Money Expert: Trump Tariffs Will Make You MASSIVELY RICH - Do This Now!

Summary

Summary of "Money Expert: Trump Tariffs Will Make You MASSIVELY RICH - Do This Now!" on The Iced Coffee Hour

Release Date: April 12, 2025

In this episode of "The Iced Coffee Hour", hosts Graham Stephan and Jack Selby engage in an in-depth conversation with seasoned investors Chris and Dave about the impact of former President Donald Trump's tariffs on the stock market and the broader economy. The discussion navigates through market volatility, investment strategies, global supply chain implications, and the transformative role of technology in shaping future economic landscapes.

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1. The Genesis of Market Turbulence: Trump's Tariffs

The episode opens with Graham Stephan referencing a tumultuous period for stocks in March 2020, shortly after the announcement of President Trump's tariffs.

• Graham [00:00]: "So we're looking at what the worst week for stocks. It's March of 2020. Really coming off of, of course, President Trump's tariffs."

Chris highlights the dual nature of the tariffs, noting both the immediate market turmoil and the subsequent rally.

• Chris [00:28]: "This is where you make all of your money over the course of 20 or 30 years. This is the dream scenario for every investor."

2. Expert Insights on Tariff Implications

Dave and Chris delve into the complexities of the tariffs, discussing their potential to create uncertainty but also presenting significant investment opportunities.

• Dave [01:39]: "Well, most people, whether they know it or not, are invested in the stock market. And it really does kind of appear to be the verge of a nuclear winter."

• Chris [02:57]: "Ackman is just trying to make a point. He's trying to guide policy."

They reference Bill Ackman's pessimistic outlook, arguing that while his concerns are valid, history shows markets eventually rebound.

3. Scenario Analysis and Market Predictions

Chris introduces the concept of scenario analysis, assessing various outcomes of the tariff imposition.

• Chris [05:20]: "What we need to do as investors is what I call run scenario analysis. Right. So essentially, you're looking at every single scenario that could play out, and you're assigning probabilities to each scenario."

Both Chris and Dave express confidence that catastrophic scenarios are unlikely to persist long-term, emphasizing the inherent resilience of markets and policy adjustments.

4. The Fragility of US-China Trade Relations

Graham raises concerns about the potential for a rift between the US and China, questioning whether Trump will relent in his tariff strategy.

• Graham [03:28]: "China, they have a lot of leverage as well, because we get a lot of product from China."

Dave concurs, suggesting that the aggressive tariff stance was more of a scare tactic rather than a sustainable economic strategy.

• Dave [09:17]: "I think that this big number, the big tariff number was a scare tactic."

5. The Importance of the Global Supply Chain

A central theme of the discussion is the global supply chain's significance and the potential damage tariffs could inflict.

• Chris [86:22]: "Most of the world's manufacturers are desperate for workforce. Right. They want more humans. We want these humans to work in factories, we just can't get them right."

They argue that disrupting the supply chain would have far-reaching consequences, affecting every sector and undermining US economic productivity.

6. Investing Strategies Amidst Uncertainty

The guests share personal investment strategies to navigate the volatile market conditions induced by tariffs.

• Chris [03:57]: "They didn't do this. At least not in that manner without anyone trying to get in front of it."

• Dave [49:35]: "I did my best to get my margin down to zero."

Both emphasize hedging and capitalizing on market dips as prudent approaches, encouraging investors to seek opportunities in risk assets while managing exposure.

7. The Role of Technology and AI in Future Investments

An optimistic outlook is presented regarding the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, and robotics, positing them as catalysts for unprecedented productivity leaps.

• Chris [85:34]: "The next five to eight years ever. Okay? I don't think there has ever been a better time to be an investor with capital to deploy into markets."

• Dave [99:08]: "It's being able to invest at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution."

They foresee AI-driven advancements creating massive investment opportunities, akin to the transformative impacts of the Internet and mobile technology.

8. Reflections on Past Investment Mistakes and Lessons Learned

The conversation turns personal as Chris and Dave recount their investment failures and the hard-earned lessons that shaped their current strategies.

• Chris [54:55]: "I've been doing this, I've been trading options since I was 13 years old. I've been losing incredible amounts of money at periods."

• Dave [70:13]: "This is the second time I've learned. I was dollar cost averaging. But it wasn't enough."

They advocate for resilience and the importance of long-term thinking, sharing how past downturns ultimately led to greater market gains.

9. The Evolution of Investing Platforms: Spotlight on Robinhood

A significant portion is dedicated to discussing Robinhood, its evolution, and its impact on retail investing.

• Chris [66:39]: "There is always an edge, a long way to fall. There's always an edge case scenario as investors that you have to be prepared for."

They debate the platform's safety, user experience, and future expansions into areas like real estate and banking services, underscoring its potential to revolutionize financial services.

10. Overarching Economic Risks and Optimistic Outlook

Concluding the episode, the guests reflect on broader economic risks beyond tariffs, such as government spending and interest rates, while maintaining an optimistic stance on technological innovations driving future growth.

• Chris [92:39]: "We do have to think really strategically about how we think about implementing AI across the globe in industry."

• Dave [95:40]: "It's only getting easier to be a good investor."

They stress the importance of maintaining a global perspective, fostering international cooperation, and leveraging emerging technologies to navigate and capitalize on future economic landscapes.

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Notable Quotes:

• Graham Stephan [00:00]: "We’re looking at what the worst week for stocks."

• Chris [00:28]: "This is where you make all of your money over the course of 20 or 30 years."

• Dave [01:39]: "I can't make a prediction based on an Ackman quote."

• Chris [05:20]: "Run scenario analysis."

• Chris [85:34]: "I have never been more excited to be in the market than right now."

• Dave [99:08]: "It's being able to invest at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution."

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Conclusion

The episode presents a nuanced exploration of the economic ramifications of Trump's tariffs, blending caution with strategic optimism. Chris and Dave offer a balanced view, acknowledging the immediate uncertainties while highlighting the long-term prospects fueled by technological advancements. Their insights serve as a guide for investors navigating turbulent times, emphasizing the importance of adaptability, informed decision-making, and leveraging emerging opportunities in the evolving economic landscape.

Transcript

[Graham]

So we're looking at what the worst week for stocks. It's March of 2020. Really coming off of, of course, President Trump's tariffs.

[Chris]

People are concerned about instability. He announced relief for the rest of the world.

[Dave]

That caused more turmoil in the markets, but touched off a huge rally.

[Chris]

The bigger concern is what plans are now being made to circumvent the US in any way possible because you can't trust us. Beijing promising to fight to the end, that is really amping up.

[Graham]

Why should people care?

[Chris]

This is where you make all of your money over the course of 20 or 30 years. This is the dream scenario for every investor. As the trade war with China heats up, President Trump is urging Americans to stay cool. Guys, I've seen a lot. I have never been more excited to be in the market than right now. We're in uncharted, unprecedented uncertainty.

[Graham]

So what should the average person do with this information and with everything going on in the market?

[Chris]

I don't care what you have to do. Whatever you can do to make a little bit of extra cash over the next few weeks to next few months to be able to invest in risk assets.

[Graham]

Chris and Dave, thank you so much for coming on the Ice Coffee Hour. Really appreciate it. You both are investors that I respect a lot. You're not a hedge fund. You have nothing to sell. Yet over the last few years you have made tens of millions of dollars in the stock market. I want to read you a quote and get your opinion on it. Bill Ackman has said we're heading for a self induced economic nuclear winter and we should start hunkering down if tariffs remain. Why should people care?

[Dave]

Well, most people, whether they know it or not, are invested in the stock market. And it really does kind of appear to be the verge of a nuclear winter. It's. I think that quote like that was a very long thread that he posted on X and he has done a very good job historically of freaking out right at the bottom. Have you noticed that if you, if you look at every time he freaks out and goes on CNBC and cries or he has a moment, that is the moment where the market has bottomed. So I can't make a prediction based on a Ackman quote. But it's grim and you know, at some point markets always go up.

[Chris]

Ackman is just trying to make a point. He's trying to guide policy. Right? So okay, technically what he said is true. But that's if no one does anything, which we all know that won't happen, right? People are Going to do things, policy will change, it will get adjusted. He's calling out, if you stay on this track and go in even deeper, it will result in this bad outcome. But we all know that's not going to happen, right? Like, not. At least not in that manner without. Without anyone trying to get in front of it. So, like, yeah, technically I think he's right, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen.

[Graham]

And what do you think the breaking point is? Because there is the fear that if tariffs stay on the same path that they are and other countries refuse to back down, and that would be, namely China, that things could get substantially worse. And everyone has the assumption Trump is not going to back down because if he does, he's going to appear weak. And China, they have a lot of leverage as well, because we get a lot of product from China. They have very cheap goods and services, and they allow us to buy iPhones at $1,000 versus 3,500.

[Chris]

You got to get in the mindset of Trump, right, Because like, he is unilaterally calling the shots. So, like, for you to call this, you have to call Trump correctly. I was wrong last week. I didn't go in hedge strong enough last week.

[Dave]

I didn't either.

[Chris]

The history of Trump is that he will reverse really quickly at any sign of disapproval or any sign of los. Right. And he didn't do this.

[Dave]

I don't think, I don't think that the stock market is his barometer this time around. He's. I think his approval rating will be the thing, that if it gets low enough, then he'll.

[Chris]

But approval rating, Dave, is delayed by about a month, like a survey, four to six weeks. So, like, yeah, he won't see that for a little while. Okay, so let's just, let's just talk about this. You're saying if the tariffs go through as they're proposed, that won't happen. That can't happen. Like, we all know that that cannot happen.

[Graham]

What's going to stop that from happening?

[Chris]

Any type of rational, like, thought depend upon. Right, right, right, right.

[Graham]

So, like, thank you guys right now.

[Chris]

But if you look at the tariffs as they're written, there's just no possible way that those tariffs can be imp. Manner for any meaningful amount of time. It will result in such chaos that there's not any administration, including Trump, as at his craziest. Do you agree, Dave, that would allow that to actually happen for any prolonged period of time. So, like, here's the thing. There's a lot of Stuff happening right now. And there are a lot of rumors and there are a lot of opinions and things are changing, like, multiple times a day.

[Dave]

So as the market was prepared for a version of this, the market was prepared for reciprocal tariffs that were actually reciprocal tariffs, but that's not what we got. The market was going up when he said 10% across the board. Then he pulls out the. The old easel or the chart.

[Graham]

Yeah.

[Dave]

And those numbers were not close to what anyone was expecting, labeled reciprocal, but not at all.

[Chris]

It.

[Dave]

This is. This is not a reciprocal tariff. And to call it that, I think reciprocal tariffs might actually be effective. Basing reciprocal tariffs on an actual formula that makes sense mathematically, that is reciprocal. And if you really want to target a trade imbalance, you could make that a portion of the ratio, but it doesn't make sense the way it is now.

[Chris]

We could talk about what they should do or shouldn't do, but it really doesn't matter what we think. The reality is that when you have situations like this where there are a lot of possible outcomes, what we need to do as investors is what I call run scenario analysis. Right. So essentially, you're looking at every single scenario that could play out, and you're assigning probabilities to each scenario. Now, you could actually do that, and you could spend a lot of time running 60 different scenarios of every way that this storyline could play out, and the percentages that you assess to each of those scenarios. And then you could look at how many of those scenarios would result in the market being okay and quickly recovering, and how many of those scenarios would result in something catastrophic happening. Well, you could do that, but I'm just going to tell you right now that if you were to go through that process, there are very few scenarios, very few that would result in any type of catastrophic situation that would last for any meaningful amount of time. Right. It would be so irrational. And while people can do irrational things in government for short periods of time, history has shown us that it almost never has durability. The market, the government and policymakers will always revert back to something normal, something comfortable, something safe, something safe for. For. For their party, something safe for their future votes. Okay? So if you run, if you just look at the scenario analysis, I feel really, really good that we're going to get through this. Like, the exact timing and the exact nature of how we get through it is to be determined. But, guys, I have been. I have lived through 87. I was young, but my family was in the market, and I lived through it. And I remember it like it was yesterday. Dave and I were right in the heat of it. No, 2000. During the dot com boom and bust. 2008, we were definitely in the heat of it. Of course, you know, Covid was one of our largest investment trades of my lifetime. And this doesn't even feel remotely as scary as any of those. When you were to run the scenario analysis, meaning with each of those situations, there was a higher likelihood of leading us into a bad place that could last for a while. Like, I just don't see that here. I just don't.

[Graham]

Personally, I don't think Trump is going to back down. I think there's going to be a rift between Trump and China. China's not going to back down. Trump's not going to back down. I think that's going to spook the markets longer than people expect. I wouldn't be surprised if we see another to 15% downside from here. But I also wouldn't be surprised if Trump delays things and just says, okay, for the next 30 days, we're not going to implement anything and we're going to see if we could work something out or spin something in his favor where it's like, oh, actually we got this, this thing and we're never planning on the full tariffs as it was, but now we got this and so we're winning and we're way further ahead. Something like that. That's what I think is going to happen.

[Dave]

I'm closer to that viewpoint. I think that this, this big number, the big tariff number was a scare tactic. It spooks the market. He was trying to spook other countries. The likelihood of it going through as stated on that chart, I think is very low. But I, I agree with you that China is going to be the sticking point. We've already seen countries coming and saying 0%. I think, I think we could avoid all of this. If China just came back and said, whatever their actual tariff rate is, if they, if they're, I don't know what it is. If it's 6%, 7%, whatever their current tariff on US imports into China is, if they just made a broad statement and said, you know what? Our average Trump, we are going to lower our tariffs to whatever it currently.

[Chris]

Is, 8%, 6%, which would be dramatically lower than what, Dramatically lower than what that turf said it was. Right. Yeah.

[Dave]

I think Trump could take that as a win and say, oh, well, we won, we won with China and we're going to do a reciprocal tariff with China now. And if other Countries did that. Like, we've already seen some come back and say zero. We haven't yet seen the administration respond to those with a new low rate. But I think that the other countries, if they bring Japan, sending their master negotiator to the White House. Did you see that?

[Chris]

I did.

[Dave]

Okay. I'm sure that master negotiator can outsmart whoever put that chart together. Hot take.

[Graham]

What do you think?

[Chris]

Trump wants the win and he's going to ensure that he gets the win. Right. Like. Like. And I don't think that's. He's going to take months to before he's willing to get the win. I think it's more like.

[Dave]

But that could be a perceptual win for him.

[Chris]

Well, correct.

[Dave]

Necessarily a financial win.

[Chris]

Correct. Right, right. So, like, what I mean by that is I think he wants to close the door on this. Trump has a long history of not wanting on a single topic or issue for any prolonged period of time. He likes to move on. Right. He likes to move on for something else. I'm sure he's already thinking of the next thing he wants to talk about or deal with. And it's probably not this tariff situation. So I think the situation gets resolved probably in weeks. What does resolved mean? It doesn't even really matter. Right. It just doesn't matter trillions of dollars.

[Dave]

Back into the market, though. That's what we really want to know.

[Chris]

Because the market doesn't. As long as it's relatively rational. Right. As long as it's relatively the same as it is today. We might have some additional tariffs, we might have some additional provisions, some additional trade deals. It might look a little different, but the market just wants certainty. Because if you're a US Company, first of all, you cannot onshore your manufacture, you're not going to spend billions to onshore your manufacturing, which will take three to five years and put you in a time period when none of that might matter. And now your competitors are still manufacturing in Vietnam and India at half the price that you're. You can't afford to do that. But you also can't afford to start expanding internationally if you don't know exactly what this situation looks like. Right. Additionally, earning season is about to hit. Now, if you're a CEO, are you going to guide, are you even going to provide guidance? I think we might be back in a 20, 20, 2021 scenario where CEOs are like, we can't provide guidance. That's going, that's going to rock the market.

[Dave]

They can't predict what's going to happen. And so they can't give guidance. So they get the perfect excuse to pull guidance.

[Chris]

So the next few days to few weeks can continue to be really volatile. And that's like, that's your. There are a lot of ways that the scenario analysis can play out in the short run, but I think there are less ways that it can play out in the long run, which is why, like, I don't really care. I actually hope this, like, lasts a little bit now because, like, I'm trying to earn some income, I'm doing some things to try to get some cash, and I'm just hoping that the market is still kind of here or lower by the time that cash hits so I can go in deeper.

[Graham]

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[Chris]

Guys, I think we're going to be fine.

[Graham]

What do you think?

[Chris]

There's too. There's too much at risk.

[Jack]

I think we'll be back up to where it was maybe a week ago in three or four weeks. I think. I probably agree that there's going to be some turbulence right now just because of all of the news coming out and, like, then, you know, pulling the tariffs and adding tariffs and. And no one likes that. And I think over the course of the next three, three, four weeks, that'll all be resolved. And I'm like, ah. And then the money's going to come back in. That's what I kind of think. But who knows?

[Dave]

I.

[Graham]

This decision, this is great.

[Dave]

This is what not to do, because I know about his predictions.

[Graham]

You inverse this. So we've got another inverse. No worries.

[Jack]

Tricked me.

[Graham]

Oh, my God. Yeah, that's what I wanted to hear. Because now we just do the opposite of that. We got a long way to do this.

[Chris]

There is always an edge, a long way to fall. There's always an edge case scenario as investors that you have to be prepared for, though, right? Like we're here saying that. I think we all kind of agree that everybody wants this to be over, probably including Trump at some point. And we're more likely than not to see this resolve itself in a matter of weeks, if not months, worst case. But there is that one edge case scenario where Trump's a little crazier than any of us realize right now. Right.

[Dave]

And cares a little less about the market than he has previously.

[Chris]

Whenever you have a single individual that has that much concentration of power, there is more of a likelihood of something crazy happening. Right? Because like, if we were making these decisions in a normal political environment where Congress was involved, right. And having to vote on this stuff and looking out for everyone's kind of hometowns and their future elections, I think we could feel a little bit better that it's going to resolve and resolve quickly. But when you have one person, you do have to look out for that edge case scenario because, like, we haven't seen Trump in a little while in this situation. So has he changed? Like, has he changed so radically that we need to be concerned?

[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Graham]

Now, what are your thoughts on Trump saying, and I'm not sure if he said this, there's a narrative out there that Trump is taking money from the rich and giving it back to the middle class. In the sense that really Only the top 10% of people own the vast majority of stocks. And for the average person in the United States, stock market crash makes no difference in their daily life. All they care about is are eggs cheaper? Is gas cheaper, what is my car insurance like day to day expenses? So for Trump crashing the market, for most people in the US it makes no difference.

[Chris]

Well, so that statement's misleading because if the bottom 50% own only a small fraction of the equity market, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're not also invested in the equity market. It's just they could be fully invested. Not saying that they are, but they could be fully invested in equities, but that still represent a small piece of the overall equity pie. But, but regardless, equity markets love them or hate them, they are intertwined throughout our economy, and there's no getting around that. So when equity markets get hit, it has numerous impacts across the economy. Whether you happen to own stocks or not, your boss probably does, right? The person hiring you probably does. The company you work for is impacted by their ability to raise funds, right. To issue equity. So it really does. It doesn't matter if you personally own equities or not. Although probably most people are more directly tied to equity markets than they think, even through their pensions and various things. Right? It will absolutely crush the economy and everyone in it if, if the market starts to fall apart and remains weak for a long period of time, like, that's. I think that's undebatable, guys. Also, this whole thing with tariffs and, and it's just so frustrating to me because, like, the blanket tariffs on these countries and the trade imbalance and saying that we want other countries to trade with us as much as we want to just makes no sense on any level. Like, Graham, like, you're big into coffee, right? I'm sure you've heard kind of this coffee comparison going around. Like, we're charging, like, we want to charge tariffs on Brazil and places, Colombia, places that we get our coffee from in hopes that we're going to buy more American. That doesn't make any sense at all. Like, American coffee comes almost exclusively from Hawaii. Right. And by the pound, I would say it's like at the cheapest, $20 a pound. Is that right?

[Jack]

It's expensive.

[Chris]

It's super expensive. So American coffee starting at $20 a pound, most regular coffee from these countries is like five bucks, six, seven bucks a pound, four bucks a pound. So, yeah, like, if you, if we pay us, paying more for that coffee is not going to make us migrate to $20 a pound coffee. Right? That's just, that's just obvious. So this, at the end of the day, this tariff is simply an increase of cost to most people.

[Graham]

Well, given that, because, yeah, you're right, A lot of the coffee is, is naturally grows the best around the equator. What about the theory that Trump is purposely trying to crash the stock market to refinance the natural, the national debt? And this is all part of a master plan.

[Dave]

I, I think that might be giving too much credit to a master plan. I've read that, too. It would be genius if that were the case. But I don't, I don't buy into that.

[Chris]

All you have to do is kind of look into the Long history of Trump's, the narrative of what he's been pushing around, why he wants tariffs. And that's never been the narrative. Right now you can say all of a sudden, now that that narrative is no longer working, you can pick a new one. Which is what happened the last few video that went viral that he retweeted or he put on Truth Social.

[Graham]

Was that the Warren Buffett one?

[Chris]

Yeah. Which with which Warren Buffett did not say? Yeah.

[Graham]

So for those unfamiliar, there was a video that was retweeted so many times where Warren Buffett was command, you know, commenting on Trump's actions and calling him like the most brilliant move he has ever seen and how this is a great move for the economy. Trump retweeted that. A lot of people took that as fact. Then Warren Buffett came out in a note, said, I have never said this. This, this is not me.

[Chris]

Yeah, yeah.

[Graham]

Interesting how some of these things just get started and.

[Chris]

Yeah, and, and by the way, like that narrative of he's doing all of this just to knock down interest rates for the refinancing. I like in context that would really wouldn't make sense to, to do this for months on end to American financial markets. Like we will save hundreds of billions from that, you know, if we can knock it down a point. But when you look at the destruction that would have to happen to our economy over the course of the next 60 to 90 days, I think some of those interest rates are getting reset in May. Like it doesn't balance out. Like we'd be losing more than we would be gaining.

[Dave]

Although we did see Trump tweet directly to or I guess it was on. He truthed. Can we call it truthing?

[Chris]

Put it on Truth Social.

[Dave]

Then the administration came out and lowered the rates.

[Chris]

He does this, of course, he wants the rates lowered, of course. But the two things are independent from each other. And will this have the effect of lowering rates? Potentially, yes. Can you say it's worthwhile at this point if we're going to have companies close down as a result of it?

[Graham]

What's interesting is that putting a 90 day postponement on the tariffs and we saw the market basically recover shows just.

[Dave]

How much the market wants to be back into the market and wants to go to the moon again.

[Graham]

True. But it shows me also in support of that theory that he could keep it it alive temporarily long enough to refinance some of the debt, save hundreds of billions of dollars and then all of a sudden pull out the rug and the stocks recover.

[Chris]

There Are other. There are so many things that are getting impacted by this market. For example, look at the lack of capital gains that are going to be paid. How many people are selling right now at losses and that's going to impact our ability to collect taxes. Right. This year. And how much in taxes could it be? Hundreds of. It could be hundreds of billions of taxes that we're losing out on right now by people selling at a loss. Right. So like there are just so many things. Look at what companies are doing as a result of this. Right. Look at the lack of growth, the lack of hiring, everyone being in a standstill. Do we really want to keep corporate America frozen for the next 90 days? Well, how would that impact the next couple of years? Right? Like, you can't just look at things in a vacuum. And I, I don't believe that was the impetus for Trump doing what he did. Like, it's just he has months, years talking about these tariffs. That's why he did it. He feels that this is the right economic strategy. And you can agree with him or disagree with him.

[Graham]

Give me the case for tariffs.

[Chris]

When you say tariffs, like it's not about broad tariffs. Tariffs are probably a good thing in certain industry sectors with certain countries where it happens to make sense. Maybe we got kind of caught off foot in a few situations and maybe they need to be more balanced. Great, that's fine. But just this whole blanket statement of tariffs, when you're looking at tariffs from 100 years ago and trying to make that the president for why we need to have terrorists day, that narrative just is nonsensical. Tariffs do make sense in certain situations. I'll give you a perfect situation like the milk scenario, right? Like with Canada, we have this incredibly high 200 plus percent tariff that Canada puts on the US for milk. But that tariff doesn't actually start until we hit this very high floor for milk. The reason why that tariff is there is to ensure that we don't completely flood Canada with our milk and put their own milk producers out of business. So Canada is saying, hey, we'll take all this milk up into a point, but at a point you kind of have to stop selling us milk because we have to have our own milk producer selling us milk. And I believe we're selling a lot. What they're buying a ton more milk from us than they ever have the last few years, but at a certain point they're going to cap it. So they put this ridiculously high tariff rate. Now, I don't think we paid anything in tariffs or they paid anything in tariffs for milk because we never hit that rate even with all the additional milk. So tariffs are like supposed to be strategic for a very specific product class where you have an issue and tariffs are a tool, it's an economic tool. It's one of many economic tools that you can use to address a problem. But the most important thing that we need to be thinking about right now is supply chain. Like the global supply chain that we have kind of initiated over the past, what, 20, 25 years of free trade is so sophisticated and so strategic. If you look at like cars in the US like how many times the auto parts move between Canada and Mexico, like why do you think that is this? It's because of specialization, right? It's because we happen to have a plant in that country and we happen to have a labor class in that country that is really good at doing this one thing. And it really doesn't make sense for every country in the world to replicate that one thing that would be inefficient for the entire automotive sector. So we all kind of agree that hey, they're going to do this, you're going to do that, you're going to do that and we're all going to optimize so that we can have a car, right, that, that utilizes everyone's workforce and everyone's sense of specialization. Now it's not a perfect model, but it's like the best model that we've been able to come up with over the past 25 years. And look how cheap generally our products have become. Like, I joke about this all the time. Like, like stuff is so cheap now. Take the brand stuff away. Like the premium that you pay for a brand. I mean you can go right now to Target or Walmart and you can get like a pretty decent shirt, shirt for like single digit dollars. Like do you remember Dave, back in the 80s when we were growing up, I think it cost more back then to buy the same shirt in those dollars, right? That's insane. Like what sort of impact has that had for quality of life? Where every single American, no matter who you are, can like have a nice shirt and have a good pair of jeans and have a pair of. I mean that sounds kind of stupid.

[Graham]

But like what's the danger of that if we become too reliant on inexpensive labor in other countries?

[Chris]

It's not always about the expense. Okay, I'm going to talk about hard drives for example. China has like something like a hundred thousand skilled laborers in China with mostly female, mostly smaller females. With really tiny hands that have years and years of expertise of like fine tune articulation for hard drive line manufacturing, right? You've heard Tim Cook talk about this a little bit with the iPhone. He's like, it's not about the cost always. We just don't have the specialized labor force to do a lot of these manufacturing jobs. And sometimes it's expertise, sometimes it's literally just having the labor that's willing to do that job. Like listen, my daughter does not want to go work in a sewing factory, okay? Surprise, surprise. Like I don't care who you are in America. I don't care what your demographic is, where you live, what your, what your level of wealth is. I bet you if you have a 16 year old daughter anywhere in the US right now and you are like, hey, what do you think about like working in a sewing factory for the next 30 years? Just like not happening.

[Dave]

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[Chris]

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[Dave]

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[Chris]

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[Jack]

At a certain point though, if you take that to like the nth degree, if other countries are like abusing labor laws and stuff like that, and they're able to then get dirt cheap labor, dirt cheap product, and then sell it to the United States so we could effectively not complet compete with anything. Like do you see that even being a possibility or is that kind of a, a false threat?

[Chris]

I, I, I think that, I think that's false because truthfully, like there are other countries you can shift labor to where you have more control over, not over adhering to labor laws. You're not going to necessarily bring that back to the United States because again, in most of those situations we just simply do not have the labor force, end of story, period. Right. So like that could be a real problem. But that doesn't mean that we have half a million people prepared to make sneakers in the United States. Right. Every day. Right. Like, and we do make some in, in the US by the way today. Like usually a lot of our manufacturers here, most of them are like at capacity, most of them have open jobs, they're trying to hire guys. You know this like half of my life right now is in robotics. Why? Because most of the world's manufacturers are desperate for workforce. Right. They want more humans. We want these humans to work in factories, we just can't get them right. Now I believe what we should be thinking about is a longer term strategy for onshoring. Like a 30 year strategy for onshoring with automation and robotics. Right. That's really doable. Maybe we make some huge sacrifices where we start to onshore our most critical industries, pharmaceutical supply, minerals, maybe even semiconductors, things that we think are critical to our country's sovereignty. Yes. Maybe we should make those moves first and then get on a 20 or 30 year plan for how do we ultimately onshore more manufacturing in a way that works for the United States, which is not going to be putting humans in factories by the millions. I just hate to say it, like why are we not talking about that? Nobody wants to do that here. It's not even an option. So we shouldn't pretend it's an option. And that's why when you asked me in the start like, hey, what can we do about these? I'm like, you actually can't implement those tariffs. Like it's not even an option.

[Dave]

So you think you could implement them and then Everything just gets more expensive until it doesn't work anymore.

[Chris]

Correct. And it won't work anymore. And then you end up reversing out of the tariff. So like, yes, you could do anything for a short period of time, but there is no viable path for us to actually implement anything remotely close to the tariffs that were shown on that board.

[Jack]

Do you think, think the market's response to the proposed tariffs were expected by the administration or were you, Would you guys say it was easily predictable that this would be the severity of the response?

[Dave]

I, I would have predicted it. I bet the person at Kinko's that made that chart got online and bought some puts on the market because that's not what anyone was expecting. We were expecting either unilateral or three tiers. Like we had a bunch of different things that seemed reasonable and that the market was expecting and the market had been going down for months in anticipation of it. And then when we saw those actual numbers, they just seemed so far fetched and out of reality that the market did what needed to do.

[Chris]

The reason why the freakout happened is because those numbers don't actually exist in real life, so no one could be anticipating them. Right. Like even if your worst case scenario was we're going to match every tariff in the world, that would have been the worst case scenario, right?

[Dave]

Like even double the actual tariff around the world.

[Chris]

So there is no scenario that any rational person or investor would have run through to say, you know what, we're going to come out and put tariffs on the world that are like five to seven times what they are in every country. Like that was never in anyone's game plan. That's why the market freaked out.

[Graham]

So do you think the market drop is appropriate given the tariffs that were suggested, or do you think that the market is completely irrational right now because the tariffs are not real to begin with, that those could never be implemented? So everything is a big overreaction.

[Chris]

I think the latter. Everything is an overreaction, but people are concerned about instability. So it's not just the tariffs, it's about how do we get here, how do we even allow that to happen and what's going to happen next and how will the rest of the world, how does the rest of the world think about the United States right now? The bigger concern is what plans are now being made to circumvent the US in any way possible. Because you can't trust us. That's the concern. So the concern is if we did that, what are we going to do next? Can you trust us? Or should you start making moves no matter where you are in the world, to try to not be reliant on the US because you never know what we're going to pull.

[Graham]

Is that priced into the market? What do you guys think?

[Dave]

I think, yeah, the market is pretty good at pricing things in. This is just a weird scenario because it is so bizarre that the market doesn't know how to really price it in.

[Chris]

By the way, this is. As an investor, let's be honest. Unless you're like, retirement age, this is what you wish for. This is what you wish for. Yes, it is. Especially you. You're like half my age. You should be. You should be. You should be dreaming. You should be dreaming about scenarios like.

[Graham]

If you lose 20%, you need to gain something like 35% just to break even.

[Chris]

Graham. This is where you make all of your money over the course of 20 or 30 years. This is the dream scenario for every investor, and I feel like it's for the market to drop.

[Dave]

We.

[Chris]

We played.

[Dave]

We played Covid so well, and I feel like we missed the boat on this one.

[Chris]

Well, we missed the. What do you mean we missed the boat? We didn't hedge hard enough.

[Dave]

We weren't hedging.

[Chris]

Okay, but.

[Dave]

But we weren't double dip hedging our entire portfolios the way we were when we saw Covid, because Covid was like, okay, we see it coming. And we knew that the market. There's no reason the market could go up because this terrible thing is coming. And it made sense. But the tariff situation, we're old.

[Chris]

We don't work anymore. We don't have a regular income. If I was 25 or 30 and I had a monthly income and I had the ability to invest 10 or 20 or 30% of that monthly income, which everyone should be doing. This is the dream. You hope this stays like this for a year, year or two. Like, this is where you make your money. This is it, guys. Like, how do you not like this? How?

[Jack]

Because in January I put all of my money in.

[Chris]

All of your money? Do you make any money a month?

[Jack]

I do, but I have a tax bill coming up, and so I'm going to be.

[Chris]

So the timing's not optimal for you, fine. But hopefully it stay. It stays like this for a while.

[Jack]

If it stays like this for a while, then I'm okay. But if. I mean, I don't know. The problem was just back in January, I was like, okay, I've built up my savings. And then I was like, okay, let Me just kind of dump it all. And so I bought a bunch and then I nearly fully depleted it and then we, like, took a distribution off the podcast. So I had some, some cash and then I finished putting that in. Then the tariffs hit and have a tax bill. So I'm. I'm basically pretty, you know, pretty thin right now in terms of how much I can invest.

[Graham]

We joked about this even before the tariffs. Like, soon as Jack went all in, we were joking and be like, oh.

[Jack]

Yeah, that's the peak, actually, in incredible. Like. Like, I. I cannot believe it because I'm not superstitious at all. And I've mentioned this on the podcast. This is nearly the final straw in terms of, like, how is it, how is it every single time that, first.

[Chris]

Of all, I'm buying your dinner tonight, okay. So you can just relax a little bit. That's okay.

[Jack]

We got a company card, you know, but.

[Chris]

But all right, short term, painful it is. I get that.

[Jack]

I'm not even looking at my portfolio. I'm probably down so much money.

[Graham]

Can I look at it?

[Chris]

It.

[Jack]

You're going to have a reaction, and I prefer not to.

[Chris]

You know, the feeling you get when these things happen, it is disheartening. Your heart drops and it feels so bad when you're an investor to see your account down 20, 30, 40%, 50%. I've seen it multiple times. I've seen my account down 60, 70% in my life. And you always look back a year later and you go, God, I wish I just had the balls to.

[Dave]

Just to hang in.

[Chris]

Just to hang in there and not sell or invest more. There's not one time in my life going through five market crashes that I haven't looked back a year later. And the snapbacks are always so much quicker than you anticipate them to be, right? Every single time. But think about it this way, guys. We are at the impetus of what is likely to be the largest productivity leap in the history of mankind. The next five to eight years ever. Okay? I don't think there has ever been a better time to be an investor with capital to deploy into markets. And it's because of the productivity leap we're about to see mainly through AI and embodied AI and automation and robotics. This is going to benefit the world, I believe, in a huge way. And I'm so excited to be in capital markets right now and to have this gift.

[Dave]

It's a gift to have all of that on the horizon and to have a market crash right before it.

[Chris]

It's almost A dream.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Chris]

And I just want this market to stay here for like 60 days. Yeah, just stay here for 60 days. Because every dollar that I get is going into this market. Stocks that I loved two months ago are half price.

[Graham]

Now. Before we go into that, if you're ever curious how we keep the Iced Coffee Hour running so smoothly from tracking different episodes we have coming up, lining up integrations and staying organized. No joke, it's all with their sponsor, Notion. We've basically built out our entire podcast brain within Notion over the last few years. And we were genuinely so excited when they reached out for a sponsorship because this is a company we use all the time.

[Jack]

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[Graham]

You could create to do lists, set up a calendar, track your workouts or meals, whatever it is. The options are endless. I also really like their design. It's just clean, minimal, and it makes everything seem calm and under control.

[Jack]

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[Graham]

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[Chris]

Stocks that I loved two months ago are half price. Half price. I'm just like, what do you think of the warning?

[Graham]

Big find the warning from like Vanguard and Buffett and Charlie Munger that we might see lower than average returns over the last decade. And they've been saying this since really 2021. And they've warned investors that, you know what, sure, sure, you've gotten about 10% a year, but I believe over the next one to two decades, it's likely to be about 4% a year, 3% a year. What are your thoughts on that?

[Chris]

I try to stay away from macro predictions. I'm not great at them. I don't really care what the market does. I think there will be big winners the next decade. Right. So as long as I could predict who those big winners are, and I think I know who they are, are.

[Dave]

The S and P average might not perform the next five years as good as it did the last five years. Who knows, right? But if you pick the right stocks, you're going to outperform the S and.

[Chris]

P. Yeah, I think you mentioned Buffett, and I have so much respect for Buffett. Like, he's one of my favorite people in the world. But he essentially missed the entire technology cycle. Right? Buffett could be a multi trillionaire right now easily if he would have just put a small piece of his portfolio into technology during the technology boom of the early 2000s. So macro stuff is hard. That's all I'm saying. It's hard for me, it's hard for Buffett. It's hard for everyone to predict macro because there are too many variables. And the world is constantly evolving and changing in ways that we never would have anticipated. So whenever you hear someone making macro predictions, they're making, making them, assuming that the world stays relatively consistent with the way that it's been during their lifetime. I'm telling you that we're about to see a radical, radical shift in technology driven mainly by artificial intelligence, where nobody could really predict how the next 10 years is going to go and how it's going to look. The one thing that I do know is that productivity, I think, will skyrocket.

[Graham]

So what should the average person do with this information and with everything going on the market?

[Chris]

Either don't do anything or if you are going to do something, I would be figuring out whatever you could do to get a second or a third job. Start driving Uber at night, start washing cars on the weekend, start flipping garage sale merchandise. I don't care what you have to do. Whatever you can do to make a little bit of extra cash over the next few weeks to next few months to be able to invest in risk assets. That's. Listen, for me, I'm investing in Robin Hood and Nvidia and you know, aggressive tech stock Tesla. You know, like, like that's what I'm doing with my money. Like, you might not agree with my stock picks, but, but I, this is the time to be, to be. To, to figure out how to find risk dollars in your life. Do it in a way that won't harm your family if it goes wrong. Right. But like fine risk. Like, like just this is, this is the time to maybe like, like save some money, make some extra money, figure out how to get some extra cash just for the purpose of getting crazy rich later. Because you want to be, you want to have money in risk assets right now for the next 10 years. Like you want to find money to put in risk assets. I am so, guys, I've seen a lot. I have never been more excited to be in the market than right now.

[Dave]

So how do you have, how do you have your portfolio positioned right now? Are you, you, do you have any cash? Are you still in margin? Like this is I always.

[Chris]

So I'm not with the volatility and when the concentration risk of having a single individual moving equity markets every day. I mean, what if, like, what if Trump lost his mind a week ago? Like, like, what if, like. Right. That's a pop. When we're running scenario analysis, one of those scenarios must be that maybe Trump lost his mind. Mind. Right. And maybe he's just going to keep going on this and not stop even if the market's down 50% and you can't do anything about it. Right. So there's a con level. You have to acknowledge that as a risk. So I'm not lever Dave. Yeah. And that's for me.

[Dave]

I did my best to get my margin down to zero. Now I did have to get back into margin a little bit because of some opportunities, but I'm waiting, waiting for some clarity on tariffs to then ratchet my leverage back up.

[Chris]

Agreed. I'm waiting to pounce. That's what I'm doing. So I do have some degree of hedging going on in my portfolio and it changes every day. And it's a little bit of a gut instinct. What is the news cycle going to be in the next 24 hours? Is there a likelihood that something that crazy is going to happen? And if so, I need to, I'm only hedging my portfolio maybe 35% at most. So it's not a lot.

[Dave]

And I, and I did that the weekend after the tariffs were shown to the public. I just had a hunch that we could see another Black Monday. And if there was going to be a Black Monday, I wanted to have some puts on the S and P and was able to cover those, you know, the morning of.

[Chris]

By the way, I will admit there is a counter argument to what I'm saying right now that is a little scary. Ray Dalio, if you read his stuff, I love him and he makes a pretty darn good case that we're in the early cycles of. I don't want to call it like the end of everything. I don't want to freak you out. Yeah, no.

[Dave]

If you haven't seen that, it's a 40 minute animated, like here's how the world works. It is the most. I watched it again this weekend just because this is all that's on my mind. And you, you would love it.

[Chris]

Did you read his post today though on X? No, he put out a. I've read it on the way here. He put out a post day on X and he listen, you gotta listen to everything he says because it's legitimate. But I will say this, he's not taking into account anything that I just said. We've always somehow have found a way to save ourselves something that we didn't expect, like the Internet or cloud computing or like the mobile phone. Like right when we thought we were totally screwed, something just happens. I don't know how that is, but something always happens that makes the world so much more productive and saves industry and like, makes everyone like everything more profitable.

[Dave]

But if you watch the Ray Dalio video, as the US is going down and China's going up, you have to, to hope that the US is going to be able to capitalize on that new technology better than China.

[Chris]

I don't know that we need to be able to capitalize better than China. We just can't be that much worse than China. We have to be, we have to kind of be in the same world as China because China is, they're, they're ready, they're going like I've been, you.

[Dave]

Know, and, and if you think about tariffs as a solution to this. It's kind of awkward, but if you think about like IP management of things like Deep Seek stealing content from our technology, that that's where you, like, there.

[Chris]

Is a little bit of a facade when it comes to China. They are, we should be concerned. But I'll give you one example. So like One of my LPs of, of the robotics company that, you know, I'm involved with. He has been traveling China for two weeks, meeting with every single robot company in China, like every single one. And he's looking at them to potentially invest. He's also looking at them as it relates to competitive intelligence. And he's somewhat impressed because he said there's like a hundred humanoid like robotics companies over there. It's wild. But, but his word to me last night was nothing really to be worried about. Meaning, like, yeah, there's a lot of startups, there's a lot of action, but these companies aren't structured as formally and as like, well thought out as you might think from the videos you're seeing on YouTube. Okay, so, so it's not all that it seems, but they are a force to be dealt with. China the next 10 or 15 years. We, we. I do believe that we're going to figure it out. I think we're scared right now. And that's a good thing, I think, like, when I mean by scared, like we're scared that we're about to get beat out by China. And I will say this, Dave. Like, we like to rip on Gen Z for like these kids being a little like lax and, and just soft. I'll say I'm Gen X, right? So I'm going to call him soft. But I, I'm starting to engage with a lot of these kids, especially in robotics. And let me tell you something, they are smart as hell. And I don't think we can just label Gen Z as one thing because there is a section of Gen Z. These kids are just wildly ambitious and crafty and resourceful. And I actually believe that that generation is going to step up in a really big way and save us. I do. I think they're going to compete. I think they're going to compete. I'm confident in that.

[Graham]

How do you do such a great job separating your emotions from investing? Investing?

[Chris]

I've been doing this, I've been trading options since I was 13 years old. I've been losing incredible amounts of money at periods. Right, Dave? There have been a couple times when I broke down, I got, I did some bad stuff. I put Myself in a really bad situation when I was younger and I learned my life. And Dave even has had a talk with me. He's like, you gotta chill.

[Dave]

I became your bank for a little bit.

[Chris]

Yeah, he did. He was my bank. Like there was a point where I went broke and Dave would lend me money and he like kept the tab of like how much money I owed him.

[Jack]

Like, why did you keep lending him money?

[Chris]

Just Dave had always been more conservative than me.

[Dave]

Yeah, he's a good friend, but I've always believed in this. You, you see this brain network right now, Would you not believe in that?

[Jack]

Well, you know, if you had a record of losing and losing and losing, then maybe I would feel otherwise. But no, I, I see where you're coming from. Is there a specific time in the day that's better to buy stocks? Like if you have auto investing on should be buying as soon as market opens, during market close or somewhere.

[Graham]

I saw a chart that said every day if you just bought after hours, you would make more money than buying like market open or that buying a market closed.

[Chris]

There are nuances to that that I don't think were reflected in the report that you saw. Because I saw it too. Because you're not, you don't actually get to buy it at that. Does that make sense? Like it's not as clean as you think it is. Because I was curious when I read that report and I read into it and then I was like, oh. Because I was like, there's no, nothing that could be easily arbitrage actually exists in the market. Just, you're aware with the volume of algorith trading at high frequency firms right now, they're able to assess anything that's easily arbed out and it gets arbed out almost instantaneously. So like don't look for easy things. It's impossible because there are computers that are looking for that stuff and it will react to it really quickly. So my answer to you is I don't really know. And that's not how I trade. I don't think like that. You know how I think I look for information that other people, people missed. Like I'm not looking at the market, I'm trying to look for actual cultural, consumer behavioral shifts that, you know, the money heads on Wall street are too consumed with financial noise to quickly surface in the world.

[Jack]

What do you two think are the main things people are missing right now?

[Chris]

Well, I think they're too consumed by something that's short term.

[Jack]

Yeah, the tariff stuff.

[Chris]

Yeah. And by the way, it's really difficult to get in the head of Donald Trump and assess what he's to say and do intraday. So like unless you're on his team, unless you're on the truly on the inside and you have access to that level of information, why are you trying to do something that you can't do? Focus on things you can control. The thing I love most about these short term volatile macro events is that it tends to take down the entire market market, whether it's justified or not.

[Dave]

Finding the opportunities when everything is down, finding those companies that you wanted to be in anyway and being able to buy them on sale at a discount, there's nothing better.

[Chris]

I totally agree. As you guys know, I've been on like a Robinhood kick for like seven, eight months. I really feel strongly that the psychopaths that run Robinhood are going to make the most of this deregulatory environment, environment that we're in the next few years.

[Dave]

We haven't heard anything about deregulate. Our attention spans are so short. We hear tariff, tariff, tariff and that's all we can think about. We now do have the deregulatory president, we have the bitcoin president. We have all these other things that were, that were the top of mind like two weeks ago and now all we talk about is tariffs.

[Chris]

So I like, I was in Robinhood pretty heavy, but then I was like, I didn't think the stock was going to go from 20 to 70 to 65 and like a few months that really pissed me off because I was like wanting to slowly. No, I was in it pretty heavy but like I wanted to be in it even heavier and now it's down to like 30, 31, 30, 30, whatever. And so yeah, like I'm doubling down. I'm finding money to get into the stocks that I really want to be in heavy. And this is just like a blessing having this opportunity. There are companies like Amazon that have been down nine weeks in a row. So you know, like one of my biggest themes the next decade is automation and robotics and efficiencies that will be brought to enterprise on a vast global scale. I cannot think of a company that's set up to benefit from that trend even if they're not actually making the robots, which they are too, but, but to benefit from that trend more than Amazon. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I think there are huge opportunities right now and you just have to like not get nervous with the short term noise ways because like, let's be honest, none of Us are in the market for the short term, right? Like, no, come on. We should. That would be insane. Like we're in this for our lifetime. Right.

[Graham]

And Dave, what's your approach right now with investing?

[Dave]

I'm basically trying to not touch my portfolio as things are going down other than to hedge a little bit and then looking for those opportunities and doubling down on the stocks that I think are, are the ones that, that have the biggest opportunity. And I'm. It's the same stocks we, we, we talk every day. So it's like hard to separate the, our, our two philosophies. But Robinhood, ever since they announced the Gold card and they have productized now a bank where they're not a bank but they get to have banking services. I just feel like they're so aggressive with trying to take wallet share that that's a stock that I want to be in and so I'm just looking for opportunities like, like that. Yeah. Tesla. Tesla. I'm not letting the politics of Tesla cloud my judgment on Tesla as a robotics company. It's. I don't care about their automotive division at all. They're a robot company.

[Graham]

Speaking of Tesla though, what are your thoughts on Elon Musk turning that a bit political that now it seems like almost it's a statement. If you drive a cybertruck, it's terrible.

[Chris]

For Tesla, but could it get worse? It has to be at. It's worse right now, right? Like could he possibly get more political than he is right now?

[Dave]

Cyber trucks on fire every.

[Jack]

It's already what was crazy.

[Graham]

I went to LA recently and I was there for a day and I heard twice someone said excuse the car. They were driving a test. Excuse the. I got this before everything. One of them even said I looked into seeing if I could give the car back back or do like a swap a lease sort of thing and have someone take over my payments. But there's like a penalty if you do that. I was thinking it's a great car. I mean but like there's that. But that's a very la.

[Chris]

It's not just la. You know, my friend in Florida has a cyber truck. It got vandalized a week ago, week and a half ago. But it's going to be a volatile year for Tesla. That's just no way of getting around it. Like you either believe in the future of Tesla, FSD and Optimus and robotics, because that's really all that matters for Tesla Tesla over the next decade, or you don't. And if you believe in that you kind of, you love the fact that they're having this volatile year because again, it provides you with an opportunity.

[Dave]

And us long term Tesla investors are very used to the volatility. This is, this is nothing. Seeing Apple drop like it did and Amazon and all, every stock just tank, that's shocking to long term investors of the kind of blue chips of the tech world. But, but getting like getting back through.

[Chris]

The noise guys again, like the entire generation of young people are investors for the first time in history. You have an entire generation where every single one of them, especially the, you know, male, like every guy, like, you know, I have coffee every morning with my dog and like every other morning there's another random person walking up to me that's young and just wants to talk about, about stocks or crypto or whatever. Like, I'm like, people do not understand that literally every single person in that generation is investing for themselves through an app. When you look at Robinhood the next two to three decades, I truly believe they're in the pole position to be the largest financial institution on Earth within 25 years. Like, and they're a $34 billion company today, which is not nothing. I mean they could theoretically 20x from here over the next two decades. If that thesis plays out, and it's a thesis that I don't even see. I'm trying to figure out how it doesn't happen. They have to do something stupid again, right?

[Dave]

Yeah, if they, if they got rid of the sell button again or got rid of the buy button. Yeah, that, that could be a problem.

[Graham]

Still have not gotten over that, by the way. A lot of people still reference that moment even though a few brokerages did the same thing. And it wasn't an issue just with Robin Hood, but they got all the fl.

[Chris]

I don't think it's as big of a. I think you are kind of in the middle of it more so you're more aware of it. But I don't hear about, no, every.

[Dave]

Time, every time I, I post on X about Robin Hood, there's always a comment that says it's the same seven people in the world.

[Jack]

I don't hear about it from all of my friends that haven't been investing for a while. It's only the people that already know it about it. And the worst that they could do is just not transfer their money to Robin Hood, which it doesn't exist there right now anyways.

[Dave]

But those transfer bonuses, like Robin is just doing so much to draw money in and to keep you in their Sticky app. Their app is such. It is such a better interface than I. I use Schwab for forever. I use Robin Hood as my primary brokerage now. It's crazy to me, but I do it.

[Chris]

I made my first sports wager on Robin Hood a week and a half ago on the Duke game and won. It was a small wager, but let me tell you, you. It was so enjoyable. It was so easy. You know, they. They call it a prediction market. Like, I've been in other apps like MGM Sports and stuff, just trying to figure out, like, how to place the. It's not hard, but it's kind of like it's sports people.

[Dave]

And this is more geared to finance people.

[Chris]

Normal. No, it's just geared towards, like, normal. It's.

[Graham]

Well, I think it's geared towards game Gamify system. They've gamified investing and they're gamifying.

[Chris]

They did the same prediction with sports. Like. Like, if you get on one of those sports apps, it's not like, it's kind of a little bit cumbersome and confusing and clunky. They're just good at the thing that actually matters.

[Graham]

Well, they dumb it down. I've seen it where it's like, do you think market's gonna go up or down? And it's just like, red or green, and you pick one of them. Like, how much do you want to make on this? And then you could, like, do the sliding scale of, like, I wanna make this much. All right, well, your odds are this. And it'll cost you this. Do you wanna buy? Yes or no. And it's like, yes. And then, like, confetti shoots up.

[Chris]

It's dumb, but it matters. It's. It's the stuff.

[Dave]

Like on our live show, Chris will sometimes buy stocks in real time. And he is the worst at, like, understanding what he's doing with the. The app.

[Chris]

I make mistakes.

[Dave]

For whatever brokerage you were using at the time. The experience on Robinhood, I was this morning half, half asleep trading options. But the interface just makes it so easy to roll your options down and just scroll and visually see what you're doing. And it's just. It's a better experience.

[Graham]

So where do we draw the line between investing and gambling?

[Chris]

I don't think there's any similarities between. I'm like. I refute that aggressively.

[Dave]

That sounds like a gambler would say that.

[Chris]

No, no, come on.

[Dave]

So I.

[Graham]

So listen, I've gotten into a few. Like, I. I put maybe two grand total into random options.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Graham]

To me, that's no different than gambling.

[Dave]

No, that is if you're going to.

[Chris]

Put it into random options.

[Graham]

Well, I'm not talking random options like a blindfolded, just like picking something. But I' like there's been a few bankrupt companies that are like on the verge where I'm like, I'm gonna buy some call options on this and if they don't go bankrupt, I'm gonna 10x. But if they do, it's money I'm willing to risk.

[Chris]

Oh, okay. So, so that's kind of like more just pure speculation and that, that kind of sits on the line. I, I would agree. But what I love is I was so annoyed a few years ago when all these young people would just talk about meme stocks and gamestops and crypto crap coins. Right? There's still a little bit of that, but not anymore. Like if you look at what they're talking about this week, they're talking about losing real money in real companies. And like that's actually awesome. I would say 95 plus percent of what's happening on Robinhood is investing right now. Not extreme speculation of meme style stuff. I think the majority of it is actual investing and I think every year we go forward, forward, it's only going to get more that way.

[Dave]

I think there's a bigger percentage of people's accounts that are investing accounts, but it's, it gives you the opportunity to have fun and make a crazy bet on something happening in the markets the same way you can on a sports.

[Chris]

You just, you just said it like I would, I would, I would assume the majority of your account is investing and then you have a little fun on the side doing some speculation that could theoretically be closer to gambling. And I think there are a lot of people like that and that's totally fine if you want to throw some money on something stupid. But like the majority of your account is likely investing. And I think it's like that. It's that way for almost every single investor on Robinhood right now. Except for some, except for the ones.

[Dave]

That are on Wall street bets posting their screens.

[Chris]

Because, because I, because I've seen, listen, I'm close to a lot of these guys that were like big, big meme coin traders and they were big gamestop guys like a few years ago and I converse with them them and they're not really talking about that stuff more than once in a blue moon now. They still do a little bit of it on the side, but most of them are in Nvidia and they're In Robinhood. And they're in like, you know, they're trading actual technology stocks, actual growth companies, because that's what actually happens. Dave, we were during the dot com boom when we were that age, we were doing the equivalent of meme stocks back then, investing in all the IPOs, all the stupid IPOs pets. And it was all based on hype.

[Dave]

Short term Cisco options because they seem to go up every day.

[Chris]

And then most of those companies went actually bankrupt. We lost all of our money that was invested in gross stocks. Like actually all of it. Like our account was down 50 to 60%. Do you remember? We actually lost 60%.

[Dave]

I just remember. I remember the year that I lost more money in the stock market than I made at my job.

[Chris]

Yeah, but here's what happened.

[Jack]

I might this year, but, but here's what happened.

[Chris]

The account, we still had our E trade app, right. And six months later, 12 months later, when we're earning income because we had real jobs, what are we going to do with it? We started putting it back in the.

[Dave]

Market and dollar cost averaging into the S and P. Two years later, us.

[Chris]

And all of our friends, we're now investing in real companies. So yeah, we started doing stupid stuff. We learned the lessons the hard way. You have to learn them the hard way. It's the only way you know that like if you don't lose money money, you don't learn your lesson. Maybe next time you, you'll. Dollar cost average.

[Jack]

This is the second time I've learned. I was dollar cost averaging. But it wasn't enough. And so I was like, okay, I need to start depleting the savings. And that's January. But I'm curious, do you feel like Robin Hood is just as safe then to put your money in as any other Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Vanguard? Would you feel just as comfortable using it?

[Dave]

And if not, I think we have differing opinions on this. I, I do. It's where I keep the majority of my money. Robinhood is, I think of it as a marketing interface on top of other people's backend. So Robinhood isn't, you know, they're not doing the trades, they're facilitating the trades to make you have an easy experience and then handing it off to a backend company the same way Schwab and TD and the others do. This episode is brought to you by Selectquote.

[Chris]

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[Dave]

Oh, I did three years ago. I'm saying today I did.

[Chris]

I think they learned their lessons. I think they're, they're becoming a grown up company now. I bet their compliance team is meaningfully larger today than it was in 2021. I would feel relatively comfortable having a large amount of money with Robin Hood. That said, I have been. I was with Ameritrade before that Scott trade got acquired by Ameritrade and then Schwab acquired Ameritrade. Now, as you guys know, I'm publicly audited every year and they've told me not to move my accounts because that would be like a red flag. So I have like an 18 year track record within one account. So I'm sticking with Schwab for that reason alone right now. But also so I like, I can actually, I have a private, A guy, I can get him on the phone if there's an issue. If the, if the site is down, they'll manually place a trade for me. I feel like if anything horrible happen at Robin Hood, you'll never get someone on the phone like that to do that for you.

[Dave]

I've had good chat conversations with them. But I have also had the Schwab guy come to my house when I needed some papers. He drove to my house.

[Chris]

I can drive to the Schwab office in our neighborhood if I needed to. You should go to your house.

[Dave]

He'll do that.

[Chris]

If the consumer app was down, I'd be like, place my trade now, sell my stock. If like, I don't know, an earthquake went off.

[Graham]

I had a rumor for Robinhood that they want to get into banking. And one of the services that they might offer is a Uber service where they deliver cash to.

[Dave]

They already do. They've announced that.

[Graham]

That's it.

[Dave]

Yeah. Okay. You can. It's not in the app yet. It's coming, I think this fall. But you'll be able to, instead of going to an atm, you'll be able to access your Robinhood banking premium banking service. They can't call themselves a bank cause they're a banking service, but you'll be able to on your phone in the Robinhood app, say $100, here's where I am and someone will bring you $100 in cash.

[Graham]

How is that profitable?

[Chris]

I don't know. How could they do that? I don't know why they did it. I don't care about it. It's not why I'm invested in Robin. I think that just it's a little market because you're talking about it Grant.

[Graham]

But I'm thinking it's like there's gotta be a minimum because let's just say I want 20 bucks and they're trying drive in like 30 minutes to bring me it twice.

[Chris]

I mean unless you're doing a drug deal, who needs that?

[Graham]

But that's why it's probably marketing because I, I don't know if I'd ever use that. But it's nice to think, okay, if I need like a few hundred bucks.

[Dave]

So at their event they actually demoed it and it appeared to be a free delivery. And you tip the driver the same way you would doordash or an Uber Eats or whatever. It's just a delivery service. That's the driver.

[Jack]

It's like whose money is the driver?

[Dave]

I'm sure it's insured.

[Chris]

I think this is a round off era, guys. I think it's a conversation topic and it's a market marketing gimmick. They're smart when it comes to this stuff, right?

[Dave]

They basically wanted, they wanted to offer private banking like services. And so the same way Schwab will drive to my house and hand me paperwork they wanted to have what would, what would the equivalent of that be? And without being a bank and without wanting to have to deal with the ATM networks and becoming a part of that, they're able to say, oh yeah, you need cash, we'll bring it to you.

[Chris]

But. But here's what matters when it comes to Robinhood. There's what you see and there's what you don't see. Like when did we start talking about them getting into sports wagering? A year ago, right. We were had conversing about and now they're in sports wagering. This team, Vlad and his team, they're animals. Like they're animals. They're going to ask for forgiveness later. Anything that remotely touches money in any way, they're going to try to take over. They're going to try to ambush is on it. Like if it touches money. So you've heard the rumors about real estate. Like eventually.

[Graham]

What's this with real estate?

[Chris]

Eventually there's rumors that they would potentially get into was That a real rumor.

[Dave]

I just thought you made that.

[Chris]

No, that was abs. That is absolutely real and I believe it's.

[Graham]

So what is it? You have to explain it now.

[Chris]

Well, that they would eventually get into the broker game as well and transact.

[Graham]

So I would be able to buy a house.

[Dave]

Buy or sell your house through the Robinhood?

[Chris]

Yes. And. And they would get. So when you think about when all these companies started up, maybe it was like seven years ago, they were trying to integrate the real estate tech stack to have basically commission free brokerage. Right. They didn't have enough funding and the technology wasn't there and they just didn't execute well enough to pull that off. It's really expensive to market on the front end as you know, to get your customers. It's a lot of work. They were too early. I think Robinhood is going to wait for the right time and they will have the right resources. And the beauty behind Robinhood is they will already own the customer base. Right. So they're just going to layer it in as a product. I don't know how long until it happens. I just know they will try to make that happen. When you think about a financial institution, they're probably thinking larger than any financial institution on earth today. They want to be involved in more things that touch money than J.P. morgan is.

[Dave]

They've stated that they want to touch every dollar that you. That you interact with.

[Chris]

And if there's one thing that gets me going, it's a big company that thinks like a startup. That's Tesla. Right? I don't know if you guys have ever had the privilege to work at a big company like Dave and I had earlier in our career. We've sold our companies to big companies and we're forced to work there for periods of time. It's a joke. Like when you understand the difference between a large incumbent and a nimble startup, it's like night and day. So if you're able to catch that rare form of large company that still thinks like a startup and is willing to take risks. Risk and ask for forgiveness later, that is something I am going to throw money at. I'm just gonna. Because it's such a rarity. It hardly ever happens because.

[Dave]

And I'll keep throwing money at that until there's an indication that they're starting to be more corporate.

[Chris]

Correct.

[Dave]

Like think about. I worked at Yahoo in 1999 when it was still kind of a startup. And I worked there for 10 years and by, by the end it was so corporate. So I, I Left because it was.

[Chris]

Just, he just stayed too long because he got to help produce the Victoria's Secret fashion show coverage for, for, for like 10 years.

[Dave]

World's largest streaming event at the time.

[Chris]

But, but here's, here's where everyone got messed up on Robin Hood. They were in a horrible regulatory environment where they were getting attacked by the government anytime they tried to do anything. And so they froze for years. The company just froze. So we're kind of look. And then at the same time, they made the worst mistake ever. Whether it was their fault or not, they got caught up in the whole GameStop issue, which was literally the worst PR attack that I've ever seen on a company in my lifetime. So they had all of that bad stuff happening at the same exact time and now that has mostly resolved itself and now they're in the polar opposite regulatory environment and they're just putting the pedal to the metal and going for it. So I, I think a lot of people just don't fully understand or grasp that this is a company that's trying to grow to a half trillion dollar financial institution over the next 10, 15 years. And they're going to, they're going to do everything they can to make that happen. And I don't really see any massive roadblocks. And we talked about the tailwind of, of the wealth transfer, right, the 80, 90, $100 trillion wealth transfer. Robin Hood has all these accounts and they're all relatively small, small still. And they're just getting bigger. Every single year they're getting bigger because young people are earning more money and they're inheriting money.

[Jack]

I see one big roadblock. I think on Tuesday or whenever the next day of trading is open, I'm going to put some money in Robin Hood.

[Dave]

Oh, no.

[Jack]

So I think, oh, I think that, you know, whatever you guys have right now, you might want to sell.

[Graham]

You know, Are you actually going to do that?

[Jack]

I won't tell you. You'll end up finding out. Check the stock price.

[Chris]

Yeah.

[Dave]

Just look at the market.

[Jack]

Yeah. Yeah. That was a very.

[Graham]

What do you say to people who maybe have all their money invested in the markets and want to go into margin because they see the opportunity. The stock market has fallen over 20% and they want to buy in, but they want to do margin.

[Chris]

Well, it depends.

[Dave]

We have a very different risk profile than the average normal investor. I would not listen to us when it comes to using margin and triple leveraging and all of that. But the way we use it, I feel is very responsible given our High threshold for risk.

[Chris]

I have buckets of money that are earmarked for maximum aggressiveness in the market and I know the risk associated with that, whether it's taking on margin or investing in options that can dissipate overnight and go to zero, which they have many times. So it's all about bucketing your money. And if you have a bucket of money that is geared to generate three to five times the market return and you're willing to take on that risk, there are appropriate times to have margin, but you have to understand the risk that's associated with that and the risk is large. So, like, it's not the type of thing you want to do inside of your core account that's part of your core portfolio where you cannot, you know, you can't withstand a massive loss because again, there's always tail risk. People do not understand that tail risk are actually very real. And there's tail risks you can see and tail risks that you can't see, but they're potentially massive and they could destroy you. So I, I have an appropriate amount of margin for my level of risk. But that's a very. Graham. It's a very personal decision. You just, you just can't blanket, discuss margin, margin without understanding someone's personal tolerance for risk and what their objectives are. Quite honestly, it's almost impossible to achieve 5, 6, 7x market returns without leverage, some form of leverage. And I need to, that's. Those are the returns I'm looking for.

[Graham]

And when was the last time both of you were wrong?

[Chris]

I was wrong last week. I was wrong last week. I did not, I said I was.

[Dave]

Not fast trading the Rose Garden event the way I should have.

[Chris]

I thought that Trump would react more quickly to dissatisfaction on his brand. He always has in the past. And this is the first time that Trump has not had a knee jerk reaction when something went not the way that he wanted it to go or that he anticipated it to go. So I was wrong. And if I thought this was a possibility, I would have been way more aggressively hedged on my account than I was. I was hedged a small amount, but not nearly enough. I got slaughtered this last week. You know, I put a post on X on last Friday and I was like, hey, listen, I got slaughtered.

[Graham]

How much were you down?

[Chris]

Millions. Over a course of two days. A large, low double digit percentage of my trading portfolio. Portfolio. And it was because I miscalculated something and it was Trump. And I just explained that those things are going to happen. They're going to happen. You're not alone. I knew I wasn't alone. We have a strong community and I knew they were hurting and I just wanted everyone to know. It's not just you. It's like it's me. I'm hurting really bad. I misjudged something. I got it wrong, and now I'm paying the price. Price. But I have been here before, and it has always been okay in the long run. I have never looked back at any of those scenarios and been like, that just ruined my whole life. Yeah. A brighter days are ahead of us. I don't know exactly how it plays out. I don't know the exact timing of it, but if brighter days are not ahead of us, then that will be the first time in history.

[Graham]

It does. It does worry me in the sense that you are very confident that things are going to rebound. Because I remember the same things happening in 2020. And I don't want to say, like, I felt the bottom, but it seemed like when things were bottomed, I knew so many people are like, I'm not going near that. I don't want to touch it. Things are going to go much worse. We're entering a 1920s Great Depression. This time around, I see everyone have the same sentiment as you that this is nothing. Prices are going to rebound. And listen, it might be, but it's just. It seems like a completely different narrative shift than I saw four years ago.

[Chris]

I mean, I think the panic has been very real the last few days, though. If you look at investor sentiment, it's.

[Graham]

Like, all I'm seeing on Twitter is buy the dip. Buy the dip. Buy the dip. Buy the dip. I don't see anyone saying, like, oh, this is. This is the start of the next. Like, sure. You see, like, Robert Kiyosan and like a few of the people saying, like, oh, this is. This is the moment I've been talking about.

[Chris]

They've always. He's. It's been the moment for him for nine years.

[Graham]

But on a large scale, I see everyone being like, I'm excited. I see very few people fearful about it. And that worries me that maybe that fear has not been priced in.

[Chris]

But my. I think it's about time frame. Like, my time frame is not buy the dip. So I'm up in three weeks. Yeah. For me, it's. I don't know.

[Dave]

Or three years from now. You know, you're going to be fine.

[Chris]

I do not care if it takes two years, years to come out of the dip. I want it to take two years. I want the market to stay down for at least a year. That would be awesome for me because.

[Dave]

I feel better seeing a large number in my account than a small number.

[Chris]

And I don't. I know this is the only way we get real opportunity. This is where the real gains are made. For me. This is always where I've made the most. Right. I've always made the most going in deepest during the times where it felt hardest to do that.

[Dave]

But on the macro side, and I know we don't really, we don't have any ability to predict that if there was a year of the stock market going down, you, you're happy because you can keep buying more always. But that is, that is a recession. That is people, not people being afraid to take money and spend it because the, the world is ending, right?

[Chris]

Yeah. And recessions are temporary, always have been.

[Graham]

What do you think the biggest risk to the economy is besides tariffs?

[Chris]

I think the bigger risk economy is that we do meaningful damage to the global supply chain. If we really stick to this policy too firmly and we, if we really.

[Dave]

Want to bring iPhone manufacturing to Nebraska, that is a long term change in the way the world has worked and that I think that the damage to the reputation of the US as a trading partner that you can trust is kind of the bigger picture.

[Chris]

All I care about is the global supply chain. It's precious, it's highly efficient and it's a big part of why we operate here in the U.S. u.S. Companies are able to operate with such high productivity around the world and it's just this amazing thing that we built up over decades. I know there are areas where we probably need to like tweak. Right. And I, I'd be fine with the administration doing that. But I don't want to do anything detrimental to the global supply chain. That is absolutely critical. And it has, it has like fingers into every company in the country and every worker in this country. And I hope that this administration has a deep level of respect for that supply chain because it's not something that changes easily. I do have respect for wanting to onshore long term, but there's a way, a right and a wrong way to do that.

[Dave]

You can't flip a switch and expect US companies to be able to start manufacturing. We do not have sewing factories or iPhone factories in the US we just.

[Chris]

Couldn'T do it if we want to onshore. I would love to have a long term viable strategy for onshoring over the.

[Dave]

Next couple of decades and incentivize US companies to onshore versus punishing by making them pay more and then decide how to pass that extra cost.

[Chris]

But also, guys, we need a healthy global economy. Like, so as an investor, I've probably listened to more earnings calls than I think any investor in the world. Probably maybe 10,000. Like, I'm not joking. Like, this is my, my hobby is listening to earnings calls. I love it. It's like my reading and over the course of the past 15 years, years, the degree of importance that's been put on international sales for American companies, I just, I can't even really communicate it to you guys. It's so critically important. It's all that matters almost these days. Like, you get to that point in the call where you're like, even if things were terrible here, all of our growth is coming from international sales. From China, right? From Asia, from all over the world. It is so critical, as you're saying, saying Dave, to keep those relationships moving and well greased and to not have an anti American sentiment because, like, whether you like it or not, we are better together globally. Right? And like, if you're part of the investing ecosystem, there's no way you don't know that, right? Any of these companies you're investing in. Look at the percentage of sales that we're getting globally. Look at make McDonald's look at Starbucks. Look at Popeyes. Look at like all these companies, like, their growth is international. Look at Columbia Sportswear. I could just go on and on Uggs and this. Every single company I've been investing in, international is a huge Lululemon. Look at what they care about international.

[Dave]

We've already heard too, like, brands like Starbucks and McDonald's in other countries where they, they aren't necessarily really facing any tariffs because they're sourcing locally in those markets. There is a decline in store traffic for these US Brands that are part of US Companies because of this kind of anti American.

[Chris]

But forget about the anti American sentiment. We want their economies to be doing well so they can go to those places and spend money. It's like, America is great. We have great ideas, we have great execution. Like, we have amazing corporate enterprise scaling around the world world with our brands that have brand value in every country in the world. That only matters if every country in the world is doing okay and generally doing better every year to spend money on these amazing American brands that are around the world. Right? So I just think there are nuances here that aren't being respected right now.

[Jack]

Do you think government spending is anything of any importance? Can we continue on the same path? Is it good, we're trying to cut it down, or do you think it's just another disposal distraction?

[Chris]

No, I think it's a major issue that we need to like be very serious about. I'm like very pro Doge, you know, I think. And even if Doge doesn't make any real massive impact, it's setting the right mindset for government, right? Even if Doge only ends up clearing out a couple hundred billion or 100 billion, it's a mindset change. Truthfully, we do have to go in and make probably, I don't even want to call them cuts, but we have to think more strategically about how we spend money on defense, right? About how we spend money on some of these programs. Because listen, you can't make any massive cuts unless you start to cut into defense. I was not happy to hear about the F47 program, right?

[Graham]

Like, what was that?

[Chris]

Manned aircraft? Like, it's the new manned aircraft. Like the last time we had a big manned aircraft program was it in the trillions of waste?

[Dave]

Listen, if you look back at Elon's tweets from back in the day, he was very, very anti manned aircraft because drones of the future, we don't necessarily need to send a fighter jet with pilots to do that job, right? You can send a robot to do that job and have it controlled from, you know, offshore.

[Chris]

We, we, listen, we, we just need to, we need, need to like be at our best in terms of creativity. How we think about spend big spending programs. There are ways for us to solve these problems. They're not easy, they're nuanced. We just need to treat them seriously.

[Dave]

It's not necessarily even spending less, it's just spending more efficiently and in, in smarter ways.

[Chris]

But I will say this. Yes, it's a huge problem. It needs to be controlled. But we've always kind of had something come out of no, nowhere and save us. Like I was saying, like whether it was the industrial revolution or whether it was the technology revolution or the Internet or mobile, you know, mobile smartphones or cloud computing, right? AI in my lifetime is bigger than anything I've ever seen. And it has potential to be the thing that saves us. So we need to think really strategically about how we think about implementing AI across the globe in industry. And it could be the thing that pulls us out of this hole. So like, I want to be, I'm always, I'm a little bit of an optimist, quite honestly, but I'm hoping that AI and embodied AI and automation and robotics are the Things that kind of save. Save us. And when I say save not just us in the US but really save the world from all the mistakes that we've made the last 15 years. Overspending, spending, getting greedy. Right. Like, we have been kind of stupid with our money, quite honestly.

[Graham]

Do you think there's a chance we get back down to 0% interest rates?

[Chris]

That would not be a good thing if that. If that. If we got there, it's because something really bad happened. I really hope that doesn't happen. Graham, are you looking for that?

[Graham]

I don't know. I see a lot of talks about getting back down to zero.

[Chris]

God, that's not healthy. I don't.

[Dave]

Zero means we had another trip. Tragic problem that we had to address by. By printing money.

[Chris]

Look at the mistakes we made when it was zero. Cheap money does not lead to good decision making. You do not want money to flow that easily. There's a balance. I always say, like, everyone's always about, I want big government or I want small government. I want lots of taxes or low tax. How about just appropriately sized government that operates better? How about appropriate interest rates for the time time that we're in? Right. Like, I don't know if the right number is 2, 3, 4, 6, 7%, but whenever you go to an extreme, I don't think it's healthy. And when money is flowing to that degree, I hate it. Like, it's just. It's flowing inefficiently. Like, it had to be there because we didn't have the capacity to solve that problem strategically and with precision. So they just threw money out in hopes that it would just get us through a very scary moment in time where we didn't have all the information on how to fix it. Okay. Like, let's be honest. We put interest rates to zero because we didn't know how to solve the problem strategically. I think the only way it gets back down to zero is if we have a really big problem that we can't figure out how to solve. And we're trying to band aid it, but you saw what happened. We're now trying to dig out of that hole. You just asked me if we can cut the budget and you're talking about zero. Like those two things. Things conflict in a really big way. And I hope we're kind of like somewhere in the middle.

[Graham]

Do you think it's harder to be a good investor today than 10 years ago?

[Dave]

I think it's easier because we have just access to more information, faster trading, easier, everything. Like 10 years ago. Yeah, we had apps we could trade on. Twenty years ago, you were calling someone on the phone. I think AI and you know, managing your portfolio with AI is going to be a thing in the future. I think it's, it's only getting easier to be a good investor. But once everyone's a good investor, is anyone a good investor?

[Chris]

So the world is digitally connected now, and it means that we all have access to almost all information in real time. Information doesn't, no longer sits behind a paywall. So if you want to assess, like, what is the world buying today? How are they, what products do they like, what brands are doing well? Well, like, how are we spending our money today versus a year ago? Like, the answers are there for you to see on social media as regular people.

[Dave]

And that used to be something that only like analysts and gatekeepers and they would buy all of this data and they could analyze it, but now anyone can.

[Chris]

Yeah, we, that's the thing I keep telling everyone, like, like information has been democratized and that's to the advantage of retail investors. They just don't know it because they think there's this big mystical Wall street that's screwing them. I'm like, no, they're, they're afraid to tell you that we have the advantage as retail investors. So like, we think about all the big movements in companies the last few years. If you go back to all those movements and you say, like, why did that company start flying? Whether it was like Abercrombie backward, it's all based on information that we could have seen as regular people. It's not information that Wall street was privy to that we weren't. So like, even if you look at stuff like Nvidia, there's nothing about chat GPT and Nvidia that Wall street had access to that we didn't. We all had access to chat GPT at the same time as the hedge fund managers. And we could connect the dots more quickly than they could because they have a bureaucracy that they, they have to go through to get a trade cleared. It could take them two weeks. Right? Like we, we, we're nimble. Like, we see the world unfolding in real time as just regular people. And we're like, we have our feet deeper in the real world than some finance head on Wall Street. So like, I think this is the golden age for retail investors because we can see the world unfolding and we can, we have our Robinhood app or whatever app, right? And you. And we're not intimidated to trade on it. We all know how to trade. Now we all know how to invest, by the way. We've all been through kind of a couple bad cycles, which is important. Important. And we're no longer making stupid mistakes. Like, we were like all the investors that came in during the 2021 thing. They all lost. They made their learn lessons. We're getting smarter. This is the golden age. And by the way, at the end of the day, with change comes opportunity. And I literally just told you that the biggest change of our lifetime is about to happen with AI. I don't know exactly how it plays out. I don't know exactly who the winner winners are, but there will be winners, there will be losers. And the change is about to be so big and so massive and come on so quickly that it will be the biggest investing opportunity of a lifetime. And it's ahead of us. It's not behind us. It's like the next five years, the next five to seven years.

[Dave]

It's being able to invest at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

[Chris]

It's amazing. I honestly thought, like, during the Internet age, I was like, dave, are we going to get another one of these? I was nervous that that was the last thing. And then. And then when mobile phone, the whole Facebook thing with social media and with iPhone, I was like, God, that was a big thing. Are we going to get another one of those? And then we got cloud computing, which is kind of big, but a little more obscure.

[Graham]

Yeah.

[Chris]

And I'm like, dude, I don't know if we have anything left. Is there going to be another big one? And then, like, dude, AI happened. I was like, no, this can't be real. It can't be real because. Because, like, if this is real, this is bigger than everything put together and like, damn, it's going to be a good time to be an investor the next 10 years. It is so real and so prolific. And what's going to happen the next five years as this technology starts to get productized? Because it's not productized yet. That's what's so crazy. It's like people are not using it. They're literally not using it for what it can do.

[Dave]

Some of it has been productized, but there's so much more to go. And companies will form on top of existing technology. And the fact that you can go onto a chatbot and code an entire app and launch it in the App Store in a weekend is crazy to me.

[Jack]

ChatGPT. I was hanging out with some friends and we wanted to do Jeopardy. And it created a straight. I've never coded before in my entire life. I know zero about coding, but it walked me through beginning to end. How to create a Jeopardy. Board out of code, and I could customize it exactly how I wanted to. Hooked it up to my television. And all of a sudden we had Jeopardy. It came up with all the questions. I was like, use these categories. Do you think any other category would be more fun? I gave them. I gave ChatGPT our gen, our demographics of like our age group. You know, we're mostly men. And it came up with the categories, created this entire thing native to. So it was in chat GPT2, I didn't have to open up Terminal. I didn't have to, you know, open up Java or whatever you do. It was all in there. Created Jeopardy. Had a blast. It was insane.

[Chris]

But any regular person right now can go on the text to image generator on either Google or ChatGPT or Grok, play around with it. And then I want you just to think about all the applications just for that one tool, and then remind yourself that you're working on 1.0. That tool 1.0. Think about what it's going to be like in a year, two years. Literally every single business manager in the world at their fingertips can create ad campaigns in. In one minute is whatever is in their mind, whatever's in their head. They can.

[Graham]

What's going to stop eventually? Because if we keep going down this path, what's going to end up happening is that we're all going to be hooked up to electrodes, and then ChatGPT is going to create the perfect simulation and the perfect world for you to be in where you don't have to spend any money, you don't have to do anything. You're going to be hooked up in a pod, in some fluid. We're all going to be like every.

[Dave]

Science fiction movie, okay?

[Graham]

And then all of a sudden, you just. You just like, kind of pulse every now and then and sending, like, shots. But in your mind, you're living like the dream life. And you could be hooked up to this pod for like 50 bucks a month.

[Dave]

How do you know we're not already there? From another intelligent being from another planet? And we're just in their simulation.

[Chris]

But all. But also.

[Dave]

Guys, that is the weirdest timing ever.

[Graham]

See sign.

[Chris]

Oh, my.

[Jack]

That is.

[Dave]

That is.

[Graham]

Is insane.

[Dave]

It's blinking at us.

[Jack]

It's like. Yeah, yeah, you got it.

[Chris]

All right, Graham, that's interesting.

[Dave]

I mean, did we just blow a fuse or are we in a simulation?

[Jack]

Do you ever use ChatGPT to make trades for you?

[Chris]

No.

[Jack]

Like, do you ever run your ideas by ChatGPT as a heuristic?

[Dave]

Yeah, I, I ask ChatGPT about the company, about things. I, I get transcripts from earnings calls from ChatGPT or Gro Groq.

[Chris]

I, I use it as an assistant. So like, if I discover a cultural shift or like a, a change in consumer behavior, I explain it to Chat GPT. And this used to take me a lot of time to do manually, but I'll say, hey, I'm identifying this change, this shift in consumer behavior. Can you help me identify industry sectors and companies that are publicly traded anywhere in the world that would both benefit and be harmed by this shift? And it will basically give me all the companies and sectors and its opinions. And that's my 1.0 for my doing my own research. Research before I would have to spend like six hours, maybe, maybe even 10 hours doing research to do what that does for me in 20 seconds. So it just, it just kind of allows me to do more with like the things that I'm surfacing, but I haven't yet figured out a way to allow it to surface.

[Dave]

Yeah, surfacing the idea, but like using it as your own personal research assistant who can pull data for you.

[Chris]

Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

[Dave]

Summarize a lot of, like, you can, you can just like upload 200 page PDFs and say, okay, give me a gist of this. Is there anything interesting in here? And I use that all the time.

[Chris]

It's, it's incredible. And I think people keep going to the fact that, oh, this is going to remove all these jobs. Like it's going to make our economy small, like you don't need people. I'm like, no, no, no, that's not how it's going. There will be some job loss. But what I'm seeing more of is you could do more with the people you have. And because you could do more with every individual person, as long as that correlates to additional potential for your company, you're likely now to hire even more people because that one person has the value of four. Right? So before a person could you really, were you really going to spend money to hire that person if they could only generate potentially this much more value for your company, but if hiring that person can generate this much more value for your company, and I know this isn't instantaneous, right? But over the long term, over the next decade, I think that's how enterprise is going to think about human capital. As long as that human Capital is savvy and they understand how to leverage these tool sets. I think we're going to see a massive expansion in the global economy as opposed to people getting left out of it. And again, I am an optimist and I've been kind of people rip on me for that. But if you look at the history of the world, that type of thinking has always been correct. So the down and out this is going to screw everyone and put us out of jobs. There is some truth there for some industry sectors for some transitionary state of time, but I'm fairly confident that this is going to massively increase the opportunity for human capital over the next two decades, because human capital is going to be able to, to constructively do so much more with these new tool sets.

[Graham]

What do you think people are going to look back on 10 years from now and just say, I can't see. I saw that coming.

[Chris]

Robots.

[Dave]

The robots see that coming.

[Chris]

Robots are going to be everywhere in 10 to 15 years. Yeah, me and Dave were, we were.

[Dave]

You'll be interacting with them as just, it'll be just as normal as using your phone all day, day, every day. You'll be using a robot.

[Chris]

I, I was, I was driving on the service road of a highway and there was construction and Dave looked over, this is like a month ago and said, it's going to be weird in like eight or nine years when we look over and for every human doing that construction work, there'll be like three or four bots working with them and it'll just be totally normal. The same way that tractors are normal now. Where back in the day we just saw humans doing the work and now we see the what machinery Japan thing.

[Graham]

That they came out with. That little like, it looks like a, like a wolverine that they get on top of and it just like runs. It was like a CGI thing, but they came up with this, this like mobility thing.

[Chris]

Guys, the stuff that I am seeing in the last 60 days coming out of robotics and the amount of talent that's moving into the space, that's what's really interesting. So the young kids, remember I was kind of mentioning that J, Gen Z, all of these young kids that would have gone into like computer science or programming. Almost all these kids I'm talking to right now are wanting to go into electrical engineering, robotics, like hard, like it's wild. There's so much human talent pouring into this space. And as you, you might not know this, but China has earmarked $134 billion to ensure that they're the global, global leader in robotics and humanoids. And I hope that the US is going to do something similar soon. I don't know if it's a cash infusion, but just in terms of like a national mandate that we're not going to lose this arms race to China. I think what you're going to see in the next five years is going to blow your mind. It's going to melt your mind. And in 10 years you're going to be like, we're living in a robotic world. And it will be what ushers us into the age of abundance that I love to talk about out where we just get to do things that are more creative as humans because a lot of the repetitive jobs are going to get taken up by robotics and automation. So I think it's robots in 10 years.

[Jack]

Thank you two for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour. It really means so much. I mean, this is a last minute podcast just because of everything crazy that's been happening. So really appreciate you guys making the time.

[Graham]

Thank you. We're going to link to your info down below in the description. Really appreciate it.

[Jack]

Thank you to the viewers for making it this far. Means a lot.

[Graham]

Subscribe if you haven't done that already.

[Jack]

Like, comment if you want.

[Graham]

Yeah, the like button really helps that too. I hate asking for it, but it actually does make a significant difference for the video for the entire channel. So if you're watching to this point, just give it a quick like, it's free. Subscribe if you haven't done that already. Really does help out.

[Jack]

Thank you for watching, guys.

[Graham]

Thanks so much.