Is Palantir Overvalued? Stock Drops 10% on Michael Burry’s Bearish Bet

0:00:29 Thank you.
0:00:32 For more information.
0:01:02 For more information.
0:01:41 Support for this show comes from the Audible original, The Downloaded 2, Ghosts and the Machine.
0:01:44 The Earth only has a few days left.
0:01:50 Roscoe Cadulian and the rest of the Phoenix Colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer.
0:01:55 But a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever.
0:02:04 Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Roscoe Cadulian in this follow-up to the Audible original blockbuster, The Downloaded.
0:02:10 It’s a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide.
0:02:15 Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking,
0:02:19 What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love?
0:02:22 The Downloaded 2, Ghosts and the Machine.
0:02:24 Available now, only from Audible.
0:02:33 Today’s number three.
0:02:41 That’s how many monkeys are on the loose in Mississippi right now after a primate-carrying truck crashed in Jasper County.
0:02:49 Local officials have warned residents of multiple hazards, including disease, aggression, and guerrilla warfare.
0:02:55 If money is evil, then that building is hell.
0:02:56 The show goes on!
0:03:00 The folks in there have watched the show, show!
0:03:03 Welcome to Prof G Markets.
0:03:03 I’m Ed Elson.
0:03:05 It is November 6th.
0:03:08 Let’s check in on yesterday’s Market Vitals.
0:03:14 The major indices climbed on better-than-expected employment data from the ADP.
0:03:20 The U.S. added 42,000 private sector jobs in October, an improvement from previous months.
0:03:28 Meanwhile, Treasury yields spiked as the Supreme Court signaled skepticism at the legality of Trump’s tariffs.
0:03:37 Pinterest had its second-worst day ever, falling 21% after earnings showed that tariffs caused retailers to moderate their ad spending.
0:03:47 And finally, Snap shares soared 25% after the social media company announced a $400 million perplexity deal in its earnings report.
0:03:51 Okay, what else is happening?
0:04:00 Palantir has fallen more than 10% since Monday night on news that the legendary Michael Burry made a huge bet against the stock.
0:04:07 His firm, Scion Asset Management, disclosed that it bought put options on about 5 million Palantir shares,
0:04:09 worth almost a billion dollars.
0:04:16 News of the trade followed an impressive earnings report in which Palantir beat Wall Street’s expectations on every metric.
0:04:20 The software giant saw U.S. commercial software sales grow 121%.
0:04:24 U.S. government software sales grow 52%.
0:04:27 And overall sales grow 63%.
0:04:29 So, who is Michael Burry?
0:04:31 Why do investors care about what he thinks?
0:04:39 Well, he is the guy who correctly identified the subprime mortgage bubble before it popped in 2008.
0:04:42 He eventually shorted the market before the financial crisis.
0:04:44 He ended up making upwards of $700 million.
0:04:49 So, he is a big person, a big icon on Wall Street.
0:04:53 And now he believes that he has identified yet another bubble.
0:04:55 This time, it is AI.
0:05:03 And as we’ve covered at length in the past couple of months, many of his concerns are echoed by other investors too.
0:05:07 And in this case, many seem to be spooked by Palantir’s massive valuation.
0:05:19 The stock currently trades at almost 300 times earnings, 125 times sales, and has seen a run-up of over 250% in the past year alone.
0:05:29 So, for more on what is happening with Palantir and how the stock is falling, we are speaking with Gil Luria, Head of Technology Research at DA Davidson.
0:05:31 Gil, good to have you on the show.
0:05:32 Thanks for having me.
0:05:42 So, Palantir is falling down around 10% after this news that Michael Burry of Big Short fame is shorting the stock.
0:05:44 Let’s just start with your initial reactions.
0:05:47 What do you make of how the stock moved after this news broke?
0:05:55 The problem with trading at 100 times revenue is that those are numbers that are hard to justify.
0:05:58 You could argue for 120 times revenue, 80 times revenue.
0:06:02 All these numbers are detached from the fundamentals.
0:06:10 They’re not based on the stream of future cash flows discounted to this period, which is how we value most stocks.
0:06:21 And that makes a stock susceptible to just negative news flow of any type, including a very prominent person taking a negative position in a stock.
0:06:27 And this is coming right after Palantir reported earnings, which beat on pretty much all estimates.
0:06:33 Just so that we have the context, can you just walk us through what we learned in Palantir’s earnings?
0:06:35 And then, of course, we learned about Michael Burry.
0:06:39 So, Palantir’s earnings were spectacular.
0:06:42 They exceeded anybody’s expectations.
0:06:46 It’s not one of those where, you know, the results are good, but some people expected more.
0:06:48 They grew revenue 63%.
0:06:57 This is a $4 billion plus business growing 63%, which was an acceleration from 50% the previous quarter.
0:07:02 And they did it at a very profitable level of 50% operating margin.
0:07:04 So, everything was great.
0:07:07 They’re more than doubling their commercial business.
0:07:11 They grew their government business by 50%.
0:07:13 You don’t think of that as a business that you could grow that fast.
0:07:15 And they did.
0:07:17 And they continue to win.
0:07:23 They’re increasing their backlog significantly, which is all to say they’re the best software company.
0:07:26 They’re performing much better than any other software company.
0:07:28 So, the results themselves were great.
0:07:42 But again, when valuation is that high, there’s nothing that can prevent the stock from falling without really changing what the valuation’s relationship is with those fundamental results.
0:07:47 Which I think begs the question, like, how do you justify this valuation?
0:07:54 Trading at 300 times earnings, more than 100 times sales, highest sales multiple in the S&P.
0:07:58 You know, its market cap is like roughly equal to Netflix.
0:08:00 It’s generating 10 times less revenue.
0:08:03 How do you justify the valuation?
0:08:05 Well, I don’t try to.
0:08:05 Okay.
0:08:12 But many individual investors just really say that, you know what?
0:08:13 This is a company I believe in.
0:08:18 I think they can continue to grow these rates for many, many years to come.
0:08:20 And I’m going to be proven right.
0:08:25 The parallel here is to think about Tesla 10 or 15 years ago.
0:08:27 We were in the same situation.
0:08:35 You know, us curmudgeonly Wall Street analysts said, you know, there’s no way you can tie this valuation to the fundamental performance of the company.
0:08:39 And individual investors said, no, we believe in Tesla.
0:08:40 We believe in the product.
0:08:41 We believe in Elon Musk.
0:08:43 And it’s going to work out.
0:08:46 And it did for them for a very long time.
0:08:51 And those same people are now telling us, I believe in Palantir’s mission.
0:08:56 This is a great business that’s going to grow very fast for a very long period of time.
0:08:57 And we’re just going to hang on.
0:09:01 And those are really the incremental investors to Palantir.
0:09:04 There are institutional investors that have made a lot of money there, too.
0:09:10 But disproportionately, it’s individual investors that are driving Palantir’s price up.
0:09:12 And it’s not that they can’t be right.
0:09:16 Palantir, again, I mentioned they crossed the $4 billion mark.
0:09:19 There’s far bigger software companies.
0:09:20 Adobe does $20 billion.
0:09:21 Salesforce does $40 billion.
0:09:23 Oracle does $50 billion.
0:09:25 Not to mention Microsoft, et cetera.
0:09:35 So Palantir, if they continue to execute this level and if nobody else figures it out, can actually continue to grow these rates for many, many years.
0:09:44 It’s just that, again, us stodgy Wall Street analysts are going to have a hard time making hard predictions on things that are going to happen 10, 20 years from now.
0:09:50 It reminds me of the famous saying, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
0:09:54 To me, that is what’s going on here.
0:09:59 What I’m hearing from you is it’s very hard to justify the valuation.
0:10:01 The fundamentals certainly aren’t there.
0:10:03 So this is all about the narrative.
0:10:15 And it sounds like the question for people who are shorting the stock is, do we really think the narrative is going to run out of steam on your time frame, on your short position?
0:10:17 And perhaps no.
0:10:19 I mean, certainly didn’t happen with Tesla.
0:10:23 Certainly hasn’t been happening over the past couple of years with Palantir.
0:10:27 Do you think that’s going to be a problem for the shorts?
0:10:27 Exactly.
0:10:28 Exactly.
0:10:31 Because, again, the Palantir’s business is doing phenomenally well.
0:10:35 They will continue to grow this fast, at least for the next couple of years.
0:10:37 So if you’re short, you’re going to have to be very patient.
0:10:38 You know, back to Michael Burry.
0:10:45 I think a lot of people see the movie Big Short and think it’s this great story about these heroes that got it right.
0:10:48 We lived through that period.
0:10:53 There were a lot of people that were short the real estate market one way or another and lost everything.
0:11:01 The story of Big Short is about the couple of people that were somehow able to hang on long enough.
0:11:01 Yes.
0:11:06 And convince everybody to let them hang around long enough that they made money.
0:11:11 A lot more people lost money shorting the real estate bubble in that time frame.
0:11:12 Yeah.
0:11:15 I think Christian Bale did a pretty good job as well.
0:11:17 I’m sure that contributed to it.
0:11:19 And the Margot Robbie scene in the bathtub didn’t hurt.
0:11:22 Yes, that’s true.
0:11:26 So Alex Kopp was asked about this Michael Burry short yesterday.
0:11:28 He was on CNBC.
0:11:31 He had a very animated response.
0:11:33 I just want to play it and quickly get your reaction.
0:11:37 It just is super triggering because these people, they could pick on any company in the world.
0:11:45 They have to pick on the one that actually helps people, that actually has made money for the average person, that is actually supporting our warfighters.
0:11:47 Why do they have to go after us?
0:11:52 And I’ll tell you what, though, it’s crazy motivating because I’ll tell you why the short sellers are constantly getting screwed by Palantir.
0:12:00 Because every time they short us, we just are like tripling down on getting the better numbers and part, honestly, to make them poorer.
0:12:07 So I hear that that reads to me as defensive and frantic, but perhaps others read it differently.
0:12:10 Maybe it’s maybe it makes you more bullish.
0:12:11 What do you think?
0:12:15 So this is Dr. Karp getting his own bulletin board material.
0:12:26 If you watched Last Dance about Michael Jordan’s last championship season, one of the episodes was about the fact that at some point, everybody was afraid to talk to Michael Jordan.
0:12:30 But it motivated him so much that he invented sluts.
0:12:37 He lived to think and convince himself that somebody told him that he can’t beat them.
0:12:39 This is where Dr. Karp is right now.
0:12:40 He loves this.
0:12:55 He wants to compete against the shorts, and it’s what’s keeping him motivated, and it’s helping him keep the company motivated to have an adversary and a foe that he can sling his arrows at.
0:12:57 He’s doing a phenomenal job of it.
0:13:02 He’s motivating his people, and they continue to perform well.
0:13:04 And again, I wouldn’t bet against them.
0:13:05 Final question here.
0:13:09 Palantir was obviously the loser on this news, down around 10%, but still trading.
0:13:12 But still trading at a pretty incredible multiple.
0:13:16 Any concerns about how this could spread?
0:13:25 This idea that if Michael Burry says, oh, I’m short, then maybe everyone else gets a bit worried, and you start to see that sentiment kind of infect the rest of the market.
0:13:26 Is that a concern for you?
0:13:43 I think the concerns about the AI trade at large are there, and we almost see the pendulum swing back and forth daily right now between the excitement about everything we’re seeing in AI and concerns that we’re blowing a bubble and back and forth.
0:13:55 But Palantir is the highest valuation, so it’s just more susceptible than any other stock to these types of concerns, which will probably make it more volatile than any other stock for a foreseeable future.
0:13:56 All right.
0:13:59 Gil Lurie, Head of Technology Research at DA Davidson.
0:14:01 Always appreciate your time.
0:14:01 Thanks, Gil.
0:14:02 Thank you.
0:14:06 After the break, how Wall Street reacted to Mamdani’s victory.
0:14:09 If you’re enjoying the show, give Profit G Markets a follow.
0:14:32 Unless you have a lot of money, because there’s unlimited downside.
0:14:36 Anyways, the point is, you’re engaged with your investments, and public gets that.
0:14:39 That’s why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously.
0:14:43 On public, you can put together a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul.
0:14:45 Stocks, bonds, options, it’s all there.
0:14:50 Plus, an industry-leading 3.6% APY high-yield cash account.
0:14:53 Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously.
0:14:59 Go to public.com slash Prof G and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.
0:15:01 That’s public.com slash Prof G.
0:15:03 Paid for by public investing.
0:15:07 All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal.
0:15:12 Brokered services for U.S.-listed registered securities, options, and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Invest, Inc.
0:15:14 Member FINRA, SIPC.
0:15:18 Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.
0:15:25 You know what’s better than the one big thing?
0:15:27 Two big things.
0:15:28 Exactly.
0:15:32 The new iPhone 17 Pro on TELUS’ five-year rate plan price lock.
0:15:35 Yep, it’s the most powerful iPhone ever.
0:15:38 Plus, more peace of mind with your bill over five years.
0:15:39 This is big.
0:15:45 Get the new iPhone 17 Pro at telus.com slash iPhone 17 Pro on select plans.
0:15:47 Conditions and exclusions apply.
0:15:52 Sometimes, the best gifts aren’t gifts at all.
0:15:56 They’re experiences, journeys, something that unwraps them.
0:16:00 This year, help them explore their past with Ancestry DNA.
0:16:03 Help them discover where they come from and who they’re connected to.
0:16:07 Now, with even more regions, exclusive features, and incredible detail,
0:16:11 they can see where they’re from and the paths that shape their family’s story.
0:16:13 This holiday, give more than a gift.
0:16:15 Give Ancestry DNA.
0:16:17 Visit Ancestry.ca for more details.
0:16:18 Terms apply.
0:16:24 We’re back with Profty Markets.
0:16:25 It’s official.
0:16:32 The capital of capitalism has elected Democratic Socialist Zoran Mamdani as mayor.
0:16:39 New York City’s business leaders poured more than $25 million into efforts to defeat Mamdani.
0:16:42 Now, Wall Street is recalibrating.
0:16:46 Investor Bill Ackman, who had warned about Mamdani for months,
0:16:48 he congratulated the mayor-elect on X.
0:16:51 Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan.
0:16:54 Jane Fraser, Citigroup CEO, and BlackRock’s co-founder,
0:16:58 Ralph Schlossstein, have also offered their support.
0:16:59 They cited their commitment to the city.
0:17:03 Still, many in the business community remain wary about his policies
0:17:08 and whether he will follow through on some of his most progressive initiatives.
0:17:12 So, here to unpack how Wall Street is reacting to the election,
0:17:17 we are speaking with Liz Hoffman, business and finance editor at Semaphore.
0:17:20 Liz, thank you very much for joining us on Profty Markets.
0:17:21 Thanks for having me, Ed.
0:17:24 So, let’s get your reactions to the election,
0:17:28 then maybe we’ll get into how Wall Street has responded.
0:17:31 I’ll just start with, what do you make of this election?
0:17:35 What does it say about where we’re at and where New York City is heading?
0:17:39 Yeah, I mean, Zoran Mamdani ran a very disciplined campaign
0:17:42 around an issue that matters to a lot of New Yorkers.
0:17:43 So, not terribly surprising.
0:17:46 I think this was largely priced in kind of politically
0:17:52 and as we’ll talk about with the financial set after his primary win in June.
0:17:56 There was obviously a contingent trying to sort of, you know,
0:18:00 pluck victory from the jaws of defeat here and rally first around Mayor Adams,
0:18:02 later around Cuomo.
0:18:06 There was a lot of jockeying to try to get the Republican in the race to drop out,
0:18:09 a sense that, you know, correctly, they would have split the non-Mondani vote.
0:18:10 In the end, it didn’t matter.
0:18:13 And he won quite handily.
0:18:16 You know, with a message that really resonates in this particular moment,
0:18:18 which is that New York is crazy expensive.
0:18:19 Yeah.
0:18:24 You speak with a lot of these leaders or you’re tapped into the scene.
0:18:28 How do these business leaders, how do people on Wall Street feel about this election now?
0:18:34 I would say it went for, if you go back to June, kind of shock and disbelief, the five stages of grief, right?
0:18:36 Shock, disbelief, anger.
0:18:42 I would say, you know, by this week, resignation had taken over.
0:18:44 And, you know, these are people who live by the numbers.
0:18:48 They know how to read polling that was very consistent.
0:18:55 And actually, if anything, sort of under, you know, overestimated how well, you know, the other candidates on the ballot would do.
0:19:03 And so, you know, in my conversations over the last couple of weeks, I think you started to get a sense of, okay, New York is resilient.
0:19:06 We got a lot going for us as a city.
0:19:09 Read what, you know, you can read what you want about sort of the economy.
0:19:15 But this is still the financial capital of the world and is getting stronger, you know, in the global financial system, not weaker.
0:19:17 We can survive this.
0:19:21 And I think the conversations, you know, that I’ve had today, there’s a little bit of navel gazing.
0:19:37 There’s a sense, I think, that, I mean, a real realization that they have lost huge amounts of power in their own backyard over a city that they, you know, haughtily, though not terribly inaccurately believe that, you know, they have built over, you know, decades and decades.
0:19:40 And also over their own employees.
0:19:48 I mean, if you look at Mamdani’s coalition, it was really centered around college-educated, white, upwardly mobile professionals.
0:19:53 These are the people who work at these big banks and investment houses and just told their CEOs to buzz off.
0:19:56 What would you say are, like, the biggest concerns?
0:19:57 Is it taxes?
0:19:59 Is it policing?
0:20:03 That’s something that Andrew Ross Sorkin brought up when he was on our show.
0:20:07 Is it just the fact that he is a self-described democratic socialist?
0:20:09 Like, what are the top concerns?
0:20:10 Yeah.
0:20:13 The taxes, I think, actually less of a concern.
0:20:17 You know, billionaires don’t like being taxed, but they’re pretty good at not being taxed.
0:20:21 And I should say a lot of these guys don’t live in New York, so the city taxes won’t really hit them.
0:20:25 They don’t mind being taxed so much as they mind being scolded.
0:20:35 They mind being talked down to, which, you know, I think Mamdani has real, you know, ideological problems with the capital class.
0:20:37 And he’s not been shy about it.
0:20:38 So that’s one.
0:20:40 Two is quality of life and policing.
0:20:42 And that’s very real.
0:20:46 And I don’t think it’s just confined to the kind of noblesse oblige elite of New York.
0:20:56 I mean, that is, just last week, the Southern District in Manhattan brought a big racketeering case against, essentially, an open-air drug market in Washington Square Park, one of the most beautiful corners of the city.
0:20:57 That’s a real thing.
0:21:01 You can go back a couple of years to violence on the subway.
0:21:06 I mean, there was a man killed on the subway a couple of years ago who worked at Goldman Sachs.
0:21:10 And that got the CEO of Goldman Sachs on the phone with the mayor that said, these are real problems.
0:21:14 We, you know, these are people who have a lot of options about where to live and where to work.
0:21:16 And I think that is very real.
0:21:25 I’m not a New York political reporter, so I don’t know how serious the threats of sick-outs and walk-offs and the police force are, but that’s absolutely something to keep an eye on.
0:21:35 The third thing, though, I think when you talk to the business elite in the city, their main complaint is that this guy is not qualified, right?
0:21:40 These are people who are very credentialed and they care very much about the ladder that they climbed up.
0:21:46 And they run big organizations and they think, rightly or wrongly, that big organizations are hard to run.
0:21:48 And New York City is a giant organization.
0:21:50 It’s got a $120 billion budget.
0:21:52 It’s got 300,000 employees.
0:21:54 It’s about as many as JPMorgan Chase.
0:22:06 So they just, they’re really dismissive of his qualifications in a way that just really comes through, just dripping with, you know, real dislike of how he got where he is.
0:22:15 Yeah, something that struck me about this election isn’t so much about what it will do, but more about what it will say and what it says right now.
0:22:28 And I think one of the elephants in the room with this campaign, at least to me, is it is anti-billionaire and it is anti-multi-multi-millionaire, arguably anti-millionaire.
0:22:37 It is a campaign that says we’ve had enough with rich people and the way they’ve run society.
0:22:42 Maybe it didn’t say that outright, but it certainly said that implicitly.
0:22:45 To what extent is that driving the reaction?
0:22:50 To what extent is it people on Wall Street and business leaders just reflexively saying,
0:22:57 Well, you’ve said that we’re your enemy, therefore you are our enemy, and we’ve got a problem.
0:22:59 Would you agree with that, with that characterization?
0:23:01 Yes, I would.
0:23:10 You know, I think, broadly speaking, we kind of live in an oligopoly right now, and that I think has played out sort of most interestingly in Washington, where you had, you know, huge billionaires.
0:23:12 In fairness, not from New York City.
0:23:19 The ones who, you know, have had Trumps here are largely from Silicon Valley and are a really different breed of billionaire.
0:23:22 I spend a lot of time with people on Wall Street.
0:23:23 They have healthy egos.
0:23:40 They are different from the kind of only-I-can-save-the-world breed that you get out in Silicon Valley, who mistook their, you know, perhaps great technological skills and inventing capacity for technocracy and the ability to govern.
0:23:43 But I do think you’re starting to see real backlashes there.
0:23:55 It’s woven into some of the political backlash around the AI boom right now, where, like, people are looking around at their neighborhoods and seeing these big faceless data centers going up and their electricity prices going up.
0:24:00 And I do think there’s, like, a bit of a bad moon rising on that front, and I think that is very real.
0:24:06 I’m not saying we’re, like, heads on quakes and mobs in the streets, but I do think that that’s, like, a real political element.
0:24:07 And it’s been brewing for a long time.
0:24:12 It goes all the way back to, you know, what drove Brexit and what got Trump elected.
0:24:17 And, you know, this is a market show, so you’ll remember the meme stock crazes.
0:24:18 It was really eat the rich.
0:24:20 These guys are out to get you.
0:24:22 They are playing a game that you’re not allowed to play.
0:24:25 And that’s been bubbling below the surface for years now.
0:24:38 So my final question, one of the big concerns or threats that was posed was that if Mamdani were to be elected, we would see this gigantic exodus out of the city.
0:24:48 Businesses would leave, business leaders would leave, you know, New York City would theoretically lose out on millions and millions of dollars of tax revenue.
0:24:50 Is that happening?
0:24:52 Do we think that that’s going to happen?
0:24:53 What are your thoughts?
0:24:55 It’s not happening.
0:24:56 I’m pretty skeptical of it.
0:25:04 Because if you go back to the coming out of the pandemic when everyone said, well, I’m never going to go to the office again and I’m going to work wherever I want.
0:25:09 The CEOs of the big Wall Street firms were the loudest people saying butts in seats.
0:25:17 And it’s going to be pretty hard for them to demand that their employees come back to these big office towers and them not to be there.
0:25:21 You know, Wall Street says a lot, but it is a money place.
0:25:23 So you’ve got to look at where they’re putting their money.
0:25:37 And I would note that the other big thing that happened in Manhattan over the last week or two is that J.P. Morgan just opened a huge, new, glistening, very expensive, incredible piece of engineering and real estate, which is a giant bet on midtown Manhattan.
0:25:47 I don’t know if you live in New York, but like arguably 47th Street between Park and 6th Avenue is like it’s not where you want to spend your time all the time.
0:25:55 And they’ve just built a massive monument to capitalism on the on the premise that they’re going to have a lot of people coming in and out of that building.
0:25:57 I think it’s I think it’s pretty overblown.
0:25:59 You have certainly seen people go to Florida.
0:26:05 Ken Griffin, the big hedge fund Citadel securities trading firm, left Chicago and kind of set up in Miami.
0:26:09 And but I don’t I don’t think that is a real threat.
0:26:13 Ultimately, these are human capital businesses, so they got to be where the talent is.
0:26:21 And despite it being unaffordable and, you know, for all the reasons, young, young, upwardly mobile, college educated people want to live in New York.
0:26:26 And there are still hundreds of applicants for every seat available in that J.P. Morgan office tower.
0:26:29 Yes, as much as we complain about it, we are still here.
0:26:31 I’m still here, too.
0:26:33 I’m still here.
0:26:34 I’m unemployable outside of the city.
0:26:38 So I’m hoping I’m hoping everyone that I cover sticks around.
0:26:39 No choice.
0:26:44 Liz Hoffman, business finance editor at Santa for really appreciate your time.
0:26:45 Thanks, Ed. Pleasure.
0:26:52 Well, yesterday we got into the election.
0:26:55 We discussed what it means and why it matters.
0:27:00 And if you want my Mamdani take, then go ahead and listen to yesterday’s episode.
0:27:02 We’re not going to rehash it now.
0:27:08 But I will take this moment to highlight something that will be relevant to the conversation moving forward.
0:27:13 And that is this question of what Mamdani will do to the New York business world.
0:27:19 More specifically, will all the New York businesses and all the New York business leaders leave?
0:27:21 Will they go to Florida?
0:27:23 Will they go to Texas?
0:27:25 Or perhaps will they leave America entirely?
0:27:29 And that might sound like kind of a ridiculous question.
0:27:31 Maybe it sounds hyperbolic.
0:27:38 But let’s not forget all the threats that we heard from all these leaders in the months leading up to this election.
0:27:46 Let’s not forget what all these people said about what they would do and what would happen if Mamdani indeed were elected.
0:27:50 And that is, they said that they would leave.
0:27:57 Whether it’s John Katsimatidis, who said he would sell all of his New York offices and move out if Mamdani won.
0:28:02 Or Dave Portnoy, who said he would move his company out of New York if Mamdani won.
0:28:06 Or Bill Ackman, who said we’d see this giant exodus out of New York.
0:28:12 Or all of these anonymous bankers who told all of these press outlets that they were heading for the doors.
0:28:17 In fact, one survey found that 9% of New Yorkers said they would, quote,
0:28:21 definitely leave if Mamdani were elected as mayor.
0:28:23 This was the story they told us.
0:28:26 This was the story they wanted us to believe.
0:28:29 And look, it’s a good story.
0:28:31 In fact, it is a famous story.
0:28:37 It is the story of Atlas Shrugged, which is, of course, Ayn Rand’s most famous work.
0:28:42 And for those of you who don’t know the plot, essentially, a group of business leaders get together
0:28:47 and they form their own little society because government is overreaching.
0:28:50 It’s too burdensome and because taxes are too high.
0:28:53 And so that is essentially the story that we were told.
0:28:55 It’s the story that Bill Ackman was telling us.
0:29:00 And by the way, I’m sure his perspective is at least somewhat informed by that book.
0:29:11 Well, was this just a fun story, a way to rattle the cage?
0:29:14 Well, I don’t know.
0:29:15 And I guess we’ll see.
0:29:19 But let me just read you Bill Ackman’s latest tweet.
0:29:19 He said, quote,
0:29:22 At Zoran Mamdani, congrats on the win.
0:29:27 If I can help New York City, just let me know what I can do.
0:29:27 End quote.
0:29:31 I get the sense that Bill Ackman isn’t leaving.
0:29:34 And I also get the sense that others aren’t leaving either.
0:29:37 Here’s a Business Insider headline from yesterday.
0:29:41 Quote, business leaders say they can live with Mamdani.
0:29:42 Here’s Bloomberg.
0:29:47 Quote, Mamdani gets wary Wall Street support after New York City election.
0:29:48 Here’s another headline.
0:29:52 Quote, rich New Yorkers who fear higher taxes just can’t quit the city.
0:29:59 So for all that talk about this mass exodus of all of the business leaders in New York,
0:30:03 it certainly appears that they are more than willing to at least try to figure out a way
0:30:04 to stick around.
0:30:06 And again, we don’t know yet.
0:30:08 We’re only a day in.
0:30:17 So let’s check back in seven or eight months and let’s see if 9% of New Yorkers actually did
0:30:17 leave.
0:30:22 But if they don’t, if they don’t leave, well, I think it would be fair to say
0:30:26 that these were empty threats and they don’t hold water.
0:30:32 Yes, you may not like your mayor, but the reality of New York City is it’s pretty great.
0:30:35 And that’s why you actually are willing to pay these high taxes.
0:30:41 And this is all to say next time this crops up in either a mayoral race or a Senate race
0:30:46 or maybe a presidential race and people and businesses start saying, I’m going to leave.
0:30:46 I’m out of here.
0:30:50 Let’s just remember what happened in New York.
0:30:54 Okay, that’s it for today.
0:30:59 This episode was produced by Claire Miller, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin
0:30:59 Spencer.
0:31:01 Our associate producer is Alison Weiss.
0:31:06 Our research team is Dan Chalon, Isabella Kinsel, Chris O’Donoghue and Mia Silverio.
0:31:08 And our technical director is Drew Burrows.
0:31:10 Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media.
0:31:12 If you liked what you heard, give us a follow.
0:31:13 I’m Ed Elson.
0:31:18 Tune in tomorrow for our conversation with Bradley Tusk.
0:31:19 Thank you.