What’s the Right Investment Strategy for 2026?

0
0
AI transcript
0:00:07 support for today’s show comes from dark trace dark traces the cybersecurity defenders deserve
0:00:12 and the one they need to defend beyond dark traces AI cybersecurity that can stop novel
0:00:16 threats before they become breaches across email clouds networks and more with the power to see
0:00:22 across your entire attack surface cyber defenders including IT decision makers CISOs and cybersecurity
0:00:27 professionals now have the ability to stop zero days before day zero the world needs defenders
0:00:32 defenders need dark trace visit dark trace.com slash defenders for more information
0:00:42 support for this show comes from odoo running a business is hard enough so why make it harder
0:00:48 with a dozen different apps that don’t talk to each other introducing odoo it’s the only business
0:00:55 software you’ll ever need it’s an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier crm
0:01:01 accounting inventory e-commerce and more and the best part odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms
0:01:06 for a fraction of the cost that’s why over thousands of businesses have made the switch
0:01:13 so why not you try odoo for free at odoo.com that’s odoo.com
0:01:24 what’s up this is your favorite dj next up top tracks that aren’t holiday songs but totally should
0:01:30 be we love a holiday vibe but what you really need to hear is all full-size fragrances and body
0:01:33 miss are 20 off at sephora starting december 15th save 20 on brands like salt de janeiro yves saint
0:01:44 lauron valentino fleur and more only at sephora and sephora.ca exclusions in terms supply
0:01:51 today’s number 12 that’s how many points the average credit score decreases after a state legalizes
0:01:58 online sports gambling yet true story my credit score is like my sex life i didn’t used to have one and now
0:02:06 it’s just bad what do you think ed pretty good it’s okay it’s okay actually you know what uh my credit
0:02:12 score it’s it’s a lot like um my sex life and or my dating life in new york and that is every time i pull
0:02:15 out my credit card uh she and it go down on me
0:02:21 that’s so wrong on so many levels
0:02:38 what do you think of that number 12 points your credit score goes down by 12 points on average
0:02:44 if your state legalizes sports betting i thought that was a fascinating number yeah um
0:02:55 have you ever had a credit card rejected on a date i have that’s a good move by the way i didn’t get
0:03:01 laid that night just i know that’s a shocker but i was especially i was especially like usually i
0:03:05 wouldn’t have sex but after having my credit card declined she immediately went and had sex with someone
0:03:12 else i just thought of that actually i think i have had that i had it with with drinks at a club
0:03:18 with a bunch of guys i was like i got it i got it i put it put the card down credit card has declined
0:03:23 my friend has to come in and step in for me it’s brutal that used to happen to me so much
0:03:29 that i still can’t use credit cards without getting nervous every time i swipe my card i expect it to come
0:03:35 back not approved or rejected or something i still i like to carry cash makes me feel like a mobster i like cash
0:03:43 well we got a lot to get into here um so may i move us along i want to know a little bit more about the real ed
0:03:49 going into the holidays what’s going on ed how are you i’m doing well i’m doing well i’ve got uh christmas
0:03:56 parties this weekend um you’re such a complex interesting person i’m glad i asked
0:04:02 fuck this claire what’s going on with you not much scott i was really hoping we could get away with
0:04:08 moving on wow you guys aren’t even being nice to me anymore see this is this is let me just give
0:04:15 everyone a 411 what happened ed has not had his review in bonus conversation yet so he’s laughing and
0:04:21 being nice to me claire’s like fuck you old man let’s get on she had a review yesterday so she’s
0:04:27 done the money has already been wired she’s out she’s probably already accepted a job running like
0:04:33 salesforce podcast america or something i’ve collected the bag it’s time to go let’s move it on
0:04:39 all right you guys win let’s move let’s move into the episode okay let’s do it
0:04:52 over the last few months we’ve had an incredible lineup of guests from professors and journalists
0:04:59 to investment strategists and analysts and economists all with their own take on what 2026 might look
0:05:05 like and we’re going to just play a quick collage of some of our favorite moments if i came to you
0:05:13 and i offered you a robot that could do your job for you does that make you better off yeah it’s not
0:05:20 hard right well that robot more or less exists and it’s called ai now let’s take the same scenario
0:05:29 i invent a robot but i sell the robot to your boss you’re out of a job brother penniless nothing to do
0:05:35 by the side of the road the point here is these two scenarios have the same technology
0:05:43 a robot that can do your job one of them is a land of plenty and beauty where we’re called to our
0:05:50 higher callings and the other is one of misery for many of us what we have here is not a robot problem
0:05:56 or an ai problem but an ownership problem so i’m more convinced that there’ll be a destruction of value
0:06:04 the markets but probably more akin to something like 1999 than 1929 what i think i don’t know about
0:06:10 today is i think it’s harder to fully understand where all the leverage is today than we used to know
0:06:16 you know after 2008 so much of the the loan market in this country moved to private credit we don’t really
0:06:22 know all the disclosures about that some of that’s connected into the insurance industry now so there’s a
0:06:27 lot of sort of questions that i have and i also think this ai boom which is sort of the euphoria i
0:06:34 mean it’s how much of that whole boom is being powered by leverage so not to say that you look at
0:06:38 you know meta and google and all the big tech companies are obviously throwing a lot of their
0:06:43 own cash at this problem but also they’re taking on some debt but they’re also now partnering with all
0:06:47 sorts of private credit funds and doing all sorts of other things there’s all sorts of other
0:06:53 component parts of this ecosystem that are being powered by leverage to the extent that there’s going
0:06:59 to be a correction there’s no place to hide in stocks i i can’t see a way because if the mag 10 go
0:07:05 down by 40 it’s not like the industrials are going to hold their value while this happens the panic that
0:07:10 that’s going to create is going to ripple through stocks you’re an investor primarily investment stocks
0:07:16 and bonds my advice is even though historically you might never have invested in non-financial asset
0:07:22 categories this might be a time where you think about you know kind of at least moving a portion of
0:07:29 your portfolio a bigger chunk than ever into cash or something close to cash or maybe even collectibles
0:07:35 things that i’ve never owned collectibles but you know for the first time in my investing history i’m
0:07:41 saying maybe i should hold something that is not going to be effective inflation goes to 10 percent
0:07:49 there’s a market economic crisis that is potentially catastrophic it would be kind of shocking if you
0:07:57 didn’t have some kind of profit-taking correction in 2026 at some point on the order of 10 to 15 percent
0:08:04 it would be i’d be i’d be really surprised not to see that i actually think michael and i are pretty
0:08:08 aligned in the sense that i think there is going to be a drawdown next year he says you wouldn’t be
0:08:15 surprised but to me it doesn’t mean that’s the end of of the actual bull market and in fact i think
0:08:20 stocks fully recover those were some of the highlights that we’ve heard uh and it is clear that there is no
0:08:26 single consensus there’s similar themes happening uh ai is obviously very important that was the most
0:08:32 important thing in 2025 but then questions of is there a bubble uh is there not a bubble how large is the
0:08:39 what is the impact going to be on the markets a lot of different takes from very reputable respectable
0:08:46 people um with very interesting answers but the question that we have yet to answer is what do we
0:08:52 do with all of this what should we actually be doing with our portfolios heading into 2026 so
0:08:58 that’s what we’re going to get into today scott let’s just start with your reflections on the collage
0:09:03 and then perhaps your answer to that question the thing that kind of summarizes what someone said
0:09:07 and i can’t remember if it was a guess i’ve never seen a bull market that more people hate
0:09:12 and that is people just aren’t feeling very good about this market they look at it and think okay
0:09:17 we’re just sort of it’s almost like when you’re waiting for someone to break up with you you just
0:09:22 kind of wish they’d get over it like you’re too wed to the relationship and you’re just sort of waiting
0:09:27 for the next shoe to drop kind of describes basically my entire love life 18 to 38 you’re just
0:09:36 waiting for the end and this market we’re just waiting for like i almost feel as if people would
0:09:42 be somewhat relieved if it just went down 20 and some air got let out in a weird way and the other thing
0:09:49 that strikes me about this whole thing is the term that the market continues to climb a wall of worry
0:09:53 we don’t i don’t like this market things are overvalued oh the s&p is up again it’s just
0:09:58 everything can there’s a little bit of a dip and then it just keeps going up
0:10:09 um so i it just it strikes me how anxious people are how they are cautiously pessimistic is another
0:10:16 another great term um in terms of well i’ll get your reactions and i’ll tell you how i’m responding
0:10:21 and it might not be the right thing but how i am actually shifting capital around yeah my reaction is
0:10:27 very similar this the wall of worry i think is the is the best way to put it i think tom lee really nails
0:10:33 it when he says yes we are experiencing returns right now the stock market is going up but if you
0:10:40 talk to anyone about it people don’t feel good people are mostly speaking with bearish sentiment
0:10:45 and we’re seeing that in the news too and we looked at some of the new sentiment recently and we are seeing
0:10:51 a lot of bearish sentiment in the news so i think the wall of worry is is a great point i don’t think
0:10:58 there are aspects to this market that that people aren’t aware of that could surprise us i mean this
0:11:04 ai bubble thing we all know what’s going on here we all know the circular deals we all pretty much know
0:11:09 what’s happening with the leverage though to andrea sorkin’s point there’s a lot of private credit in
0:11:15 there that perhaps might be distorting things but overall most of us kind of know what the risks are
0:11:25 which i think should ultimately lessen our concerns heading into 2026 and i will just present to you
0:11:32 my sort of macro thoughts on the bear case for 2026 and then the bull case and then we can get into what
0:11:38 you’re doing about it and how we should how we should be thinking about it so the bear case
0:11:46 what would it what would it look like and why would a a significant drawdown in 2026 actually happen for
0:11:55 me i’ve got three major themes so the first one is that ai is a bubble so we’ve talked about this a lot
0:12:01 on the show we’ve we’ve seen the ai capex which came out to 350 billion dollars this year that’s up from
0:12:10 200 billion in 2024 we’re seeing huge amounts of borrowing amazon google microsoft meta oracle which of course
0:12:15 had its bad earnings last week they have raised together more than a hundred billion dollars in debt this year
0:12:21 it’s more than three times the average of the previous nine years plus we’ve been seeing the circular deals
0:12:28 where nvidia invests in open ai and then open ai takes the money and buys compute from nvidia which of course is very
0:12:32 concerning so we’ve talked about that i think people understand that and i think there is still
0:12:39 a chance that there could be some sort of triggering event i think that it would happen most likely with
0:12:44 open ai that would cause some some drawdowns in the market that might be painful so that’s the first thing
0:12:51 the second thing is valuations just look expensive so you’ve got the s&p trading at 31 times earnings
0:12:59 right now which isn’t dot com levels but it’s like just before the dot com levels it’s like 1999 levels
0:13:06 and that is expensive and to ashworth’s point it’s a little uncomfortable to invest into a market when
0:13:11 valuations appear to be that expensive on a price to earnings basis that’s number two and then the third
0:13:19 reason is that maybe we’re just due for a correction and that is we’ve had a really good three years
0:13:33 we had 24 return in 2023 23 return in 2024 we are on track for a 17 return in 2025 so that’s three
0:13:42 three big years in a row which would make you think okay this is not very usual that you get this level
0:13:49 of of return so consistently across multiple years so maybe we are just due those are the bear case
0:13:56 components there and that’s three of them now i’m going to just tell you my anti bear case and the reason
0:14:01 i’m not saying bull case i’m not that bullish but i think these are three good reasons why actually
0:14:09 we won’t see a bear market and a significant drawdown over the year the first is interest rates and that
0:14:14 is rates are coming down rates are now at their lowest level in three years we we’re going to have
0:14:20 one more cut in 2026 that is according to the fed but this is also powell’s fed the reality is trump’s
0:14:24 going to get a new fed chair in there in may and that new fed chair might just be a sycophant
0:14:29 and we’ll just continue to cut rates and if you have a lower interest rate environment that should
0:14:35 lift earnings across the board and so the idea of investing or sorry not investing or shorting
0:14:39 or selling when we’re entering a low interest rate environment to me doesn’t make a lot of sense
0:14:44 the second is deficit spending we’ve got the big beautiful bill which is going to add roughly
0:14:50 480 billion dollars in fiscal support we’re going to pump money into the economy it’s going to
0:14:56 accelerate gdp growth and yes it’s extremely irresponsible over the long term because the
0:15:01 amount of money we’re going to borrow but if we’re just looking at 2026 that’s free money coming in
0:15:07 there that’s going to definitely prop up the market and then the third reason is ai might be a bubble
0:15:14 but as of now it’s not a particularly dangerous bubble and that is there are a few ai companies that
0:15:20 are behaving dangerously i would say open ai core weave oracle maybe palantir but the big tech
0:15:26 companies that really really matter microsoft google meta amazon they’re not they actually have a ton of
0:15:31 cash on the balance sheet they already have these incredible businesses that work with or without ai
0:15:36 and the reality is they’re just making a large bet and they have the money to make that bet and maybe it
0:15:43 doesn’t work out or maybe it does work out but the reality is whether or not ai works microsoft’s going to be
0:15:49 fine google’s going to be fine meta’s going to be fine amazon is going to be fine so that is the reason
0:15:56 why i would not land in bearish territory i’m i it’s i’m not fully bullish but i’m i think we’re going to
0:16:05 have sort of stagnant uh sort of subdued returns next year i don’t think it’ll look like 23 24 25
0:16:12 but i don’t think that we’re going to see an overall negative market by the end of 2026 is my
0:16:18 view yeah i thought that was really thoughtful i think most of it comes down to one of two things
0:16:24 uh an exogenous fact that we can’t yet even anticipate no one was anticipating except for
0:16:31 some really thoughtful ci analysts 9 11 um uh bill gates and a few other people saw covet but none of
0:16:36 us i don’t think we’re expecting that the weird thing is about these natural disasters is in some
0:16:42 ways they’re less damaging to the market because the markets have traditionally ripped back so
0:16:49 aggressively after um an exogenous event whether it’s covet or 9 11 that now people see these things
0:16:53 they want to see the moment there’s a dip at all everyone’s like bye so the recovery time is getting
0:17:01 shorter and shorter the narrative i i just think we’re just decyclicality just probability evaluations
0:17:09 everything you talk about mean for me that the likelihood of some sort of drawdown is just greater
0:17:17 than it isn’t um and i think it kind of mostly all centers around ai i think the market is being
0:17:23 driven by the unrealistic expectations built into the valuations of companies now representing 40 percent
0:17:31 of the market and so it feels like one false move you know even just good results not great results much
0:17:39 less a study comes out showing that um you know 80 of startups are using open weight chinese models and
0:17:45 some big companies with big contracts are canceling them with anthropic and open ai and moving to these
0:17:51 chinese open weight i just think there’s a variety of things that could say okay this business is going
0:17:57 to grow 60 percent not 200 percent a year meaning their stock should be down 70 percent so and if they
0:18:02 go down and if you look at every company in the magnificent 10 they’ve had drawdowns of 60 to 90
0:18:08 percent at some point and it just feels like we’re due and the problem is that the markets are much more
0:18:15 fragile now if these companies lose half their value the markets the s&p loses um 20 percent whereas
0:18:23 when these companies lost more than half their value in 2000 the whole the market lost or it had a five
0:18:28 percent impact these companies are just now if nvidia sneezes the entire global economy is going to get
0:18:36 walking pneumonia because our we become kind of anti i don’t say no i was gonna say fragile anti-fragile is
0:18:45 robust we’re anti-robust we’re fragile and i’m genuinely believe that there’s no way we can have
0:18:53 i mean to a certain extent ed again the markets these indices are such damaging metrics because
0:18:58 they give the illusion of prosperity and that everything is healthy and i would argue that if
0:19:04 we wake up in a year and open ai and nvidia and the magnificent 10 are much higher than they are now
0:19:13 that that will connote a certain amount of chaos in labor markets and a real societal pain because the
0:19:20 only way i think these companies move higher is if they show that companies are are massively increasing
0:19:26 their earnings by buying the site licenses by finding efficiencies which is latin for layoffs
0:19:32 you know we’re at we’re at a fork in the road right now and that is built into these expectations of
0:19:37 these stock prices is the notion they’re going to increase revenues amongst their client base by five
0:19:42 trillion or find efficiencies of five trillion or some combination of the two i don’t see an incremental
0:19:47 revenues from these i don’t see pepsi making more money from these things i see them making greater
0:19:54 earnings because they can outsource or get rid of 70 or 80 of their compliance customer service and legal
0:20:03 costs and brand management and great so pepsi co stock will go up fantastic they will lose you know
0:20:09 they could potentially lay off 10 of their workforce every year for the next four to six years which
0:20:12 create will create huge tumult in society
0:20:15 in the labor markets so
0:20:18 i mean answer the question i think that’s an interesting question
0:20:21 if you had to go to sleep for a year would you rather wake up
0:20:25 and find out these stocks had doubled or they’d been down 40 or 50 percent
0:20:27 and i’m not sure i’d pick the former
0:20:29 yeah i think i agree yeah
0:20:35 if nvidia is at eight trillion dollars and it’s bigger than the german and the japanese stock market
0:20:35 combined
0:20:42 have we found some new way of making a ton of money off of ai that i don’t see i think the two ways you
0:20:51 make money are probably um autonomous and robotics but even those involve a massive destruction and labor
0:21:01 so if we woke up and said the stocks have doubled that would mean that literally
0:21:08 the middle class got massively kicked in the nuts over and over over the course of the next 12 months
0:21:13 so again we we obsess over the markets and i get it and we get this notion that
0:21:17 and like who knows what trump’s going to try and do if the s&p keeps going up
0:21:23 so i i i agree with your assessment but your assessment kind of distills down to the following
0:21:25 like the rest of us you don’t know
0:21:31 i don’t know but my my my prediction if i if i’m making a prediction here on what will the market do
0:21:36 is that returns will be meh it’ll be just a meh year across the board
0:21:41 so i i don’t know but i i’m saying i think that that’s what it’s going to be
0:21:48 because i think you have these two gigantic forces facing up against each other which is that
0:21:55 in a lot of ways we are due for a correction and a lot of the ai expectations are simply expectations
0:22:01 and we are going to see like okay show us the revenue show us the business show the real impact
0:22:06 on the bottom line show us how this has completely transformed your business as you were pricing it
0:22:12 earlier and i don’t think we’re really going to see that or if we do see it i think it’s going to
0:22:16 kind of disappoint us i’m going to realize actually it was going to take a lot a lot longer than we
0:22:22 thought but you also have at the same time this other large force which is you’ve got trump in here
0:22:27 who really wants the market to go up and he has a lot of power to make that happen either whether
0:22:31 that’s through the fed chair and through influencing these interest rates and i do think we’re going to
0:22:36 come down more than just one more cut i think we’re going to have more because i do think he’s
0:22:42 going to influence what happens here with these fed decisions as well as the big beautiful bill and
0:22:48 unbelievable deficit spending so those two powers are confronting each other and it’s going to come
0:22:56 to a head this year and so that leaves me thinking they’re both formidable forces i guess is my point
0:23:03 and i think that that would lead us into a place where you know maybe you do see a drawdown but then
0:23:09 you kind of come back up and ultimately you end the year sort of low low single digit growth
0:23:16 we’ll be right back after the break and if you’re enjoying the show send it to a friend and please
0:23:17 follow us if you haven’t already
0:23:30 support for the show comes from linkedin one of the hardest parts about moving to a new city is
0:23:35 finding your people you can look far and wide but it’s hard to find the people who just get you
0:23:39 and the same goes for b2b marketers locating the right people who align with your business and an
0:23:44 audience that connects you with your product and your mission can make all the difference but instead
0:23:49 of spending hours and hours scavenging social media feeds you can just tap linkedin ads to reach the
0:23:54 right professionals according to linkedin they have grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals
0:23:59 making it stand apart from other ad buys you can target your buyer by job title industry company
0:24:03 roles seniority skills and company revenue giving you all the professionals you need to reach in one
0:24:09 place so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals
0:24:14 only on linkedin ads linkedin will even give you a hundred dollar credit on your next campaign so you
0:24:20 can try it yourself just go to linkedin.com slash markets that’s linkedin.com slash markets terms and
0:24:23 conditions apply only on linkedin ads
0:24:38 hi welcome to mcdonald’s can i take your order hi oh wow um can i get a yep the mcvalue menu has a lot of
0:24:43 delicious options for under four dollars each plus tax like a cheeseburger deluxe sweet chili junior
0:24:52 mcdouble and chicken snack wrap so it’s okay to take a minute when ordering the mcvalue menu so many
0:24:57 options for under four dollars each plus applicable taxes at participating mcdonald’s restaurants in
0:25:03 canada prices exclude delivery everyone’s story sounds different we get it so when it comes to finding a
0:25:09 life insurance plan that’s in tune with yours we got you cooperators financial representatives take the
0:25:14 time to understand your full financial picture from insurance to investments so you can get coverage
0:25:20 that sounds good wherever your story takes you get your whole story heard start your life insurance
0:25:24 conversation with a local co-operators financial representative at cooperators.ca
0:25:28 life insurance is underwritten by cooperators life insurance company
0:25:42 we’re back with prof g markets i find i can’t trust my emotions and that is i have a bias
0:25:47 a huge bias against trump uh president trump i think is a stain on the american experience so i
0:25:52 naturally look for a connection or rationale for why the market is going to collapse under his watch
0:25:59 when he was elected in 2016 i thought this guy is a village idiot and i should i and i literally sold
0:26:03 all my stocks i’m like there’s just no way this guy should be in charge of the or have any influence
0:26:10 over the u.s economy i still can’t believe you did that oh trust me i’ve done much stupider things
0:26:15 have you ever been out with me drinking that that’s like that’s literally that’s a bronze medal of the
0:26:21 gold medal of stupid decisions i’ve made throughout my life had anyways so i sold everything
0:26:28 incur huge tax liability because my stocks had run up and then bought back in six months later at a
0:26:35 higher price when i realized i was acting like some dumb you know dumb jerk so i probably destroyed
0:26:39 granted i’ve never had you know i was diversified by that point i had most of my money in
0:26:45 l2 or most of my net worth in l2 and real estate at that point or or a lot of it but i probably lost 10
0:26:55 of my net worth in uh 40 or 25 of my stock market value by acting out of emotion also what i find is
0:27:02 that when people hate a market like this it usually goes up and that is again this notion of climbing a
0:27:07 wall of worry and that it’s when you’re expecting it’s it’s really interesting that the stuff you’re
0:27:11 expecting to take the market down or the disasters you’re expecting usually don’t happen because people
0:27:18 start preparing for them it’s the shit you’re not expecting that gets you right because naturally
0:27:23 when you start worrying about something you start preparing for it or hedging against it it’s the
0:27:30 things you’re just not thinking about that sneak up and grab you if i had to pick one person just to
0:27:35 listen to said okay you can only pick one and to run my portfolio it hands down would be professor
0:27:40 de motoren i find he has just an ability to take his heart outside of his body when he’s making
0:27:45 decisions and just make purely unemotional decisions and i’ve always just found him just
0:27:53 almost like a little bit sociopathic’s a negative term but he just seems totally unfazed by whether
0:27:57 met is good or bad for the world he just looks at the numbers and i remember him telling me oh no it’s a
0:28:02 great buy right now yeah yeah maybe kids are cutting themselves but it’s an amazing buy right now
0:28:08 he’s and so i would trust aswath and aswath quite frankly freaked me the fuck out when he basically
0:28:15 started saying i have never it was crazy i’ve known aswath for 23 years i’ve never heard him say
0:28:22 i can’t think of what to buy right now when he says baseball cards and collectibles baseball cards
0:28:27 yeah but you’re going deep in the barrel uh by the way i’ll come back to how that’s impacted my
0:28:33 own personal investing but i thought oh my god after i got off the after i listened to him i don’t make any
0:28:36 financial decisions now no matter what’s happened without talking to a bunch of people and giving my
0:28:43 my time myself time to regulate after that i thought i immediately need to like sell half my stocks
0:28:50 maybe more and develop a bit of a cash hoard and then i started remembering i have never been able
0:28:57 to time the markets i have never i’ve been investing in stocks since i was 13 i’ve made more money in
0:29:01 stocks than i’ve made buying and selling businesses and i’ve made a lot of money buying and selling
0:29:07 businesses but i’ve made the majority the 60 70 percent of my net worth has come from granted i
0:29:13 needed the capital to invest that i got from selling businesses but as a percentage of my if you look at
0:29:19 my total net worth and all the money i’ve spent two-thirds of it has come from capital made uh in the
0:29:26 markets from capital i got from selling businesses and i have never once been able to say oh i’m
0:29:32 selling now and then a year later the market’s down and i go back in and and buy stuff on the cheap i’ve
0:29:37 never been able to figure that out and it seems so simple when you hear it’s like oh yeah in theory it
0:29:42 makes just a ton of sense and you don’t know because when shit starts going down you think it’s going to
0:29:47 continue to go down and then it rips back up or it goes down you think it’s a great buying opportunity
0:29:52 and then it goes down another 20 it sounds easy in theory i remember uh by the way i just got invited
0:29:57 back to davos so i don’t know if i told you that ed 20 fucking 25 years later they invite me back
0:30:03 anyways but i remember being in line going through security and i saw this guy with curly hair and i’m
0:30:07 like i recognize this guy and he introduced himself to me and he’s like michael dell i’m like oh hey
0:30:14 michael i’m sky galloway we’re both entrepreneurs similar similar weight class um look what happened to his
0:30:20 career look what happened to mine anyway and we start talking and i think bush was president this
0:30:27 is how long ago this was i think it was clinton was just leaving office i was there in 99 and he was
0:30:31 really excited about george bush i’m like no i’m i think the market’s overvalued i’m gonna say when he
0:30:35 goes like he’s like oh you’re trying to time the markets he’s like my experience is that’s really hard
0:30:39 and i remember thinking oh he’s michael there’s a reason he’s michael dell
0:30:46 like he’s right it’s really hard i have never been able to time the market so in general
0:30:51 and this lends to okay i don’t like to give a financial advice even though i do is that true
0:30:56 um but i think it’s more important to say what are you doing with your actual fucking money what are
0:31:03 you doing that is what you really believe right yeah and what i’m doing is i’ve decided all right
0:31:09 of all people that ended up saying something really interesting about the markets tony robbins
0:31:14 said something that always stuck with me he did an analysis of investing he was doing this book like
0:31:21 the 20 best ideas and if you look at bull markets generally speaking there are 12 days of enormous
0:31:27 upside and if you miss any of those days you underperform the market and the only way you don’t
0:31:34 miss those days is to always be in the market and so one of my tenets that i still hold on to is i am
0:31:41 always in the market now i take leverage up and down i have felt sort of insecure about the markets for
0:31:45 the last four years so i have paid down and this is a story of privilege i’ve paid down all my mortgages
0:31:50 i don’t have any i have a small amount of debt on my real estate but almost none because that gives me
0:31:56 firepower and also what i’ve done is i’ve been diversifying like crazy for the last two or three
0:32:02 years mostly because i’m traumatized by having lost all of my wealth not once but twice and so i’ve been
0:32:09 diversifying what i am also doing is the following i am making some moves i have a home in london and
0:32:13 i’m thinking of most like we’re thinking okay we’re moving back to the us
0:32:19 should i either should we either sell it or rent it out and i wish i had never sold a house i wish
0:32:25 i’d still held all of them but i’m thinking okay i would like to have some cash i’m really long real
0:32:31 estate i have 40 maybe 50 percent of my net worth in real estate maybe more like 60 percent because i
0:32:36 get to i like it i like the fact psychologically i don’t i don’t have to check my stocks every day if
0:32:42 it goes down i don’t know about it there’s a consumption effect i buy really nice homes i enjoy
0:32:48 visiting them i’m hoping my boys will come visit me i just enjoy it i like to fix up homes i’m good at it
0:32:54 so but i am so long real estate now that i think okay you talk a big game about diversification
0:33:00 maybe take some capital off the table and also interestingly enough when everyone’s saying that
0:33:04 real estate prices are going to crash in the city that means that means you should probably go long
0:33:09 everyone’s been predicting a crash in london because of non-dom i have found at least people i’m talking
0:33:14 to luxury sales are kind of quietly quite robust right now and i don’t the data says something
0:33:18 different but the people i talk to here are getting their number for their homes because a lot of people
0:33:24 are seem to be moving here which shocks me but anyways same in new york luxury sales are way up right
0:33:29 now despite mom donnie was supposedly going to scare every billionaire millionaire out of new york
0:33:35 luxury sales have had their most robust month in a long time since he was elected but i’m thinking
0:33:44 about getting out and i’m doing a couple things one and this is a total story of privilege i get access
0:33:50 to certain investments where if i go on the board i get additional equity as an advisor so i’m trying to
0:33:56 if you will do more of those and take money out of the market and invest in small companies where i get
0:34:03 equity plus so i invest alongside a vc and it’s like paying negative carried interest i agree that’s
0:34:08 not helpful to people because they don’t have access to those deals what i’ve also done i went and bought
0:34:13 for the first time a very expensive piece of art because of what demotorin said
0:34:20 and i’ve never done that before i don’t know anything about art but after speaking to demotorin
0:34:25 um i thought maybe i should put some money just for fun into a piece of art in case you know
0:34:30 unfortunately i can’t shove it up my ass and head to my bunker in new zealand but if shit gets real
0:34:35 and the zombie apocalypse happens it’s going to be me in a kitchen knife in front of this piece of art
0:34:42 uh trying to fend off the zombies but more than anything what i’m doing is um i’m about to make
0:34:49 substantial investments in section which is the company that upskills the enterprise for ai it’s
0:34:56 part of the adoption layer as we call it that i started in 2018 or 2019 i’m about to make a
0:35:02 multi-million dollar investment there because uh the valuation will be pretty good and i the the company
0:35:08 is booming you know after going sideways for a good six seven years all of a sudden it’s exploding
0:35:14 which i’m really happy about and didn’t expect i’m also about to make what should be a substantial
0:35:20 investment in this company prop g and that is this was a company that i thought will be fun good
0:35:25 influence make some good money work with people i really like kind of getting the team back together
0:35:30 again to do another company but i mostly thought this would be a lifestyle business and now and because
0:35:34 of the good work of you and some other people and i’m not just blowing smoke it all of a sudden is
0:35:38 and the market’s coming to us podcasting’s booming i’m like oh you know my greed glands are going
0:35:43 again i’m like wow we might actually get an exit here or real enterprise value and you brought this
0:35:50 up on the editorial call i’m investing where i’ve made the most money outside of markets and that is
0:35:58 i’m investing i hate to say it myself because that sounds egotistical but i have influence control
0:36:05 and good valuations in the companies i control um uh so i’m investing there and i’m slowly but surely
0:36:11 winding down some of my public markets exposure i’m going to sell my apple stock i’ve sold 60 of it i’m
0:36:17 going to sell the rest it’s trading at a p of i think 33 or 35 and it’s growing single digits amazing
0:36:26 company by the way thank you tim cook i bought it in 2010 and it’s paid for a lot um i’m going to hold
0:36:33 on to amazon because that’s my big tech stock pick of 2026 but i am i’m not selling a bunch and going
0:36:42 into cash what i’m doing is i’m diversifying i’m trying to create a basket of wealth such that if the
0:36:50 whole market goes to shit i’m down 30 percent not 120 percent where i have been before uh that’s how and i
0:36:56 don’t know if it’s the right strategy i wish i had a little assworth on your shoulder yeah it’s so funny
0:37:00 i have access to the i have access literally like you to the brightest people in finance in the world
0:37:06 and i still wake up like i don’t know what the fuck to do um i work with goldman sachs asset management i
0:37:11 have the brightest tax people in the world we have access and literally i walk around most time going
0:37:18 buy sell no i should buy i should sell i i so my point is if if you’re out there and you’re not sure what
0:37:23 to do welcome to the club buy low-cost index funds and make sure you’re diversified what are you doing
0:37:32 ed i that was great i i loved hearing everything you’re doing so um by the way one thing that kind
0:37:37 of occurred to me your point about selling and that it’s never you’ve never successfully just sold at
0:37:43 the top and then waited and then got back in this is one of the great things about value investing is
0:37:47 if you are investing over the long term if you’re following the buffett strategy the benjamin graham
0:37:53 strategy you never really have to sell you don’t even have to consider that because you’re
0:37:59 continually buying for the purpose of holding for the long term for 10 20 30 40 years if you’re selling
0:38:03 it’s a very very rare event so that’s just one of the benefits of value investing you don’t have to
0:38:09 even ask yourself that question okay as for what i’m thinking about for 2026 so the way i think about it
0:38:17 this is the year of de-risking and it sounds like it’s the same for you but i think that it’s pretty
0:38:24 much the case for everyone and that is by virtue of this incredible run-up that we have seen over the
0:38:31 the past three years particularly in tech almost exclusively in tech almost everyone’s portfolio
0:38:37 is completely imbalanced right now and that is if you were a good investor if you invest in the s&p
0:38:45 every year if you were dollar cost averaging in as we recommend you are now overexposed to big tech
0:38:51 and that is because as we’ve said before the top 10 stocks in the s&p now make up 40 percent of the
0:39:00 entire index since 2023 those 10 stocks have delivered 65 percent of the total returns in the
0:39:06 in the s&p in the market you look at microsoft apple amazon google and nvidia which together have
0:39:12 contributed to half of the returns and this is a combination of things because the stocks went way up
0:39:19 in price but also they have extremely high weighting in the s&p the s&p gives more weight to those bigger
0:39:24 companies which has actually been a great thing for all of us in the past few years because it’s those
0:39:32 companies that have outperformed so what to do now given everything we’ve just said i think it’s time we
0:39:39 take our win we’ve had a really good run and it’s time to de-risk and diversify because i can tell you
0:39:45 with almost 90 certainty i would say you’re not diversified enough right now just by virtue of
0:39:51 what’s happened in the s&p so how to do that things i’m thinking about first very easy pick which i would
0:39:58 definitely which i’m doing definitely recommend buy the equal weight s&p 500 and it’s very simple instead
0:40:04 of the regular s&p which naturally over concentrates into big tech that’s what has happened equal weight
0:40:10 we’ll just invest you evenly across all of the companies in the s&p so it’s not indexed correct
0:40:16 so the the 490 stocks that we keep on saying are being left out well this way you give them a little
0:40:23 bit more light in the sun so that’s the first thing second thing let’s start diversifying into
0:40:30 non-tech sectors so uh a couple of sectors that i’m looking at that have underperformed relative to
0:40:36 the market consumer staples also health care and i think you could take a look at many other sectors
0:40:41 and figure out which works for you but those are a couple of sectors which just have not really
0:40:46 tracked with the market thus far and i think are due uh for a bit more momentum and then the other
0:40:51 thing we’ve talked about this before as well but non-us equities we’ve talked about it a lot but you
0:40:56 should be looking at china and india and if you want to keep things simple just emerging markets
0:41:04 and we called this at the beginning of the year after liberation day and we nailed it it was a great
0:41:11 year for emerging markets but i i don’t see any reason why that won’t continue especially if we are
0:41:17 in a lower interest rate environment which historically is pretty good for emerging market stocks so those are
0:41:24 the main things that i’m thinking about i think it’s also worth looking at small caps um maybe the russell
0:41:29 1000 versus the 2000 i like that idea too and then what are they trading at they’re trading at crazy
0:41:37 the russell 2000 is at a record high right now and it’s up 16 year to date yes but i i would just bear
0:41:42 in mind that we it we had a huge downturn coming out of covid fair point so if you actually look at the
0:41:48 past four years we’re only up five percent on the russell 2000 because there’s this gigantic trough
0:41:55 it’s at a p of 38 up from its 10-year average of 16 i mean i just hear a demoner in my ear these are
0:42:01 companies that are smaller and have in many cases they don’t actually have earnings because they’re a lot
0:42:06 smaller which is why we’re seeing that disparity but i also think that that’s that’s a fair that’s what
0:42:12 your saying is all true i don’t have like a hundred percent conviction in small caps but i think that if
0:42:18 if you don’t have that exposure already you should certainly be considering it purely for the sake of
0:42:26 diversification final thing i would say and you inspired this is just investing in yourself i mean
0:42:31 asworth told us there’s no place to hide and then we had this whole episode where we’re asking the
0:42:36 question what are you supposed to do with your money if there’s nowhere to put it if there is no place
0:42:40 to hide and he talked about collectibles i personally just can’t get on board with that
0:42:48 um it just goes against everything that i believe in i think a better strategy is what you’re doing
0:42:53 and that is if you don’t know what to invest in you might as well invest in yourself and i think there
0:42:59 are so many different ways to do that as you say you’re investing in your company that you have control
0:43:05 over that you own that you can steer the trajectory of but i think also if you’re just a regular person
0:43:10 maybe it means investing in some coursework or some certification or some education
0:43:15 like maybe you were thinking about taking a finance course an online course but you’re like i don’t
0:43:20 know if i should be shelling that out right now well if you have cash you’re not you’re not sure where
0:43:26 it goes that’s a great this is a great time to consider that i also think you could even think about
0:43:33 your health in this way like maybe you were thinking about a gym membership and but you’re like i don’t
0:43:40 know like i’m kind of worried about savings well if we’re in a subdued market then actually now would
0:43:46 be probably a good time to consider getting the gym membership you can always cancel but that’s an
0:43:52 example of an investment investment in yourself which it makes more sense when you look around
0:43:59 and you see that there is a market in which the returns are probably not going to be stellar so
0:44:04 i really like that point i’m not sure exactly what i’m going to do to invest in myself but i’m going to
0:44:10 really think about it and consider ways that i could take some money and figure out how to upgrade
0:44:14 myself i love that you’ve convinced me i’m finally that’s it i’m going to get the scrotum lift
0:44:26 we just had our first spit take from ed elson yeah invest in yourself join a membership go to
0:44:35 business school nope staple the twins back a little bit and bring them up bring bring them up
0:44:37 high and proud
0:44:57 we’ll be right back and for even more markets content sign up for our newsletter at profumarkets.com
0:44:58 slash subscribe
0:45:13 we present some of the biggest stars and biggest dramas streaming on paramount plus
0:45:21 and the nominees are best british baddie tom hardy in mob land i will find you most killer performance
0:45:28 michael c hall in dexter resurrection glad to be back slickest oil man in texas billy bob
0:45:34 and land man blow your up big boy let’s go and the winner is you stream paramount plus
0:45:36 a mountain of entertainment
0:45:43 to the holiday host who caught their hungry guest trying to take a bite out of their five-year-old’s
0:45:50 gingerbread house hi you’re a safeway pa announcer here keep their house and emotions intact by putting
0:45:56 out a holiday charcuterie board with four select deli items for only 24.99 let our charcuterie save
0:46:01 the holidays that’s the way safeway ingredients for life restrictions apply see in store or online for
0:46:10 details this episode is brought to you by defender with its 626 horsepower twin turbo v8 engine
0:46:19 the defender okta is taking on the dakar rally the ultimate off-road challenge learn more at landrover.ca
0:46:31 we’re back with prof g markets a couple of weeks ago it looked like netflix had effectively won
0:46:35 the bidding war for warner brothers discovery but last week paramount blew the process open with a
0:46:43 108 billion dollar hostile bid asking warner brothers shareholders directly to choose its offer instead
0:46:49 and now it looks like investors think the fight isn’t over warner stock surged around four percent last
0:46:55 week and then again later in the week as paramount courted investors in new york so
0:47:05 scott last time we talked about this we said netflix wins that’s it done and dusted now paramount’s back
0:47:11 and now on top of that wall street seems to believe that this is only just beginning the bidding war is
0:47:18 going to escalate hence why we see that the stock is moving upward was moving upward throughout the week
0:47:26 um let’s just get your reactions to what’s happened in the past few days well one don’t listen to me i’m i
0:47:33 the ellisons are going to walk away with it i thought then oh netflix is one oh no look this is
0:47:40 this is an interesting case study and why acquisitions almost never work two-thirds of the time they end up
0:47:44 being not accretive to shareholders which means if you could go back in time you wouldn’t do the
0:47:51 acquisition uh people still continue to do them for a few reasons uh one a good acquisition can be
0:47:57 a tectonic shift i think the best acquirer in history is probably zuckerberg yeah true he bought
0:48:04 um instagram for a billion it’s it’s probably worth somewhere between 200 and 500 billion on its own
0:48:11 at least uh by the way a month later marissa mayer bought um tumblr for the same amount of money and it
0:48:16 got sold for 1.1 billion and it got sold seven years later for three million dollars and at the
0:48:22 time they were both seen as comparable and he was pillory for the boy king spending a billion dollars
0:48:26 for a company with 19 employees and then he went on to spend 19 billion dollars for whatsapp which i
0:48:35 think is going to be worth a lot more so the the draw or the thought of making a big changing you know
0:48:42 kind of groundbreaking acquisition is really seductive uh it also can make sense in terms of a roll-up
0:48:45 strategy so i was on the board of a yellow pages company it was pretty simple we’d wait till we got
0:48:49 a call from every yellow pages company in the world who said we want out we’re dying we’re like okay we’ll
0:48:54 buy you we can cut costs faster than your business is declining which makes it accretive to shareholders
0:48:58 if you bought a blockbuster in 1999 you could buy them for two times cash flow and they went out of
0:49:03 business but they didn’t go out of business for 13 years so you made three to five extra money so there
0:49:10 are roll-up strategies when you’re trying to acquire growth assets occasionally you connect and hit a
0:49:15 grand slam but most of the time you strike out and a lot of the time you get bean in the face so these
0:49:21 things one they underestimate the complexity of the integration and cultures they overestimate the
0:49:26 synergies but the thing that’s going to make this acquisition out uh looking back and think this
0:49:30 probably was a bad idea yes and just to clarify for both bad idea for both net you’re talking about
0:49:36 both companies right now whoever gets it i think the only possible winner here from a shareholder
0:49:41 standpoint might be netflix because they might make the argument that with whatever it is a 400 billion
0:49:51 dollar a 25 dilution wasn’t game-changing and we have wrapped up and put a bow on streaming and my
0:49:56 co-host at pivot would say she had a really good argument that scott it’s not about streaming it’s
0:49:59 about the market for eyeballs and youtube is a bigger competitor and she doesn’t believe it
0:50:03 should be blocking an antitrust totally disagree yeah i think it probably should be blocked because
0:50:08 i think original content creation based on a subscription model is its own unique market
0:50:15 and that basically disney disney hulu paramount plus are all basically apple tv are all basically
0:50:22 fucked they’re all going to be the seven dwarves and uh and and netflix slash hbo would be an
0:50:28 unassailable snow white so to speak but sorry i interrupted you you were going to say what we
0:50:33 will look back at this being a bad deal for a reason it’ll be a bad deal for shareholders i think for
0:50:39 almost in any scenario because they’re simply put it’s not that these are great assets it’s not that
0:50:45 there aren’t synergies to be to be garnered but the only way it makes economic sense is if it’s a
0:50:51 non-economic deal for consumers and labor and that is it consolidates a market and my fear around netflix
0:50:59 and i love ted sarandos i love netflix my fear is that consolidating taking walmart and the lvmh of
0:51:05 streaming will effectively create so much pricing power that are a leak advantage from labor and consumers to
0:51:10 the shareholders of netflix and there’s always a tension but i think the fdc and the doj should they do
0:51:14 their job and not have a president way shut the fuck up the president should have no view on this
0:51:21 i’m going to be involved why so you cannot pay the subcontractors and take the company bankrupt
0:51:29 anyway this is this is what should happen highest bidder wins this is a dual this is not a dual class
0:51:33 shareholder company whoever shows up with the biggest check gets preliminary approval for the deal they then
0:51:42 have 12 18 24 months to close it goes under doj and ftc review where very smart economists and consumer
0:51:49 behavior experts come in and say is this a distinct market or is the market all streaming and all video
0:51:56 and tiktok and whatever else you do and we should let it go through and then it should go under a
0:52:02 cifius review or a national defense security review where if it’s paramount and jared kushner is part of the
0:52:08 deal and raising money out of the gulf does that present a security concern when the gulf states
0:52:15 have influencer control over cnn so we have very smart people who are supposed to make these decisions
0:52:21 not a guy who’s nodding off in cabinet meetings and knows nothing but how to put companies out of
0:52:30 business or podcasters we can pontificate on this but we should decide but my sense is i have a view on
0:52:36 who would be the right owners or the wrong owners but my i mean for cara really doesn’t want the
0:52:43 ellisons to own it and i’m like you know what david zaslov david ellison pick your poison i mean
0:52:49 i don’t i don’t we don’t get to decide who we like or don’t like i like ted sarandos that has
0:52:55 nothing to do with it the question is who shows up with the biggest check and who can who can convince
0:53:01 regulators that this will not be bad for competition and increased prices and and seed advantage from
0:53:09 labor and from consumers to such an extent that it’s only the shareholders of of netflix that win
0:53:14 here but when i have been on boards and we’ve acquired companies they almost never work because
0:53:20 and finally the thing that has entered the room here that will make this likely a non-accretive
0:53:24 acquisition for almost any of these players unless it’s what i call a monopolistic acquisition
0:53:31 see above netflix is the thing that’s entered the room here is testosterone i can guarantee you
0:53:38 that all of the bidders had a maximum number that they told their bankers 90 days ago okay if we can get
0:53:45 it for up to if we really stretched uh larry and david have said okay to the bankers if we really
0:53:52 stretch we offered 19 we could maybe go to 22 or 24 every one of these players has had a maximum number
0:53:59 they have all blown by their maximum number because this is what bankers are great at they get you to
0:54:05 climb a wall of valuation when i was selling my company to gardner the illusion of a third and a fourth
0:54:11 bidder okay can you do this can you do this do this and then finally when they walk away okay if you
0:54:17 just come up 10 it’s yours and we can move on and their greed glands get going and all that if david if
0:54:25 if paramount gets this then david ellison is on the cover of every magazine like the winner the king the new
0:54:32 king of hollywood what the fuck does he care about shareholders he’s a 34 year old looking to like
0:54:41 get out of the shadow of his father and and you know take take i don’t know sydney sweeney to the oscars
0:54:46 he doesn’t give a shit if this is a low roi for shareholders his father’s much more shareholder driven
0:54:53 but even his dad might be talked into we’re so close dad if we just come up a little bit we win
0:54:57 and that’s why his dad ends up calling trump saying you can’t let this happen that’s right
0:55:03 the fact that the ellisons are even saying that this will pass regulatory muster because we have our
0:55:10 thumb up the ass of the president is an acknowledgement of the kleptocracy and kakistocracy we now have in
0:55:17 america highest bidder that clears regulatory review both for defense and antitrust that’s how this should go
0:55:22 down and unfortunately it’s not but what’s happening i’ll give you an example i met a woman named ruth
0:55:30 perrett who’s the cfo at google total adult in the room she showed up to google if she was in charge if
0:55:33 she was the ceo of any of these companies that company would have already said we’re out thanks
0:55:39 very much enjoy playing in traffic and there’s something about men and testosterone and it’s okay
0:55:43 if you distinguish between the sexes as long as you’re critical of men so i’ll do that
0:55:50 and that is these guys have now got their fly down and they’re all sword fighting with their dicks and
0:55:56 they all want this thing distinct to the fact that probably gonna overpay for it because they all
0:56:02 want to be the winner and ruth perrett the cfo of google when she showed up to google and larry and
0:56:08 sergey were spending hundreds of millions if not billions on like curing death she’s like okay it’s time
0:56:15 to pretend we’re grown-ups and they were fiduciary for shareholders stop all the stupid shit you are
0:56:21 spending way too much money on your pet projects and pretending that shareholder money that you are
0:56:26 not a fiduciary for shareholders and she imposed real financial discipline that was probably probably
0:56:33 the most accretive thing that happened at google in the last 10 years was the cfo who came in and said
0:56:39 all right let’s pretend we’re adults and this might be fun and everybody larry and sergey want to pretend
0:56:43 it’s a good idea because you’re you’re the largest shareholders here it’s not it’s fucking stupid stop it
0:56:49 it’s not good for shareholders and she cleaned out a bunch of these projects these guys have now lost
0:56:56 all sense in my view but maybe the exception of netflix because if they can get this thing by ted flying
0:57:01 to washington i underestimated how machiavellian ted is or how shrewd he is he went and met met with trump
0:57:09 realizing if i don’t kiss this guy’s ass i mean this has now become all of these guys trying to trying
0:57:16 to curry favor with trump to make sure they get regulatory review which is again see above you know
0:57:24 oligarchy cacostocracy but this is they have lost it at this point it is now hormones have taken over
0:57:32 competitive gene is taken over and they are all all they are doing is making one of uh crowning this
0:57:37 will be a bad acquisition maybe with the exception of netflix if they can impose true monopoly power which
0:57:42 they might be able to do which will be bad for consumers in hollywood and the creative community
0:57:50 um but this will be a bad deal at this price for almost any other acquire it just won’t pencil out
0:57:56 basically this whole process is going to create the wealthiest man who destroyed the most shareholder
0:58:03 value and that is david zaslav david is going to walk away he is a beast i completely underestimated him
0:58:10 all the things i thought he was going to screw up he’s completely proven us wrong like that absolutely
0:58:15 crushed it he’s going to make a billion dollars for dramatically underperforming the s&p for five years
0:58:21 by turning this thing into it into a dick measuring contest that is what he did and and i thought he
0:58:27 wouldn’t be able to do it and he absolutely did the the testosterone is pumping it’s now he’s turned
0:58:32 it into a bidding war and i i remember thinking he’s trying to make this happen it’s not going to happen
0:58:37 they don’t want it they don’t want it enough he did make it happen i just wanted to make a a little
0:58:43 amendment to something you said earlier about you know i think you correctly point out the question is like
0:58:50 who shows up with the biggest check and that is true and in this case paramount has showed up with
0:58:57 the biggest check they’ve offered 30 a share netflix offered 2775 so they have the biggest check but the
0:59:02 question you think like oh so paramount has to get it the other question that is part of the calculation
0:59:10 just in terms of fiduciary responsibility is which one is more likely to go through so there are various
0:59:15 concerns with both with netflix it’s really an antitrust issue with paramount it’s also kind of
0:59:20 an antitrust issue but less because parent is smaller but also as you say a national security issue
0:59:26 because jared kushner is out collecting funds from all these sovereign wealth funds in the gulf and do
0:59:32 we want uh the gulf states having an ownership in in in our largest media companies so that’s the
0:59:39 that’s the calculation that if they’re doing this fairly will go into the review and it could be that
0:59:45 they say we’ve decided the paramount deal is less likely to go through and that is where the trump
0:59:51 relationship starts to to play a role if they do believe that there is a higher likelihood because
0:59:57 trump likes ted sarandos more or trump likes david ellison more then that will be part of their calculation too
1:00:05 one wrinkle that should be acknowledged also jonathan canter pointed out maybe we’re overestimating
1:00:11 trump’s power because trump could say no but then the courts could say yes i mean the courts could just
1:00:16 strike down his opinion i always get kind of like well how how much faith do we really have
1:00:21 in our court system to sort of hold the president to account but there are all of these
1:00:28 all of these questions happening in here and and it does it is a really interesting question of fiduciary
1:00:34 responsibility what is the fiduciary responsibility and what is the best decision because it’s not just
1:00:41 the money it’s also the likelihood of the deal happening this will take two years and in i think six
1:00:48 months the republicans are going to lose the gavel in the house and i think in 18 months there’s going to
1:00:53 be open all of a sudden the republicans are going to see the writing on the wall and go this guy’s a
1:01:00 lame duck and he’s nodding off in every meeting and i i’m going to speak out again this thing is going
1:01:06 to become so politicized and the political force of the last 10 years donald trump is going to be
1:01:11 massively neutered i think his power is only his power and influence is only going down
1:01:21 but you’re going to see it’s going to be fascinating to watch but i don’t i don’t i mean keep in mind ed
1:01:30 this is a stock that 15 months ago 18 months ago was trading at eight bucks it’s now at 29
1:01:36 i gotta tell you i’m such a david zasloff fan at this point i’ve completely turned around on it
1:01:42 i think he’s an absolute legend i think he’s like the worst and the best at the same time i’m just in
1:01:48 awe of how he’s run this auction he’s the adam newman of media i’m going to figure out a way to
1:01:52 lose other people’s money and make a shit ton of money if he just surfed and smoked a lot of pot he
1:01:57 and adam should hang out he’s turned it into that trophy asset that you were talking about in the
1:02:03 previous segment that all rich people want and crave because there’s scarcity and they want to be there
1:02:07 they want to be involved he’s somehow done that and people thought it was just this crummy little
1:02:13 media company literally 12 18 months ago yeah but he’s done more than that he’s cherry-picked a
1:02:18 board of people who are willing to give him ridiculous compensation for adding very little shareholder value
1:02:24 but he he did he did come up with the shareholder value he’s done it and he’s done in about a couple
1:02:28 of months i’m sorry what was it acquired when he did the merger what what was the stock price at
1:02:36 that’s a great question let’s find out oh it’s okay hold on when they announced the deal
1:02:44 warner brothers shares were at 2775 so basically the company’s a little the guy’s going to make a
1:02:51 billion dollars for adding no shareholder value when the smp’s up 50 percent i take it back
1:02:57 yeah no no no he’s the most overpaid investment banker in history that’s basically what he’s done
1:03:03 here and he’s created a bidding war and he’s found he’s found friends and family to stock the board
1:03:08 and say okay tell you what you don’t add any value you vastly underperformed the market and we’ll give
1:03:15 you a billion dollars that’s what he there’s a skill to finding total sycophants and just basically
1:03:19 saying in every board meeting your job is just to swallow hard
1:03:29 i’m torn i’m torn i i think i respect him i think there’s there’s photos of him with all the
1:03:35 all the hollywood stars on sitting courtside at these basketball games i don’t know let me think
1:03:39 i’m producing a show for netflix and i just said netflix shouldn’t get this from monopoly behavior
1:03:44 and the other bidder was hbo and i’ve just said david zasloff has found a board members of people
1:03:49 who swallow hard what do you think my future in hollywood is looking like right now council culture
1:03:54 is dead you’re good no i’m not worried about being cancelled i’m worried about a bunch of old dudes
1:03:59 saying we don’t need this fucking dick around we don’t need this guy around heckling from the cheap
1:04:05 seats fair enough oh god it’s lucky i own a big piece of art we’re gonna need to find out what that
1:04:09 piece of art is are you gonna are you gonna tell us it’s a brazilian artist i don’t like to talk
1:04:15 about my art i have it’s my second piece of art my other piece of art is a picture of auto frank
1:04:20 sitting in the standing in the attic where he and his family hid until they were betrayed by
1:04:25 people and were shipped off to concentration camps i just thought i’d change the mood here for a moment
1:04:31 and no joke no joke i look at this photo every day and it makes me feel grateful that’s a good
1:04:36 piece of art i’m gonna change the mood dramatically here i think everyone should find something in
1:04:42 their life and a piece of art a picture and it can be sad like this one is or it can be inspiring
1:04:49 but i think everyone should try and identify an object in their life or something and or note or
1:04:55 something and it that makes them feel good about themselves good about their situation grateful and
1:04:59 look at that thing every day i look at that photo every day it’s first thing i do every morning as i
1:05:02 i walk down the stairs and i stare at that photo for a good five or ten seconds yeah i have a friend
1:05:06 photo of you in my office does the same thing for me and you realize
1:05:15 i will survive i can get through this i can get through this i can get through this all right
1:05:20 let’s take a look at the week ahead thanks for mocking my moment ed
1:05:28 okay all right we’ll see the employment report for november and partial october data will be
1:05:31 included in there as well we’ll also see inflation data from the consumer price index for november
1:05:38 and nike fedex and general mills are all reporting earnings scott any predictions uh my prediction is
1:05:45 that the best performing assets or investments are going to be in weird investments that most people
1:05:50 don’t have access to but in venezuelan assets i think that there’s going to be a regime change
1:05:57 and an oil rich and culturally rich venezuela is going to boom over the next three to five years and
1:06:03 people who take enormous risks and find a way to invest in venezuela are going to come out
1:06:05 uh with just extraordinary returns
1:06:11 all right this episode was produced by claire miller and engineered by benjamin spencer our
1:06:14 associate producers alison weiss mia silveria is our research lead our research associates
1:06:20 are isabella kinsel dan shalon and kristen o’donohue drew burrows is our technical director and
1:06:24 katherine dylan is our executive producer thank you for listening to prof g markets from prof g media
1:06:28 tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the markets
1:06:47 you have me in kind reunion
1:06:56 tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the market
1:07:00 you have me in kind of a fresh take on the market
1:07:02 you have me in kind of a fresh take on the market
1:07:04 you have me in kind of a fresh take on the market

Scott Galloway and Ed Elson synthesize the wide range of views guests have shared on what 2026 could hold, and lay out how they’re thinking about investment strategies for the year ahead. They then turn to the escalating battle for Warner Bros. Discovery, explaining why the showdown between Paramount and Netflix may just be getting started.

Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter 

Order “Notes on Being a Man,” out now

Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice

Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets

Follow Scott on Instagram

Follow Ed on Instagram and X

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Leave a Reply

The Prof G Pod with Scott GallowayThe Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Let's Evolve Together
Logo