37).
• General agreement that stability and less "knob twiddling" (constant tinkering) is desirable after Powell’s era of over-communication.
• Michael: "It's a lot easier to sort of do nothing when we're at a more normal neutral rate [...] than when we're at 1%." (40:37)
• Jan: "Don't get me started...he blew up Silicon Valley bank, right? ...he shouldn't have blown him up in the first place." (40:54)

7. Nvidia, Semiconductors, and AI CapEx Bubble Debate

• Discussion shifts to Nvidia’s earnings: hyperscaler CapEx is expected to exceed $1T by 2027; AI infrastructure soon a $3–4T annual spend (41:23).
• Nvidia’s unique moat—CUDA software platform and end-to-end ecosystem—makes it the “Walmart of compute.”
• Some memory makers like Micron and Samsung are seeing outsized profits, but Jan warns they lack long-term competitive moats, with most gains stemming from price spikes not sustainable structural advantage (55:13-56:39).
• Josh: "Every serious person working in AI is fluent in the CUDA software platform and how to use it...it's the bedrock of AI." (58:28)
• Jan: "My thesis is that Nvidia is a blue chip survivor because of CUDA, because of the software...If you're in that position, it's Nvidia's game to lose, at least as being one of the blue chip providers." (58:14)

8. Bubbles, Bears, and the Limits of "AI Everything”

• With so much economic activity and stock market performance tied to a single theme (AI), is this a bubble?
• The hosts suggest that while parts of the ecosystem will correct, the “real” AI/automation boom (robots, self-driving cars) hasn’t hit yet; bubble talk is early (63:35-64:51).
• Josh: "We want to say this is the top before the robots are even here?” (64:37)
• Jan: "Within the ecosystem there are corrections...openai looked like it was being lapped by anthropic." (65:06)

9. Capitalism, Wealth, and Social Impact

• Deep dive into the corrosive effects of inert/inherited wealth vs wealth earned through work (69:47-72:54).
• Reflection on historical vs. modern philanthropy. Are today’s technocratic billionaires as civically engaged as Gilded Age tycoons? (74:00-79:30)
• Jan: "Wealth can be very corrosive...Happiness comes from growth, from your family, from working, from having meaning in your life. Wealth is an enemy of that." (69:47)
• Discussion of New York legacy philanthropy vs. today’s more private, less “monumental” giving.

10. Society, Social Media, and Culture Shifts

• Social media’s psychological impact, the push to unplug (bricks, pouches in schools/comedy clubs), and the analog counterculture among young people (81:53-84:24).
• Jan: "Social media was a technology that had a lot of negative social implications...One of the biggest misses in my lifetime is like, wow, this created a lot of weird behavior." (82:37)
• Michael shares his habit-breaking “phone brick,” while hosts agree taking phones from kids in schools led to immediate improvements.

11. Book Recommendations & Closing

• Jan recommends:
  • Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis ("...explains who all the founders were, their different political philosophies and their personalities.”) (85:01–85:33)
  • How the Scots Invented the Modern World
• Brief riff on how Scottish and Irish immigrants shaped America and the world (85:45–86:43).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Michael Batnick: "I avoided catastrophe with Halliburton. I met this guy, and I feel like I'm good now...I'm happy that we...But genuinely, I was feeling like..." (04:20-05:02)
• Jan Van Eck: "The reason SMH has performed so well is...the rules of inclusion and the cap...the biggest holding...can be up to 20% and that's Nvidia..." (14:03)
• Josh Brown: "Network effects businesses on the scale that we have them now, that's it. Number one, the internet. Number two, we stopped enforcing antitrust 25 years ago." (18:18-18:25)
• Jan Van Eck: "It's very reflexive and it's all based on one thing. The wealth that's going to happen from these SpaceX and anthropic IPOs..." (29:37)
• Josh Brown: "This entire S and P has become an AI momentum ETF. Is that too extreme for your taste?" (28:47)
• Jan Van Eck: "Don't get me started...he blew up Silicon Valley bank...he shouldn't have blown him up in the first place." (40:54)
• Jan Van Eck: "...they don't really have competitive technology. Sure, it's a duopoly...but they're vulnerable and most of their profits are coming because they're like, oh, you need my stuff, I'm going to raise my prices..." (55:46)
• Jan Van Eck: "My thesis is that Nvidia is a blue chip survivor because of CUDA, because of the software..." (58:14)
• Josh Brown: "We want to say this is the top before the robots are even here?” (64:37)
• Jan Van Eck: "Happiness comes from growth...wealth can be very corrosive." (69:47)
• Josh Brown: "...for a moment...everyone had enough money...we ended up with people marching in the streets, burning stores down...maybe the worst possible thing for everyone to have enough money all at once." (67:29-68:59)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Opening Banter & Knicks Stories: 00:00–08:54
• SMH & ETF Construction: 09:00–16:34
• Megacap Dominance, Market Structure: 16:34–22:54
• AI, Wealth Creation, IPO Impacts: 29:08–34:12
• Government Debt & Macro Risks: 22:54–29:08
• Fed Transition Discussion: 36:16–41:02
• Nvidia, AI Bubble, and Chips: 41:02–64:51
• Capitalism, Wealth & Society: 69:47–79:30
• Social Media & Culture: 81:53–84:24
• Book Suggestions and Closing: 85:01–86:43

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Summary

This episode is a sweeping, energetic conversation that threads market mechanics, mega-trends in AI, the rise of megacap tech, societal impacts of wealth, and the evolution of our economic system. Highlights include insider ETF construction wisdom, clarity on why Nvidia remains dominant, the social ripple effects of the current AI and tech boom, and refreshing candor on the role of wealth and capitalism in 2026 America. The chemistry between the hosts and their guest, Jan Van Eck, makes even the densest financial topics accessible and entertaining.

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For further reading:

• Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis
• How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman

Transcript

[Jan Van Eck]

Here's our annual tie.

[Josh Brown]

I love it. Wait, what's the theme this year?

[Jan Van Eck]

See if you can figure it out.

[Michael Batnick]

It's got to be warsh. No, no, Hamilton.

[Jan Van Eck]

Hold on, hold on. Look at the eagle. What's ccl?

[Michael Batnick]

Carnival Cruise Lines.

[Josh Brown]

Carnival Cruise is a good one. Oh, I love pink.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. No. Who is this?

[Jan Van Eck]

What is ccl?

[Michael Batnick]

Is that.

[Jan Van Eck]

Dude, I'm walking out of here. You have a backup.

[Michael Batnick]

Is that.

[Jan Van Eck]

What's the C in Latin? What does the c stand?

[Michael Batnick]

Cerebres.

[Jan Van Eck]

100, 250. Oh, my God.

[Michael Batnick]

Is that George Washington?

[Josh Brown]

Cerebus.

[Michael Batnick]

Cerebrus. Who's the other guy? Celebrex. Who is it? Is it Celebrex?

[Jan Van Eck]

3 most important things in financial history. Hamilton. The founding of the system. FDR bailed out the banks. Stablecoin.

[Josh Brown]

Tight shot on this.

[Jan Van Eck]

First time that financial company can compete against banks.

[Michael Batnick]

Is this Kissinger?

[Jan Van Eck]

Who is it?

[Michael Batnick]

It looks like him.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's Hamilton, FDR and Stablecoins.

[Michael Batnick]

That's fdr.

[Josh Brown]

I missed the Stablecoin.

[Michael Batnick]

That does not.

[Josh Brown]

Where over here. Next to mine. Next to mine. I thought that was like just.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's usdc. That's a symbol. I couldn't put.

[Josh Brown]

I love it.

[Jan Van Eck]

I couldn't put tether because of course, tether is like.

[Michael Batnick]

So thanks to Jan. I wear blazers now because Jan invited me to an event and he said. I said, yeah, right. Yeah, of course. I'd love to come. Thank you. And he goes. He emailed me back. He goes, not to be a dick, but please don't wear a T shirt.

[Jan Van Eck]

Everyone else is wearing suits.

[Michael Batnick]

Don't wear a T shirt.

[Jan Van Eck]

He wore a T shirt.

[Josh Brown]

And you find his hoodie.

[Michael Batnick]

I wore a T shirt and a blazer.

[Josh Brown]

Wait, Nick, put this on my desk. I'm going to wear that. I'm going to wear that on TV.

[Jan Van Eck]

So.

[Michael Batnick]

The first time I met Josh was in 2,011. I was in a dark place in my life. My mother was about to pass away. I had just gotten the last, like, quasi legitimate job opportunity. I'm sitting down for game three in Madison Square Garden. Nick's Heat. We were down two zero because, you know, LeBron. And as I sit down, I remember, it's like a flashbulb memory for me because as I sit down, like my body, my soul left my body. I was like, prepared to go home

[Josh Brown]

and get the email at the game.

[Michael Batnick]

Literally, as I'm sitting down from the CFO of a company and you think

[Josh Brown]

you're gonna get this job.

[Michael Batnick]

It was just. It Was the last hope in the planet. And I was already unemployed for, like, a year. Like, I was such. It was such a rock bottom time in my life. So it was game three. Mario Chalmers, who? I would kiss him if I saw him for this. He hit a corner three, put the Knicks down, like, 21 at the end of the third. And I said, I'm leaving. And my friend goes, what do you. Where are you going? I said, I gotta go home. I was like, not.

[Josh Brown]

You can't enjoy a basketball game. So I was unemployed for a year.

[Michael Batnick]

It was. It was. It was not great. So that was the first time I left the playoff game early. And I met this guy that night. I never met.

[Josh Brown]

We met on the. We met on the train platform, back

[Michael Batnick]

in at, like, 11:45. And literally, if Chalmers missed that shot, I probably would have stayed. All right, fast forward.

[Josh Brown]

Now. What was I doing that night? Was. I was.

[Michael Batnick]

You were drinking.

[Josh Brown]

Well, definitely. But why was I getting off a train at 11?

[Michael Batnick]

It was a Friday night. It was a Friday night.

[Jan Van Eck]

It was a different era, so it's a different area. You were a young man. Hold on.

[Josh Brown]

Married, though. What was I doing?

[Michael Batnick]

You were a young man.

[Josh Brown]

I would never come home a quarter to 12 now.

[Jan Van Eck]

What are you talking about now? Because.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, Never. All right, so fast forward, fast forward, fast forward 14 years. So that's how I met Josh. Leaving a playoff game early. Fast forward 14 years. Last year, game one at the Garden. We were up by 12 with, like, legitimately, like, a minute left, whatever it was. And I said, all right, I'm gonna go catch a train. I, like, beat the crowd. And I escaped. Thank God I escaped the Halliburton shot. I would have. I might have. I might have been crying, Dagger. I might have been crying if I

[Josh Brown]

was in my seats all time, Dagger.

[Michael Batnick]

So on Monday night, or whatever it was on Monday night, Tuesday night, on Tuesday night, um, Dean WADE Hit a 3 and 1. Put us down 19. Next trip, Donovan Mitchell. 3. Put us down 22. I said, all right, I'm leaving. I just. I don't want to be here anymore. Like, the game's over. I'll see you. Uh, and so you know what? We all know what happened. I feel like the market basketball gods

[Josh Brown]

for the people that don't listen to basketball. It might have been a top 10 all time postseason comeback.

[Michael Batnick]

Not might have. This decade, there was a number like. Like, teams up 20 were se. We're 643 and oh, up 20 with six minutes to go.

[Josh Brown]

No one has ever, ever.

[Michael Batnick]

So I missed now the basketball gods. I feel like I'm even. I avoided two. Catastrophe. I avoided a catastrophe with Hal Burden. I met this guy, and I feel like I'm good now. I'm even. However, yesterday morning or Wednesday morning. Yeah, yesterday morning, I got so many emails, including from Adam, saying, I can't. You must have had the time of your life. And so I am.

[Josh Brown]

I am simultaneously put it that way.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm happy that we. But genuinely, I was feeling like.

[Jan Van Eck]

Were you watching it on your phone?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I watched the end of the game in roses in the guard in Penn Station.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. You deserve to be roasted, though, for the following reason.

[Michael Batnick]

So I'm. I'm. I'm genuinely a little bit depressed. Like, I missed the. I've been to, what, 300 match, four days of my life. I will never see that again.

[Josh Brown]

But it's not true.

[Jan Van Eck]

You'll never see that again.

[Josh Brown]

It's not. That's not the reason why he deserves to be roasted. These are the reasons. First things first. If you watch the game on tv, you know nobody left. That garden was fuller than any other arena would be for any other team.

[Jan Van Eck]

Crowd was great.

[Josh Brown]

I really wanted to say was on there, like, they were quiet, but they jumped to their feet the minute we started to score.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay. I left at the bottom. I left at the bottom.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, that's one. Two.

[Michael Batnick]

I deserve credit. I changed the whole juju of the arena.

[Josh Brown]

Kendall Jenner hadn't left by the time you left. 2. And this is like.

[Michael Batnick]

She wasn't there.

[Josh Brown]

Those were. Do you send at least $10,000 tickets?

[Michael Batnick]

No, stop, stop.

[Josh Brown]

How much could you have sold that ticket for?

[Michael Batnick]

1100. That's not. That has nothing to do with anything.

[Josh Brown]

No, but you have two of them.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, I split with a friend. But that. That has absolutely nothing to do with it.

[Josh Brown]

I understand, but I'm making the point. Somebody else would have loved to have paid that much money to have sat through the whole thing.

[Michael Batnick]

Totally erroneous. Next.

[Josh Brown]

Why is it erroneous?

[Michael Batnick]

What does that have to do with anything?

[Josh Brown]

You deprived a real Knicks fan. You deprived a real Knicks fan of the opportunity of a life. That's too much. Too much. Where's Duncan? Duncan would be laughing.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. Is there anything else?

[Josh Brown]

I love you. I'm sorry that happened.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, I'm going tonight. No, I'm sorry I happened, and I am not leaving. I'm not.

[Josh Brown]

They could be down 30. You're not. You're not leaving.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm not leaving.

[Jan Van Eck]

All right.

[Michael Batnick]

I love. So. Shall we? Pod.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

It's

[Josh Brown]

Compounding Friends episode. Oh my God. This is my favorite show. Stop.

[Michael Batnick]

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

[Josh Brown]

This episode is brought to you by Tema ETFs. You've heard us talk on the show about how fast markets are shifting. Tema builds thematic ETFs around structural trends they believe have staying power. The kinds that are durable across market cycles, not just driven by headlines. The growth of the space economy, the surge in electricity demand as AI and data centers push the grid to its limits. The shift back to US Manufacturing as stretched supply chains and geopolitical tensions complicate trade. TEMA has nine institutional quality funds tracking these themes and more. Learn more about their lineup, read their insights and stay up to date@tema ETFs.com that's T E M A ETF.com. Welcome to the Compound and Friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnick and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. 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. Really compound in France. You guys in? Oh, man, what a treat. What an absolute treat we have for everybody listening. I have to tell you guys, this is an amazing time in the markets. It's an incredible time in certain sectors of the markets. Maybe witnessing something that we've never seen before, I have to say, and that could turn out really good or really bad. We're all gonna find out together. We have a fan favorite returning champion with us today, Mr. Jan Van Eck. Give him a round of applause.

[Michael Batnick]

There was a zero percent chance.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

99.9. 99.9.

[Josh Brown]

With me as always, my co host, Michael Batnik. Yeah, hi, my name is Downtown Josh Brown. First time listeners. Last time listeners. We appreciate you. Jan is the president, the CEO of Van Fox, a global investment management firm he has led since 2010, having joined the family founded firm in 1991. Vanek currently manages 199 billion as of 331, including the legendary SMH ETF, which has annualized at 29% a year since inception.

[Michael Batnick]

Unreal.

[Josh Brown]

In 2011. Holy cow. Before we get into the show, can I ask you an SMH question? I know the answer for the audience. The origin story of that product is a little bit wild. It was a Merrill lynch vehicle and you guys acquired it. Why did they sell it? They got out of the ETF business wholesale.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, they got out of asset management right during the financial crisis. And this was a product that made no fees. They created it actually for the commission revenue because it was a very tradable. It was only 25 stocks. The super liquid.

[Josh Brown]

Was it based on the socks?

[Michael Batnick]

No.

[Josh Brown]

So that's interesting. Is there the Philadelphia Semiconductor Exchange. Everyone calls it the sox, but that had been a long standing thing that people paid attention to. But that wasn't what SMH was built on.

[Jan Van Eck]

So the problem with the trusts, besides no fees, which is not good for anything in life, is they would create a basket of stocks and you literally couldn't change it. So for example, the funniest one, sorry for me was the regional holders. Regional bank holders.

[Josh Brown]

That's what the H H stands for. Holders. H O L, D R S. Correct. Okay.

[Jan Van Eck]

And the regional bank holders. What happened? All these central banks, big money center banks were buying the regional banks. So what was in that thing? B of A, you know, Citibank like. So the regional banks wasn't even a regional bank because once it was purchased, you had to keep.

[Josh Brown]

You got stock in the parent company.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, you got stock in the parent. You couldn't trade it. So these things were really distorted and they didn't have to follow 40 act law, you know, rules of diversification, all that kind of stuff. So it was. They're better.

[Michael Batnick]

I asked Claude this week about the Philadelphia Stock Semiconductor Index because I thought where the. Why Philadelphia? What does that. Did Ben Franklin find? You know, invent these semiconductors? That's where they were listed back in the day. Yeah, I didn't even know that there was a Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Yeah, that's the oldest stock exchange. I'm sure you know that.

[Jan Van Eck]

Not the.

[Michael Batnick]

No, in the United States.

[Josh Brown]

In the United States. Don't think it's the oldest.

[Michael Batnick]

According to Claude.

[Josh Brown]

Don't think Claude is right. The buttonwood tree was 1700s. I don't think anything predated that wasn't a stock exchange. That was where literally there is a document in the new. I just looked at it that brought a guest to the New York Stock Exchange today. They have the actual founding document that the 19 original dealers signed incorporating themselves as an exchange.

[Jan Van Eck]

I think the first trading was in Philadelphia, but wasn't an exchange. Cause they were trading government bonds.

[Josh Brown]

Were they trading cheesesteaks?

[Jan Van Eck]

Government bonds? That was the big thing though. And stock in the U.S. bank of the United States, which was our first central bank. And Hamilton, when he was Treasury Secretary actually he created the bond system to begin with, U.S. government bonds. But basically there was a crisis and he intervened in the market. He did whisper rumors that the US government was going to buy. He did some purchases.

[Michael Batnick]

Civil war venoms.

[Jan Van Eck]

And there were people outside to your point, in Philadelphia in the streets trading. So. But I don't think it was an exchange per se.

[Josh Brown]

How big is the smh?

[Jan Van Eck]

It's big.

[Josh Brown]

Are you allowed to say it's like

[Jan Van Eck]

over 60 billion or something?

[Josh Brown]

Is it the most successful in those terms? Sector ETF in the market?

[Jan Van Eck]

It's gotta be.

[Josh Brown]

Not sector industry because like sector is

[Jan Van Eck]

certainly the biggest semi by a mile.

[Michael Batnick]

Do you, do you guys consider yourself like the big. An indie? Are you the biggest indie? Are you like. Or are you like so far past indie? How do you consider yourself like Vaneck Asset Management?

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, indeed.

[Michael Batnick]

But you gotta be the biggest because you're not State street, you're not a bank.

[Josh Brown]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

And you're not Blackrock, but you're WisdomTree.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, right now we're pretty big, but you're huge. We're relying on SMH and some other things, but yeah, and we've actually had a big European business. So our European assets last year went from like 11 billion to 45 billion.

[Michael Batnick]

How? Why?

[Jan Van Eck]

We had a defense ETF and then a bunch of other things. And you know, Trump is like sell. You know, he's our top salesperson for a defense ETF in Europe.

[Josh Brown]

That's what I think when I think about. You guys have some of the most iconic. I don't want to call them thematic because they're indexes, but you have gdx, gdx, smh. Every trader on earth knows what these things are. And in the case of smh, I almost think it's become shorthand for the sector. Nobody talks about the socks anymore. It's almost like talking about the KBW bank index, which nobody does.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah. The reason SMH has performed so well is it's only the video we've been around. Right.

[Michael Batnick]

But it's second worst performer though we spoke about.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, but for people that are listening, it's how you construct it. You can call it, I'm sure 20 ETFs called semiconductor. But what are the rules of inclusion and the cap the bit meaning the biggest holding in our ETF can be up to 20% and that's Nvidia. And so the main differential on performance is because of Nvidia, the other ETFs have smaller weight plus they own all those mid sized companies that really. It's a viciously Competitive industry, and they all kind of went sideways.

[Josh Brown]

It's an interesting point. I don't know why equal weighting is so popular for sector OR Industry Group ETFs. I don't understand. Do they hate momentum? Because why wouldn't you want Broadcom and Nvidia to become outsized positions? And the reason I'm asking that is I think about, like, biotech. XBI versus IBB. XBI owns, I don't know, 1% of 100 biotech stocks or whatever it is. Why do you want. Why does anyone want that? Why wouldn't you want. When the sector's in favor, you want the biggest biotechs that are going up the most to be the biggest part of the portfolio?

[Michael Batnick]

I own xbi.

[Josh Brown]

But why do you.

[Michael Batnick]

Because it's the high. Because it's high beta.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, no, no, no. Stop, stop, stop.

[Josh Brown]

Backwards.

[Jan Van Eck]

Stop. Right? Because it's higher beta. Because, like, if you want the juice,

[Josh Brown]

small cap gold miner, you're taking winners. Let's talk and cutting them down.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Am I right?

[Michael Batnick]

I want the juice.

[Josh Brown]

Tommy's wrong.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm not buying and holding this forever.

[Jan Van Eck]

We live in this era where it's been all momentum, all large caps in every sector like that has driven performance emerging top to bottom. But in the old days, you wanted the smaller companies, like small caps, like small cap gold miners used to be. GDXJ used to trade. Much more volatile and much more on the upside than gdx. Yeah, but that. That's the reason. Sometimes manufacturers just create these things to create them, though. Josh.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, okay, I. So for me, if I think a sector is going to be in favor, and I want to be long the sector, it seems you would almost have to have brain damage to say, but I don't want the winners to be more than 2% of the portfolio.

[Michael Batnick]

No, no, no, no. You're conflating things. You think that bigger market caps are automatically the winners. They have been. That's.

[Josh Brown]

No, they have been for a hundred years.

[Michael Batnick]

No, they haven't. No, they haven't.

[Jan Van Eck]

15 years. 20 years, dude.

[Michael Batnick]

Waiting by market cap and waiting by momentum. I mean, we just built Porterhouse. It's not the same thing. The S&P 500 allocates by market cap weighting and market cap weighting is not always. It has been the last 15 years. Those are not always true or false

[Josh Brown]

for either you guys. True or F. Periods in which equal weight or small caps would be the other way to phrase that outperforms. Large caps are sporadic and short duration

[Jan Van Eck]

in the last era of 15 years or whatever.

[Josh Brown]

Are there entire decades? Yes, there are entire decades where an equal weight approach is better.

[Jan Van Eck]

Remember all the academic literature? Remember there's whole firms based on this. You want value and you want small cap, right?

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

John, you've seen this, this chart.

[Jan Van Eck]

As soon as they publish that research,

[Josh Brown]

you lose clients. Naom.

[Michael Batnick]

You know the chart from Ned Davis that showed if you invested a dollar in the S&P versus a dollar in the largest weighted stock at the time. Investing in the largest stocks at the time, up until Apple in 2013 when it broke the mold, was a terrible strategy. It's been in the last era, the last 15 years, where the largest have also happened to have the best momentum, the best earnings growth, et cetera, et cetera. But it's not permanent. It's not always.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, I mean, I wanted to talk about, you know, we'll talk about Semis and Nvidia maybe in this pod, but like that, that's the question. It's like, oh, the biggest companies, they always fail. You always look back and go the top 10 in the 70s. They never make it to the 80s and 90s.

[Michael Batnick]

I do think that era is. It's a structural permanent shift, in my opinion, because the amount of money that it takes to compete these days, not just with AI and the computer and all that stuff, although that's a big part of it. The moats are more durable, I think, than they have been in the past. Obviously not with everything. Intuit is down 23% today. Obviously things change and stuff, but the moats with capital are different than I think they were in the 50s.

[Josh Brown]

I think there's two other things we've never had. Network effects businesses on the scale that we have them now, that's it.

[Jan Van Eck]

So that's number one, the Internet.

[Josh Brown]

So that's the Internet. Number two, we stopped enforcing antitrust 25 years ago. Both parties are guilty to some extent. We just allowed companies to not only dominate one industry, but to spread out horizontally and dominate 12 industries. I don't see any real political momentum to reverse that. And so in that environment where you have network effects businesses where the bigger they are, the more profitable they become and nowhere with all whatsoever to trust bust. Why would you think that there's going to be any sort of durable advantage to small caps? It's like, what is the story? But the only thing I can come up with is a bear market and the small caps have less to fall because they were already at a lower multiple. I can't come up with why that would be a durable advantage to be smaller in the year 2026. So, I mean, I could be wrong.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's today's market structure. I agree. It's all about earnings. And if you look at earnings right, the tech giants just cry. They're lapping. They're lapping everyone else on earnings growth. If you could have small companies that used to grow faster, earnings wise, that's a great story. But Michael and I will have a response.

[Josh Brown]

Kroger is a publicly traded company. If you wanted to equal weight companies that are involved in the supermarket business, you would get an equal amount of Kroger as you would Amazon. Amazon literally could give groceries away for free so long as people are paying the prime fee. Like, it almost wouldn't even matter. There's no world in which, for any reason, that's just gonna flip itself on the Internet.

[Michael Batnick]

No. It feels like we've been at the end of the Runway for this story for the last 10 years, and it just keeps extending. Even prior to AI. So I was listening to a podcast by Matt Bellamy about, like, vertical Video is now the next big thing. So Reels is monetizing such an incredible amount. They're at a $50 billion annual run rate. And Reels just started monetizing in like 2022 or 2023. Reels has now surpassed Netflix. All of Netflix just Reels does more revenue than Netflix. And if you think about what we just saw this week with star, with SpaceX's S1 and what Starlink is doing. Have you seen what's happening to the broadband cable companies? They are. They are literally crashing through the floor, all of them. It's unbelievable. So it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

[Jan Van Eck]

But that's the genius of Elon, right? Creating this whole satellite phone network. Like, who thought. I mean, who thought, right? And that's the argument against the antitrust policy or for the laissez faire antitrust policy is someone will come along and they'll compete and they'll leapfrog you. That still is possible.

[Josh Brown]

It's. You could still come.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's hard, but it's.

[Josh Brown]

You could still come out of nowhere. But it just. The likelihood of it seems less. May. That may not be true. A lot of this is like anecdotal or a feel thing, but, like, the likelihood just seems less that the businesses that we talk about every day are disruptible in any way. The good news is they all compete with each other. There was a time when, like, I think Steve Jobs sat on Google's board, like stuff like that. They're, they're all amazing competitors and they do compete. They just don't compete with small companies. They compete against each other.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Amazon prime competes with Netflix every day

[Michael Batnick]

and Apple TV, YouTube.

[Josh Brown]

YouTube is competing with, you know like they're all competing for attention in a macro sense. And then on a micro level, every one of them has a business going up against another one. Just think like what Waymo versus Tesla versus Uber, like that'll be a battle royal for the next 10 years.

[Jan Van Eck]

And OpenAI came out of nowhere. Right. And suddenly have hundreds of millions of users now whether they can monetize it, but still. Right, so it's possible. And A.I. we weren't even talking about A.I. five years ago.

[Michael Batnick]

Right, so five years ago when you were here, or it wasn't five years ago, but one of my favorite appearances that you made on the show was when you were screaming about the bond market and how there's no buyers and that was a long bond market ago. We are not in Kansas anymore. How much of the sovereign debt around the world was negative yielding? I can't remember what it was. It was a lot. All right, I assume, I know you aren't happy about that. I assume you're not happy about the current yields today either.

[Jan Van Eck]

Meaning listen, I, in my 10 year macro view, bullish, AI bullish India really worried about our debt levels. In the United States, it's a timing thing. In the markets it's like the housing crisis. It's going to hit at some point. We just don't know when.

[Michael Batnick]

How do we know when?

[Jan Van Eck]

So I'm the most sensitive, I'm freaking out and everyone's like, John, what's going to hit? We're borrowing a trillion dollars a year, right. Our budget deficit was six and a half percent now shrunk to the low fives. If Trump spends all this money on defense, it's going to have a six handle again. When the gut, when the markets lose confidence, the Fed has no control over the 10 year. So right now everyone's not even paying attention. I don't know when this is going to be. The one thing I do point out is the UK bond on the long end. UK bond yields are going up. Japan, they're way off. 30 year bonds, 30 year bonds, long duration bonds.

[Josh Brown]

Can you explain what you think went on in the last week where all of a sudden the 30 year treasury hit a high it hadn't been at since 2007 and the market, the stock market did not even blink. We were so caught up in this AI cap and maybe that's part of why the 30 year bond is doing that. I'd love to hear what you think.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, no, it's an interesting question. Why didn't equities react more to the backup in rates? I guess if you want to put that away, they did a little bit, they wobbled.

[Michael Batnick]

Housing stocks did.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, they wobbled, but they didn't really fall over. And I think that's why I am bad on timing on this thing because I just don't think it's a worry right now.

[Josh Brown]

Why are rates doing that?

[Jan Van Eck]

Why are rates going up? Well, we had a bad oil. No, we had a bad inflation print.

[Josh Brown]

Right, I know, but.

[Jan Van Eck]

Because I think that's it. Look, I think it's two things happening at the same time and you can't prove it. That's a wonderful thing about finance. It's the bad CPI and PPI numbers. Right. So people are worried about inflation and they're just worried about, you need higher nominal yields, the higher interest rates in a higher inflation environment. Right. Otherwise real rates go down. Okay. At the same time, this war seems to last forever and we're spending a lot of money. If we spend another half a trillion dollars on defense next year, it's a blowout. It's a budget blowout.

[Michael Batnick]

But what do you think when this goes bad when something.

[Jan Van Eck]

Sorry, just to be clear, the markets, they may not price it in for another decade, but I'm just saying it's something I watch you say It's a blowout.

[Josh Brown]

500 billion dol. Fight Iran for a year. Okay. It's not.

[Jan Van Eck]

We don't have that. We don't have. That's the hidden secret. Like he can go over to China and talk to Xi Jinping. We don't have that money. That's our big Achilles heel in the United States. The markets are not paying attention at all. I'm with Iran. They're well behaved, I would argue, but you know, when the ten year goes over, I don't know, five or five and a quarter, I'm going to be freaking out.

[Josh Brown]

Is that why the Iranians are able to hold out?

[Jan Van Eck]

I don't think they think about that.

[Josh Brown]

You don't think they think about the financial situation of the country that they're going cuz we think of nothing but blockading them and harming them financially. You don't think it's crossed their mind?

[Jan Van Eck]

I think it's very much, really expensive in America. I think it's very much in China's mind. I think they think we're really weak because of that ultimately. And they're going to catch up on the technology front and one day they're going to wake up and they're going to say, we have more gold than the United States and we've got, you know, we've got a military that's competitive and your, your financial system, you know, we blew up right during the financial crisis. They were fine.

[Josh Brown]

Wow. So some would argue they swept some things under the rug like they did during COVID but we could.

[Jan Van Eck]

I'm not, I'm not extolling China. I'm just saying it's a, it's a, it's from a geopolitical perspective. It's a weakness for the.

[Michael Batnick]

Let me paste it.

[Jan Van Eck]

But I don't think Iran cares about.

[Michael Batnick]

Let me paint an alternate possibility of what's happening in the market. So friend of the show, frequent guest Warren Pies tweeted this great chart. Chart three, Daniel. He said S&P 500 forward. Sales growth is projected at 18% over the next 24 months. Historically, this corresponds to 12.4% nominal GDP growth, about 6% annualized. Something to consider as yields. And the Fed look for a new equilibrium. This is pretty, that's pretty tight. Not 100, but it's directionally. It's pretty good.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

So this is the glass half, full view of what's happening. It's like, listen, sales growth is really strong. Economic growth is really strong. Why would 10 year be at 3%? That wouldn't make sense either.

[Jan Van Eck]

Right. No, that's. Sorry, that's really. You're right. That's the third point that might be explaining higher yields, which is our economy's heating up, which is great.

[Josh Brown]

So anything good happening in the economy is either directly or indirectly related to AI. There's nothing. My opinion, there's nothing else good in the economy. The housing market's terrible. The bottom third of the country can't pay their bills. Delinquencies are starting to edge up very slowly in a lot of areas. People are having trouble with cell phone bills, they had trouble with utility bills over the last six months. Auto delinquencies starting to come off the bottom. Existing home sales. You literally can't buy or sell anything. Nobody else is. There's a lot of negatives in the economy. None of that shit matters to the s and P500 we have. I read Adam Parker today basically says there's 263 companies in the S and P that are involved in building the AI infrastructure. More than half the market. Whether it's Caterpillar or a digital reit or a utility or companies selling equipment to a utility, doesn't matter. Almost everything happening that's positive is directly related to AI capex build out or selling AI something to people. I don't see that changing. I could be an idiot, I could be wrong. And I'm not even saying it's a negative for investors. But like anything that's away from the AI theme, stocks aren't working, the companies aren't hiring people. It really seems to be getting into a place where Adam says the entire S and P has become an AI momentum etf. Is that too extreme for your taste or what are your thoughts on that concept?

[Jan Van Eck]

I think there's another industry besides AI and you talk about this. It's the wealth industry. It's the industry that we're in.

[Josh Brown]

We're part of this AI boom though.

[Jan Van Eck]

We're part. Right, okay, so we're definitely related or we're at the hip. But I'm just saying our businesses are booming.

[Michael Batnick]

But AI market, it's driving.

[Josh Brown]

But wait, right? IPOs, wealth creation on a massive scale. And stock prices which drive AUM fees. That's what's going on with the same trade.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's very reflexive and it's all based on one thing. And the wealth that's going to happen from these SpaceX and anthropic IPOs. I was at dinner with someone who bought a house in Noe Valley in San Francisco. A week later, someone bid another million dollars for the same house. The amount of cash that's going to be hitting Northern California for the people who haven't left.

[Josh Brown]

Tsunami of cash.

[Jan Van Eck]

Insane. The amount of wealth in this country is beyond my experience.

[Josh Brown]

So you said it's reflexive. I think it's recursive. I think it's a circle. It's around and around we go. Because like, hear me out. The person that's a SpaceX early shareholder, maybe their employee, maybe they're an investor. So the first window to sell for this deal I think is five weeks. Like it's very different than six month lockup. No, it's not. You're wrong. They're. They changing the way they do this specifically for SpaceX, they're having a rolling lockup period. And I think like within a few weeks the first sales can be made. You can't dump your whole position. But I think the liquidity coming from these wealth creation events will be very different than prior IPOs where they made you wait six months, nine months. You're talking about a $2 trillion IPO. Even if you allow 10% of shares to be sold, think about how much new cash that is. What does that cash do? It finances the construction of new McMansion, probably Ferrari. More Rolexes. Tons of stock market activity, tons of wealth management activity. Fee related stuff. Maybe starting new companies with that money. Like it's just, it's so it's recursive, it's. And I don't know what breaks the cycle. Obviously a stock market crash would do it. Barring that, I just don't know where it ends.

[Michael Batnick]

But this could break the cycle. So Tom Lee was talking about this. He said the amount of same thing. The amount of wealth that's going to be created is going to be staggering. Guess what? The amount of wealth has to also come from somewhere. Because who is going to finance these purchases of space X&OpenAI and anthropic on the open market? Where does the $80 billion in cash come from and what is that going

[Jan Van Eck]

to do to the index funds ETFs?

[Michael Batnick]

So is there enough money to support it?

[Jan Van Eck]

That's. I think that's. They're smart. SpaceX is smart in two, two senses. They know they've changed the rules of a lot of indices. So that ETFs, like some of ours, we've changed our rules or created them. That way we can buy pretty much right after it lifts. Normally an ETF would have a rule of depending on how, you know, how much they rebalance or how frequently they rebalance six months later or even a year later for some ETFs. So they're managing the initial float. I heard there's only going to be like 3 or 3.5% which is teeny. You normally wouldn't get included in an index with that little float because it can whip around so much. So I think they're really managing this intelligently. But it's going to be a lot of shares to unlock. Like it's going to be like 10%. It's going to be. It's got a lot of cash.

[Josh Brown]

I've heard some people say this is great that SpaceX will be in the NASDAQ, it'll be in the index in 10 days because how stupid would it be to have the fifth largest publicly traded company outside of the index that's meant to represent the stock market? What are they going to wait for it to go up another 100% at it? So I heard that version and then I heard the other version. Which is so basically the world's richest man says to the stock market, here's how things work now because I need my shareholders to be able to sell and you need to provide suckers in the form of ETF shareholders. So I don't feel strongly in either direction. I understand both arguments. What are your thoughts as an asset management executive?

[Jan Van Eck]

It should be in the indices, right? I mean the basics. I think that's, that's right. And it's just interesting that the, our industry, the ETF industry is learning because it used. Because the market's changing. Right. And these, we've never seen anything like this.

[Josh Brown]

Tesla coming to the market took about eight years too long.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, right.

[Josh Brown]

It was so big and they pushed it off as long as they could. And then by the time they added it, the index fund shareholders missed like 90% of the move. Right. So they don't want to repeat that, which I think is good.

[Michael Batnick]

If we can swallow these companies coming public. I don't know when OpenAI and Anthropic are going to. Obviously they seem primed. But if, but if we can get past this without the market just cratering, what's left for the bears?

[Josh Brown]

Deficits.

[Jan Van Eck]

I told you. Yeah, 10 year rates.

[Michael Batnick]

No, but come on.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, I'm serious. You guys are really good at history, right? Always the history, the risk. You know, financial crises have come from the banking system, right? Banks have done stupid stuff and they've blown up. This time the blow up will be in D.C. yeah, but there's a difference

[Michael Batnick]

between government debt and the amount of leverage that is in the system. At the corporate and house.

[Jan Van Eck]

There's not a lot of leverage in the system. There's not. It's all equity. It's vc. It's like it's not. After the financial crisis, we solve the private sector's debt issues, right? So we just got to keep our eye on the government. But look, I'll give you my acid test. When I meet with clients, I'm like, is the US government going to meet all its obligation in the next 10 years? 90% of us say of course. That's ridiculous. No way. We are not fixing the Social Security trust fund. That will run out of money. So.

[Michael Batnick]

No, it will.

[Jan Van Eck]

Payments will be cut 20% in. No, in the early three. Where are you going to get the money from?

[Michael Batnick]

We'll find it.

[Josh Brown]

No taxes.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, it's going to cost. That's going to. That's, that's my tree.

[Michael Batnick]

Under whose administration?

[Jan Van Eck]

You can't fix a retirement system three years before it Goes bankrupt.

[Josh Brown]

Hear me out. You can't hear me out. No need for retirement, because no one's going to be working. Just saying, this is something that I'm hearing. I'm hearing no more work. Nobody needs to work. It'll just be a citizen dividend from AI productivity.

[Michael Batnick]

Let's talk about the incoming new Fed chairman. So this is a Donald Trump appointee, Kevin Warship, expected to lower rates. Obviously, the President was pressuring Jerome Powell, calling him all sorts of names. And the Wall Street Journal wrote an article recently, the economy Kevin Warsh is inheriting is not the one that he wanted. So the previous Fed, for the most part. Let's go to chart two. There was consensus. Everybody was on the same page in terms of when it's time to raise rates, when it's time to cut rates, for the most part. This is a, this is from the Wall Street Journal showing Fed governors and regional banks and how many members were dissenting.

[Josh Brown]

And from 19, almost no dissent.

[Michael Batnick]

From 18 to 24, everybody was on the same page. And all of a sudden there was a lot of, there was a lot of different opinions about what the Federal Reserve and what the chairman should do about the direction of interest rates. And the market was pricing in a couple of rate cuts, and all of a sudden it's pricing in a rate hike. And I thought that idea was ridiculous. I don't think it's that ridiculous as I did six months ago. This is. And they always say, I don't know if they're like, what the data shows that they always test the market, always test a new Fed chairman. Looks like we're setting up for that again.

[Jan Van Eck]

Could be. It's a different environment. Right. I think coming into the year, like, Besant was scathing about Powell. Right. The critique was, you know. Yeah, you had consensus in the Fed, and those people were out of their minds and out of touch with reality. This, you know, the temporary inflation, they were all, they were all, they all agreed with each other. They were all wrong and massively wrong. Right. Tulip, How. And I think as we get away from him, and he was very articulate and communicative and obviously, you know, a responsible public official, but I think he won't look so great in retrospect. I don't know if we'll hear that much from Marsh. Right. He is kind of the. The Fed shouldn't do so much camp.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

And like, do you think if inflation is up because of oil prices, do you think the Fed should. The Fed has no control over oil prices. So I Think their instinct is to do nothing and to say less. And so I think that's kind of where we're at. But I don't know how he deals with all the different voices at the table. But that's kind of. I've penciled in for the last six months already. Kind of not a lot of change in monetary policy this year. I don't think that's a risk to the market. I think it's good, just stable policy.

[Josh Brown]

I think that's a thing that we all agree on. Like I've been saying, I don't understand why there are 12 different people speaking on behalf of the Fed in different cities throughout the course of the month, even when there's no rate decision. Why am I hearing these people's names all day? I'm not saying don't give speeches. I think the Janet Yellen Fed was the worst example of this. It was just a cacophony day after day after day. And when you actually look at rates during her term, almost nothing happened. Like, there was no reason. There was really no. It's nothing to do with her. There was no reason for there to be a ton of rate stuff. And then Trump, you know, he's got to get rid of her. She doesn't. She's not central casting. She doesn't look the part. Fine. I'm not saying I like the decision. I don't like this. I'm just saying he puts his guy in. And Powell, to his credit, I think he's serious. But he also, another one, could not stop talking, could not stop doing things. Also, like changing direction, making a 180 from one month to another. This month we're nowhere near normal. Next month, hey, we're gonna cut three more times. Make up your mind or shush.

[Michael Batnick]

Shush.

[Jan Van Eck]

I mean, we put a lot of thought, no question. Warsh was the most kind of hardcore of the nominees. And we thought a lot about, like, is he going to, like, shrink the balance sheet and really upset the bond market? And I, like, my personal view is not. Our House view is, I'm not that worried. I just think he's not going to react as much. But that's really a concern, right? If he starts really shrinking the balance sheet, that might have an effect, a retract, you know, contraction.

[Josh Brown]

When you get in the shower, let's say the temperature is not perfect. Do you just get in and let your body get used to whatever it is, or are you twiddling the cold, twiddling the hot, like trying to find the perfect Temperature, I'm the first thing like whatever the shower is within reason. It's enough of me. It's fine. I'm here to take a shower and get out. I feel like the Powell Fed is characterized by this idea that they have to constantly be turning the knobs left and right and I hate it. And I don't think it helped in the end. There were times to do things, times not to. It's very hard to know. We all get that. But the constant talking about it and mind changing like I hope we get an era where we almost never hear from Marsh. I like that bet. I like that about the Greenspan era. Came out twice a year like Santa Claus and it was enough.

[Michael Batnick]

But also it's in Powell's defense. Look at where the Fed funds rates were during his tenure. It's a lot easier to sort of do nothing when we're at a more normal neutral rate or close to a neutral rate than when we're at 1%.

[Jan Van Eck]

Don't get me started.

[Michael Batnick]

Let's talk.

[Jan Van Eck]

I mean he blew up Silicon Valley bank, right. And you know, he raised, he raised rates so quickly and he, that was his jurisdiction.

[Josh Brown]

Could have been.

[Jan Van Eck]

So he's a regulator. It could have been way worse. But like he shouldn't have blown him up in the first place. We agree that was so obvious that it was coming quarter after quarter they were having to write down.

[Josh Brown]

Remember bank of America had 120 billion in mortgage bonds they were upside down in or something the portfolio.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, around the corner.

[Josh Brown]

But should somebody be aware of that before we jack interest rates up 13 times?

[Michael Batnick]

All right, let's, let's talk Nvidia and semis. So they reported last night business as usual. Colette Kress CFO said with analysts now forecasting hyperscaler capex to exceed $1 trillion in 2027. And agentic AI beginning to proliferate. All industries AI infrastructure spending is on track to reach 3 to 4 trillion dollars annually by the end of this decade. Holy shit.

[Jan Van Eck]

Makes sense. I mean supply is here, demand for AI is here. We have such a compute shortage it's impossible for us to get our minds around it. That's where we're at. In 10 years we're going to look back and go oh my goodness, that was so silly. How could we have missed this? Whether it's a trillion a year or 2 trillion a year, whatever it is, the demand. And and the other news of this year, right that I find so interesting is corporate America is willing to pay for this build out, right. They're paying money for anthropic and I love that Nvidia broke out data center revenue from non data center revenue because to me, you know, corporate America, if I were running a huge corporation, I'd want my own instance of AI because of security concerns and who's mixing my data with other people.

[Josh Brown]

You don't want to be intermingled in a, in a data center. If, if you're a large corporation, you need your own situation.

[Jan Van Eck]

Totally. I don't want some guy at AWS or woman miskeying something and suddenly like my data is exposed. Right. And that's a huge risk.

[Josh Brown]

Here are some of the myths that have been blown up in the last six weeks since Liberation Day. The first myth is that like there was going to be some Capex slowdown because one of the hyperscalers was going to blink. Nobody's blinking. And at this point they probably couldn't even if they wanted to. Like the customer demand is what's fueling this. Not the, not the hubris of Satya Nadella. It's what the customers are that we need more compute. It's not like one man's whim. I want to keep spending.

[Jan Van Eck]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

They're being told that they need to keep spending or those workloads are going to go to someone else's cloud. I mean that's, isn't that, isn't that simple?

[Jan Van Eck]

Yep.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. I don't really hear the Capex bears anymore. They kind of have gone away. They're coming up with their new story.

[Jan Van Eck]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

The circular financing, like the whole thing is spinning plates or whatever. I'm not hearing a ton of that. The cybersecurity stocks, I think almost all of them are back at all time highs. Ripping another myth blown up that every type of software would be instantly worthless. Thanks to Claude, it seems obvious now in hindsight, it does show there's a path forward for software companies if they do something that's important enough that people won't screw around with vibe coded versions. What do you think about that idea?

[Jan Van Eck]

I mean, to your first point, it is kind of amazing that hyperscalers have gone from very capital light, high margin businesses to capital intensive businesses. And the stock market's kind of not carry too much unless your name is Oracle. Right. Because they're going to have to start borrowing money. Right. I mean they're kind of doing it a little weird off balance sheet now. And usually the stock market would kind of punish companies like that. Like they were the perfect company. High margin, low capital needs and now they've kind of changed and I'm a

[Josh Brown]

little surprised they haven't been punished though. Microsoft and Meta are not on the new high list. The only one that is is Alphabet because it has its own LLM.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, but they're still spending money on it.

[Michael Batnick]

Apple's on an all time high today.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, Apple not involved in AI at all. They don't even knowledge that AI exists yet.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, you gave us a cool chart showing how you guys are using it. So the Journal reported this as everybody's getting ready to come public. Anthropic's revenue is set to more than double to 10.9 billion in the second quarter. I'm pretty sure that's like quarter over quarter. I don't think it's year over year. I think they were at $4 billion. So they're now at a $40 billion annual run rate. You know, nothing. We haven't seen anything like this. We keep talking about it. You shared a chart with us. Chart 9 Vanex Token Usage at Claude. So walk us through this. Like what? How are you guys using them? And these. What is this? That's a lot of tokens. Are you guys. Is this a lot of money that you guys are spending with these LLMs?

[Josh Brown]

What's the left axis? That's number of tokens.

[Jan Van Eck]

That's number of tokens. Right. So contextually we use chat. We got an enterprise chat last year and then we added claude. So this is only like a snapshot. I just picked one of the charts and we started it only in February of this year. And just kind of eyeballing it, we've doubled our token usage in three or four months. But part of it's moving away from chat. There are a couple of interesting things. CLAUDE will actually tell you how many tokens you're using. OpenAI doesn't.

[Josh Brown]

Sorry, moving from ChatGPT to Claude.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, but I'm saying they're anthropic. Claude tells you how many tokens you're actually using. That's why I say actual at the top. Whereas OpenAI, you don't really know how many tokens you're using. It's really weird. You know, you do the queries, but they just don't report that information to our cto. The other thing about this, actually, it surprised me that it's not steeper. And I think that goes to everyone else's narrative, which is that corporations are going to take years to deploy AI.

[Michael Batnick]

It's just because they're constrained, you can't get more.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, it's Just people need. Yeah, well, no, it's just also not enough people at Vaneck are deploying AI in their day to day. I mean, it's growing.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. People aren't using enough tokens.

[Jan Van Eck]

To me, I look at that, I wish it were steeper.

[Josh Brown]

Right. But to be doing like, do you have ideas for what they should be doing and they're not doing them or do you want, like many companies, you want your employees to play and come up with ways to make themselves more efficient?

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, I'm not smart enough to think through every workflow application, so I want them to be as creative as possible. That's why we don't have any budget for this. They can do it as much as they want. I think to put a number on it, we spend 750,000 a year right now on, you know, on both of these. If you think about that and what investment people cost, like there's a positive payback.

[Michael Batnick]

So you'll, you'll be at a million dollars in a second. And I think they reported they have a thousand enterprises and it's probably 2000 at this point that are paying a million dollars and people that are not at the enterprise level, like I'm paying whatever, 100 bucks a month, whatever it is, and I'm running out of tokens. So this is like at a micro

[Josh Brown]

level, but they're weight limiting us.

[Michael Batnick]

So last night I asked it to summarize, give me the best points of the S1 for space X. And it took a minute and I, you know, I'm just curious, like, wow, that was really awesome. How many pages, how many words were in the S1? And I said like, actually we only were able to go through the first 40 pages because you hit your limit. And I was like, son of a biscuit.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, well, that's right.

[Josh Brown]

You should have stopped by Vaneck and used one of the. He said, he said, there's no budget. Just come on in and start clauding yourself whatever you want.

[Jan Van Eck]

How come Barry's not paying for an enterprise version here?

[Michael Batnick]

We're working with that now.

[Josh Brown]

We're talking with the enterprise folks at a lot of AI plate to be to be determined.

[Jan Van Eck]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

But in terms of how it's impacting like workflows for financial professionals. Gavin Baker was on Patrick's podcast yesterday and he was saying there are so many podcasts where material exec market moving executives are speaking and I can't listen to seven of them in a day. But I need to know what they're saying because oftentimes they're saying things that are not in the transcripts, that are golden nuggets. And I am using the agentic agents to transcribe all of them and to feed them to me.

[Josh Brown]

Right. When you look at that token usage, are you delineating between what Michael's talking about, like an always on agentic thing that might be running for 24 hours and versus somebody at their desk that has an idea and wants to follow a mental thread toward a possible solution to a problem?

[Jan Van Eck]

No, we don't. We don't do that.

[Josh Brown]

Right. So we'd be interested to know the two different versions of token.

[Jan Van Eck]

So one of my colleagues corrected me on this. Right. So a lot of this usage is kind of prompt into their website and have them run a task and then obviously now you can build up memory and that requires a little bit less compute and all that kind of stuff. That's very different than the open claw agentic AI where they are doing the whole task and you don't need to intervene, you don't need to ask them.

[Josh Brown]

The hamster wheel is just turning.

[Jan Van Eck]

And that is. We're very early days at van. We've only allowed, you know, some of our analysts to go do that on their home computer, you know, sort of, or in a sandbox. It's, it's because. So this is unbelievable. With our proprietary data, this is what

[Josh Brown]

Gemini Spark, what they announced this week at the IO conference is like just imagine Gemini just always running and doing things on a regular basis without the prompt. And that's, that's the agentic part that we're. You're right, it's like people are talking about it, but I don't know that there are any companies coming out and saying we're agentically running this whole revenue operation inside our business, then we might get there by the end of the year. So we're in a different world, though. We're in a world of client data.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Like you are. We are. It's. We're in a heavy regulated, heavily regulated business. I, I know a lot of the fintech guys are running around on LinkedIn talking about all this shit, but in reality, I actually don't think there are going to be big innovations that are initiated in financial services. I think like most innovate innovation waves, we're gonna be more toward the end than toward the beginning. Just given the nature of how little you can really experiment when you have people's personal data.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

So that's just my, my gut. I still think we should try and I still Think that we should be experimenting or asking questions and trying to answer them with this new technology? I don't think we should be taking customer information and uploading it into a cloud and hoping that it will spit back critical insights while simultaneously potentially compromising the people that we're responsible to. That's a corporate policy here. We're not going there. So I know a lot of firms want to, but it won't be us.

[Jan Van Eck]

It kind of depends on what you're doing. We have some tasks that are just like someone told me, like 47 spreadsheets to run the accounting for one of our hedge funds.

[Josh Brown]

Well, that's right.

[Jan Van Eck]

That's crazy.

[Josh Brown]

That's obvious. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, but so you add enough of those things, you're saving bodies, right?

[Josh Brown]

Do you think the productivity boom has a positive externality in the stock market that outruns the threat of automation driven job loss? Like, are you a glass half full or a glass half empty or undecided?

[Jan Van Eck]

I'm a glass half full.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, 100%.

[Jan Van Eck]

But I think a lot of. Oh yeah, totally unbiased that way. But I do think, I think history, you know, supports that. If you look at, and if you look at charts of how automation has affected different jobs, sure, secretarial jobs are down 75% in two decades. But it took two decades, you know, for that, for that change to happen. Maybe AI accelerates things, but people are slow to change in general. 40 million women entered the job force after World War II. If you look at an employment chart, you can't see a blip. Right. Because that's not how employment works.

[Josh Brown]

New jobs were created.

[Jan Van Eck]

And I see the IT guys at VanEck who literally last year thought, oh my God, my job is in danger because AI is going to take my job. They are now 5x more productive and they're more needed, not more needed, but as needed as they were. So I just, but I do think it's a huge concern for a lot of people because they're technophobic. People are concerned about their jobs. Like that is completely legitimate.

[Josh Brown]

Somebody at UBS put out sort of like their own model of what this looks like. And they compared SaaS software companies to newspapers in the 90s. Do you think it could be that dire for a lot of software businesses? Like, we basically ended up with two newspaper companies probably left.

[Jan Van Eck]

I think there's no AI without data. So if you can add value by organizing data, and that's where a lot of this AI activity right now is, it's better organizing data because you realize you've got this great tool but if you don't have data to process internally, that's valuable and some things are obvious but some things aren't. That's really where the value is. And so I look at if Salesforce, we're a big Salesforce user. If they can efficiently organize our data, okay, maybe there's some value, but I would pay less for it. We shortened our Salesforce contract to only two years.

[Josh Brown]

So what you see happening in the

[Jan Van Eck]

market, the data lay separate and it's competitive. It deserves a RE rating.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so you think that's. Well, you got, it's appropriate. Can we talk about chips a little bit?

[Jan Van Eck]

Sure.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. How outrageous is this? On the scale of 1 to 10 what we've seen go on. I'm not saying like talk down the smh, but like some of the moves. I think Intel's up 100% this year. Daniel, chart 11 or more. Some, some of the moves, not for you to comment individually on the stocks but like this seems sort of unsustainable.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. And you think we're looking at Micron and SanDisk. The EPS went from $9 in March 2025 to 85 bucks for Micron. Sandis went from $2 to $99. This is the forward EPS. You think that this is a bubble or what exactly do you think?

[Jan Van Eck]

So I look at, you know, I take my 10 year perspective looking back. Do these companies have competitive moats? That's how I look at this kind of stuff.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. And the answer's yes.

[Jan Van Eck]

And so I have a thesis on Nvidia. Maybe we can get to that. I don't think these memory companies have a competitive moat.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Jan Van Eck]

Because memory, you know, chips became, you know, Nvidia went from a single commodity GPU provider to being the mainframe of AI Cuda. Love to talk about that more. Right. These companies are, they are using, they don't really have competitive technology. Sure. There's only, it's a duopoly, you know, for the most part for the, for the memory. But they're vulnerable and most of their profits are coming because they're like, oh, you need my stuff, I'm going to raise my prices. It's not really value added. Jensen is giving you much more compute. He's like the Walmart of compute. Right. He's just giving you better value and more quantity and that's ultimately what everyone wants.

[Josh Brown]

Is that true?

[Jan Van Eck]

This stuff, they're just raising their prices.

[Josh Brown]

When you see this earnings expectation, let's just take micron $9 to $85. The majority of the growth is not selling more units.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's price.

[Josh Brown]

Price.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yes.

[Josh Brown]

What disrupts that? You're not going to get a new memory chip company spring up, are you?

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, we don't know. But Chinese memory memory manufacturers could definitely export.

[Josh Brown]

What if the models get more efficient at the utilization of memory?

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, that'll happen too.

[Josh Brown]

That'll definitely happen.

[Jan Van Eck]

Ecosystem, that's why I love to say who's going to be around in 10 years? Because this whole ecosystem is going to change. Right? It's pre learning, it's, it's inference. Every part is memory. It's every single part. There's vicious competition, right. And, and, and, and it's changing. Right. At some point our CTO is going to say stop spending $3 million or I'm going to tell him stop spending $3 million on compute. And he's going to say, okay, I'll do fewer API, you know, requests and all this kind of stuff. Right. So he'll change his programming to make it more efficient. That's actually, we're already doing that. So it's a changing, evolving system. My thesis is that Nvidia is a blue chip survivor because of cuda, because of the software. There's nothing more motivated than a founder who used to be at a commodity business, which he was when he was just selling GPUs to game players then. Wow. Now I can control an ecosystem. Right. So he did a deal on inference. He's doing a deal everywhere in the universe to be. And you know, the analogy I look at is IBM, right? IBM has survived for many, many decades because it was super close to the end customer and they pivoted from being hardware to software and then software to services.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

And they survived. So you have to be able to pivot as a company. But if you're in that position, it's kind of, in a way, I'm more optimistic than my colleagues. But I think it's Nvidia's game to lose at least as being one of the blue chip providers.

[Josh Brown]

Every serious person working in AI is fluent in the code, the CUDA software platform and how to use it, and all the certifications in the AI space, all the training it has. It's the bedrock of AI. You don't see that as being shakeable anytime the next few years. That's the key to selling more chips.

[Jan Van Eck]

They'll get competition. Google has its own chips. Like there's other chips, but the software platform. But their ecosystem, it'll be. The ecosystem has to Be the cheapest per token at the end of the day, cheapest per result that you want. And so that's why I'm a bull on Nvidia, because he's like, I call him the Walmart of this ecosystem. He's always trying to drive costs down. That's why he said my competitors could give their chips away. It doesn't matter. They're so inefficient, I will kill them.

[Josh Brown]

Last night they reported yet again one of the most insane victory lapse of a quarter we've ever seen from any company ever. Earnings were up 125%. Revenue was up like 80 or something. They guided higher by 4 billion than expectations for the rest of the year. They gross margin 75. They did everything that everyone wanted and more. The stock, I know it rallied 15% into the news, but fell 3.

[Michael Batnick]

It's down 1 1/2%.

[Josh Brown]

Down 1 1/2% today.

[Jan Van Eck]

Can I give you my theory on this?

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. What the.

[Jan Van Eck]

Okay, Nvidia has been, I'm going to call it flat, right, for nine months or a year. And so what was interesting to me is Softbank sold, right? So someone who had made a ton of money said, okay, I like to take higher risk and I'm going to redeploy my capital. So I love what people are talking about after the Internet bubble and how there had to be a rotation in these stocks like Amazon, all these people, it took years to kind of grind through a different shareholder base. And that's kind of, I think, what's happening. Right. Nvidia is going from hyper growth to kind of more blue chip investor space.

[Josh Brown]

It's still hypergrowth, but I get your point.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, and so they're looking and it's got, but it's got all the DNA of a great blue chip stock. They're starting to pay out dividends, they're doing stock buybacks. They've got great margins and their cash flow is phenomenal. Right. So, you know, that's, that's why I think that's what explains why the stock, they are, you know, the forward earnings have come down, but it's sort of like, can I sleep at night owning this stock? And like, absolutely, that's, that's me. I may not make as much money as the next guy, you know.

[Josh Brown]

When did SoftBank sell?

[Jan Van Eck]

Some time last year.

[Josh Brown]

And you think that was the pressure on the stock that kept it in a.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, it's, no, no, not that per se. But it triggered my thinking, Josh, that all these people that have Made much money in this stock. They're just rotating through it. I get it. Like, I get it. That's all I'm saying. It's like, you need. That's what's happening in my.

[Josh Brown]

What do you think about this? I. I asked the. I asked the people on the trading desk on halftime report today. The existing buyback left on the previous authorization was $39 billion. They took it to 80 last night. I said, does anyone think that this is meaningful for, like, the share price? They were all like, no, it's not. I Understand it's a $5 trillion market cap and 80 billion, but still, that's a lot. It's another person sucking up stock when somebody else gets bored with it and wants to sell. Well, you know, what do you think?

[Michael Batnick]

I think the. The answer is why the stock isn't moving the way that you would expect a company to when it reports. It's why it's a gigantic stock, and it takes a lot of buying pressure to. It's a. It's. It's an elephant.

[Josh Brown]

80 is not enough.

[Michael Batnick]

It's like you and me trying to move an elephant. Like, it's, it's just. It's a lot of weight. But getting back to our conversation, I don't think. I mean, no, it's. It's meaningful. Getting back to the conversation about equal weight versus cap weight. This. This blew my face off. So bank of America put out a chart. Chart 17. The earnings outlook is more dependent on a few stocks than ever before. And this is not new news, but this in particular, the top five is a quarter of the index earnings. And there's one name in here that I said, holy shit. Nvidia, Google, Microsoft. Microsoft, Apple, and then Micron. You could have given me 100. Well, I probably after 100, would have guessed. You could have me give me 30 guesses. I don't think I would have said Micron. So again, it's Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Micron are a quarter of the earnings of the index.

[Josh Brown]

What if I said, which one of these won't be on here in 24 months?

[Michael Batnick]

Micron.

[Josh Brown]

Very obviously. Micron.

[Jan Van Eck]

Five years. Ten years. Micron.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, five years. Okay, okay.

[Michael Batnick]

Just by process of elimination, like, which, you know,

[Josh Brown]

Nvidia.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's so insane how much they're paying in taxes? Micron. Like, and these. And these Korean memory chip makers. Like, someone gave me the statistic. I can't remember it, but this week. But they're like, those two companies are like, equal to the entire prior year's. Tax revenue for the country solved, the deficit for the country. You talk about we should move them here. You're right.

[Josh Brown]

You talk about 10 year macro forecasts. Nvidia is going to be as important to automation and robotics as it is right now for large language models and chat. Right, Stipulated. Like they're. They're planning to play heavily in robots cars. Isn't that the reason not to be shouting stock bubble right now? Like we haven't even gotten the humanoid robots, the self driving cars just hit the road in the last six months, almost no one's been in one yet. Like for, for. Because we were talking about like. All right, fine, eventually this will be a bubble. But like you want to say bubble now before the first time a robot brings you a martini in a bar. Like today, you want to say bubble. I just, I'm mystified. I look at what SpaceX is coming to the table with and Tesla and all the stuff Jensen's talking about now, which is physical AI, and I just feel like, yeah, I get it, stock prices will rise and fall. But like we want to say this is the top before the robots are even here.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's not only that. Again, compute demand is here and supply is here.

[Josh Brown]

That's the big one.

[Jan Van Eck]

So until they get to an efficient market, like what are we talking about? We're going to look back and go like, what were.

[Josh Brown]

What?

[Jan Van Eck]

You know, what was the. Who was missing the big trend? I don't think we're missing the big trend. You guys are all over it. I'm just saying. Now, having said that, Josh, I like

[Josh Brown]

the clarity from you though.

[Jan Van Eck]

Within the ecosystem there are corrections. Like Oracle was down 50%, right?

[Michael Batnick]

That's a crash.

[Jan Van Eck]

OpenAI.

[Michael Batnick]

That's assault, brother.

[Jan Van Eck]

OpenAI looked like it was being lapped by anthropic. Right? And so there are pieces of this ecosystem that will go up and down.

[Michael Batnick]

Do you guys have a robotics etf? You must.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, what is it?

[Michael Batnick]

I can ask you. I'm asking you tell me.

[Jan Van Eck]

Ibot.

[Michael Batnick]

Ibot.

[Jan Van Eck]

Okay, I'm not that shy.

[Josh Brown]

No, it's crazy though. Like the rules for talking about etf, we're learning this. No, I can't say what they're called unless.

[Jan Van Eck]

What's your etf?

[Josh Brown]

I think the rule is you have to say Candyman three times.

[Michael Batnick]

You can put it in a bottle and throw it into the ocean. If somebody finds it, here's why. Here's why. Here's the anti bubble.

[Josh Brown]

I can give you a riddle and if you solve it, I could Tell

[Michael Batnick]

you, we could do wordle for our ETF. So, Daniel, chart 18. All right. S&P 500 margins going through the roof. This is from Peter Berezin. We're looking at the S&P 500 profit margin forward trailing. This is remarkable. I mean, this. And this is almost kind of scary because there are political ramifications coming. I mean, they're here today, but they're definitely coming. When we see more layoffs and you see S&P 500 prices and margins at all time highs, that is for society. That is. That is a dangerous cocktail.

[Josh Brown]

He's not worried. He's not as worried about it.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, listen, let's just articulate exactly what we're talking about.

[Michael Batnick]

No, let's relitigate.

[Jan Van Eck]

We got the midterm elections, Right. Let's say that the Republicans lose the House. Okay. Are we gonna change monetary policy? No. Are we gonna change fiscal policy? No. Right. So they'll impeach Trump a couple more times. Right. Nothing will happen. That'll just be performance. Right. Are we going to solve inequality in America in the next 12 months? No. I mean, there's no. Anyway, not to get in my soapbox. There's never been a society where you've had egalitarian wealth, period, in the history of the world.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, Josh has a paperback book coming out where he wrote about that.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. So thank you, Michael. What an assistant. So I have. This is contractually obligated. Harriman House would like for me to mention there's a paperback edition of my book coming out this summer. But to Michael's point, that does look good.

[Michael Batnick]

But we tried that.

[Josh Brown]

So to Michael's point, I think it's. I should probably know this.

[Michael Batnick]

What was the name of the blog post?

[Josh Brown]

Chapter 2. You weren't supposed to see that name of the book. We named the book after it. But, like, it was this thing where we had a moment where everybody had enough money to not work. And it was Covid and it was 2021 and everyone could just start a business or start baking sourdough loaves or maybe show up at Wendy's for their shift. Maybe not. Maybe work from home or pretend to work. People could just switch careers, switch states they lived in, and everyone had enough money in the bank that like. Like for a moment, it didn't last long. And what I wrote about is how it literally tore society apart. We ended up with people marching in the streets, burning stores down, race riots, fast food companies that couldn't open the doors because nobody would show up to work. Like it's maybe the worst possible thing for everyone to have enough money all at once. It's so pitch black to say it out loud. And I went through all of the aid that was paid out and I came up with. And I did this in a pre. AI, by the way, this myself. I came up with like $20 trillion worth of just giveaways and money raised and Broadway and small businesses and restaurants and sporting events and just like all of the Here. Don't worry.

[Michael Batnick]

Sh, sh, sh.

[Josh Brown]

Please, just don't riot. We broke society like Powell is Powell. Having rates too low is the least of it. We kind of reordered society by virtue of doing a version of UBI like, here, you're good, your bank account's full, your bills are paid. Any other problems? No. That's great. I'm gonna go fly a kite now. The country broke and we can't do it again. So, like, I guess the bigger point is we actually need people who are hungry enough to strive and show up to their jobs. So I don't know that there is some future where it's like, oh, don't worry, corporate profit margins are so high, we'll just distribute the money. We can't do it.

[Jan Van Eck]

I think I put it even, you know. Yeah. I guess I would just say I feel like wealth can be very corrosive.

[Josh Brown]

This is not even wealth, though. This is.

[Jan Van Eck]

I know, I know that's not what you're talking about. Don't worry about wealth.

[Josh Brown]

Don't worry about going to work.

[Michael Batnick]

What do you mean?

[Jan Van Eck]

Happiness comes from growth. You get happiness from your family. You get happiness from working, from having meaning in your life. And wealth is an enemy of that. Wealth can make you lazy. It can lead to bad habits. It can amplify bad habits. So no one, I think, thinks that. Look, I think capitalism is good. Materialism is bad. Right?

[Josh Brown]

I don't know. I'm from Long Island. I don't know if I agree with that statement. Look, materialism is bad.

[Jan Van Eck]

Materialism over. It can't be consumerism. That can't be your only value.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I think your point is, and

[Jan Van Eck]

whether it's religion or family or work, like, we all need our communities. We need satisfaction from something else as much my point, I'm really kind of making the same point that you are.

[Josh Brown]

Yes.

[Jan Van Eck]

And all I'm saying is some of the wealth and some of the pockets, and maybe it's because I live in Westchester or whatever, but like, it's. It's just. It's very. It's jarring to me compared to the era that I grew up.

[Josh Brown]

Do you have a lot of like. Do you have a lot of wealth? Well, non working wealthy people in the community.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's not that. It's just like the concept of a private jet. Like I. I mean, obviously I don't fly private. Right. So it's just weird. Right. And kids. Your kids go to other. Go to school with kids that fly private.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

That's just weird.

[Michael Batnick]

I watch your life on tv. It's called your friends and neighbors.

[Jan Van Eck]

That is literally my neighborhood.

[Josh Brown]

Where I live, the wealthiest people are the people who work the most hours. Like we. I don't live in a place where that linkage is broken. The people who are the. Would you agree with that? The most prosperous people in my town. I'm a micro. It's a micro example. But like the most prosperous people financially are also the people who do not stop working.

[Michael Batnick]

We don't have inherited wealth in our town.

[Josh Brown]

Right. Nobody who inherits money would live where we live. Or not that.

[Michael Batnick]

Or like Napa babies. They live on the North Shore. Like not. Not near us.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Right. So. So it's like I always think of materialism. It's like. Yeah, but they earned it. Like they. Because we don't have anybody who's just like laying around cashing checks.

[Jan Van Eck]

You're talking about Michael's new set of clothing.

[Josh Brown]

No, now where. Where Barry lives on the North Shore.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's a whole other story with the wine cell. I actually don't.

[Josh Brown]

Right. I actually don't know a lot of people who. Who live there that actually work. So it's a whole different.

[Michael Batnick]

But that type of wealth is corrosive.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, that.

[Michael Batnick]

The inherited wealth and the overnight success. That's why the most miserable pricks on the planet are the people that won like the lottery. Of finance. Of finance. Whether it's an overnight. Literal lottery winners or people that sold the business. And you're also ostracized from your community when you have that much money and you live in a normal neighborhood. Like if Josh and I had $100 million an hour town people like get. What do you.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, you gotta hide it.

[Josh Brown]

You gotta hide it or why are you here?

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People don't want their kids necessarily to even be around like a household that's like that where everybody.

[Jan Van Eck]

I agree. I think that's neat. And I'm not saying inherited wealth is necessarily bad because it can allow people to buy houses for their kids and stuff like that. So I'm not on a soapbox But I'm just trying to make that distinction because I think capitalism is something that kids should learn to appreciate in school. What a great system we live in and what wealth and new technology enables for our generation, for this country. It's amazing. We have full employment and we live in a great free country, relatively speaking. And that capitalism narrative can be very negative and corrosive. What kids are taught, that's my differentiation.

[Michael Batnick]

And of course, there is nothing wrong with being born into wealth and having successful parents.

[Jan Van Eck]

I'm marrying into it.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, that's even better. But when did you take over your company?

[Jan Van Eck]

You know. Yeah, 2010.

[Josh Brown]

Didn't you listen?

[Jan Van Eck]

But I was there in the 90s. I forgot. I joined after law school in 93. Right.

[Josh Brown]

So.

[Jan Van Eck]

Oh, and we were losing money, so let's be clear. No, we were, he inherited debts and my brother and I took over. We had to fire 40% of the firm.

[Josh Brown]

So I wanted to ask you about, I wanted to ask you about, like, your opinion on this. We, we had a project where we, we have all these different investment strategies inside the firm, different allocations, and they have names. And one of the names for one of the strategies is Lenox Hill. They're all neighborhoods in Manhattan. So Lenox Hill is the 70s, let's say from Fifth Avenue to maybe Madison or to park, right? So like 70th up to 80th, so micro neighborhood in New York. But it has the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It has all those limestone buildings on Fifth Avenue. And one of the things about that is, that's from a hundred years ago. The quote unquote, robber barons, they created all this wealth, but what they did with their wealth is they built these institutions for the public. They built opera houses and museums and they set aside nature preserves, things like Central park, not just in New York, but all over. There was something about making money in a filthy business like steel or shipping or copper mining or even JP Morgan in banking, cutting people's throats all day, being John D. Rockefeller, being like relentlessly aggressive, but then turning around with all of that accumulated wealth and building things for the public. I'm not saying we don't have philanthropists. I'm aware of Michael Dell and Michael Bloomberg. I understand that. But it does feel to people that we don't have that same civic payback from people that are now creating themselves as trillionaires. Do you, do you think that's too harsh or do you think like the modern day robber barons are doing enough in a civic setting so people walk by these institutions and say, yeah, I understand. I got this back from the people who built Palantir and Tesla. And like, what do you think about that idea? Because all they brag about now is I create jobs. But like, if you don't work for the company, I don't give a. That you create jobs.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, look at Gates versus Look at

[Josh Brown]

this shithole city I live in. I don't care that you created jobs for people that I don't know. Like, look at this massive wealth you've accumulated. Why aren't you reinvesting in the, in the places that people live.

[Jan Van Eck]

Bill Gates, right, who made a lot of money and then very thoughtfully invested in a lot of different technologies and philanthropy, philanthropies versus Elon Musk, who's like, I'm going to make as much money, create as much wealth.

[Josh Brown]

And then, well, he thinks he's saving humanity by enabling us to get to the moon. And he might be right. But none of us who are alive today will experience the benefit of that.

[Michael Batnick]

But Yan, don't you. Don't you think that's part of the problem with doing. What Josh is suggesting is that the cities and the governments that run the cities are so shitty at distributing and executing and there's so much corruption like Amazon search for a new headquarters or one of the projects that they tried to come here and we villainize them and we, we drove them out. Like, I think a lot of these people and they are doing. There's a lot of people that are incredibly philanthropic. That's like sort of quiet. I mean, that's more your world than ours, of course, but there's people that are doing that. But at the public institutional level, it's hard.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think we don't really know because a lot of the wealth has been created in the last decade or two, and so we don't know what they're really going to do with it. I want to give them a break. And also, I'm not sure what's so obvious to give money to. I give to educational institutions primarily. That's kind of my.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, Michael Dell, I forget the number. Is it 50 billion, $10 billion or $2 billion to all of the Trump accounts?

[Jan Van Eck]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

Just like I'm adding to your accounts personally. So it's not a museum with columns. I understand. And maybe most of the recipients don't even know where it came from. I understand that too. But like, it's a bold example of somebody who's been philanthropic his whole life, seeing A need and saying, you know what? I believe in that cause. And here I'm gonna turn on the afterburner for what those accounts could grow into. I think that's amazing. I just don't think there maybe is enough of it. And that's why we have people like AOC literally voting down and chasing out an Amazon project that would have employed people who live in her district. It almost seems insane. But maybe that's part of the problem is they don't come off as philanthropic as they are.

[Jan Van Eck]

You know, I think also I'm just kind of going back to the history books here. There were some amazing philanthropists. Like the Rockefeller family is just insane. I mean, you could spend an hour just listing all the things that they did just in New York, much less around the country in the world. But probably there were a lot of robber baron people that made a lot of money, that just started their own private banks and managed their money and didn't do a lot with it. And so I bet there's probably both types in both eras if we were

[Josh Brown]

gonna be fair about it so here in New York.

[Jan Van Eck]

But I do think it's an issue for our society now. Right. This wealth inequality bothers a lot of people. And you're right, they have a. They're very public figures.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. Here in New York we have this incredible tradition of like the fabulously wealthy doing real. I mean, Vanderbilt's name is still on everything and Carnegie's name is on a ton of stuff. And we have. Modern day Ken Langone, I think is like one of the greatest men who's ever lived. He basically said to the NYU Medical School, from here on out, every student is tuition free. All that I ask is you take your education, go back to the place you came from, or go somewhere new and treat people. And like, I Wish There were 10 or 20 of those, but there's like one of those.

[Michael Batnick]

Barry Dillard did the park down there.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

So people have done stuff, right? You're right. Ken Langone's a giant.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, he's a giant, absolute giant. I agree.

[Jan Van Eck]

And he's also hands on. Right. I mean, he really transformed NYU medical facility, but he really was. He didn't just write a check is my point. He really, really helped the morale of the place.

[Josh Brown]

Do you think we can turn this anti capitalism wave around? And if so, does it require some sort of like grand gesture or is it just like time? Because right now I think we do have a lot of people in their 20s who might like permanently be Anti capitalist and I think hurting themselves. But it's also like, not great for the continuation of America if it persists.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, I'm really into celebrating our 250th and understanding what it was.

[Josh Brown]

I know you care about what it was all about.

[Jan Van Eck]

And so, yeah, I think academia is kind of becoming a little bit more balanced over time. And I think there's. So, yeah, I think that's fixable. And that's the distinction I made between materialism and capitalism. Right. Our system is really good and I think sometimes they confuse it just with, oh, there's rich people that I hate them or I'm envious of them and that kind of stuff. And it's like, well, yeah, but think about the system and what it's done. And then you don't have to. No one's worshiping materialism, I guess, is that. That's my point. And the very younger generation we should talk to Howard Lindson about. This is not the, you know, the degen economy, but there's like a pushback, right, for dumb phones and being unplugged and more people getting involved in religion, you know, so we'll see. You know, society always kind of adjusts.

[Josh Brown]

Funny you bring that up. They're bringing back rock and roll music because of how imperfect it is to experience in person. Guitarist plays the wrong chord every once in a while, the singer loses their voice. And it's so different from the world that kids live in online, where there are no imperfections and everything is very plastic and sterile. And, you know, they manage you through an algorithm exactly where they want to get you. You go to a rock show somewhere in Brooklyn and every night's a different experience. And it's kind of cool to see analog things. Plugging an instrument into an amp versus a laptop at a day club in Las Vegas. I like that there's a counterculture sort of groundswell of that amongst young people.

[Jan Van Eck]

I think social media was a technology that had a lot of negative social implications. And I know a lot of people talk about it, but I think that's not the. It's not the diagnosis. It's kind of the pushback on what are the behaviors. And I think a lot of our institutions were superior. Super slow. Like, John Haight wrote this book about what I just mentioned. And it's like, take phones out of schools, make kids talk to each other. Like, we should have done that a decade ago. Like, really, it's happening now. But that's one of the biggest misses in my lifetime is like, wow, this created a lot of weird behavior and it still affects politics. I still know, like, probably you have friends too that are totally caught on the right or the left and they just, they have no perspective because they're on the echo chain.

[Josh Brown]

Can't talk to those any people anymore.

[Jan Van Eck]

But they were in our society, like, and they just don't, you know, they don't shut up on you.

[Michael Batnick]

I have a physical device, it's called a brick, where I lock my social media when I get home because I am addicted like everybody else and I don't want to be scrolling when I'm in bed with my kids, which I have been for the last seven, nine years of their life. So.

[Jan Van Eck]

When did you do that?

[Michael Batnick]

Two months ago.

[Josh Brown]

They took the phones out of my kids high school this year.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, same.

[Josh Brown]

It was like they didn't miss a beat. The kids are fine.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's so much better.

[Josh Brown]

They don't need it. They don't need it, right?

[Michael Batnick]

Well, they don't need poison.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, they took comedy clubs, putting the phones in pouches. Get over it. It's an hour and a half. What if the babysitter calls? Okay, you stay home then everybody else wants to hear the comics say what they're gonna say without the fear of seeing a camera in their face. Like, I, I feel like I'm not saying like no phones anywhere. I'm saying where appropriate. Yeah, put the phone down, do something different. So easier said than done for most people.

[Michael Batnick]

Weird way to end the show.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. Anyway, but don't put the phone down when we drop this episode. Ladies and gentlemen, John. Great job today. Daniel, thank you. Do you have fun on the show today?

[Jan Van Eck]

Awesome. Love you guys.

[Josh Brown]

All right, shout out to Yan Van Eck. I wanted to tell people you guys are an incredible asset management firm. We think the world of you. Every time I see you on TV or I hear you saying something, I know I'm going to learn something. And you brought us some history books. So tell. Tell the audience which books you handed to us. And I'm probably going to read one of them at least. I'm on vacation next week, so.

[Jan Van Eck]

1776, I kind of. What's the one book? I was talking to someone at a bank who didn't know anything about history. And frankly, I didn't know a lot 10 years ago. What's the one book you want to give someone? Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis.

[Josh Brown]

Founding Brothers.

[Jan Van Eck]

Founding Brothers. And it's not a page turner, but it explains who all the founders were, their different political philosophies and Their personalities. And so it's a good grounding. It's not military history. Like, who cares? It's not focused just on one founder.

[Josh Brown]

It's the people.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's ensemble. It's a one book, I guess, and I reread a bunch for that. And then the other book is totally different. It's how the Scots invented the modern world. And it's just,

[Michael Batnick]

besides for the iPhone, what did they invent?

[Jan Van Eck]

They're so fierce and like all over the world. Like, they settle Hong Kong, right? They settled Australia, settled Hong Kong. The Scots were the fighters in the British Empire. They were. Look at the mixed, you know, bloggers, blah, blah, all over the place, right? They are the. They were the fighters. I think seven presidents were Scots, Irish. Like.

[Josh Brown]

Huh.

[Jan Van Eck]

Like Andrew Jackson, like all these people. They were really the. And it's a really fascinating story.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, what's the. What's.

[Jan Van Eck]

And obviously they were big investors, right? It was the Scots, the Dutch, and you know what?

[Josh Brown]

Okay. And then there's another book that I read a million years ago, how the Irish saved civilization. So the Scots and the Irish were more important than we. Than we think.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, that's a more narrow story, I would say, about how they saved like some. Some Christian documents.

[Josh Brown]

You were copying the written canon of Christianity before it was burned everywhere else or whatever.

[Jan Van Eck]

Exactly.

[Josh Brown]

All right, so we're gonna. So I'm gonna. I think I'm gonna read the. I think I'm gonna read the Scots one just because I've read a lot about American history already, but I've never heard that story, so.

[Jan Van Eck]

All right.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, we think. We think the world of you. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. We appreciate you guys. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. We'll see you soon. Have a great week. Thanks again.

[Michael Batnick]

Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or. Or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe [e-mail].