Tom Lee Says It's Still Early

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Compound and Friends

Episode: Tom Lee Says It's Still Early
Date: August 22, 2025
Hosts: Downtown Josh Brown (A), Michael Batnick (C)
Guest: Tom Lee, CIO & Portfolio Manager at Fundstrat Global Advisors (B)

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Overview

This episode welcomes back Tom Lee for an in-depth conversation about today’s market dynamics and why he believes “it’s still early” in the current bull cycle. The conversation weaves through the resilience of the equities market, the evolving landscape for banks and crypto, the divisiveness of recent market rallies, and Tom’s hands-on role in Bitmine’s Ethereum treasury strategy. The group also dives into sector dispersion, future drivers of bull markets, labor market trends, and the concept of mean reversion in today’s corporate landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tom Lee’s Market Reputation and Longevity

• Hosts praise Tom’s forecasting accuracy and willingness to maintain a bullish view even under criticism, especially post-2011:
  • “What's more impressive than your record ... is how much shit that you've had to put up with along the way.” – Josh Brown (09:33)
  • Tom highlights the challenge of being “right” in a field where only the next call matters and past wins are quickly forgotten. (12:13)
• Quote:
  • “It's our next call that matters, not our previous set of calls.” – Tom Lee (12:31)

2. Bull Market Resilience & Waterfall Declines

• Tom explains market recoveries are typically V-shaped unless a recession intervenes, countering popular narratives:
  • “We've showed that basically, unless there's a recession, it's always a symmetric balance … the ratio's like 1.4 to 1.7.” – Tom Lee (14:19)
• 2025’s 20% market drop was strong and fast, and the subsequent recovery was equally swift, suggesting ongoing bull market momentum.
• Quote:
  • “If you had a fact pattern of two 20% gains and then the third year's up 10 already ... you have confirmation that it's a bull market.” – Tom Lee (17:31)

3. The “Most Hated” Rally and Investor Psychology

• Discussion on why every big rally is “the most hated,” focusing on missed opportunities, fear of buying after sharp runs, and generational divides.
  • “People don't operate with independence. … When something bounces, it's just dumb people buying and that prevents them from jumping on.” – Tom Lee (19:11)
• Many investors persistently anticipate another crash and miss substantial upward moves.

4. Valuation Debates and the False “Seven Stock Market” Narrative

• Pushback against the idea that only a handful of megacaps are driving the market:
  • “When people say there's only seven stocks going up, I think it's a false portrayal of the stock market.” – Tom Lee (23:06)
• Equal-weight S&P valuations remain within long-term norms; stock market return breadth is wider than many believe.

5. AI and Market Leadership

• Tom’s perspective: AI is the main current theme, but singular drivers are routine across history:
  • “A theme driving the global economy has been systematic since capitalism.” – Tom Lee (25:21)
  • Expanding on AI’s effect: “It’s only a bubble if spending is not driving income growth ... and we have margins expanding, so it’s not even late cycle for AI.” (25:57)

6. Rotation and Breadth: Where Does the Next Bull Leg Come From?

• Signs the bull market could broaden beyond megacap AI winners if the Fed cuts rates or ISM manufacturing data improves.
• The dispersion between tech sub-sectors (semiconductors vs. software) is high; AI’s disruptive effects create new winners and losers.
  • “This should be a good stock picking environment.” – Tom Lee (27:09)
• On agentic AI and corporate efficiency: Tom shares practical examples of AI-driven improvement within both Funstrat and corporate America (31:08–33:09).

7. Profit Margins and the “Mean Reversion” Fallacy

• Highlights that high corporate margins stubbornly defy mean reversion, primarily due to evolving company quality and index composition.
  • “Mean reversion is too commonly used a word. ... In the equity world, there's no such a mean reversion. There's winners and losers.” – Tom Lee (36:46)

8. Macro & The Economy: ISM, Labor, Fed Policy

• ISM manufacturing has been below 50 for a historically long stretch, indicating caution but also a potential “coiled spring” for future expansion.
  • “You never had a cycle peak when you've had ISM below [50].” – Tom Lee (38:16)
• Labor market concern: College grads are struggling to find jobs, possibly due to AI’s disruption or a misaligned labor pipeline.
  • “There's no linear careers anymore ... AI means there's a huge mismatch.” – Tom Lee (45:31)
• The team debates the effectiveness and accuracy of BLS data vs. other measures (cell phone data, ADP payrolls), and discuss rate cuts and policy expectations ahead of Powell’s Jackson Hole speech.

9. Crypto, Treasury Companies, and the Bitmine Model

• Crypto remains a generational asset; adoption divides persist:
  • “We know crypto is a generational divide ... it’s people in their 20s and 30s driving all future change.” – Tom Lee (54:10)
• Tom outlines Bitmine Immersion's Ethereum treasury strategy:
  • Bitmine switched from capital-intensive BTC mining to an asset-light model, accumulating Ethereum using only equity financing—no leverage.
  • “The only debt on Bitmine’s company is a $1 million loan ... it’s literally straight clean equity.” – Tom Lee (60:20)
  • Yield from staking ETH could facilitate shareholder rewards and buybacks.
  • The company is now highly liquid and one of the ten most traded US stocks by volume (69:02).
• Per Tom, rumors about systemic leverage risks in this ETH strategy are incorrect.

10. Granny Shots ETF Success

• Tom’s thematic “Granny Shots” ETF (ticker: GRNY) has achieved $2.28B in assets since its November 2024 launch.
  • The portfolio blends long-term themes (AI, demographics, seasonality) and has outperformed peer funds.
  • “We're just trying to find you the best sort of important theme drivers in the market.” – Tom Lee (77:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the evolution of banking and tech multiples:
  • “The financial industry could start to be trading like a tech sector multiple.” – Tom Lee (03:09)
• On investor bias during rallies:
  • “People don’t study history. They study their own sensibilities.” – Tom Lee (14:45)
• On AI as a market driver:
  • “AI is the most important driver of the global economy.” – Tom Lee (25:01)
• On efficiency and AI disrupting labor and traditional business:
  • “[Palantir] eliminates grifting in your business model.” – Tom Lee (33:47)
• On mean reversion and index quality:
  • “Companies of 2025 are better than companies of 2015 and way better than companies of 1985.” – Josh Brown (36:32)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 00:35–01:38: Bitmine background and strategic shift
• 09:33–12:48: Tom Lee’s forecasting track record
• 13:37–14:45: V-shaped recoveries and market symmetry
• 17:13–23:14: Market resilience, valuation, and the “seven stocks” debate
• 25:01–25:57: AI’s centrality and historical context of single-theme markets
• 27:09–33:09: Sector dispersion, agentic AI, and real-world corporate cases
• 36:46–37:14: Mean reversion myth and index evolution
• 38:16–41:22: ISM below 50—why caution may be bullish
• 45:31–47:05: College grad job market and the evolving labor landscape
• 54:10–57:09: Crypto adoption divides and generational dynamics
• 58:17–62:12: Bitmine’s equity-only Ethereum strategy and staking yield
• 69:02–70:13: Bitmine’s trading volume/liquidity edge
• 71:34–74:21: Granny Shots ETF, its themes, and construction

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Closing and Personal Notes

• Tom Lee shares upcoming travel to the Frieze Art Festival in Seoul and excitement for the Future Proof conference in Huntington Beach (77:14–78:48).
• The episode closes with candid banter, movie recommendations, and a special offer for Compound listeners: 30-day free trial of Fundstrat research (80:15–81:17).

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For Listeners Who Want to Dive Deeper:

• Tom Lee’s analysis blends quantitative rigor with historical perspective, consistently arguing that American corporate dynamism and technological adaptation are underappreciated.
• Both bulls and skeptics will find food for thought in his view of broad, durable market forces and the perils of missing out due to psychological and generational barriers.

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Fundstrat Promo for Listeners
A 30-day free trial is mentioned: fundstrat.com/tom (81:00)

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Note: Timestamps are in MM:SS as per the provided transcript, skipping sponsor messages and disclosures.

Transcript

[A]

How was Jackson Hole?

[B]

It was good. I wasn't there for the Fed part. I was there for the alts part.

[A]

The more traditional crypto part of Jackson Hole. The salt course. Yeah. Oh, so they're doing salt assault Jackson Hole now.

[B]

It was Salt Wyoming. Yeah. It was Kraken and Skybridge both sponsoring.

[A]

How was it?

[B]

It was good. They had a lot of policymakers there and you know, so it was a good mix of like people building things and then policymakers.

[A]

Very cool. I heard you on with the Bankless guys. That was good.

[B]

Yeah, I like those guys.

[A]

It was good.

[B]

They're not as good as you guys, of course.

[A]

So we'll talk about obviously Bitminer later, but is it Bit Minor? Bitminer?

[B]

Bitmine.

[A]

Bitmine immersion.

[B]

Bitmine immersion, yeah.

[A]

Where did that company come from? Did you start it or.

[B]

No, it was an existing bitcoin mining company, but it was very small company and mining's not a great business. And so they were open to kind of rethinking of their strategy. So the company was open to kind of pivoting to one focused on Ethereum.

[C]

So they went from a miner to a Treasury.

[B]

Yeah. So they have this. Originally their thing was immersion mining, so they have liquid cooled miners. But mining is a very competitive business because you don't necessarily win a block reward and you have all this Capex. Whereas now they're essentially their treasury strategy is holding Ethereum is really asset light for them or Capex light. Right. There's almost no capital spending, so it's a good pivot for them.

[A]

I was saying this last week, Tom, are you getting bored of the market? I feel like we just say the same shit every week. Nothing's happening. It's all just like, is AI going to blow up or is it going to continue?

[B]

I think there's a lot of clues coming that. That there's some really big things happening. Like, I think one of the most.

[C]

Who's coming for what?

[B]

I think that one of the most interesting things is that the US financial system is about to get really re architected in a way that's like oil. Like imagine oil had all these EMPs and stuff. But the one difference is that the financial system could become like as big as the tech sector in terms of market cap.

[C]

Really.

[B]

Like JP Morgan's PE could become a.

[C]

Growth stock if what?

[B]

Well, if they become less reliant on two things. One is the traditional financial architecture has a lot of friction. Right. Because there's so many intermediaries in everything that's done including how JP Morgan.

[C]

But Tom, aren't they the friction.

[A]

Yeah. Why do they want to remove it? That's their rake.

[B]

Well, but if they could make more rake. So remember, there's power laws. As soon as the banks get involved in an industry, they already have large share. So they have the ability to do power law in anything they do. And so if they decide to go into rearchitecting the bank, one of their biggest sort of saves or value capture is the staffing of the industry could drop a lot. JP Morgan has 200,000 people. They could make more money with 5,000. So I think that the financial industry could start to be trading like a tech sector multiple.

[C]

Oh, I like that.

[A]

That's a call.

[B]

Right. So that's very exciting.

[C]

As long in J.P. morgan, I'm Goldman, like the.

[B]

Like J. Morgan and Goldman and Morgan Stanley, they're going to be strong whatever they do because they have customer relationships that will follow them to whatever they do.

[A]

So the metric for banks was tangible book. That's like what they always say on tv. And that's. Maybe that's not the metric anymore.

[B]

Correct. It might be. It'll. And even things like credit costs and net net interest margin, it's going to change as a dynamic because like if JP Morgan gets big in stablecoins, they might make more money from stablecoins than deposits. They may be a very different company.

[C]

It's not out of the question to see a RE rating like that because we're living through one in the utilities right now.

[B]

Exactly.

[C]

It happens.

[B]

So suddenly power's become a really important driver because of AI. Well, AI is converging onto the blockchain to create a crypto token economy. The financial system is always the other side of that. Like it's. So if there's a big AS story for tech, there's gotta be a big crypto story for financials.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's. That's why suddenly financials could become a huge percentage of the S and P. I like it.

[C]

I like it. We'll take it. All right. Your headphones on. How far we can go? We're do not disturbs on our phones. Am I the only one that has that problem? You usually. It's usually just me.

[B]

All right. Very confident. Confident in my assertion.

[C]

We love those claps.

[B]

Episode 205 oh, wow.

[A]

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

[C]

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[C]

Welcome to the compound and friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael.

[A]

Batnick and their castmates are solely their.

[C]

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. So, Wolf, can you imagine? We've done this 205 times. Tom, what do you think?

[B]

It's always super fresh.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Super impressive.

[C]

And keep it fresh. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the biggest and best investment podcast in the world. I'm your host, Downtown. Josh Brown, my co host, is with me, as always. Y' all Say hello to Mr. Michael Batnik.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Thank you. Thank you.

[C]

Plenty more energy in here. All right, we have a very special guest today. Returning champion, fan favorite, literally the pinnacle of stock market analysis, macroeconomic foresight. Somebody who needs no introduction, but I'm giving one anyway. Tom Lee is the CIO and portfolio manager at Fundstrat Capital & Co founder, head of research at Fundstrat. Tom, welcome.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Can I say one thing? A couple of weeks ago on Animal Spirits, Ben and I did a show, and we titled it the Dumb Money. And it was talking about all of the money piling into the treasury, the digital asset, treasury companies. And then I listened to you on Bankless, and it was a correction of the record. I know we're gonna talk about Bitmine immersion technology later in the show, but I did say, regarding you, I don't think, in fact, let me not caveat, that there hasn't been a single person who is commenting on the market over the last 10 years that's been more right than you.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[A]

That's true.

[B]

Thank you. Thanks.

[A]

I mean, do you think that there's anybody else?

[C]

No, I think Tom's the goat right now.

[A]

I think it's slugging percentage on base, not a baseball guy, but all of.

[C]

Those things, so nobody would argue it. And. But what's more impressive than your record of the things you've said and what's happened afterward? What's more impressive is how much shit that you've had to put up with along the way. Because. Yeah, no, because I remember 2011 and 2012, Tom Lee, and you might have still been at JP Morgan.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay. And you were bullish. And at that time, being everyone was like, a little bit bullish. I shouldn't say that, but being like, as bullish as you were in 2011 and 2012, it almost felt like you were a magnet for all of the anger and frustration that people had. But you stuck your neck out there, and you obviously were proven right. I Think we're, I don't know, 15 years of 12% average annual returns.

[A]

14.

[B]

Yeah, it's been extraordinary.

[C]

Nobody was saying that. Even the bulls were saying things about like the new normal and like get used to 3 and 4% average annual returns going forward. And they had all these reasons why. Valuation.

[A]

Cape ratio.

[C]

Cape ratio. And you were one of the few people that was willing to be bullish.

[A]

You said all that.

[C]

No, you did, you did. You also, during crises, you would pop on CNBC or wherever you were and you would say, yeah, no, this is, this is volatile, but the volatility won't last. And we still think A, B, C, D. And then as those things would play out, you'd have to do it again cuz it'd be another crisis. But I do think that you are getting credit now. You're getting your due for having been the most right market commentator consistently. Right. And how's it feel? How's it feel to be a gangster?

[B]

Thank you. I didn't realize I was a gangster. I should carry like a machine gun.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you're like a markets gangster now. I feel like you're the guy. What do you think?

[B]

Well, next time I come, I wear sunglasses.

[C]

All right, fair enough.

[B]

And grease back hair.

[C]

No, but truly, how do you feel in the position that you're in now? Do you, do you worry at all? This has been an amazing run. It's got to stop at some point. Or not the markets, but like just your career arc. How do you like, what is it, what is it like being Tom Lee right now?

[A]

I'd sell, I'd sell calls. No offense.

[C]

Michael would edge. Michael would hedge you. But how do you feel?

[B]

Well, you know, we are constantly reminded that we're wrong all the time with our clients. I'm in a very strange business because like research and we have two essentially, really three cohorts, but really it's primarily institutional investors and then non institutional. And we service them and we provide research. But they never really say, you've done a great job.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Because. Because their job is tough and they already have many people providing advice. And so we're just one of the many views and so we never really.

[C]

Get, oh, they'll take the credit and you're just an input. Yeah, okay, but that's fine. That's the business you're in.

[A]

You're only as good as your last tip.

[B]

And that's another thing. Cause I was an equity analyst. It's our next call that matters, not our previous set of calls.

[C]

Oh, man, what a hamster wheel that is. Yeah, right.

[B]

But it's fun and exciting because it keeps us grounded, and that's why I'm so afraid to ever take a victory lap.

[C]

Yeah, it's a really good point. And the reality of this business is that you could have somebody in the markets for a 400% run in the S and P, and then there's a 20% drawdown, and it's stupid Tom Lee bullish right at the top. It's like, no, yes, at the top, but also for the 400% preceding the top. Did we all forget? Yeah, but people do forget. They don't care.

[B]

That Feb to April period happened this year. Like, all of a sudden people are yelling at us, saying, like, how did you let us sink ourselves and get caught in this tariff thing? You know, and the Fed's not gonna save us? And we kept saying waterfall declines are V shaped, but no one could really believe it. But now that we recovered, at least we're not getting yelled at.

[C]

Are you surprised at the speed with which the markets recovered? Even if you. So I know you remained bullish through that, and it was the right. It was the right call, but are you even you surprised at how fast we recovered?

[B]

I mean, yes and no.

[C]

There are V's and there are V's. That one looks like the pandemic.

[B]

Yeah, well, yes. I mean, that was a complete drying up of buying power and then a complete loss of confidence from the CEO level to everybody in the world because no one had an answer. So you could see why you'd have this huge air pocket. But I do know two things, that markets are symmetric. So the faster you decline, the faster the bounce.

[C]

That's always.

[A]

Yeah, Char Kit has a great one.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. So we. We showed that basically, unless there's a recession, it's always a symmetric balance. It's one point. The ratio's like 1.4 to 1.7. So if it took eight weeks to lose 20, you'll recover it back in 1.4 times that length.

[C]

Oh, okay.

[B]

So in other words, it's always like symmetry.

[C]

So why do so many people think V shaped recoveries are anomalous when, based on what you're saying, they're actually the norm?

[B]

I think people don't study history. I think they study their own sensibilities. They're saying, like, oh, well, if you lose confidence, it's gonna take me this much longer to recover. That's why everyone says there's a K shaped or square root.

[C]

No, you hear like, U shaped recovery a lot too, right?

[B]

Correct. Like every letter but V and, and it's always V. It's always a V, Tom.

[A]

So you did the work. You've got 12 waterfall declines since 1929. Do you think that this is what we're gonna see going forward?

[B]

Yes, actually, maybe.

[C]

Structurally, what's a waterfall decline? What's the definition of that?

[B]

Oh, well, it's a term we coined probably around the 2012 period, but it's when the market has a high velocity decline. So like, if you say so like.

[C]

A lightning fast sell off.

[B]

Yeah, so the fastest declined at 10% or the fastest down 20.

[C]

So rather than like dribbling lower when it just like the bottom falls out.

[B]

Yeah, it's like you sprung a. Like the ship is just sank.

[C]

All right, so here's 12 of these. And just for the listeners who aren't looking, we have dates in here like 8287-2002-2009-2020, 2025 is now on the list officially. Yeah, that was a big one. That was 20% and it was like overnight.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And usually no retest, at least in modern history.

[B]

That's right. I mean it will look like a retest, but no, usually that's another thing people say. There's always a retest. It might be true at the stock level because there's sellers that want to get out, but at the index level, it's actually rare.

[C]

Yeah, I actually would say post financial crisis there are no retests. Yeah, like that's it. If you don't, if you don't nail that moment, it's okay. You could still buy later, but you're not getting two chances at the moment. Yeah, you're buying higher, you're buying higher and that might be okay for people. All right, let's talk about the resilience of the current stock market. We'd love to just get your like 30,000 foot view of where we are. So the S and P is working on a 10% gain for the year, give or take. Nasdaq slightly better, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Leadership coming from utilities, industrials, financials, communication services. Yeah, so all the. Exactly what you'd expect. Huge semiconductor rally this year. And then what's not working? Energy, materials, health care.

[B]

And health care.

[C]

And health care. Okay. What do you make of the resilience of the market? Look at how much shit we've put up with already. Look at how many like big bad, scary things we've been through and we're still in a double digit gain for the year. So what do you think?

[B]

Well, I'd say, number one, just for people to place themselves in history. So if you had a fact pattern of 2, 20% gains and then the third year's up 10 already and maybe we'll be up 15 or 20 this year, then we're in a bull market. So whatever.

[C]

Wait, then you have confirmation that it's a bull market.

[B]

Yeah, because this never happens in a bear market. Three, like, you can't have like a dead cap bounce that lasts 36 years.

[A]

You can't have bull markets and bear markets.

[B]

Yeah, but then they should then place themselves in history. This is probably more of an early start of a bull market rather than late.

[C]

It's amazing because there's nobody that you would talk to who would say we're early.

[A]

But the pushback is. And there's lots of pushback. You have people saying that this feels like 2021 all over again. The SPAC boom, the new issues. Nvidia and Microsoft are talking to Todd's crypto, talking to Todd's own last week. Nvidia, Microsoft are almost bigger than energy, Healthcare, staples, utilities. It feels like it doesn't make sense. But you're saying it does make sense.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of those comparisons, then they don't realize. Well, where it's Nvidia's rank as net income contributor. I mean, they're almost the biggest.

[A]

If not, they don't understand the granny shot.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Put this chart up. The third time we have had a most hated rally since 2020. This is a term that needs to be retired, right?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Okay. Why the most hated rally? Because it's always the most hated rally. People just hate rallies. That's it. Not everyone. Most people like it. The most vocal people just despise people that sell.

[A]

Definitely hate it.

[B]

This one is. This one has been particularly reviled, I think, because one, the speed of the recovery has been so fast. As you know, many people rage sold in April because they're like, look, the economist told me 60% chance of recession, that's the same as a sell rating on the stock market. And they went to cash. They couldn't redeploy it because there was no pullback.

[A]

It was too fast.

[B]

Too fast.

[C]

Is that what creates a hated rally? That phenomenon, like people don't get back in fast enough?

[B]

Yeah. And I think it just shows you that people don't operate with independence. They operate with a bias. They think when something bounces, it's just dumb people buying and that prevents them from jumping on with the buy. I mean, think about Palantir and Tesla. They Netflix, they were all like, retail stocks. Someone was telling me the first time that they tried to buy Tesla institutionally, they had to bring in this research firm from Oregon that wrote a report on Tesla. Okay. This is Jenison. And that was the first time that research firm ever got called to go to New York to actually meet a hedge fund.

[C]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[B]

So all the really big churns come because someone recognizes it. And it's not often like the crowd that recognizes it.

[C]

Okay, so the hated component of this, the hatred comes from. A lot of people miss out. A lot of people can't bring themselves to buy something that's already recovered. Cause they think they missed it. And then you have people that missed all three. Like they never bought. Cause they've been waiting since 2020 for a return to the lows.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And they don't get it. And then they don't get it again. And they don't get it again. At that point, it's just like, maybe stocks aren't for you.

[B]

Yeah. And I'm not trying to be snarky, but a lot of the people say, well, American exceptionalism is over. That's why I'm buying Germany are the people that hated every rally here. And so they're trying to now create an opportunity somewhere else.

[A]

Let me ask you this. So you have some charts showing the equal weight PE for the S&P 500. And it's been in a range over the past six years. It's averaged 16.3. And right now it's 16.9. On the next chart, you've got all these different things. All these different things that we've experienced and that we've. We've brushed aside. The resiliency of the stock market.

[C]

I like that. From eggs for the inflation cycle.

[A]

Inflation to the fastest Fed hikes to the tariffs, and, you know, everything in between supply chain issues. Do you think that this is, and I'm sure it's both, more of a fundamental tailwind from the AI story and. Or a combination of. Between inflation and the length of the bull market and the psychology of the market. There is so much money willing, waiting to be deployed on every single dip. Is that which do you think is more responsible or is it both?

[B]

Well, I'll answer it by saying, start off my career as a stock analyst. Okay, so imagine we have a stock, okay, let's call it xyz, and we shot it full of holes. They should have been kill shots six times because Every one of those was a kill shot for this bull market. And yet this thing.

[C]

What are the things?

[B]

The inflation cycle for Covid, number one.

[C]

Fastest Fed hikes in history.

[B]

And then the bullwhip chain effect was number two, the fastest Fed hikes. Well, the fastest inflation cycle in history. The fastest Fed hikes in history. The Trump tariff shock and then US bombing Iran's nuclear.

[C]

Each of those should have produced a bear market.

[B]

Yeah. Should have killed the bull market or even killed the economy.

[A]

So what does that tell you?

[C]

Just like even, like you don't even have to know market history, just common sense. The United States is bombing an Iranian nuclear facility, therefore buy the spoos.

[B]

Yeah. You never would have thought in the.

[C]

Morning nobody would do it.

[B]

If you asked me in January, I'd say, okay, we got a risk of a bear market.

[C]

Right. And none of these things has produced a sustainable.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

We've had like bear markets, but not a secular bear market.

[B]

Yeah. So let's say that this stock was 16 times and we shot it six times over five years, like just kill shots. And it grew earnings every year. We would say the PE has to.

[C]

Go up a lot and it hasn't.

[B]

It's actually lower. It's a cheaper market.

[C]

It's incredible.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So I don't think most people are looking at an equal weight market.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So that's number one. And if they are, they're not looking at the valuation.

[A]

They're looking at Palantir.

[B]

Yeah. They're. They're looking. When people say there's only seven stocks going up, I think it's a false portrayal of the stock market.

[C]

There are seven very large stocks.

[B]

Correct. But with big earnings.

[C]

With big earnings.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Justifiably large.

[B]

Yeah. And I'd say the reason it's not just seven, because Grant, our granny shots doesn't is only equal weighted and it's beating the market this year and it only buys quality growth.

[C]

So that ETF, that strategy is not reliant on having a 10% slug of the biggest stock in the world.

[B]

Yeah. It would hurt an ETF because granny is an equal weight by nature.

[C]

So I agree with you. I don't buy into the seven stock paradigm. But the thing that I probably believe that you would disagree with, I think the entire stock market return this year boils down to AI Capex. We're talking about utilities. Why did utilities get rerated? AI, why are financials ripping? Because of all the activity on Wall street related to capex and AI stuff. M&A IPOs it's all one industrials. Well, what the hell are they doing? They're building data centers. They're building gas transmission to power the data centers. The whole thing is AI. There's not a second thing happening. The GLP1 bull market's dead. I don't know of another. Even, like the quote unquote, the strong consumer. Consumer stocks looks like shit right now. Nike, Chipotle, Starbucks isn't doing much. So, like, if there's one game in town, but it's affecting four of the biggest sectors in the market, it's a fairly fragile. Or maybe I'm wrong, it's a fairly fragile thing to rest on. Like, oh my God, I hope this AI Capex story holds up, because if it doesn't, it's taking down everything with it. Do you disagree with that or you're on the same page with me?

[B]

Okay, so I'm going to 100% agree.

[C]

All right, AI, we can close out. Let's do favorites. All right, go ahead.

[B]

That AI is the most important driver of the global economy. Okay, but where I think people make an inference mistake is that thematic? A theme driving the global economy has been systematic to the global economy since capitalism.

[C]

It's always this way.

[B]

Yeah. There's always been an industrial revolution.

[C]

Okay, fair.

[B]

And Even in the 80s, the retail sector was the best group for 20 years because boomers were entering the work, women were entering the workforce, and there was a baby boomer thing on retail stock. So that was a single theme of demographics. And like, the Internet boom was a singular thing of actually creating digital infrastructure. So, like, it's always been a story of the stock market.

[C]

So the fact that the entirety of the market's gain this year is being fueled by earnings coming from this one theme actually does not fly in the face of financial history. It happens all the time.

[B]

Yeah. So it's only a bubble if spending is not driving income growth. So margins should be shrinking or debt should be rising faster than revenue. And we don't have a leverage cycle yet. And we have margins expanding, so it's not even late cycle for AI.

[A]

It's all AI Dean Christians at Sentiment Trader had a great tweet this morning. He said the internal conflict within the technology sector is remarkable, with a significant number of stocks making new highs while other while others are making new lows, as captured by what's called the high low, the high high low logic index. He said last week it surged to its second highest reading ever, underscoring how AI is creating winners and losers within the sector. So in other words, in plain English there are more all time highs or 52 week highs and 52 week lows simultaneously than there have been over the last.

[C]

So the index rises on increasing dispersion between new highs and new lows.

[A]

So the index is being driven by the larger stocks. There's stocks that are obviously winning, we know, but there's stocks that are getting destroyed.

[C]

It's semiconductors versus software. To me that's what I see.

[B]

Yeah, I think it makes sense because when you're in a big cycle like this, the winners are easy to identify cause they have visibility. But it doesn't mean the losers are dead, Matt. But for now they're kind of untouchable. This should be a good stock picking environment.

[C]

A lot of people are saying the weakness in the software sector can be attributed to the employment picture and just less hiring, weaker hiring, which makes sense. Businesses spend more on software when they have a higher headcount. Right. You need less seats or more seats from an enterprise. So that's one part of it. And the second part of it is disruption. What? Software is being disrupted right before our eyes by AI. And one of the poster children people cite is the chart of salesforce.com CRM Salesforce would say no, no, you don't understand. We're going to invent agentic AI. The market doesn't think so. The market thinks that AI is going to be able to do a lot of things that people's employees can do, which means less demand for enterprise sales at Salesforce. Where do you fall in that debate?

[B]

I think it's more of the latter is driving because you know, we know creator. The value that you pay for a creator now has dropped a lot because of AI, whether it's content creator or software developer. Yeah, People are writing their own apps internally now, chatgpt, fixing the code. So on the margin, if, let's say it's only a 1% change in the demand of something that can cause 20% change in the price of something. We know it's been chipped away.

[C]

Okay, so you think the weakness in the enterprise software space is somewhat warranted?

[B]

Yeah, and you can probably see it in Silicon Valley, right? They're not funding SaaS companies anymore, they're.

[C]

Funding AI startups, they're funding tanks and drones. But that's a whole, that's a whole other conversation.

[A]

Do you think the next leg of the bull market comes from a broadening out? We saw something interesting yesterday. Duality Research posted a chart showing that there has only been two days with better breadth and a bigger loss since 1996. So this was on Tuesday, the SP was down 40 basis points. I think the equate was up 40 basis points. Something like that. Do you think that that's what is gonna drive the next higher is an expanding market?

[B]

Yeah, I mean I think that there's many reasons to argue market will expand. Cause the Fed has been on hold all year. So they're neither dovish or hawkish. But if they resume cutting, that's a dovish cycle resuming. That's broadening. The ISM's been below 50 for 30 months now.

[A]

Why does that matter?

[B]

Well, it's a sign of business confidence. The CEOs of these companies, because now I'm chairman of a company, there's no internal economist. You get your economic view from the Fed and from Wall Street. Right. And so if the economists are cautious, companies are cautious. That's why the ISM has been suppressed. But that means you're not funding Capex beyond demand. So expansionary spending hasn't taken place. That's a broadening. And then the third of course, is that AI, agentic AI. We're kind of moving into the phase where it's. We're seeing useful applications. That means companies are using AI to actually grow their business. That should be broadening opportunities.

[C]

It's not just the where are they using agentic AI? Is that chatbots at like an E commerce site where they're handling customer complaints via an agentic AI, like an agent versus a human agent is that we're talking about?

[B]

I mean I'd say even at Funstrat, like we're finding a lot of ways now to use AI within the company to make it to run better. Whether it's identifying the source of like why people are having issues or what they don't understand about what we're saying or how to actually sort of clip things that we're saying to emphasize more information or even understanding like the source of inbound traffic, like the inquiry. So it's this is the. Maybe even in the last couple months where I've said wow, we're really benefiting.

[C]

From it now that would stop you from hiring a person to manually do those things.

[B]

Yeah, I can share a story of a company, but I can't tell you the industry it's in because they asked me not to say, but they're a really big company.

[C]

Adult entertainment industry.

[B]

No, no.

[C]

Okay, say more.

[B]

But they're really big and use the supply chain. And they said that they were like they Have a commodity that they gotta hedge. And they kept losing money on their hedging. And then they were losing money on the supply chain. Cause, like, they have to buy this commodity and they have to package it and sell it. Then they brought in Palantir, and then they just fed every one of their invoices and all the truck times and literally every trade they did for hedging. And then it just spit out this series of recommendations. Now they're making money. Their hedging of their commodity is a huge profit maker. And their operating margins have. And then they said they have no idea what Palantir did. It's like magic.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And it was like, just. It wasn't like a bunch of consultants coming. It was like, literally they just fed this into like a.

[C]

Can I ask you about Palantir? So I listened to their conference call for the first time. I'm like, ridiculously late to the Palantir story. I sort of understood that it was a government contractor primarily that was now going to go into commercial and talk to corporations about how they can take their magic and apply it to every industry. And I love the story. Stock is $400 billion market cap. They're predicting $4 billion in revenue for this year. So it's like everybody gets it. I don't know how much opportunity there is in the stock right now, but it was remarkable, the stats they put up on this call about adoption of people hiring Palantir. Like, yeah, I think they added like a thousand corporate customers in a quarter or something crazy like that. Is that the kind of company that you think transforms American business to the point where you get that RE rating in small caps?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And finally you get valuation, expansion, and mid caps. Because Palantir or somebody like them comes in and completely transforms the company. And Wall street then gets shocked on the next quarterly earnings report.

[B]

Yeah, okay. I did speak to Palantir because I saw them at an event and this is what. So even like our company, which is only 33 employees, but we of course have big asset management and we have tens of thousands of clients. But I was like, could you guys just drop in and make us better? They're like, just let us do it.

[C]

Can you do it for free?

[B]

Yeah. But here's the thing. My business partner, a bit Mosaics, says that he has this term called grifting. Palantir eliminates grifting in your business model.

[C]

Okay, say more.

[B]

What they mean is they'll find where someone is taking money from you that you don't need in your operations or there's too many people in this movement of something and you don't need them. Or maybe internally you don't.

[C]

Grifting is harsh.

[B]

Well, I know, but it's inefficiency maybe.

[C]

Would be a polite way of saying that.

[B]

Yes, but that's like a millennial term because I'm not a millennial. But you know what I mean. They're finding how to get you from your revenue to your net income or even more revenue without.

[C]

They're the new efficiency expert.

[B]

And you don't have to be a better marketing. They're actually just saying this is how you should re plumb your business.

[A]

So we have all of these magical companies that keep popping up out of nowhere that are getting huge and pushing the valuation of the index to new highs. And this is a tired case that the bears have been making for 15 years. Maybe eventually it'll prove out to be true. But when you see something like this, the EBITDA, EBITDA of the S&P 500 or whatever metric you choose in this case, that's what gainify is using at an all time high. Why doesn't this, why doesn't this scare you? What are the bears?

[B]

Misunderstanding, I think if that, if we said started at point a, which is 2016, okay. And every company was unchanged and their business strategy was exactly the same and they didn't have to do anything and face any stress in that nine years, then I would be shorting that chart. But look at what happened to all these companies. They had to deal with the six kill shots. We have, like as you said, AI Revolution, which is really an American story and maybe part China, but nowhere else. So why shouldn't more value be coming into American businesses? So you know what I mean.

[C]

So you're saying we're paying up for companies, but shouldn't we, haven't all of these companies gotten so much more impressive in the way that they handle? Like we don't even have recessions anymore.

[B]

Yeah. And look at 2Q earnings that just passed 12% earnings growth. Like if someone said, by the way.

[C]

Why wouldn't you pay up for. Right. Why wouldn't you pay up for companies that are this good at finding new ways to pull the profit?

[B]

Yeah. And they're growing faster now 10 years in. I might say that's a good horse, you know.

[C]

Well, Tom, one of like the central precepts of the macro, like the macro commentator, is that ultimately profit margins, A are always too high and B are on the verge of mean reverting.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And then they never do.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Which means Companies of 2025 are better than companies of 2015 and way better than companies of 1985. Who would dispute that?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

See, so the mean, the profit margin, mean reversion. People dispute that every day when they wake up.

[B]

Yeah. Mean reversion is too commonly used a word. Like, it's proper in the fixed income world, but in the equity world, it's. There's no such a mean reversion. There's winners and losers. Right. And remember, in the S and P, like those companies in 2016, out of the 500 in 10 years ago, I bet you 20% are gone. So it's.

[C]

Well, that's the other thing. It's new. It's. It's. It's newer, younger, better, faster, stronger companies.

[B]

Correct.

[C]

Right. It's not the same. We're not tracking the same 500 companies over 10 years.

[B]

Yeah. If this was the Wilshire 5000, I bet you it's been flat.

[C]

Okay. All right, so we have a collection of 500 companies that doesn't necessarily match the ones that we were looking at 10 years ago.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay. I think that's a strong argument. Do we want to do. Do we want to do. Do we want to do this one?

[A]

All right, let's move on to the economy. So, Tom, you mentioned earlier that the ISM manufacturer, at least this one, the ISO manufacturing, has been below 50 for 28 months.

[C]

Do you care about this?

[A]

Yeah. Why is this bullish?

[B]

Well, because, remember, this is actually one where there's no one making up the answers. Like, this is a survey that's sent and people respond if things are better, worse, or the same. So it doesn't have any political bias. It doesn't have any. Like.

[A]

But the answers are biased. No.

[C]

Like, the people giving the answers are not necessarily answering the question.

[B]

So. But if they're answering it in a negative sense, that means that they're cautious. So you can take their inflation. That's what you want.

[C]

Yeah, that's what you. You don't want this to be like a heavily bullish.

[B]

Correct. You never had a cycle peak when you've had ISM below. By the way, this is the longest stretch since 1950 when you have this pervasive caution in business. We're nowhere near a cycle peak.

[A]

So imagine people. Imagine they turn bullish and they start spending money. You actually were talking to the bankless guys about this. And this is an important point. Like, everybody's bullish. No, they're not. They might feel that way if you're.

[C]

Not bullish, why do we have 25 months below a 50 reading on the ISM? Is it because people that answer this survey, what they hate the most is inflation. That would be my guess.

[B]

And tariffs now?

[C]

Well that's like. They hate tariffs because of inflation. Yeah, I think they hate inflation more than anything. So I think that that's why you get four straight years of below 50. ISM prints.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, now you remember when you are this far forlorn and dejected and then you flip positive, you won't just go to 50 and then it's over. We probably can have four years of this staying above 50. I mean if you look at the history, once it breaks above 50, it's multiple years. But this could be a record stretch above 50.

[A]

This is bizarre. Talk to the chart that we're looking at. Like this is this most recent episode of the ISM below 50 and the stock market just relentlessly grinding is not typical.

[C]

Yeah, I would say like maybe the people answering these surveys are just not terribly important to the economy anymore in the way that they once were.

[B]

ISM is still more correlated with S and P earnings than services index because we're more of a manufacturing.

[C]

Who are the people commenting for? For, for this survey?

[B]

So it's members of the Institute of Supply Management. So it's basically the survey factory foreman, like but, but it also could be the Intel Nvidia purchasing manager. Although they get one vote, right? They get one survey.

[C]

Okay, so tech is in here.

[B]

Everything's in there.

[C]

Okay, so you're saying that this is like a coiled spring.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay, but when does, when, what makes this flip positive? Because we're not going to get 2% inflation unless something's really going wrong. So what do these people need to flip positive?

[B]

I think we need policy stability which could come next year from the White House.

[C]

I mean this White House is known for stability. Okay, I'm with you on that. What else?

[B]

Okay, or it doesn't get more unstable. You get a Fed that's dovish, which is cutting.

[C]

You're probably going to get that, if not now, at a minimum by May.

[B]

But then you need this third thing to happen. You need the excess spread on interest products to fall. Like today. If you're borrowing for a mortgage, it's normally only been at 160 basis points above the 10 year or 1.6%. So the 10 years at 4.2% the 30 year mortgage should be 5, 8. But it's not, but it's like 7. So there's excess spread on mortgages. But as soon as those other two things happen, I bet you that spread drops.

[C]

What is the source of that spread being so high?

[B]

It's actually hard to explain. Someone says that it's either banks worried about prepayment velocity because they're going to charge, so they charge an excess spread, or it's uncertainty about the value of the collateral. Like can home prices drop? So you don't. You have to charge a high rate because they're only putting 20% down.

[A]

Wait, the spread is high because they know that if and when rates drop, people are just going to prepay.

[B]

Yeah. So you lose money. Yeah. You're losing money or refinance. Yeah. So the velocity hurts you.

[C]

Right. The lenders don't want 10% of their customers saying, here's all the money, I'm refinancing lower.

[B]

Yeah. So they want to make money on it for now on the current income.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

And then third is of course, like the mortgage market doesn't have as much hedging and there's a qt. And so like it's harder to get spreads moved out. But for whatever reason, it's unusually wide. It's like 50 or 60 year widespread.

[C]

Okay. So should that fall, which it sounds like you think would coincide with Fed Funds rates coming down, that is. What, what's the, what's the meaning of that? Like, what's the effect?

[B]

Yeah, I think the simple way to think of it is like, I don't know, let's say there's 20 trillion of mortgage debt out there and like half is above that rate. That's 10 trillion times 1.6 percentage points. Like that's money in people's pockets. Plus how many more people are going to get mortgages now that it's five, six.

[C]

I actually think, I actually think the Fed has not kept rates this high for this long in a really long time. And once they appreciably fall, I don't care how bad the economy is, I actually think you could see the biggest mortgage refinance boom we've ever seen. Like outside of the pandemic.

[B]

Yeah. So think about how much money that drives housing recovery and liquidity and people starting to upgrade their homes. Remember like Home Depot said, the upgrade projects keep getting pushed out.

[C]

Yeah. That's what they're being pushed out for.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

All right. Do you think that's the next bull market is housing? I don't want to say recovery because prices are okay. Housing activity recovery.

[B]

Yeah. It's a re. It's Like a rethinking of shelter because people will want to own housing, but they're too expensive. Like, maybe there'll be new kinds of smaller homes being built or demand for modular, but people will borrow money to get a home.

[C]

Okay, all right, I like that idea.

[A]

Tom, are you worried about the labor market at all?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, because we know we're not tracking it correctly, Mark. Because ADP probably tracks it correctly, but they don't seasonally adjust correctly. And then we know the BLS numbers are different, but overall, I think the job, the labor market is softer. I also think there's a lot less hoarding. That's why there's no pricing power anymore. Right. Companies were holding onto employees. Now they're just letting them go.

[C]

Okay. I want to ask you about the phenomenon that's been chronicled this year at the New York Times and other places, about the difficulty of recent college graduates to get a job relative to history. Just anecdotally, you probably. I know you've got a, you've got a college age daughter, so do I. Just anecdotally, you're probably hearing tons of parents, like, I don't understand why my kid can't get a job. Like, why is it so hard right now? The economy seems to be good. The stock market's booming. I'm hearing this all over the place, talking about business school kids, kids that should be hired. A, are you seeing that anecdotally? And B, what do you make of that data? Is it something that could get worse? Is it a blip? Like, what do you think's happening?

[B]

I think it is a big problem. I mean, I think it's observable. It's like too many things that could explain it. Because one, the AI. Yeah. AI means there's a huge mismatch because most people aren't equipped to do the jobs that are going to be in the future available for AI. Second, I think there was this over sampling of people pursuing like liberal arts degrees, expecting a job. I mean, liberal arts education's good, but we probably need. We have now a huge shortage in trade workers. Like, massive, massive shortage. Like it's to such a degree that AI robots are doing jobs that normally were trade jobs. Because there's a shortage.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's really complicated. But I guess I advise my kids, because I have three kids, like age 20, all the way 28, that there's no linear careers anymore. Right. It's very different future because AI, meaning.

[C]

You might do one thing for eight years, take a break and Then do something totally new that we can't even conceive of yet.

[B]

Yeah. Or you might be paid for something that you didn't go to college for. Like, you may just be super creative and that's your most virtuous skill, but that wasn't what you went to college for.

[C]

What do you say to friends of yours who have kids in this position? Cause I'm sure they're all asking you for jobs. Like, what do you tell other parents who have kids that are like, I don't understand. This kid just graduated UPenn. Why is this employer that he's talking to making him go on a fifth interview and dragging this out for six months? Cuz I'm hearing stories like that everywhere.

[B]

Yeah, well, you know, I think a lot of people who work in the financial services industry are actually good. Have personal experience of what is happening to the rest of the country, which is Wall street got disrupted by AI a long time ago. Like, that's why trading went electronically.

[C]

It's all computers. Yeah.

[B]

And research shrank. What you need because you can just use. So everybody who's worked on Wall street in the last 20 years has already seen their lives disrupted. Plenty of people survive, but you had to have been adapting to it.

[C]

Okay, so more adaptable kids. Yes, you might go to school for one thing, but you might have to pivot and take an opportunity somewhere else.

[B]

That's right. And then some people will make money passively.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

You know what I mean? Some people may make money because they bought stocks. I mean, maybe people should just buy stocks early because in 20 years you.

[C]

Have to buy a lot of stocks to make money passively from them. The average dividend yield in the S and P is 1.6%.

[B]

Yeah. But as you know, when you look at people who bought basketball teams and like the compounded return, you actually did better. Just if they had put the same amount of money in the S and P. I mean, they didn't get to go to like get court sites.

[C]

Less fun.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Better return. Okay. I mean, are we going to build a nation of. Are we going to build a nation of people who start investing earlier? Because it kind of like become. Everyone becomes aware of this idea, like you have to own the capital.

[B]

Yeah. It's like, remember people used to say, like, oh, buy a house when you're 20. Now maybe we should just say buy the stock market. Because now you get, you can. You're long. The AI disruption. Do equities.

[C]

Invest in your own disruption.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay, let's do this. Non farm payrolls versus unemployment rate. Were you one of these people that was up in arms when, when the White House threw the head of the BLS out of her job? Or were you one of the people that was like, the data sucks anyway and we probably need a brand new way to collect it. What was your take on it?

[B]

I mean, I'm a researcher.

[C]

Yeah. And so if you like the bls.

[B]

I like the bls. And it's like me getting fired and happens to me all the time by a client because the market didn't do something they wanted but I get blamed for it, you know, So I empathize with the bls. I think that they're probably really well meaning. People want to get the right number, but they have incomplete information. But perhaps they should be making very clear the standard error because you know, the known standard error is like hundreds of thousands and they never post it.

[C]

But it's announced because if they were to post it, it would render the information worthless. You tell me. We added 70,000 jobs last month, but the margin of error is 200,000 jobs. Then what did you say?

[B]

Yeah, so I think they should have in every chart like a little, those little circles on the line. So you know what the high low of a one sigma error is?

[C]

The data quality has been declining for 20 years. The lack of response to their surveys. Maybe they need to rethink the whole thing.

[B]

Yeah. And probably there's probably better ways to track the job market anyways.

[C]

I agree.

[B]

Cell phone tracking.

[C]

Why?

[B]

Because you could see going to the office or you could see how many people are at Starbucks when they should be at the office. I mean, you mean like.

[C]

I mean, I feel like payrolls, like ADP does a good enough job.

[B]

ADP is really accurate. It's like it's not 100% of the population, but yeah, it's very accurate.

[A]

Tom, we've got Powell tomorrow at Jackson Hole. What is the market pricing in term of number of cuts and how do you feel about what the market is pricing in? Are they right? And what do you think Powell's gonna say?

[C]

Let's throw his chart up while he tells us.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, the market's pricing in two cuts between now and year end. I would say to me, two cuts make sense if the Fed realizes real interest rates are too high because tariff inflation is transitory. And so they should look at the break evens and realize 4 and a half percent fed funds versus 2 and a half is 200 basis points extremely tight. If you don't even Think you're going to hurt the job market? It's clearly hurting the job market.

[C]

But do you think more rate cuts all of a sudden rejuvenates the job market or. Not necessarily.

[B]

I think that a dovish cycle is going to get the ism back up. So I think it actually is expansionary.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

And of course, on the housing, it's very expansionary.

[C]

Do you have expectations for the speech itself? And understand by the time people are listening to this, it'll be Friday morning?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I don't know what time Jay Powell is Speaking.

[A]

Afternoon.

[B]

Yeah. 10:00am okay.

[C]

Okay. So make a prediction that could be instantly rendered incorrect. I'll make one too, but I want to hear yours.

[B]

Well, last year the S and p was up 2% after his speech. I think we're gonna rally tomorrow.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Even if he's hawkish and exerts his independence.

[C]

Why? Cause it'll be over and people are waiting for it to be over.

[B]

Yeah, because we expect him to exert his independence, but it doesn't have negative implications. Cuz he's already on hold.

[C]

I don't think he's gonna do like a highly politically charged thing.

[A]

Nah.

[B]

Wow. See, then the market's gonna go up even more.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. So it's.

[C]

So. So the way that this was phrased, the way that this is being looked at is like it's Powell's last stand. That's how Barron's phrased it. Like ostensibly this is his last chance to give a Jackson Hole address as the Fed Chair and he's being called a moron publicly. Like he's being shit on and people are like, he's going to strike back. He's gonna do this like fiery speech about the independence of the Fed and why that's so important for America. I don't think he's gonna do any of that. I think he's gonna acknowledge the fact that the labor market is softening. I think he's gonna signal that there's a rate cut coming in September and then he's gonna deliver the rate cut. I just don't think that he wants more smoke. I don't know. I could be dead wrong. We're all gonna find out together.

[B]

Yeah. And he's, you know, from what I've heard. Cause I don't know him personally, you know, high integrity person.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, a really class act. So you're right. It's more consistent with what you're saying.

[C]

If he cares about the independence of the Fed, then ratcheting the temperature up is not gonna help him.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay. What do you think of the irony that the jobless claims. Excuse me, The NFP numbers were actually trending in the right direction for a rate cut. And then Trump gets mad that they're not showing enough jobs. Jobs. Yeah, but wait a minute. I thought you want a rate cut. Let me get this straight. You want a rate cut and you want an explosively higher hiring number. How do those two things work together? I don't really get it.

[B]

That's right. And also knowing in September there's a big revision, the annual revision, which is probably going to make all those private previous job reports look even worse.

[C]

Right, but that's good if you want a rate cut.

[B]

Correct.

[C]

Okay. Maybe they don't really care what they want. They just want the. The attention. Yeah.

[B]

Or. And maybe, you know, I mean, I'm just a fan of an independent Fed. I'd, you know, let the Fed do their job.

[C]

Well, I think those days are over.

[A]

All right, Tom, let's do some crypto stuff. So. Because people love that. Just kidding. No, they don't. People. Nobody owns crypto. And I know that's not true, but it's the people, it's the companies that are buying the crypto. It's you guys, it's Saylor. It's the people that are early adopters. There are still a lot of people who just feel like they missed it. They hate when we talk about. It's enough bank of America. They ask their clients, do you guys own crypto? And 75% of them are at zero. So it is this weird thing where the price keeps going up. We. We know some of the reasons why, yet nobody seems to be owning it.

[B]

Yes, we know crypto is a generational divide, because if you did the survey with someone under age 30, it's probably like 50% own crypto. History shows pretty clearly it's people in their 20s and 30s that are driving all future change. Credit card spending shows their investment.

[C]

75% doesn't matter, in other words.

[B]

Yeah. Or the 75% is going to flip to 75% own crypto.

[C]

So we had, we had the chief legal officer and chief financial officer of Coinbase, which is arguably the most public facing successful crypto company. He spent 45 minutes with us on Monday. We put out the video. The video does far less views than what we typically put out on Mondays. I'm not mad about it. I thought it was an amazing interview. I'm really good at this. I don't know if you know, Michael.

[B]

You're very good.

[C]

And Michael knows crypto better than I do. And I thought we did a great job. I look at the comments. These are our fans. So, like, that's fine. You know, we want to hear honest feedback. They don't care. They. They just, oh, these assholes. Again, talking about Coinbase. So we had crypto people in the comments who hate Coinbase because it's centralizing crypto. That's fine. That's a minority. Like people in traditional finance still do not want to hear about any success in crypto. And I think my answer to why that's the case, I think they look at the people who have made millions or billions of dollars in crypto as having done something illegitimate or lottery esque. I don't think it captivates their hearts and souls. They don't look at it like, look how smart these people are. And what's so funny is there are famous value investors who haven't outperformed the market in 15 years. If I put them on YouTube right now, the views would skyrocket. And you know the names I'm thinking of, I'm not going to say them, but it's like, let me get this straight. This asset class has been the best performing asset class in the world for 10 years, and you don't want to give any credit to the people that saw it early and capitalized. You'd rather hear from somebody who can't, who couldn't make money if it hit him in the head because they're, quote, unquote, doing it the right way. Yeah, I think that's what's going on.

[B]

Yeah, it is. So imagine like, if your neighbor one day discovered oil in his backyard and became like, really rich.

[C]

Oh, you would hate his house.

[B]

You'd hate him for a. I agree with that. And then he's like, becomes an oil evangelist. You'd be like, I hate oil.

[A]

Enough with the oil. Shut up with the oil.

[C]

Right. I hate you. I hate oil. Right. All right, so that you.

[A]

And then imagine the oil did have some. A lot of scammy parts to it.

[B]

Yeah. And Right.

[A]

You'd be like, enough of the oil.

[C]

Well, that's right. That's the other thing. A lot of this money, they view it as scam. Like, a lot of the activity, there's a lot of.

[A]

But let's talk about. I want to talk about this. All right. Specifically with, with Bit Mine Immersion technologies. The risk to any asset class, the primary risk is leverage. And leverage took down crypto in the last cycle. A lot of bad Actors talk about. So you tweeted or bit my tweet on August 18 that you guys held 1.5 ish million ETH valued at $6.6 billion. Is this leverage? Where is this money coming from? And why are people who say that this is like the epicenter of the next catastrophe?

[B]

Wrong. Okay. I assume you're being leverage of Bitmine. Like does the Bit mine stock have a leverage?

[A]

Just what you guys are doing, what Saylor is doing. Like, is there gonna be.

[C]

The concept of the crypto treasury involves. We're gonna borrow money, use it to accumulate these coins where the supply is shrinking.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And that's the. That secret sauce.

[A]

Will there be a margin call? Is that the risk?

[B]

Yes. Talk about that. Well, if you could let me do like a couple minute explanation here, Duncan.

[C]

What do you think? We're gonna allow it. Good with it. I'm genuinely fascinated by this.

[B]

I want to hear. So on June 30, Bitmine announced the transaction where I joined as chairman and then Mosaics, who's my partner in this, became the digital consultant to help manage the Treasury. So essentially we helped recast the company as an Ethereum treasury company.

[C]

What was it prior? It was tanning salons?

[B]

No, it was a bitcoin mining company.

[C]

Oh, it was a miner.

[B]

Okay, Bitcoin miner.

[C]

Got it.

[B]

And at that time, there was a $250 million investment that we brought in, you know, Founders Fund and Stan Druckenmiller and.

[A]

Real people.

[B]

Real people. And what we. At that time, there was $4 of Ethereum per share and the stock was 450.

[C]

So no premium. Effectively, almost no premium.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, that's right. And then we've used capital markets like brought institutional investors subsequently and then bought more Ethereum so as sold them new shares of stocks. Yes, that's right. That's right. And you know, that includes Cathie Wood and Bill Millers. And so last week we.

[C]

I don't remember you calling me, but. Okay, continue. Talk about that later.

[B]

Yes. And last week there was an updated registration statement filed so you could calculate how much Ethereum was held per share. And it was $35 per share. Okay, so the stock, you had $4 of Ethereum per share on June 30th. And then last week at the registration statement, it was now 35. And the stock was trading at like one and a half times because stock was, let's say 50, you know, one and a half times its Ethereum held. But when you bought it on June 30, it was trading at 0.2 times where the Ethereum would be in a month from a month later.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Now all of that was financed with equity, mainly institutional investors. The only debt on Bitminds company is a million dollar loan that was originally there on June 30. So the company had a but everything first principle is it's literally straight clean equity.

[A]

So no leverage.

[B]

It's cash to buy, cash to buy.

[C]

So you guys call Druckenmiller Cathie. It's like, hey, we're gonna do this thing. We're gonna use this stock as a vehicle to acquire eth.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And we need to sell stock to you in order to facilitate those purchases. In other words, you're putting money into the company, we're issuing you shares in the company. We're gonna take your money that you give us and we're gonna buy eth. Okay, so nothing magical other than it's Ethereum and it's not, hey, we're going to do a transaction where we're going to buy, I don't know, buildings or something. That's more.

[B]

Yeah, so Ethereum number one is where the stablecoin boom is taking place. 60% of it. So like this whole genius act. Besant says stablecoins are going to go from 250 billion to 4 trillion. That's an exponential demand growth for Ethereum.

[C]

Replacing money market funds.

[B]

Correct. And it's dollarization and all that. Ethereum pays a 3% native yield if you stake it. So the 6.6 billion held of Ethereum is over $200 million in net income right now. The day we turn on staking, not only is there no debt on Bitminer, it's going to pay you $200 million a year in dividends.

[A]

And what do you do with that? Buy more ether.

[B]

Or we might just pay it out as cash dividends.

[C]

Where does that 3% native yield come from? Is that gas fees that users are paying to use eth?

[B]

Well, it's called proof of stake. So Ethereum, it doesn't have a proof of work model where you're competing for a block reward. It's saying if you hold ETH and you agree to stake it and validate transactions, you earn the staking fee, which is 3%.

[C]

Okay, so that's where that's coming from.

[B]

And then there's a power law at work that force at work that if we get to 5% of Ethereum, we become a really benevolent staking entity. That's why we want to get to 5%.

[C]

The distinction. One of the many distinctions between ETH and Bitcoin for people listening that don't care that much, but care a little, is that the Ethereum foundation and the Ethereum Whales are fairly coordinated. They have made changes before in the protocol, and they have changed ETH successfully, I would argue, to make it more useful to the community. Whereas Bitcoin. There was a one major fork where they created Bitcoin cash, but other than that, it's probably too disperse for there to ever be any kind of coordinated action.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Okay, so this is not quite as decentralized as Bitcoin, but it's more useful for things like stablecoins.

[B]

Yeah. So we're working with the Ethereum foundation because we can explain to them what Wall Street's looking for. So keep in mind that the Genius act and then SEC's Project Crypto is the recognition that using blockchain makes Wall street faster and more efficient. I've seen it at bitmind, because when we get the cash, the minute it touches the blockchain, it moves much. We have much better visibility, and it's much easier to actually track the money. The wallets are all tracked. And this is like 1971, because in 1971, the dollar went off the gold standard. And everyone said, oh, I'll buy gold instead. But remember, the dollar suddenly became a fiat and Wall street innovated because they said, now we have a dollar. Let's make sure we can move the dollars efficiently.

[C]

You need to move bars of gold to match the movement of the dollars.

[B]

So it created Wall street came out of that Single act in 1971. So now 2025, Project Crypto from the SEC and Genius act is saying, Wall street take advantage of this new technology to make Wall Street a tech industry. But they're all choosing to do it, or the majority are choosing to do it on Ethereum. Ethereum is a smart contract platform, has what they call EVMs, Ethereum virtual machines. So you can do basically a lot of smart programs and contracts. That's where Robinhood is doing their stablecoins, the tokenized products on top of Ethereum.

[C]

Right. Well, there's another L2 in the mix also for what Robinhood's doing. But they basically want to turn stocks into a tokenized thing, which I would imagine the initial stages, you're doing that to attract more investor capital because people are really into it. But over the long term, if a large portion of the market goes that way, it's probably just in a more efficient system. Get rid of dtc, here's the risk.

[A]

Let's just say that there's no margin call. It's cleaned, it's cash. The risk potentially is that I think that you are responsible for the move in ethics, the crazy move of the last couple of weeks. Like you did that. In my estimation, you got people excited. Bit mine was a. Is a huge thing. You're raising tons of money, you're buying tons of eth, if and when. Because at some point there'll be a pullback, obviously. Like it's a risk asset. If at some point there's a pullback, there's a geopolitical event, a macro event, whatever the case may be, Risk off and eth goes from 4,200 to 3,000 to 2 point, whatever. If you can't raise fresh capital because people just say like, I'm not this bear, I'm not doing this and you're not buying at the pace at which you were buying, would that like take the floor underneath away from eth? Is that possible?

[B]

Uh, yeah. I mean, keep in mind a couple of things because I can't tell you too much about the operations. We're not moving the price of eth, I can assure you.

[C]

No, but the announcement of you being involved got other people to buy eth.

[B]

But I'm just saying like in a practical sense, because we're.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Actually in the market, I don't think we've ever done an up bid.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

So I can't explain what we're doing.

[C]

You're cleaning up sellers, people that are selling.

[B]

I have to be very. I can't tell you how we're buying our. But we're buying, you know, ETH tokens. But we're not.

[A]

We, we got it.

[B]

And secondly, just keep in mind like we have a billion dollar buyback program in place and with this native yield from eth, we could be buying back the shares.

[C]

Buying back the shares. Not more eth, but the actual stock.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

So in other words, we have an internal mechanism to protect shareholders. But shareholders aren't being hurt in the sense that there's $35 of ETH. Well, last week, $35 of ETH held per share supporting the stock price, which means we're not trading at a premium, especially considering the growth of that Ethereum held per share. It's growing like 50 cents a day or something.

[A]

But if you're going to be at 5% of ETH, if that's the goal, don't you kind of want ETH to come In. Don't you want to buy at lower prices?

[B]

Yeah, I want to be stacking it lower. So I'm going to say this has been a good environment for Bitmine to see ETH kind of correct here.

[A]

Pull back a little bit.

[C]

How big could ETH get? I hate the term market cap because it's not applicable. Your company has a market cap. ETH doesn't have a market cap, has a market size.

[B]

He has a network value.

[C]

What is the current value of all the ETH in the world? How big do you think it could get? Because working backwards, that's what the 5% stake in ETH. Right. Okay, so what do you think?

[B]

It's about 480 billion right now of fully diluted network value.

[C]

Okay, but is the supply contracting or not yet?

[B]

It's actually growing about 1%. Growing 1% slower than Bitcoin's inflation rate. It's actually a third of Bitcoin's inflation rate.

[C]

Okay, and how big do you think that could be?

[B]

Well, I think that there is a very high probability, I'm gonna say maybe even 50%, that Ethereum's network value will flip Bitcoins.

[C]

Wow. Like when the flippening.

[B]

Maybe in a couple years.

[C]

People have been saying this for a long time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How much bigger is Bitcoin now?

[B]

Is it 2.2 trillion right now and.

[A]

Eth is what, 400 billion?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

All right, but you're not an eth maxi.

[B]

You think I'm not. I'm still a Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin's going to a million. But I'm saying, like Ethereum's relative size, the ratio will actually be one to one.

[A]

Last thing for me on this topic. When I dismissed a lot of these. This group as dumb money, what I meant was the people that are funding these treasury companies thinking that they're going to get the premium on the value of their tokens the way that Saylor did, the way that you are going to. I don't think there could be 30 eth treasury winners. I think you can do it, if anyone can. Do you agree with that?

[B]

Yeah, it's a. Yeah. There's two things to ensure the differentiation. One is you need to have liquidity in stock. Bitmine is the 10th most traded stock in the stock market.

[C]

That's crazy.

[A]

John, chart 14. This is unbelievable.

[C]

Let me see this.

[A]

So you have the alchemy of 5% Bitcoin miner or BMNR, ranked number 10 by 5 day average daily volume. This is un frigging believable Your stock.

[C]

Is trading more volume than alcohol.

[B]

Google, Broadcom, Microstrategy.

[C]

Wow, you flipped strategy already. That's pretty impressive.

[A]

So nobody else can do this?

[B]

Correct. So that's liquidity. Because that make institutions want liquidity. So they know that. Tom, we can buy 10 million shares of your stock, but we can get out. If we lose, we're not stuck. We're not like a prison. The second is the velocity. Because see, compared to an ETF. If you bought an Ethereum ETF on June 30, you still only have $4 of ETH per share. We took your $4 and now it's 35. We're growing your ETH holdings. So it's different than owning a closed end fund. We're actively growing your Ethereum.

[C]

So this is maybe a dumb question. Why wouldn't you do a secondary? Again? You think you wouldn't have buyers. Of course you would.

[B]

Yeah, there's probably. There's enormous interest.

[C]

But when you do a secondary, it's not dilutive. Cause you're putting the money right into eth.

[B]

Correct. So it's actually.

[C]

Michael, it's not like a traditional secondary then.

[B]

Yeah, Michael, say I was explaining it.

[A]

Like, don't say yield. Don't say yield.

[B]

No, no, no. He's saying he's selling, you know, a dollar's worth of Bitcoin, but because of the multiple of the stock, he's buying $3 of Bitcoin with it. That's what his mechanism is. When you raise capital and then you're buying an asset instead of a building, you're actually improving your book value.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

And then Ethereum itself is only at 4,000 ish, but if it flips, you know what I mean? Ethereum has a lot of upside.

[C]

Are there other tokens out there that this idea makes sense for? Is that something that you guys are thinking about?

[B]

I think if something is useful because Ethereum has this whole story of Wall street going on to the blockchain, that makes it more useful. But remember the AI world, the agentic world, where they. When you have robots, you have to now know proof of human or proof that this is a valid instruction sent to the robot. You know, they're going to have to build a token model, which is right now, most of that's happening on Ethereum. So the AI world, as you go agentic, has to use tokens on a public chain. And it looks like a lot of it's going to happen on Ethereum.

[C]

Okay. If there are any viewers still with us, we'll move. Is there anything else we want to do?

[A]

No, that's enough. It's enough. All right. We can't get out of here without giving you your flowers as a kid. Say, about Granny Shots. What an Absolute home run. $2.28 billion in assets. When did you launch this? Last week.

[B]

November 2024.

[C]

Unbelievable put, but let's just go through the slides really quickly. So, for people that aren't familiar, Granny Shots is Tom's sort of, like, thematic etf. The term comes from a famous basketball player who used to shoot free throws underhand, and Tom kind of used that as, like, a metaphor for picking stocks that he thinks are an underhand layup. Not. Not layup, but, like a free throw.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Not that they're risk free or that things can't go wrong, but, like, he looks at these as, like, granny shots, and therefore, the ticker is grny. Not promoting the etf, just explaining it. Full disclaimers apply, but show us the holdings. So these are like multiple themes inside of one thematic etf.

[B]

Correct.

[C]

Okay. And these are the themes that you think are going to be the dominant themes, Therefore, these are the types of stocks that you want to be invested in.

[B]

Yeah. So the idea is, like, these things are going to last 10 to 15 years, just like you said. AI is a. Is a juggernaut of a theme, like a story. It's not just 2025. It's going to be 2035 until 2030.

[C]

If you put bit my immersion stock into Granny Shots, does the universe implode? How does that work? Is that, like, two versions of you coming together?

[A]

It's got Bengal strategy.

[B]

It's like crossing the streams. Yeah.

[C]

All right, here are the names. Hidden gem meta platforms.

[B]

Nobody knows that.

[C]

I'm just teasing you. But you have Garmin, but you have stocks in here that people would not associate with, like, the future. Thematically Fair. Isaac Corporation, which is a data provider.

[A]

Caterpillar.

[C]

Goldman Sachs.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What else is in here?

[A]

PayPal. Progressive. That's a granny shot.

[C]

Yeah, actually some monster beverage.

[B]

By the way, there was a rebalance last week, so there's some removals, but, yes, because we did our quarterly rebalance last week, but yes, those are the names. One of the themes that is in here is Millennials, and so not everything is an AI Story, because Monster is an example of a millennial stock.

[C]

They love it.

[B]

Correct.

[C]

That's their Coca Cola.

[B]

Yeah. And the idea is there's plenty of millennial stocks, but we wanted to have a stock that's tied to two Themes. So Monster has to be tied to another theme. As you can see, it's tied to seasonality. So the reason that matters is that a single theme won't always work at every month in a stock market.

[C]

So stocks that find themselves being relevant to multiple themes that make it in.

[B]

Yeah, so it'll have, like, one thing pulling it if something's not pushing it.

[C]

What do you say to people who look at this list of holdings and say, oh, I get it. It's a momentum fund. It's not that you're saying it's not. Yeah, there's more going on here than just. These are the big winners over the last 12 months.

[B]

That's right. If you pulled up the mtum, which I don't have here, it. It doesn't look like the same list.

[A]

Okay, so Morningstar does the ranking. Quantitative is just not opinion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you guys are crushing it. You're in the top. You're in the second percentile. Well, last week, who cares? But year to date, second percentile out of three. 13, 92 different players.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Incredible, dude.

[B]

It's a top 20. Top 28. Now you got to find that out of Fortune Hundred.

[C]

What's a big. What's a bad market environment for this? Is it choppy market or a bear market? Like, in what market does this not stay near the top of the rankings?

[B]

It did see a drawdown February to April. So a bear market caused this to underperform, but then the recovery or stabilization caused us to make up all the ground lost.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

So I would say this is. This is trying to find the 30 most important stocks in the S and P that are tied to the growth drivers.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

So it's kind of a bit more growth oriented.

[C]

Can I pitch you a version of this that maybe you haven't considered?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

It's called Grandpa Shots, and it's like members only. We would get long. We get very long. Like brown loafers. If there's a trade classic rock books about World War II, like, we were just like, right, who's with me on this?

[B]

And smoking. You got to have smoking jackets. Things that you'd wear.

[C]

Yeah. Just like things that are. Things that are just like New Balance sneakers. Yeah. Maybe it's not a great strategy. Maybe we want to short those things. Congratulations, dude. This is. This is amazing to watch.

[A]

And by the way, didn't we say not to do this? I told you advice.

[C]

I said don't do it. But joking around. The reason I said don't do it is because when you have a Bad month. When the strategy is a bad month. Now, this is, like, the thing that people use to beat you over the head with, but you never cared about that.

[B]

Yeah, I'm okay with that. And we do record a video every week with our granny shot. So people have full transparency of, like, what's working, what's not. And I think that.

[C]

Do people tell you who they're pulling money from to put money into this?

[B]

Well, people always ask us what kind of bucket we're in. And at the moment, we're not on any of the major wirehouse platforms yet. Cause we need to be one year in.

[C]

That's how you get to 5 billion. Yeah, right. Because then if they approve you, like ubs, Morgan Stanley. If they're like, all right, we'll put this in the growth bucket. Forget it. It slides out.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Because that's. People like, well, I don't need to own S and P growth. I want to own this.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

This resonates more with me.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And I think it's. Yeah. So we're, you know, we're just trying to find you the best sort of important theme drivers in the market.

[C]

Dude, I love it. Congrats. It's amazing.

[B]

Thanks.

[C]

We end the show these days with something called, what are you looking forward to? And it could be career. It could be personal, it could be whatever. What are you. What are you most looking forward to right now?

[B]

Oh, I actually have something interesting going on because, like, usually you'll ask me.

[C]

And, like, you do.

[B]

Okay, next. At the end of this month, I'm going to Seoul with my wife to the Frieze Art Festival.

[C]

What is that?

[B]

It's an art festival. It's the last year in Seoul, Korea. Like, Frieze has art festivals, I think in Miami and a few other places.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

She likes art, but it's really. We're going there to see friends, so actually taking a little vacation.

[C]

Is she Korean?

[B]

She's Korean.

[C]

Okay, so how long are you gonna go for?

[B]

August 29th.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Then September 7th, I come back to Huntington beach because Future Proof, my favorite conference, is so happy that you're coming. We're so excited. We're bringing, like, half the company there.

[C]

It's amazing. So what is funstrat's presence at Future Proof going to be? Like? You're going to meet, I don't know, thousands of. We're. I think we'll be at 5,000 people this year.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Which is going to be bananas.

[B]

We're bringing Mark Newton.

[C]

Okay. We love Mark.

[B]

Head of technical strategy we're bringing in Sean Farrell.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Who's our digital guy. We're bringing all this, like, swag, you know, granny stuff.

[C]

Oh, I love it.

[B]

And, you know, I'm going to be speaking, but it you guys do put on, you know, I think is one of the most important conferences and really one of the best conferences all year. So this is like, I'm very excited about it.

[C]

Awesome. We're so happy. We're so happy to have you guys. And for those of you who are coming to future proof, Tom is going to be booking our slots to. To hang out with him. So you go to what? Whatever the activity is you want to do. Tom will commit to doing it. So jump on the app. Make sure you make sure you book yourself time in the breakthroughs too, to meet with Tom's team. All right. What are you looking forward to? We've had a long week, you and I. Are you sick of me?

[A]

I'm looking. No, never. I'm looking forward to Nobody too. The new Bob Odenkirk movie.

[C]

Oh, did you watch the first one? No, I didn't see the first one.

[A]

It's like John Wick but with Bob Odenkirk, which sounds weird, but it's great.

[C]

Yeah. Should I see that? Yeah.

[A]

I loved.

[C]

But will I like it?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Should I see it in the theater? It doesn't matter.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

What else did you see recently together. Theater guy.

[B]

Yeah. I love movies. I love storytelling.

[A]

You know, together with Franco and his wife was excellent. Excellent as a stretch. It was very good. But Weapons was truly a masterpiece.

[C]

Second experience.

[A]

Yeah, it was great.

[C]

People are going nuts about.

[A]

He crushed it. Yeah.

[C]

All right, Duncan, what are you looking forward to?

[A]

Well, I just saw Daniel Day Lewis.

[B]

Has a new movie coming out, so I'm excited about that.

[A]

He un.

[C]

Retired.

[A]

Yeah. His. Well, I mean, but he's.

[B]

He's the weed in it. But his son is directing it, I think.

[A]

Overrated.

[C]

Is it a horror movie? Daniel Day Lewis Overrated.

[A]

I think there's a supernatural element.

[B]

I'm not sure exactly what it is, though.

[A]

We watched the trailer.

[B]

I'm still a little confused.

[C]

All right, John, what do you got for us? Any trips? Any.

[B]

Not at the moment.

[C]

All right. Looking forward to making more content with us. All right, my man. All right, guys. It's been a pleasure, Tom. Thank you so much. I want to tell people that you have a special offer for compound listeners. This is super nice of you. Exclusively for listeners of the Compound and friends, Tom has provided a link for a 30 day free trial. Please visit fundstrat.com Tom that's funstrat.com Tom. You can also find a link in the description below. So if you're an experienced self directed investor looking for trusted insights to grow your wealth, Tom Lee's Funstrat Research is the place to go. You're gonna get daily access, access to his daily insights, market alerts, live webinars and stuff. That's super nice of you. Thank you very much. And compound listeners will most assuredly want to check that out. That's it for us this week. We appreciate everybody. Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon.

[B]

That was great.