The Bull Market in Electricity

Summary

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The Compound and Friends Podcast

Episode: The Bull Market in Electricity
Date: August 29, 2025
Host: Downtown Josh Brown, Michael Batnick
Guest: Jan Van Eck (CEO, VanEck)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the intersection of energy, innovation, and investment markets, focusing on the surging demand in electricity fueled by technology—including AI and data centers—and its far-reaching economic impacts. Jan Van Eck, CEO of VanEck, joins Josh Brown and Michael Batnick to dig deep on the legacy and direction of his firm, major trends in ETFs, the implications of AI infrastructure, the bull market in utilities and electricity, and the evolving roles of gold, private equity, and crypto in modern portfolios.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. VanEck’s 70-Year Legacy & Innovating for the Future (10:36 – 15:02)

• Jan Van Eck recounts VanEck’s historic approach:
  • Founded in 1955, emphasizing U.S. investors gaining access to international opportunities.
  • Notable for launching the first U.S. gold fund in 1968 as a hedge against inflation.
• Quote:

  “My father believed investors deserved more than what the mainstream was offering... The world is constantly changing and by understanding those shifts early, you could create real opportunity for clients.” – Jan Van Eck (11:58)

• Current ETF Suite:
  • VanEck now has 70 ETFs, following the ethos of finding investable, new market categories—“not just throwing stuff at the wall.”
  • Emphasis on thematic and specialized funds.

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2. ETFs: Industry Maturation, Consolidation, and Innovation (03:13 – 06:22)

• ETF industry has exploded in size and number of issuers:
  • “There are now more ETFs than stocks. You’d think consolidation would have happened by now, but it hasn’t.” – Josh Brown (05:10)
• Barriers to entry have dropped:
  • Lower cost and easier tech for fund management. New players keep coming, even as established brands avoid levered/inverse ETFs.
• Acquisitions and M&A:
  • Acquisitions rarely happen because established firms “know everyone,” and margins remain low.
• Category innovation—example of J.P. Morgan:
  • Succeeded in income strategy ETFs, especially covered call products.
  • “They helped found a category, which is what you really want to do as an ETF issuer.” – Jan Van Eck (06:55)

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3. Nvidia & the Innovation ‘Super-Cycle’ (16:05 – 26:51)

• Nvidia’s explosive growth:
  • Data Center revenue up 56% YoY to $41 billion, with no China revenue included (17:39–18:22).
  • Analysts’ expectations have caught up, but further upside may come from sectors like robotics and government/Ai infrastructure spending, particularly from the Middle East (21:41).
• Tech sector scale and labor implications:
  • Tech “mega caps” like Microsoft, Google, and Meta are growing revenue with flat headcount—“insane profit generators” (25:00).
  • “If you look at some of the charts we have—these large cap companies, they’re not hiring any more workers and their revenue is going up. These are going to be insane profit generators.” – Jan Van Eck (24:28)
• Winner-take-all dynamics:
  • AI development will compound at companies with more data and scale, making it hard for vertical/boutique players to compete.
  • “It’s another winner-take-all world. Exactly like social media.” – Jan Van Eck (27:16–27:19)

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4. The Bull Market in Electricity: Utility Stocks, Inflation, and AI (27:22 – 34:03)

• Rising demand for electricity due to AI and data centers:
  • Electricity costs are now outpacing CPI; a trend poised to continue.
  • “Electrification is another decade-long trend—there’s no way electricity prices are staying flat.” – Jan Van Eck (28:03)
• Regressive impact on low-income households:
  • Electricity costs now comprise 10–20% of income for many low-income people.
  • “If you’re in Baltimore or New York, it’s 10 or 20% of your income... All your income is your electricity cost.” – Jan Van Eck (28:48)
• Utility stock re-rating:
  • Utilities are trading at record-high multiples because of increasing capex needs and data center demand.
• Investment implications:
  • VanEck nuclear ETF (NLR) is up 45% this year, reflecting a bipartisan, global embrace of nuclear energy (32:33).
  • “It’s kind of richly valued. I wouldn’t sell it.” – Jan Van Eck (32:36)

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5. Gold, Dollar Hedges, and Deficit Risks (35:27 – 43:15)

• Gold returns as a global hedge:
  • Despite flows out of GDX (the gold miners ETF), Jan sees a multi-year bull trend in gold demand, especially from emerging markets.
  • “The world wants a hedge against the dollar. What’s the second-best currency in the world? It’s gold.” – Jan Van Eck (37:01)
  • For the first time since 1996, foreign central banks hold more gold than U.S. Treasuries (40:33).
• Deficit concerns:
  • U.S. budget deficit is at historic highs for a peacetime, low-unemployment period—posing a “risk you have to watch.”
  • “If you’re building a portfolio, you want to own the hedges… gold and bitcoin have worked out super well.” – Jan Van Eck (36:35)
• Social Security and default risk:
  • Warns U.S. may effectively “default” on its obligations by cutting Social Security payments in 2033, absent reform—a rare risk historically sourced from D.C., not Wall Street (39:01–39:11).

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6. Private Markets: Alternative Asset Managers & Access (43:57 – 52:56)

• Publicly-traded PE managers outperforming private equity funds:
  • “Why be an LP or investor in the fund when you could be a GP by owning shares of the sponsor?” – Michael Batnick (44:43)
  • VanEck’s GPZ ETF offers a way to access these alternative asset manager returns (45:56).
• Private equity and democratization:
  • Most investors can't access pre-IPO or venture equity in hot companies like OpenAI; late-stage access is becoming more accepted.
  • “The closer you are to these founders, the more likelihood you are to have access [to early funding].” – Josh Brown (51:17)
  • “If you want access, go work there.” – Michael Batnick (51:52)

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7. Crypto, Blockchain, and Stablecoins (52:56 – 57:57)

• Bitcoin’s outperformance:
  • On all timeframes, Bitcoin vastly outperformed the S&P 500 (55:11).
  • “It’s so common sense: digital gold... people have demand for that kind of stuff, and it hit escape velocity.” – Jan Van Eck (55:41)
• Generational, global aspects:
  • Younger generations adopt crypto more widely; central banks in the Middle East accumulate via mining.
• Stablecoins as transformative financial technology:
  • “The stablecoin bill is the third most important piece of bank legislation in U.S. history… it enables tech companies to get into payments without being a bank.” – Jan Van Eck (57:11)
  • This will allow financial apps to process payments, store value, and move money outside traditional bank rails.

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8. Tokenization and the Future of Securities (58:10 – 61:16)

• Corporate pushback on tokenized shares:
  • Direct tokenization (e.g., by Robinhood) faces resistance from private company issuers who want to control their shareholder base.
• **Pathways to more liquid, tokenized security markets are seen as “inevitable,” paralleling earlier ADR development, but transparency and investor protections remain open questions.
  • “It’s just a tug of war and I don’t know how it’s going to play out.” – Jan Van Eck (60:29)

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9. Looking Forward: VanEck’s Direction and Personal Futures (63:40 – end)

• VanEck will explore private market investing, especially via interval funds.
• Personal notes:
  • Jan is looking forward to college football (USC) and hockey season (NY Islanders), and advocates for preventive health screening via a calcium CT test (65:02).
• Memorable banter about Oasis concerts and family obligations closes the show.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI and market structure:

  "History is being disrupted by Nvidia... Everything we thought we knew about the laws and how quickly things can grow—tear it up." – Josh Brown (16:05)

• On inflation and electricity:

  “If electrification is a decade long trend, there’s no way electricity prices stay flat.” – Jan Van Eck (28:03)

• On gold and multi-polar world:

  “The world wants a hedge against the dollar… what’s the second-best currency in the world? It’s gold, not the yen, not the euro.” – Jan Van Eck (37:01)

• On private equity access:

  “If you want to have shares of an exciting pre-IPO startup, go work there. Second easiest way: be the college roommate of the founder.” – Michael Batnick (51:52)

• On stablecoins’ policy impact:

  “The stablecoin bill is the third most important piece of banking legislation in US history… it enables tech companies to get into payments without being a bank.” – Jan Van Eck (57:11)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Start Time | |-------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Opening & VanEck Firm History | 10:36 | | ETF Industry Dynamics & M&A | 03:13 | | Nvidia, AI, and Mega Cap Disruption | 16:05 | | Utilities, Electricity, Inflation | 27:22 | | Gold, Dollar Hedges, and Global Reserves | 35:27 | | Private Equity Managers & Public Access | 43:57 | | Crypto, Bitcoin, and Stablecoins | 52:56 | | Tokenizing Securities & Corporate Resistance | 58:10 | | VanEck’s Future & Closing Thoughts | 63:40 |

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Final Thoughts

This episode delivers a comprehensive discussion on the profound changes facing investors—from the risks and rewards in utilities, private alternatives, and crypto, to the still-unfolding impacts of AI-driven energy demand and innovations in financial technology. With a balance of historical awareness and focus on future opportunities, Jan Van Eck and hosts provide both thought leadership and actionable insights for navigating rapidly evolving markets.

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Transcript

[Josh Brown]

How was your summer?

[Michael Batnick]

Great.

Doesn't he look super relaxed right now? He does, right?

[Josh Brown]

I love the coat. You look good.

[Jan Van Eck]

Look at. Look at the color.

[Josh Brown]

I'm sporting pants.

[Michael Batnick]

Amazing.

[Jan Van Eck]

Don't I look, Hampton?

[Michael Batnick]

It's a shame we can't get your legs into the shot.

[Josh Brown]

Do you spend time out East?

[Jan Van Eck]

Oh, never. Sorry. Twice in the last 30 years.

[Josh Brown]

Josh, where do you summer?

[Michael Batnick]

I summer in South Merrick and Point Lookout and Atlantic Beach. I got my spots, bro. I definitely do.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. And you excited for future?

[Michael Batnick]

Very.

[Josh Brown]

So this is our semi conductor society.

[Jan Van Eck]

So supposedly this is for people that believe the semis are structural, not cyclical.

[Michael Batnick]

That's your style Hat. The dad hat.

[Josh Brown]

That's the dad hat.

[Michael Batnick]

That's definitely yours.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Hey, Nicole, does this jacket make me look like an asshole or is it just my face? I got a couple of looks. I got a couple of looks today. Like, what does this guy do?

[Jan Van Eck]

Why are you wearing it?

[Michael Batnick]

Looks little.

[Jan Van Eck]

You look good in your shirt.

[Josh Brown]

Looks a little little. No, it fits. It fits. You look good. All right, but that's not a summer coat. This looks, like, heavy.

[Michael Batnick]

No, I know, but it was, like, a little bit chilly this morning.

[Josh Brown]

It was chilly. I went for an early morning walk. It was cold. We're doing a video today. Van neck celebrates 70 years. Unbelievable.

[Michael Batnick]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

[Josh Brown]

I was in Newport over earlier in the week.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

First time.

[Jan Van Eck]

Rhode Island.

[Josh Brown]

Rhode island, yeah. And we did the breakers, and it was unbelievable. Holy mackerel.

[Jan Van Eck]

You ever been, people say, was it crowded?

[Josh Brown]

Not really. No. No, it was spectacular.

[Michael Batnick]

You've never been to Newport, Rhode Island?

[Jan Van Eck]

No, I've been, but not for enjoyment.

[Josh Brown]

So they built the house in 18, I think. 1896. And he died like, a year later of a stroke.

[Jan Van Eck]

1896. Who.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, whose house is it?

[Josh Brown]

Vanderbilt.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, that was his.

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

Because I was going to say that's Robert Baron era.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

Newport up to the 1920s.

[Josh Brown]

I think Sailor owns it now.

[Jan Van Eck]

Oh, man, I know where this is going.

[Josh Brown]

No, no, that's. That's it. It's a spectacular house.

[Jan Van Eck]

It was really cool. It's a hotel room.

[Josh Brown]

It is owned by, like, the Preservation Society, so I think they own a lot of the mansions.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

That are on the coast.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, you can't afford to keep these things up.

[Josh Brown]

Well, that's why they sold it. They couldn't afford the taxes.

[Michael Batnick]

Never build these things today.

Yeah.

Like.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, they're the McMansions of the day. That's what I call them.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, they. I Think they were like palaces.

Yeah.

Because we have a bunch on. On the Gold coast of Long Island. Yeah. And most of them are now nobody's living in them. Just like museums.

[Josh Brown]

So look at the gate. You can't even see Kobe.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, that's nuts.

[Josh Brown]

Look at my. That's my eight year old son. You can't even see it.

[Michael Batnick]

The scale of those things is crazy.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. It was really. It is a pass.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

Do you watch Gilded Age?

[Josh Brown]

I did not watch the G, but.

[Michael Batnick]

In the first season they go to Newport. I don't know if they did. I didn't get past.

[Josh Brown]

So there's a scene that takes place. I don't know if it's multiple scenes or the whole season, but there was a scene where they in the house. They have an HBO card. There was a dancing scene in the library or whatever.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, that's a good show. I should have kept. I should have kept going with it. I just didn't.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. And you guys are. You are not like in the party phase of the ETF market.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

Like, you saw the article this week from Bloomberg. There's more ETFs and stocks. Yeah, right. You guys aren't like throwing shit against the wall.

[Jan Van Eck]

I don't think so. But I mean, we're not. We're not doing. We've never done leverage or inverse. Right. We don't do single stock. We don't do some of that. I mean, maybe we're too stodgy. You know, we just kind of look at the market, look at industries.

[Michael Batnick]

I ask you, how come no ETF issuers ever seem to do any M and A? Doesn't it seem like there's very little.

[Jan Van Eck]

Because why we've done something.

[Josh Brown]

Why buy when you could build so.

[Jan Van Eck]

So smh some little history.

[Michael Batnick]

So that was a Merrill product.

[Jan Van Eck]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

I knew that.

[Jan Van Eck]

And we converted them. We did an overnight trade. People had to opt in.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Jan Van Eck]

So it wasn't a default because they were trusts. And then we were going to start charging a management fee, but that was.

[Michael Batnick]

Buying just a single fund.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, we bought the whole range.

[Josh Brown]

What year was that?

[Jan Van Eck]

And so we wanted it for OIH because that was the missing thing in our suite. And we got smh.

[Josh Brown]

What year was that?

[Michael Batnick]

And smh so much more important or something like that. SMH is so much more important than OIH for us. Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

But you know what? You also. You don't see any established brands. And you guys are an established brand for the most part. Getting into the levered inverse game direction is the big one. But they started there.

[Michael Batnick]

Right, right, right, right.

[Josh Brown]

But you don't see you doing it. You don't see a lot of the other primetime players doing it because you have.

[Michael Batnick]

You know, I think what I'm trying to ask you is it's surprising to me, every time I look at like the list of ETF issuers, it gets longer. And you would not think that an industry that's as mature as the ETF industry is now is 30 years old industry. You would not think that there would continue to be new companies, new players at the rate that there are. You would think that it would be consolidating by now. And yet it's not. And I think maybe that's because the cost to issue a new fund has dropped. The technology and lift to manage a fund ongoing is easier.

Yeah.

And so the spaghetti cannon is out. But also like new companies just come along, create one hit and then that's it. They're a company, they exist, nobody buys them. So.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, but you know why they don't buy them?

[Michael Batnick]

Because anyone pitch you, like, do the bankers come to you and say, you should take a look at these guys or not?

[Jan Van Eck]

I mean, you kind of know the industry anyway and.

[Michael Batnick]

No.

Okay. It wouldn't be necessary because you know everybody.

Yeah.

Okay.

[Jan Van Eck]

And the fees aren't high. Everyone.

[Michael Batnick]

Now go ahead, what were we talking about now?

[Jan Van Eck]

Where did the bankers spend the financial. Investment bankers spend all their time private equity.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

Like ETF firms like this Wisdom Tree, where there's one public company to cover.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. The margins stink. It's not a great.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't even know what the multiple would be for an ETF issuer company to get bought. Would it just, would it be like the AUM and then whatever intellectual property and it would be like a multiple of the cash flow.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, I'm probably a low one, right?

[Jan Van Eck]

I mean like everything, they go through cycles. So when there was a shortage of properties, like 30 ETF issuers when we started 19 years ago, and now there's like hundreds, 300, 400, I don't even know.

[Michael Batnick]

It's wild.

[Jan Van Eck]

So there used to be a big premium because everyone wanted to get in, but now the guys have gotten in and it's kind of normal.

[Michael Batnick]

I remember, yeah, I remember like all the rumors. Like, like so and so is going to buy WisdomTree, right. This, this big bank is going to buy this issuer. I don't even hear any of that anymore. Yeah, because I guess like anyone that would wanted to do that has already done it.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, the platforms that with Distribution, Schwab, Fidelity. Right. They already have all their, their own families, so. And then J.P. morgan got in. The people really on the outside who wanted to get in are in.

[Josh Brown]

J.P. morgan succeeded bigly. I remember when they first like came to market and I was like, what do they do with these like ultra short duration bonds and ETFs. And now they're gigantic.

[Jan Van Eck]

Jeff, he was the killer.

[Josh Brown]

Huge.

[Jan Van Eck]

They, they helped, you know, found a category which is what you really want to do as an ETF issue. You know, credit to them.

[Michael Batnick]

What is that category called? Like Jeffy Covered call.

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Or they call it an income strategy.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

And then there's defined outcome, but those are different.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, well, it worked.

[Josh Brown]

So I saw we were with. Oh my. We were with Bruce Bond when he built those things. Or like when, like he announced them to the public.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

And I said to Ben, like, these are going to be massive.

[Michael Batnick]

Yep.

[Josh Brown]

People love certainty. We good? All right, let's get it on.

[Michael Batnick]

3 claps.

All right, what episode is this?

[Jan Van Eck]

Jon Friends, Episode 206 wow.

[Josh Brown]

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

[Michael Batnick]

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[Josh Brown]

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[Michael Batnick]

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[Josh Brown]

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[Michael Batnick]

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That's vanguard.com audio. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. 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. Episode 206. Ladies and gentlemen, you are now rocking with the best investing podcast in the entire world. You guys don't seem that excited. Something.

All right.

Oh, my God. This is going to be a great show. We have a returning champion with us today, somebody who I think has just been incredible on this show and everywhere else he appears. His name is Jan Vaneck. Jan Vaneck is the CEO of VanEck, a New York headquartered mutual funded ETF company. He joined the firm in 1992 and its executive management team in 1998. VanEck runs a number of thematic ETFs, strategies, mutual funds and alternatives. And he's also a pretty. I mean, this is. I want to. I want to ask you about this because it's a little bit under the radar. You're doing a quarterly podcast and I don't know about it.

Yeah. All right.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, you guys were. You guys were kind enough to have me on and to. I think. And yeah, I, I sort of would do decks, but not like your guests or like deck pros.

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

Yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

And anyway, I did an interview and I said, you know, it's good to put your thoughts on the record.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

And so I started do this on a quarterly basis. And yeah, it's worked out pretty well.

[Michael Batnick]

This is the Thoughtful money pod, which is Adam Taggart's podcast. And you have a space to jump on there every quarter.

Yep.

Okay. And lots of people are watching these things on YouTube. It looks like.

[Jan Van Eck]

Surprising number.

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

[Josh Brown]

John, those are rookie numbers. Quarterly, you gotta do daily. This way you put out daily. You're so on the record, nobody knows what you. That's what we do. Nobody. Everybody forgets what you said.

[Michael Batnick]

You do a daily Podcast, you change your mind every day. All right. VanEck celebrated 70 years this week, which is pretty incredible. Let me read this. Amid the Post World War II recovery, in 1955, John C. Vaneck founded the firm with bold idea US investors should have access to opportunities beyond its borders. He launched one of the first US Mutual funds to focus on international opportunities, marking the beginning of a firm shaped by conviction, not convention. Here's your quote. My father believed that investors deserved more than what the mainstream was offering. He built this firm on the idea that the world is constantly changing and that by understanding those shifts early, you could create real opportunity for clients. That belief still guides us today. So first of all, congrats on 70 years. It's pretty epic. Yeah, I think you guys have lived up to that. You guys are continue to come out with the latest, the newest thing. It's not throwing stuff at the wall. It's you deciding this is a new category that investors should pay attention to and then acting on it. How many funds do you now? How many ETFs do you now have in the suite?

[Jan Van Eck]

70.

[Michael Batnick]

Is it that many?

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

And.

[Jan Van Eck]

And I would say, Josh, if I could, like, you know, the. What my dad was famous for is starting a gold fund in 1968. So really took that international equity fund, and he said, inflation is going to be a problem. And there's two things about that. Number one, it's really our investment research outlook. Like, we look at these macro trends and then what's an investable way? And instead of putting it all in one macro fund, we have a dialogue like this. We say, well, this is what we think. We think you should add this to your portfolio. It'll reduce your risk or add your return. And actually, I was just realizing that that was one of the first kind of really specialized funds.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

Back then, it was all general equities, diversified. And this was like your stocks. It was like your first thematic fund away.

[Michael Batnick]

And the gold fund still exists.

[Jan Van Eck]

Gold funds very much still exists. And that's why we started GDX as our first etf.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, that was that, right? The Gold Miners etf.

[Jan Van Eck]

We were in Gold Miners, right? We're like, hey, there's no Gold Miners etf. Let's do that.

[Josh Brown]

By the way, it's been a minute. GDX been working big time. It has been a minute, right?

[Michael Batnick]

That thing's gone.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's gone vertical exploded. As one of my colleagues said, it's now a momentum trade.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, good.

[Michael Batnick]

International stocks are back in a major way. This Year. It's something that not a lot of people were expecting. Of course, they never do. Are you guys seeing flows to areas of your portfolio that had over the last few years, kind of just been ignored a little bit?

[Jan Van Eck]

But I mean, still resources. No one's even gold. I mean, barely. Like, we got 4 billion in redemptions in GDX in the first quarter, which is a lot for that fund. And I think that was just people covering their shorts. They're not getting long, you know, I don't know. So we still see very little life in the. In the gold market, but that's how.

[Josh Brown]

A bull market is born. It's right, like, not to use the John Templeton quote, but there is still, like, you're not going to fool me again.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, right.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, I think it's a great. It's a great signal that this is going to be a long cycle. That's what we think.

[Michael Batnick]

Do you ever think about, like, what would your dad have thought of things like bitcoin or, you know, some of the innovations that you guys have done in different areas of the market? Is that like a guiding thing for you or.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, I mean, I think he was. He was a historian, and I know you guys are historians, but, you know, what does he take from that? Just that the world is changing and you got to be open to how it's going to change and that it can change super quickly.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

And that's. He would have. He would been all over bitcoin, I mean, at least researching it, you know, he was a little bit more wonky. He was more that kind of economist than the business guy.

[Michael Batnick]

It's. It's an interesting concept to be a historian or to be very aware of history, but then simultaneously not allow yourself to be trapped in it. So if you really pay attention to history, what you see is that everything changes. But so many people who pay attention to history in the markets, they get stuck. They get stuck. They revert back to these analogs that no longer make sense. And they want to see mean reversion and they want to see history rhyme or repeat, and it doesn't quite work out that way. And they almost get, like, angry about it.

[Josh Brown]

So I think that's happening today. History is being disrupted by Nvidia 100%.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

All of the things that we thought we knew about the laws and how big things can get and how quickly they could grow, tear it up.

[Jan Van Eck]

And our economy is just so different. Like we talked about a hundred years ago, we're still kind of an agricultural economy. And then during Gilded Age, it started to become more industrialized. Today it's like you guys talk about it's a wealth economy.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

I don't even know how to describe our economy anymore. There's so much money.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

That you think people get richer if interest rates go up?

[Michael Batnick]

I do.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, I know, I know. But that's never been like that in US economic history.

[Michael Batnick]

No, it's this bizarre thing and it almost, it increasingly feels to me that you basically have to join the capital class, like to survive. It's becoming more and more like that. Even if that just means through a 401k, just something at a bare minimum, this idea that you can like live outside of the financial system and not put money at risk. I really think it's like impossible to live that way now. And I think there's a growing awareness of it. I think everyone now fully appreciates that. Yeah, I just don't think it ever reverses.

[Jan Van Eck]

I'm really excited by these MAGA accounts, you know, these thousand dollars per person that's gonna start next year. I just really worried that people are so financial.

[Michael Batnick]

The babies, you mean the baby accounts. Yeah. I think it's quite ideal.

[Jan Van Eck]

People are so financially illiterate. I'm like, what? You know, I talked to that foundation, like, how are you going to educate people with so many people just don't even know what to do with investment.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, we're here to help.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

So as I said, we're all on the record. We podcast a lot. And earlier in the week, Josh and I were talking about Nvidia, how they are the last to report. And I said I would be surprised if there's any surprises because we heard from all of their customers, all of their suppliers. The Stock is down 60 basis points today, so not much of a surprise. It was a bit of a yawn, but the most impressive yawn you could ever possibly imagine. So, John, let's throw up the first chart of what Nvidia actually reported on the Data center revenue. $41 billion, which is ho hum, up 56% year over year. Have we ever seen a company. I know we haven't. These sort of numbers, this big, this fast, with room to run, with no China revenue.

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

[Jan Van Eck]

No China revenue, which is like half.

[Michael Batnick]

The AI researchers in the world are in China.

Yeah.

And they don't even have that in the, in the quarter.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, not. Not directly.

[Michael Batnick]

Not directly. Maybe through louse. Doesn't this chart look fake? Does it's real. But, but like running a business, not a lot of businesses look, look like this. Just that stair step straight up.

[Josh Brown]

So two potential headwinds for Nvidia and one obvious tailwind that might. Might make the headwinds look like a joke. Number one is that the earnings per share and the revenue surprises, the analysts have caught up. John, next chart, please. So the beats are happening on a much smaller basis, obviously. Right. The analysts are now not only caught up, like, they are bullish as all get out. So the surprises are shrinking both top line and bottom line, while simultaneously the expectations for Nvidia are. Again, this is a chart that also looks fake. Next chart, please. They're projected to grow to 50 billion in revenue a quarter, and I think five or six quarters, which is more than double of where they are today. I'm sorry, from 50 to 100.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

It's crazy. Yeah, these are. This is real. Matt had to double check this to make sure that this wasn't fake.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, 100 billion per quarter. So.

[Josh Brown]

So that's in the price. That is in the stock price. That's what people are expecting.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, I. They announced the $60 billion buyback, and I laughed, like, why bother? Save that for when you miss earnings and then authorize it as a way to save the stock price. Nobody needs it now. I hope they're not actually going to do it.

[Jan Van Eck]

I mean, he's such an impressive CEO. I think his communications are very clear. Like, what the market was worried about was the China stuff. And he said, look, no China revenue in Q2. And my projections, I'm giving you no China revenue. So you can do your own speculative stuff on top of that. But he's giving guidance, but he's not, you know, he's really clearly identifying the risks in the stock. And that's why I think this surprises Michael.

[Michael Batnick]

I think he's going to win. I think he's gonna win the China thing with Trump because I think Trump really wants the 15% of taxes on chip sales. Trump is really excited to announce all this money that we're collecting from the tariffs. It's like a really big part of his. Not just his economic policy, but like his communication strategy. He really enjoys saying, we just collected $11 billion from this country or from the. So I think he wants that 15%. And I think it's an easy leap for somebody to whisper the right thing into his ear. And it's probably gonna be David Sachs, who's the head of AI Policy at the White House. But, like, David Sachs will make the case to him. We want the Chinese using Nvidia stuff, like a deprecated version. We're not gonna give them, you know, water it down.

[Josh Brown]

Not the uncle.

[Michael Batnick]

We're not going to give them the Blackwell 300. But like, let's give them enough so that they don't start standardizing on something else.

Yeah.

And I think that'll get through to him. And I think he's going to. I think that's the next kind of. So people like, well, what's going to drive Nvidia higher? Well, when they come out and announce that they can sell Blackwell in China, then all of a sudden none of that's in the numbers. Yeah, that's how you get the stock of 200.

[Jan Van Eck]

I think there's two big upside surprises from the numbers you showed on the last slide, potentially. One is just government demand from the Middle East. I was in the Middle east earlier this year. The amount of money that they're putting into data centers. And not surprisingly, if you think about it, right, their cost of energy is cheaper than everywhere in the world.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

Then way cheaper than Europe and way cheaper than the us so it makes sense if you've got to put a huge data center somewhere, put it in the desert and have cheap, cheap energy. So that's one. And then he talks about robotics. I don't really know what he has in mind. I don't really want to interact with a lot of robots personally. But there's going to be, you know, a lot of tasks like moving robotics.

[Michael Batnick]

Are not in the Nvidia numbers to the extent that they could be.

[Jan Van Eck]

They're not at all.

[Michael Batnick]

Right. So it's a $43 billion quarter and 41 billion is data center or whatever it is, whatever their breakdown is.

[Jan Van Eck]

And then gaming, and then gaming's tiny other data center connectivity.

[Josh Brown]

It's all data centers.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

So, all right, so the headwinds are. We know the stock is. The company's valued at 4 trillion. The expectations are through the roof. The surprises are coming down. That's the potential headwinds, however, the tailwinds. John, chart 4. They shared this. They say we see 3 to 4 trillion dollars in AI infrastructure spend by the end of the decade, which is like, wait, what? Right now the big Hyperscalers are spending $600 billion. So I guess it's not that, that, that crazy times five. But, but, but, but, but, uh, three to four trillion is a big number. So I thought this is a great answer that he gave in the call. Jen's was asked about this. Like, where does this number come from? Like, could, how do you get to 3 to 4 trillion? That sounds made up. He said the best way to look at it is we have reasonable forecasts from our large customers for next year. A very, very significant forecast.

[Michael Batnick]

Bullish, right?

[Josh Brown]

All right. I said this earlier, you know, you heard from Amazon and Google like that. We know and they know because they're backlogged. Okay. So very, very significant forecast. And we still have a lot of businesses that we're still winning and a lot of startups that are still being created. Don't forget that the number of startups for native AI was $100 billion was funded last year. This year they say it's 180 billion. But here's, here's the coup de gras. If you look at AI native startups that are generating revenues, last year was 2 billion, this year it's 20 billion. Next year, maybe 10x higher than that. It's not inconceivable.

[Michael Batnick]

Who are these AI native startups?

[Josh Brown]

This is OpenAI, I guess all of these companies.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Josh Brown]

Wild. Can you imagine if this is $200 billion next year?

[Jan Van Eck]

There's so many models, I can't even keep track of all the open language, open code models that he listed out of China. I mean there's just so much innovation happening in this space, right?

[Josh Brown]

So do students of history get stuck in the dot com analog? Because on the one hand I'm sympathetic to that school. I thought, how could you not be right?

[Jan Van Eck]

We're in the innovation super cycle. That's it. And what I think is that the market value, what I said coming into this earnings season is okay. Everyone's nervous. The Mag 7 is 35% of the S and P or whatever it is, get your mind around 60%. I mean it could, if you look at some of the charts that we have, right? These large cap companies, they're not hiring any more workers and their revenue is going up. These are going to be insane profit generators. What's going to stop it? It's just unbelievable.

[Josh Brown]

Well, it's not going to be regulation. It's not regulation, no.

[Jan Van Eck]

And like this is just Microsoft. I bought, you know, borrowed this slide from CO2, so credit to them. But I looked at Amazon. Headcount's been flat over the last several years as well. They're just not hiring. I talked to MBA professor. Amazon's not hiring any college graduate programmers this year. I mean, that's true.

[Michael Batnick]

Hiring for kids coming out of college is one of the things we've harped on on this show repeatedly. It's now Noticeable in the data.

[Josh Brown]

Look at this unemployment rate for college. So this is no high school diploma, no college. A bachelor's degree and college grads. And none of them look like this. Yeah, college grads. It's not good.

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

[Jan Van Eck]

So white, the color of these. They're white collar workers. It's the first thing you automate. And the large caps. My point into the market cycle is it's the mega caps and the large caps that benefit. If you're Vaneck, we don't have that many employees. We've got four people maybe doing the same job. You got thousands at banks. Right. So they're just going to like. It's just crazy, the efficiencies that these large companies with the installed customer base are going to realize.

[Josh Brown]

Another thing that is often lost and probably a bit lazy when you're describing Google and Microsoft. You have to unpack them and talk about the other companies underneath. I mean, YouTube would be a top 20 company, right?

[Michael Batnick]

Yes.

[Jan Van Eck]

They've got so much innovation that they're working on in so many different.

[Josh Brown]

How many Fortune 500 companies does meta sit on top of or Microsoft?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

Meta has 11 different services or some. Or perhaps something of. Alphabet has 11 different services that on their own, like have a billion users. Like, this is. It's unprecedented. We've never had companies like this.

[Jan Van Eck]

AI is another scale technology.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

If you have a little vertical focusing, just like say, like we invested in this finance AI company that it was going to kill. Bloomberg's.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

But their models will never be as smart as OpenAI or perplexity because they're not going to have the traffic. So someone who has 100 times the traffic is going to have the smarter models, the better answers, and they're going to suck up all the market share.

[Michael Batnick]

It's another winner. It's another winner take all world.

[Jan Van Eck]

Exactly. Just like social media.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

Are you worried about what this does to electricity? Because I was listening to a podcast that Patrick o' Shaughnessy had, the CEO of a company called Bason, and they were talking about how quickly the cost of electricity has gone up. And I think this is a very underreported story. I knew nothing about it until I listened to it. We have a chart from you showing the cost of electricity versus CPI and all of this AI stuff. Is this going to push this up even further?

[Jan Van Eck]

I think there are a couple of implications.

[Michael Batnick]

So first of, this is wild.

Yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

This great chart from my colleague Matt Siegel.

[Michael Batnick]

Shout out.

[Jan Van Eck]

But so number one, you know, we talk about. Well, those are the Macro implications. Right. We talk, I don't know if you guys think that inflation is going to 2%. I just don't think that's likely to happen.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

And here's another example of something that's running way ahead of this. And if electrification is, is another decade long trend, there's no way electricity prices are staying flat. Because if you look at these trends like we're, we're, that's why we're rushing to build nuclear reactors and all that kind of stuff. The other thing about this though is it really has psychological impact on people.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

Even though inflation wasn't crazy at the end of Biden's administration, a lot of people felt that inflation was super high. Electricity prices are like 2% of the income of wealthy people. For low income people, it's like 10 to 20% really. Electricity, if you're in Baltimore or New York, it's 10 or 20% of your income. You're spending. All your income is your electricity cost.

[Michael Batnick]

Wow.

[Jan Van Eck]

So it's, it's so that, you know, whatever it is, 300 to 400, like in New York state electricity is going up like 11% this year. 11%. Last year we shut down our nuclear reactor, thank you very much. So electricity is more expensive in New York. But yeah, it's. So this is just an interesting story. I think, you know, it's, it's very regressive.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

From a. And so I think it'll have, I don't know if it'll have political implications.

[Michael Batnick]

But it's economically regressive in that it. More, it, it's got a heavier impact on the, on the lower income people.

[Jan Van Eck]

Correct.

[Michael Batnick]

I, I was looking at utility stocks, I've been looking at utility stocks all year. This is like a once in a hundred years re rating for these names. They're trading at some of the highest multiples we've ever seen. And it's not just the unregulated utilities, like the more fun ones, the regulated utilities are going to their state and they're pitching these rate cases and they're winning them. And the reason they're winning them is because they're saying, guys, we can't, with our current capex, we can't meet the demand. And if there are data centers in their territory, forget about it. It's like off the charts. So I think some of the biggest winners in the market over the last couple of years have been utilities and some of these transmission companies that are the go between. And do you think there's an end to that in sight or if 3 to 4 trillion is right from Nvidia, then these have to keep working.

Yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

I mean, we need more electricity in the US that's not a secret.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

We've been talking about the winners from this sort of second phase of investing in AI and what we've pointed to is nuclear and natural gas, because nuclear, because we just need it and people want environmentally clean electricity and then natural gas because. Because you can't build a nuclear plant in two months.

[Michael Batnick]

Why is the energy sector trailing so poorly? If this is the story at the utilities, is it just because oil and electricity have very little to do with each other? Because in that gas component, I would have thought that like the demand side would have picked up, pricing would have been stronger and those stocks would work. But they're the worst stocks in the market.

[Jan Van Eck]

But the worst. I mean, EQT had a pretty good run for a while.

[Michael Batnick]

No, there's a few good ones, but as a sector.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, because we. Because there's no supply limitations. We are never. The United States is never going to run out of natural gas.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Jan Van Eck]

So that's, that's part of the pricing.

[Michael Batnick]

It's as simple as that.

Yeah.

Okay. All right, Got it.

[Jan Van Eck]

But still, like the machine makers, the combine, like, you know, there's a lot of services, construction that still needs to go into to building these.

[Michael Batnick]

Do you guys have a utility fund?

[Jan Van Eck]

We don't.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay. On the drawing board.

[Jan Van Eck]

So in our nuclear fund, not to, you know, sound too promotional, but.

[Michael Batnick]

No, no, no, it's okay.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's a mix of miners. It used to be everyone would just play uranium miners. And we said that's like too, that's too narrow. So we include utilities, you know, utilities oriented towards nuclear, obviously. And then the, that it was like the equipment suppliers, but now those are the new smart companies.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

The Oculus or whatever that went five, ten times last year. Yeah, it's. It's kind of richly valued. I mean, I wouldn't sell it.

[Michael Batnick]

Oklo.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, I mean, just the whole sector.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay. Is that the biggest market cap in this sector now? Oklo?

[Jan Van Eck]

I don't know.

[Michael Batnick]

Do you know what that is?

[Josh Brown]

I know that's one of the momentum stocks that the kids like.

[Michael Batnick]

That's the Sam, Sam Altman invested in this mini nuclear reactor thing.

Yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

So some more, I think.

[Michael Batnick]

Is that the other one? I don't know. I don't. I should pay more. I should pay closer attention. Is that fund raising money or people?

[Jan Van Eck]

It's our highest fund.

[Josh Brown]

Is that really?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

[Josh Brown]

What's the ticker.

[Jan Van Eck]

NLR.

[Michael Batnick]

NLR.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's up 45% this year. I just think it's like, it's like a lot of things in the market, it's just sort of tired now. It's just gotta like the real activity's gotta catch up with it. I mean the bearish case coming into the year was it takes five years to build these things and you know, like alternative energy and everything. People are like, they were already expensive in December and you're gonna get wiped out. And I said, I don't know, I just think it's a global thing, it's bipartisan and there's enough news flow happen this year, which is what happened that, that the stocks will be supported. But you know, again, I wouldn't put all my money.

[Michael Batnick]

Now Trump is pro nuclear.

[Jan Van Eck]

Oh my God.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. No. I don't know. Is he.

[Jan Van Eck]

He's incredibly, I mean Biden started like full credit to Biden and then Newsom.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

Democratic governors Newsom Whitmer in Michigan and then Delaware governor all supported nuclear projects in their states, like extensions or whatever it was. So it's definitely bipartisan.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

But Trump did this executive order and now he's like challenging companies. He wants three of these newer reactors up and running by next July 4th.

[Josh Brown]

So I don't know anything about this stuff. What is the opposition like? I know nothing about it. Is it. People are afraid that there's gonna be like a blow up or something?

[Michael Batnick]

Yes. Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. Nobody wants that anywhere near that.

[Josh Brown]

But aren't there ways to not do that?

[Jan Van Eck]

So nimby, right? No one wants it in their neighborhood?

[Michael Batnick]

No.

Right.

Well, we don't buy a house.

[Jan Van Eck]

You know what they're doing there'd.

[Michael Batnick]

You buy a house 10 miles away from a nuclear reactor? I wouldn't.

[Josh Brown]

Why can't you stick it in one?

[Jan Van Eck]

I live in one.

[Michael Batnick]

It's no middle of nowhere.

[Josh Brown]

Cause then you have to like move the.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, that's what's happening. So they're doing it on federal land. There's one company that's bro.

[Josh Brown]

You take flights. There is middle of nowhere. There are literally hundreds of.

[Michael Batnick]

That doesn't help you. You have to move the electricity it.

[Jan Van Eck]

Generates to have it fast.

[Josh Brown]

Dude, AI blockchain something. Come on.

[Jan Van Eck]

To have it fast you need either a friendly local regime like Louisiana. Right. We need federal land where Trump with a, you know, an executive order can do it. So that's what they're doing. Then there's one company that's doing private financing. They're doing it underground. They're building a nuclear reactor underground. And they're literally building one. Don't laugh. On the moon.

[Michael Batnick]

On the moon. Great idea. No, but I am all for nuclear on the moon. I have always said this. That's the best place you could put it. I asked.

[Jan Van Eck]

That's why I had to mention it, because it's a little real. But that's how you have to get around nimby. You have to get around it.

[Michael Batnick]

But it's literally the problem with it is, you see, Fukushima, that was not a nuclear meltdown. It was a tidal wave or a tsunami that created the conditions for a nuclear meltdown. They didn't do anything wrong at the plant. Yeah, that's not a Chernobyl. It's the Japanese. They don't.

[Jan Van Eck]

The technology is so old, it's like the iPhone 3.

[Josh Brown]

You know what doesn't have tsunamis? The moon.

[Michael Batnick]

I agree. I've always said this. What do you want to say about US Credit and the depths?

[Josh Brown]

So, yeah, let me say. Let me ask you this. I know you're a. You're a deficit warrior. Steve Eisman was in here a couple months ago saying, ah, it's just virtue signaling from the rich guys. What's a.

[Michael Batnick]

Did you hear. Did you hear that?

[Jan Van Eck]

Yes, I did. So, look, I think if you look at history, right, the budget deficit in the US has never been as large as it was a year or two ago. I mean, it was just ridiculous, especially given that we had low unemployment. Any country in the world could not get away with the budget deficit that we've had. So all I'm saying is it's a risk out there that you really have to watch. And I know people are sick about talking about it, and I know that Japan has a lot of debt. And throughout my career, everyone was. The JGB trade blew people up. It was one of the widowmakers out there. I get all that. Timing in markets is impossible. Let's just grant that. All I'm saying is let's just focus on it. Now, if you're building a portfolio, you wanted to own the hedges, right? So, you know, we've been talking about bitcoin and gold for a couple of years. Guess what? Gold is working again this year. Those hedges against that big risk have really worked out super well.

[Josh Brown]

And gold looks like it's about to explode even higher.

[Michael Batnick]

You think gold is working because of the deficit?

[Josh Brown]

I do.

[Michael Batnick]

You do?

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Josh Brown]

What do you think, Ed?

[Jan Van Eck]

I have a slightly longer view. Like, I look at. If you look out. 10 years. I think that India is going to be the fourth largest consumer market in the world. So it's going to pass.

[Michael Batnick]

Europe, they love gold for jewelry.

[Jan Van Eck]

The world wants a hedge against the dollar.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

And so they are just what's the second best currency in the world? It's gold. It's not the renmini.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's not the yen. I just list these and you're like in your mind, no way. Right. The euro. No. So that's why it's been gold. And that I think is a multi year trend.

[Josh Brown]

That's not complicated. The dollar's weakening. This is the basement trade. People are buying bitcoin. And this reason, it's very straightforward.

[Michael Batnick]

I thought when you said India you were going to say Diwali season. Because when I was a broker I used to pitch gold stocks and we would pitch them around dualie season. And I didn't even know what it was. I was just reading it off a script. But it's this like Indian gift giving festival and gold is like prominently.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, I mean India just. If you think about what the world looks like, it's going to be more fragmented and that's not a bad thing. It's good that like other countries are getting wealthy. All I mean is that the, the Chinese economy has nothing to do with the dollar.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

The renminbi and the Indian rupee. They don't want a dollarized economy in any way.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

So all I'm saying is they have their own ecosystems. What's the common kind of number two currency is going to be gold?

[Michael Batnick]

What's so funny about that is it's like a complete 360 back to the way it used to be. Gold was the common currency, 100%. So now they have this belt and road thing, but it was the Silk Road and it's like everybody could agree what gold was worth.

Yeah.

So like you had this barter system but like gold was the medium that everyone just looked at and said, okay, I understand the value of that. And you're suggesting like we're sort of headed back there.

[Jan Van Eck]

Look, I'm just saying, you know, you can make fun of the deficit watchers like your guest was doing. And I would just. My first counterpoint is that the hedges have worked great in my portfolio. I don't know about his.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

So that's number one and then number two, I guess what do we look at? We look at the 10 year and we look at the 30 year. And what I like to say is we know the government's going to default on its debt in the next 10 years. A lot of people look at me.

[Josh Brown]

Wait, what?

[Jan Van Eck]

The US Is going to default on its debt in the next 10 years. We are not going to meet our Social Security obligations in 2033. That's less than 10 years from now.

[Josh Brown]

Yes, we will.

[Jan Van Eck]

We are going to cut payments down by 20%. That's a selective default on your obligations.

[Michael Batnick]

Are you adjusting that for Nvidia? How are we. All right.

[Josh Brown]

No, no, no.

[Jan Van Eck]

The trustees say this. Everyone knows that that's political suicide.

[Josh Brown]

Who's gonna do that?

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, so I said, you have two chances to fix these problems. Sorry. You fix a problem like this the year after a presidential election. We only have two presidential elections between now and 2033.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

We just had one 2025. And then we've got 2029 in his third term. 2029. It's gonna be. We'll take a look at this bipartisan, like, I wish he would have dinner with Hakeem Jeffries and say, we just got to solve this problem.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

We can't. We can't cut the benefits to people who are relying on Social Security. But there's no way one party's going to do it on its own, right? I think so we're going to default, I think convince you. No, you're rolling your eyes.

[Michael Batnick]

I think one of the great things about investing is, to your point, it doesn't really matter because the price is the price. And if you don't understand that gold is being accumulated just based on its price action, then you don't understand the first thing about investing. That thing is being bought.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, it's working.

[Michael Batnick]

Not just the etf, but gold in general is being bought. I remember three years ago, Costco was putting gold coins into the stores and they couldn't keep them on the shelf.

[Josh Brown]

Dude, this is a face blower. Look at this. Jan, what are we looking at?

[Jan Van Eck]

This is it foreign central banks. What are they buying? They're buying gold and they own more gold than. Than Treasuries.

[Josh Brown]

So for the first time since 1996, foreign central banks hold more gold than US treasuries. This is a wildly big deal, I think.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

So what the central banks did is sort of like in different phases. First of all, the developed market central banks said, oh, gold is so old. Like, we're going to start selling it. So ally Europe started selling their gold. And then what's been happening recently is basically the new rich countries, the emerging market countries are buying. So India, China, slowly, even Eastern Europe. So that's basically what you're seeing here. They just want to hedge against the dollar, which makes a lot of sense.

[Michael Batnick]

What's the y axis? 35, 30% of their reserves of their total reserves. So central banks have about, it looks like 30% of their reserves in gold and a declining 25% in US treasuries. And for reference, that number peaked around 2015, 2016, at 30% for treasuries.

[Jan Van Eck]

Can I give you the other side of the argument? So the bullish side of the argument is that we are reducing our budget deficit. And so in the last fiscal year of 6.5% of GDP, which I said was crazy from a historical or any other perspective, Bessant just yesterday is talking about getting that to five or five and a half percent. So since Trump has been in office, it's been at 5.5% tariff revenue. And that's why they keep talking about tariff revenue.

[Michael Batnick]

They love the tariff revenue.

[Jan Van Eck]

So if you get down to five or five and a half percent within a year, then you can grow your way out of it and then it just doesn't matter.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

And so I think is that your.

[Michael Batnick]

Base case of what ends up happening?

[Jan Van Eck]

I think we don't know. I'm just saying it's a big force in the markets that we got to watch. And obviously government debt matters in people's portfolios. And I just think we think you need to have a hedge fund. But I don't think I know for sure that there's going to be that I was making fun of. Not fun of Social Security. I was kind of using that to make a point. But there's both sides of the argument. So I a little bit agree with your guess that you can't overly and only obsess about.

[Josh Brown]

I would say that the deficit has been a worry since the beginning of time. It's only gone up into the right. So I am not super concerned about it. However, it does seem like the type of thing that even if there's a 0.1% chance of something going wrong, it's like the ultimate something going wrong.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

So like, I get it.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, it's always been the risk has, has come out of the banking system. It's coming out come out of Wall street, basically. If you look at our financial history, this would be the first time that the risk since pre Alexander Hamilton came out of Washington D.C. right.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

It's interesting. Yeah. Nobody worries about bank balance sheets.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's like, it's like no one worried about housing Debt until housing debt blew up.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

Because it never happened before.

[Josh Brown]

Do you think we'll see a central bank start to accumulate Bitcoin?

[Jan Van Eck]

Our central bank?

[Josh Brown]

Any central bank.

[Michael Batnick]

There's probably a few that already are.

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, yeah, I mean, aren't they doing that at all? The Mideast countries are mining it and so they're accumulating it. They're not selling it. But yeah, I think eventually, yeah, if.

[Michael Batnick]

You'Re worried about volatility, definitely the answer is to start accumulating bitcoin. I love it. I love it. Let's talk private equity. It's been brought to my attention by one of your employees. Give this guy a raise. How do I say his name?

Bo. Bo.

You call him Beau.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay. So I did this. I did this thing on private equity investing and I had a little bit of help from Sean and Chart kid Matt. We were just basically trying to figure out like, is it better historically to have invested in private equity funds or just buy the stocks, the publicly traded companies that are the biggest private equity players. And I mean it's, it's night and day. Like if you bought the stocks of Blackstone, KKR, et cetera, the top 10, whether it's by market cap weight or equal weighted, you turned, you turned $100 into $264 owning the stocks. Whereas if you bought, I mean this is one index, but the Bloomberg PE index benchmark, which aims to capture the returns of all their funds, you turned $100 into $113. Now that's in a three year period. So it's a little unfair, but just conceptually. I asked the question, why be an LP or an investor in the fund when you could be a GP or a sponsor of the fund by owning shares of the sponsor? So your guy reached out and he.

[Jan Van Eck]

Tried to sell you our etf?

[Michael Batnick]

Yes. No, but that's. Listen, man, I want my people this aggressive. He said. Hi, Josh. Hope all is well. I am Bo. By way of introduction, I've been an avid fan for a while. I listened to your session on the Prof. G Markets podcast and was struck by the analysis you highlighted between the performance of the stocks of alternative asset managers versus the performance of their fund. I recently joined Vaneck to lead coverage of our asset manager channel and I've been highlighting this trend as captured by our GPZ etf. I didn't know this existed. I went through all this trouble to build like my own model using the individual stocks. But the VanEck Alt Asset Manager ETF, what a great idea.

[Jan Van Eck]

Isn't it amazing that didn't exist. I mean, it's like four or five.

[Michael Batnick]

When did you start it?

[Jan Van Eck]

Like four or five months ago.

[Josh Brown]

I am super bullish on this theme.

[Jan Van Eck]

You are.

[Michael Batnick]

I want to buy this bullish. I want to buy this etf.

[Josh Brown]

I own Blackstone. I. This is.

[Jan Van Eck]

Okay, so here's the issue with that time period, Josh. These companies, alternative asset managers, right, because their performance fees aren't necessarily that predictable, used to trade it at quite a significant discount to traditional asset managers. I mean, the argument in the old days, right, when hedge funds were all over Wall street, is there's no terminal value to these hedge fund businesses.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

What's his face? Famous hedge fund guy retires. There's no business left.

[Josh Brown]

Now there is.

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

[Jan Van Eck]

So, Right. So now they realize, wow, these are, you know, very, you know, they're diversified. They're constantly achieving these returns. You could also argue the alternative credit managers have a competitive moat. Because if you want a billion dollar check for a data center, you're going to Blue Owl or Apollo or Aries. You can't go to some small $3 billion.

[Michael Batnick]

There's not a thousand, Right. There's not a thousand players.

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

But also. So I think, you know, so that's about 45% of the portfolio. So I kind of like that story.

[Josh Brown]

What's the other 55?

[Michael Batnick]

You like the credit, the private credit part of the story?

[Jan Van Eck]

Better. Since the financial crisis, the government basically said, you know, banks get out of the risky lending business. So now there's risky lending.

[Michael Batnick]

Are there any moats in private equity? Because I feel like my inbox is filled with thousands of offers from companies I've never heard of.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, you get the bad ones.

[Michael Batnick]

I only get the. Well, I get the good ones.

[Jan Van Eck]

So can I ask you guys a question? So if you look at these unicorns, right, all these private companies, there's about 3 trillion rounding up, right, in market cap of these private companies. And you go to an RA and you say you're missing these out of your portfolio because The Stripes and SpaceX, they're just not going public. The OpenAI. So let's say they never go public, but you should have some exposure in your market cap weighted portfolio.

[Josh Brown]

How do you not OpenAI at $400 billion?

[Jan Van Eck]

Small caps, by the way, are like 7 trillion. So it's a little wedge in your portfolio. So does that appeal to you?

[Michael Batnick]

I think to a lot of investors. Depends on if the NASDAQ just went up over the last six months. Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Wait, are you saying you can get me into OpenAI at $25 billion. I'm in.

[Michael Batnick]

So what's the answer to that?

[Jan Van Eck]

I'm asking you. Honestly, we think about. So we actually have some private funds and for that business, I think its mentality is totally different than the rest of our business. ETFs are in economies of scale business. All I care about for my hedge fund and my early stage venture fund is total return to LPs.

[Josh Brown]

But what you're talking about is very different. You're talking about like early stage investing versus growth investing. These are very different things. The markets are going to mature, right? Nasdaq Marketplace and Card and all these companies are coming in a big way. BlackRock is going to be in there. So this, I think we are still very, very early on the transformation of private to public. I think we're still very early. So these names are going to work to buy? Yeah, I think it's a buy.

[Michael Batnick]

I think the ETF will work. I haven't even looked at the holdings, but just, I think the tailwind is probably a 5 to 10 year tailwind. I don't think this is a, I don't think it's a fad. I think as more advisors start to utilize these tools in their portfolios, some will work, some won't, but they won't just stop. For some reason. It's different than when they threw all these hedge funds in our faces 15 years ago. That because that I think suffered from the problem you described. Like everybody wanted to be in John Paulson. Everybody wanted to be in Steve Cohen. Everybody wanted to be in like the hot manager. That's not evidence based. You can't like a financial advisor cocktail.

[Jan Van Eck]

Party, like investor, like a financial advisor.

[Michael Batnick]

Who talks to their clients about Vanguard Funds is never going to be the same person. That's like I'll do anything to get into point 72 or it's two different people. But this stuff. If there's a way to show people a systematic approach to making loans at a private credit fund, you will have that advisor's attention. And that advisor will not feel like a clown re explaining that to their end customers. So I think the Runway here is like five to 10 years.

[Josh Brown]

But the open, the open air, the names that you mentioned, that's, that's venture stuff, right? That's not private equity. Private equity traditionally is you bought, you buy a small cap and micro cap, you lever it up and it works, right? It's, it's equity. It's equity and leverage. It works, right? Advisors are never going to have early access to these names for their company, for their customers. If you want to get to Android today, you could do it at a valuation that you know is not what early investors got in. And it's fine. That's, that's why the market works so.

[Jan Van Eck]

Late stage access is okay to growth companies.

[Michael Batnick]

Well, the reality of there being enough great startups in order to satiate the demand of like trillions of dollars, like it's just, it's impossible. It's an impossible thing. And I was debating this with somebody who was like, it's not fair. Yeah, I know. Like not everything gets democratized cuz life's not fair. I don't know a better way to answer that. Really, it's unfortunate. I wish Everybody could have OpenAI. You can't. And if you could, you probably don't want it. If OpenAI decides we're going to raise money at a trillion dollars. Yes, there's plenty for everyone to go around.

[Josh Brown]

Wait, that's nonsense. It's not fair. That's a ridiculous argument. It's not fair.

[Michael Batnick]

It's not fair.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

The closer you are to these founders, the more likelihood you are to have access true. To invest early. Okay, so that's ridiculous.

[Josh Brown]

No, this is ridiculous. This is the way the world works. First of all, power is obviously concentrated. Yes, the people that have these relationships get access to, but also a lot of the venture investors that are putting money on the line. For every OpenAI, there's a million that go to zero.

[Michael Batnick]

Correct. You want those too. Most people don't.

[Josh Brown]

Exactly. So they're taking the risk and they get the reward and sometimes they eat shit. And that's the way it works. Matter of fact, being a venture investor has not been fun for the last three years at all. Yeah, if you were in OpenAI and some of the big winners, you did great. But it's been a desert out there.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. My advice to people who are like on the outside looking in and they're like, why don't I have access to this? The easiest way to have access to the shares of an exciting pre IPO startup is to go work there. I mean seriously, go get a job there. You will be in the stock option pool if it's not important to you. Second easiest way, be the college roommate of the founder. I mean, you have podcasts, give speeches. It's an amazing thing. That's a really easy way to get access to.

[Josh Brown]

But wait, Jan, you've done a lot of early stage investing. Like I'm sure like, like me, you have A lot of zeros in there. That's just the way it works.

[Jan Van Eck]

Yeah, I haven't done a lot.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Jan Van Eck]

But Howard, I like invest with Howard. And you know, we, we hired the team out of Circle and they've come off a really good start. But you know, it's a $40 million fund.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

You know, and, and you got to cap these strategies. I mean, we have a hedge fund that's done fantastic, it's like 47% annualized. But you, you know, what do you have a half a billion or a billion dollars in capacity in that everybody can't get in? It's a different business.

[Josh Brown]

These early stage companies, they don't need all. That's not how it works.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

Let's do some crypto stuff. So you've, you were pretty early to crypto amongst the traditional asset managers. You've been very open minded about it. You've been bullish about it for a really long time. What do you make of this state of crypto this year and why is bitcoin falling?

[Jan Van Eck]

Well, bitcoin and crypto are totally different things. I mean, bitcoin's hit all time highs several times this year. I know, why isn't it corrected recently? But Josh, come on, take the month of August off.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm teasing it.

[Jan Van Eck]

All right, so that's bitcoin. So crypto, I think, look, is blockchains are great technology, but who cares?

[Michael Batnick]

Nobody cares about that.

[Jan Van Eck]

What coins? I know, I know.

[Michael Batnick]

What coins are you bullish on?

[Jan Van Eck]

I'll be brief. I'll be brief. Look, it was only in 2023 that blockchains became at all a non toy. What I mean by that is the cost for a database have to be low and reliable right before 2023. Eth gas. Excuse me. The transaction fees were all over the place, right? Bitcoin, all over the place. No one's going to build on that. Any CTO is going to not even talk to you.

[Michael Batnick]

It's too unreliable.

[Jan Van Eck]

They're not even letting you in the conference room. That changed in 2023. Okay, so now you have Solana, a lot of cheap, reliable blockchains. Now you have stablecoins being legalized.

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

[Jan Van Eck]

Every financial institution is going to want to have stable coins from their clients. You're going to have a checking account, savings account, credit card in your bank app and they're going to want to be able to take stable coins. That's now starting, maybe it takes a year and that'll be built out.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

And so I said that's I was explaining the other day, ETH is like the Wall street token because that's what people are going to build on. It's Ethereum or something. They're. Their methodology is ETH virtual machine, right. Evm. So there's some EVM compatible chains. So that's what Wall Street I think.

[Michael Batnick]

Is going to, they're going to standardize on ETH as the way they tokenize all the securities.

[Jan Van Eck]

Evm, right. So that's why ETH is like rather like crazy over the last. It's more than doubled since we thought.

[Michael Batnick]

It was Tom Lee. It's more than just Tom Lee.

[Jan Van Eck]

That was a great interview. But it's more than Tom Lee.

[Josh Brown]

Look at this. This is back to the price. Nobody cares about these blockchains.

[Michael Batnick]

The.

[Josh Brown]

So Hogan tweeted this.

[Michael Batnick]

Loves when you hold this laptop right.

[Josh Brown]

In front of the list. Hogan tweeted this. The 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 5 year and 10 year CAGR of Bitcoin versus the S&P 500. And for people that don't own bitcoin, this hurts and they're mad. And I'd be mad too. This, this feels unfair.

[Jan Van Eck]

The coins outperformed, yes, but the, the.

[Josh Brown]

The level of outperformance on every time frame imaginable off of what people still think is just imaginary funny money. Nonsense.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's so common sense. It's digital gold, right? The supply is limited. People have a demand for that kind of stuff and it has hit escape velocity in the mid teens. So by 2017 there was a little chance that anything was going to catch up to this. Millions of people had already adopted it. And then if you just say okay, it becomes half the market value of gold. Boom. That's $400,000 in Bitcoin. It's not like a crazy, like it.

[Josh Brown]

Is just kind of the concept of a new financial system was just really hard for people to even wrap their heads around. And the loudest voices, not the best people in many cases. And you know, the FTX and the rugs like you can understand what the average person doesn't believe. Now for people that spend time around this, I think it's more. Makes more sense.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's extremely generational.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

A lot of young people and yeah, I can't really explain it. I say don't if you don't. If you don't want to ever believe it, don't spend time on it. And if you're a financial advisor, don't spend time talking to clients about it.

[Michael Batnick]

So I have a joke where somebody starts talking about. But what is the use case? And I always say this, picture this, you're in Venezuela and you lose people that way. But Michael and I were doing a show on Tuesday night and we looked at a chart of Western Union. Western Union effectively has vanished. Its share price is $8. And I said, I think this is the first US company to be literally put out of business by a blockchain technology.

[Josh Brown]

I bought some Western Union today.

[Michael Batnick]

Well done.

[Jan Van Eck]

All right, let me give you my history point here. This is why I think the stablecoin bill was so important. It's the third most important piece of bank legislation in US history. You got Alexander Hamilton sets up the credit of the US you got fdr, that puts in deposit insurance and saves the banking system.

[Michael Batnick]

And then Trump.

[Jan Van Eck]

And then you've got stablecoins, which enables tech companies to get into the payments business without being a bank.

[Michael Batnick]

No charge.

[Jan Van Eck]

Everything else in your financial life, you have to touch the bank. You have to go to your checking account and do everything from there. Not anymore.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

You can remember they made fun of Zuck when he wanted to do Libra. That stable like, like this was bipartisan. It's not getting reversed. It's pretty radical.

[Michael Batnick]

You think it's going to have that big of an effect?

[Jan Van Eck]

I do.

[Michael Batnick]

In taking fees out of the system, speeding up the movement of money.

[Jan Van Eck]

Payment stack is totally going to change. All right, there'll be more Western unions.

[Josh Brown]

But what's wrong with Venmo? I keep asking for us or Zell.

[Jan Van Eck]

That's fine.

[Michael Batnick]

You're not Venezuelan. You don't understand. All right, wait. Slide, pivot. When Robinhood announced they were going to build this thing, ETH is going to be the underlying base, but it's like tokenizing securities. Corporations who themselves issue stocks did not like it. So I was surprised at the negative reaction. I think companies were saying, like, make no mistake, whatever Robinhood is cooking up, these are not security, these are not securities that we have issued. There was a little bit of like a mini backlash and then Robinhood quickly stopped talking about it.

Yeah.

So what was your take on that?

[Jan Van Eck]

Those were private companies. And there is that dynamic going on, right, where if you. You get into this world of SPV special purpose vehicles, right? So SpaceX does rounds of investing and suddenly there's 10 venture capital funds and they're all sponsoring SPVs to invest in different rounds of SpaceX.

[Michael Batnick]

These companies don't like Elon's like, I.

[Jan Van Eck]

Don'T like this nonsense. I don't even know who owns it. And frankly, if you own spv, you have no idea. If that VC firm disappears or the Carta blows up or whatever, you have no idea. You have no transparency. So he tries to clean that up.

[Michael Batnick]

Right?

[Jan Van Eck]

And that's what these companies, they want to control their own cap table, which means they are private. They want to control who's a shareholder, right? Like Ritholes, like your company Vaneck. We want to control who our shareholders are.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

We may not mind having some minority shareholders, but we don't want just anybody.

[Michael Batnick]

Do you think that's going to happen though? Do you think that'll happen in a more accepted way? Not the private startup companies, but maybe public companies. It's similar to an ADR to me, where somebody comes along and says, we're going to create something that is represented by a share in this company, we'll be the ADR sponsor here in this country. The issuer is in a foreign country. But if you want to trade the security here, use this. That worked. The ADR market is fairly substantial. Is this like the next evolution where people say how would you like to trade a security but not be in the dollar based world, be in the stablecoin world, slash move in and out of these tokenized securities.

[Jan Van Eck]

It's just a tug of war and I don't know how it's going to play out.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

Vlad, the CEO of Robinhood on our behalf, we all to be able to trade SpaceX, right?

[Michael Batnick]

Or.

[Jan Van Eck]

Or OpenAI. There's huge demand in the wealth channel for this, right? And then there's the founders and they may like it, they may not like it. In that case, they didn't like it. But you know, maybe they get comfortable and, and the weaker the founder. Meaning if the company's super hot, sure they can suck up all the shares, right? But if they're kind of meh, then you know, too bad their. Their shares are going to trade.

[Josh Brown]

But you know what's weird? If this becomes like a liquid market, what about like investor protection and disclosures?

[Michael Batnick]

LOL. Stop. It's 2025. What are we talking about here? Nobody cares about that. Wait till the next market crash and then we'll talk about that. Are there any other charts? Do we want to do this?

[Josh Brown]

No, we did it already.

[Michael Batnick]

We're not going to do the treasury stuff, are we? Okay, suffice to say, Yan is super bullish on the digital asset treasuries. How do you really feel though, honestly? Do you think they're. You think they're good for investors because they're creative and they're giving people a new way to bet or I mean.

[Jan Van Eck]

Look, these companies, let's say they just are public companies or corporations that buy some kind of crypto asset to describe what a dad is.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

And so Michael Saylor has the most famous one. I think it gives some people the ability to buy access to that crypto with an ETF doesn't exist or they just want to own it in that form. So that's a limited use case.

[Michael Batnick]

So what?

[Josh Brown]

How about if you manage a convertible bond fund? This has been a whole month for you.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, Seriously, why buy the bond?

[Josh Brown]

Buy the microstrategy convertible bonds.

[Jan Van Eck]

Oh no, we will own strategy and a whole bunch of our ETFs. We're like, what's going on? So yeah, that's a separate thing. And then a positive spin is for some of these foundations. So a foundation is basically the original founding group of a token, right? And let's say they issue a token to do stock trading or whatever it is, derivatives trading, and suddenly that a lot of people use that platform, then that token becomes valuable and there this weird offshore thing now called a foundation. Most people don't know about these foundations. If the foundations say, okay, you know what? The United States is hospitable to tokens and to crypto. I'm going to come onshore and I'm going to be like a normal software company and I'm just going to be like a version of Unix, like an open source software company that specializes in something that's sort of what Ripple.

[Michael Batnick]

That's sort of what Ripple was trying to do. And then they got accused, some would say rightfully of issuing securities away from the securities laws. And they fought it for, I don't know, 12, 10 years, however long. So these companies will look increasingly more normal.

[Jan Van Eck]

Some will. Right. And the test is right. To avoid being a security. All these will all be securities is are you centralized or decentralized?

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Jan Van Eck]

The good thing about Bitcoin is completely decentralized. There's no one person in charge. Other companies, there'll be a range of solutions.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay, what do you want to do with the next 70 years at VanEck? Where do you think? Where's the firm going? What are you excited about private market investing?

[Jan Van Eck]

Are you kidding me?

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

All right, good. So how are you going to do that?

[Jan Van Eck]

We're looking at it.

[Michael Batnick]

An ETF wrapper or.

[Jan Van Eck]

No, no, like Interval Fun maybe or something.

[Michael Batnick]

Interval Fun. Okay, I hear those are hot.

[Josh Brown]

So hot right now.

[Michael Batnick]

So hot right now. All right. Do you have Fun on the show today.

[Jan Van Eck]

It was great to be here.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, dude, it's so great to see you. And you, of course, will be at Future Proof. Have you been to all of them? Did we ever miss one?

[Jan Van Eck]

How many? How many were there?

[Michael Batnick]

A million. It feels. I don't know. I'm so tired.

[Jan Van Eck]

I'm already tired thinking about it, right?

[Michael Batnick]

I'm already tired thinking about it, but I also can't. Wait, wait.

[Jan Van Eck]

This is my third. Okay, Third straight.

[Josh Brown]

There we go.

[Jan Van Eck]

All right, so I'm like, yeah, whatever, dude.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm psyched. I'm psyched to see you in California. I'm so glad you're going to be there. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. And aside from your podcast, your secret podcast that we just learned about today, you're active on, I think, your Twitter, LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Okay. All right, awesome, guys. Make sure to follow Jan Van Eck wherever he's saying things. You're probably going to learn something. We always end the show asking people what they're most looking forward to. We'd love to hear if you have something for us.

[Jan Van Eck]

Okay, so college football, USC fan.

[Michael Batnick]

Usc.

[Jan Van Eck]

Usc. University of Southern California. Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

All right, good.

[Jan Van Eck]

My wife went there with her New York Islanders hockey fan.

[Michael Batnick]

Okay.

[Josh Brown]

They're playing each other.

[Jan Van Eck]

My one shout out, if I could. There's something called and I'm not really big into healthcare or anything, called a calcium CT test. If you haven't taken it, take it. It's the weirdest thing. It's a $200 test. No one prescribes it ahead of time. It's basically a way to see if calcium is building up in your veins. And it's like there's op EDS about it. Brad Gerstner talks about it, and I'm not a healthcare guy, but why don't people take these tests? It's insane. Where do you guys calcium cto? You just ask your gp, and I did it. Someone told me to do it, and my GP is like, why do you need it? I'm like, like, because I want to take it.

[Josh Brown]

I've been mean.

[Michael Batnick]

I read about it on Twitter. Just give it.

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

What does that do with the Islanders or usa?

[Jan Van Eck]

Nothing. But I'm looking at this. I'm looking forward to his next calcium. No, I'm looking forward to other people. What's my best friend in my neighborhood like? He didn't take it, and suddenly he took it two weeks ago. It's off the charts bad.

[Michael Batnick]

What do you do if you're off.

[Jan Van Eck]

The charts, you change your diet and you take a statin.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so wait, literally, usc, Islanders.

[Michael Batnick]

I don't.

[Josh Brown]

I don't get the connection.

[Michael Batnick]

There's no connection.

[Jan Van Eck]

I'm looking forward to hockey season. It's like Nick's you're looking for.

[Michael Batnick]

We're excited. The same way for the Knicks.

[Josh Brown]

You know what I'm excited about, Jan? Speaking of usc, I'm going to see Oasis at the Rose Bowl. Oh, I. Sick, right?

[Jan Van Eck]

That's awesome.

[Michael Batnick]

Why do you have to do this? I was supposed to go and I told him, get me a ticket. And my wife's like, 20 minutes later.

[Josh Brown]

He goes, oh, send my money back.

[Michael Batnick]

No, it's the next day, I think. Was it the next day or a week later?

[Josh Brown]

It was very soon after a friend.

[Michael Batnick]

Dude, I call Michael. I'm like, I'm so sorry. I'm not allowed to go to his. I'm like, can you.

[Josh Brown]

Cuz we.

[Michael Batnick]

You bought it on StubHub or something, whatever. I'm like, can you, like, resell it? He's like, don't worry about it. I got it. Like, he didn't make me. He didn't make me feel like a loser about it. There's a good reason why I can't go. I didn't ask permission for. No, there's a good reason why I can't go. But I was so. I was so upset that I couldn't go. All right, we're going to get out of here, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you for listening. We really appreciate it. Great job this week. Duncan, John, whole crew, guys.

[Josh Brown]

Happy birthday, Duncan.

[Michael Batnick]

Happy birthday. Happy birthday, dude. What are you looking forward to?

[Jan Van Eck]

Future proof.

[Michael Batnick]

All right. What'd you do for your birthday? Peter Luger?

No. Believe it or not.

All right, guys, thank you. We'll be back next week. See you soon. Bye.

That.