Market Outlook: The podcast discussed the current "money tree market" characterized by continuous financing and vendor financing, despite Federal Reserve Chairman Powell suggesting stocks may be overvalued.
Investment Opportunities: Small-cap stocks, particularly in the lithium sector, were highlighted as having potential growth, with Lithium Americas mentioned as a promising pick.
Sector Insights: The nuclear energy sector is experiencing significant growth, with stocks like SMR New Scale and Oaklo showing impressive year-to-date returns, driven by increasing energy demands from AI developments.
Company Discussions: Oracle was frequently mentioned due to its involvement in various financing deals, including with TikTok and AI ventures, indicating a strategic push in tech and media sectors.
Economic Trends: Rising interest rates were noted, with the 10-year Treasury yield increasing, while Japan's Bank of Japan is starting to sell ETFs and REITs, signaling a shift in monetary policy.
Regulatory Developments: The potential shift from quarterly to semi-annual earnings reports was discussed, with implications for investor transparency and market dynamics.
Technology and AI: Nvidia's partnership with OpenAI, involving a $100 billion investment, underscores the ongoing AI boom and the substantial energy requirements associated with AI infrastructure.
Key Takeaway: The podcast emphasized the speculative nature of current market conditions, with significant investments in AI and tech sectors driving market dynamics, while regulatory and economic shifts present both challenges and opportunities.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to D'vorak Horowitz Unplugged, an hour-long discussion of activity in the financial markets around the world featuring columnist John C. D'vorak and money manager Andrew Horowitz. This conversation is casual and unrehearsed. Let's join John and Andrew now. >> I'm John C. D'vorak. >> Wait, and I'm Andrew Horowitz. >> Well, there he is. >> That was weird. It's the 24th, I believe, of September, >> I think. Maybe >> 25th. >> 23rd. >> Oh, 23rd. 23rd. Tomorrow's the 24th. Then the 25th. Yes. Today's 23rd. >> My youngest child is about to turn 30. >> 30. >> 30. What? How old is your youngest? >> Uh my youngest is uh is 31. >> Yeah. I told him I told all the kids. I said, "When you reach the age of 30, when when my son reached the age, not my well, my girls are 35." I said, "When when you reach 30 to my son, everybody's off the the wagon train, you know, the easy street, the money train." So, the girls are like, "Wait, I got all then there's an argument, right?" Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The girls got it till they were 35. Why do I get screwed? I'm like, "Well, I I should have done a lot earlier." And And they're like, "Well, what do you mean?" Well, uh, like you know, you have phones, dad, it's so much cheaper to keep us on your phone and how about Netflix? You know, what do you what's the difference between I'll do it? One person, two this whole thing. In the end, nothing. They're scrunching passwords. >> Yeah, exactly. In the end, nothing's going to change. >> No, of course. Well, the password thing is pretty hard to stop, >> right? So, that's what we have going on. uh and a happy uh and a healthy and lash tova tikateu uh for all of our Jewish listeners that are celebrating Russashana. This is the the week of atonement. This is the uh the the the high holidays where we start in rashana celebrating the new year and we finish off yum kipper not eating angry and uh the good thing about the Jewish religion is we just get it over in one day. You know the the Christians they they have Lent for was it 40 days >> and 40 nights >> and uh the same thing you have how long is um Ramadan? Ramadan's >> for there was there was Ramadan's long as a month I think isn't it something like that >> something really long >> the thing is nobody does Lent anymore. >> I know people that do Lent. >> I don't know. I don't know. >> They make a big deal about what they gave up. You know I g I gave up meat. give up some candy for a little couple of days. >> I see somebody give up breathing some of these people, but that's another story entirely. >> Uh the other thing is that um you know, we have this this one day thing where it's it's all these sins. You don't have to um it's it's pretty easy. So no no Hail Marys and Fathers and all this stuff. It's um very convenient, but we live with guilt. That's what we do in our my religion. Uh, let's talk about what's going on. We have a brand new server, by the way. What you're listening to this on right now is our brand new, newly provisioned dedicated server with all the bells and whistles. So, thank you. The um website, the DH Plugged, is much faster right now. It's working very well. And and I got to tell you, John, I've done this a number of times over the years because, you know, you get these leases on these dedicated servers and then and the reason I do it is some people do shared servers for example, right? But then there's bandwidth constraints or you're sharing >> Oh, yeah. No good, >> right? You're sharing you're sharing it with somebody. >> Cost money. Do we should be getting donations for this? >> Yes. This is this is not >> You're not doing it for free. >> This this is not cheap actually. this one. This was this is a good outlay. Um but I get a three-year deal. So this is like the fourth time or whatever that I've renewed this or fifth time and um they reprovision a brand new server. This time though it was so easy. It was one giant copy. Maybe because I there was some tricks I need I I know we had to do and I wrote them down for some tech people to I'm like look when they do this I needed to make sure this this this this and it was I almost almost too smooth >> within within one one day of re of of provisioning uh and uh and changing all the things and you know the web getting everything up and running I literally shut down the other server just shut it down. I I used to keep them running for a while just in case. Shut them down. done. So, >> now you're getting overconfident. >> Yeah. Yeah. Now, oh, now now it's going to come to a screeching halt. We're going to get a DDoS deal going on here. Look, uh, for those of you that don't know, the way we do that is we we we well, we do it ourselves, but also ask our listeners to chip in a little bit. So, if you do want to help out and you want to have your name somewhere in the I don't know the annals of helping out with the new server, go to dhplugged.com and give a donation uh of any size, any sort, anywhere you'll find the little yellow button and we'll make sure that uh you are appreciated somehow. But, uh think about it. This is something you'll say, you know, I'm part of that. That's the reason they're running is because I gave money for that server. So, something good cool there. We need still a new stock. We We forgot to do this last week. >> Yeah, I noticed. >> We talked about it. We didn't do it. So, what do you what do you think? What do you have any thoughts on a on a stock that may be something either we've ran before, but or maybe something brand new? I mean, uh Fizer's in the crosshairs right now. There's um a bunch of healthcare. >> I I'm going to do a small cap because I think those are going to take off. >> So, what kind of name would that be? We're overdue for small caps to to start making some moves and which which might make it more difficult. We want to we want something that's difficult because we have the same names coming in over and over and over again. They seem to have some sort of a formula to do this and it it's been too easy on them. >> Ah >> on our regulars that >> random small cap stock that is popular. Uh, let's see. >> I have a pick that I'm going to use today, which is not only a small I believe it to be a small cap. Not only a small cap, it's a fairly new uh a new offering. >> This one is interesting. This one was up like 60% today, too. Lithium Americas. Why did it choose that one? >> What is it? >> Lithium Americas. This This one, >> that's a winner. Go with that. >> Lac I got to look at that one. Make sure it has enough lithium Americas. Let's see. Trading 82% below Morning Stars fair value estimate. Pure plane lithium producer recently entered production expect to benefit the rising lithium price in 2025. Rated with a narrow economic moat uh and standard capital high uncertainty rating typical of small castle growth potential nanuclear Etsy genius sports any of those. No, you like this one. >> I like the lithium play. >> It's interesting that one was >> it has a couple of dimensions to it that make it an interesting thing to try to predict. >> I want to just look at this because I I could swear this thing was up a lot today. L A C. Is that the symbol? L A. No. Okay. Cancel. Uh, just give me one more second and then I'll just L A doesn't have anything. What is that? It's No, you know, maybe Argentinia. Argentinian. Lithium. We should probably do this. I don't know. Lithium America's Group right here. It's LAC. It was up 78% after hours today. >> Oh, okay. This would be impossible to to track. >> I'm telling you, I saw this going. Lac >> could go down, could go up, it could go cram. >> Could die in the vine. It's a perfect stock for the game. >> I find I find that weird how that came up as a randomized small cap stock, but it must be something. >> Yeah. Makes it even more peculiar. >> Yeah. Very strange. Very strange. Okay, so let's talk about the some other things that are going on. Um the the nuclear sky stocks, the nuclear stocks are just doing out of control. That's unbelievable. We have a money tree market right now. Today was a bit of a down day, but that was because Powell was talking about how well maybe stocks are overvalued, he said, or they're fair highly priced. But aside from that, and that's that's not unusual for a market to come back a little bit after many days of an upward trend and things just going crazy. And there's a fascinating thing that's going on right now, which we're gonna have to talk about. This whole this whole uh circular financing and vendor financing that's going on right now. This is something we saw again, we talked about this a little bit last week, I think, when we talked about how we saw what was going with Oracle. Remember that? We talked about how Oracle's getting these big financing and doing these deals and it's it's the AI boom and they're getting money from Open AI. >> Show me the money, >> right? And then it's like, wait, wait, open AI is, you know, saying, well, we'll give you $400 billion. Like, by the way, I'm going to give Oracle a trillion dollars. How about you? >> Uh, I don't think I can go that big. Maybe a half a half a trill. >> Yeah. So, you know, this is the kind of thing that they're speculating this on the future. Well, there's more that there's even more that happened today. You know, they're talking about new facilities being opened up and money just wherever it's coming from. And what's really interesting is starting to be picked up by the mainstream media now in the business world. People are starting to ask questions like how where is this all going to come from? >> Wow. It's about time. >> Yeah. Where is this all going to come from? But right now, we're to the moon to the sky. money tree markets are just happening where it seems that this financing is just nontoppable and there's going to be the continuation of this for some time and that is what is driving almost every single day there's another announcement welltimed wellplaced and it usually involves Oracle which seems like all of a sudden there's a love affair with Larry Ellison and Oracle I you know I I'd like to look into this I I would bet that he has a new PR uh publicist What does he need one for at his age? He's 81 years old. What is he doing? >> He's always he's he likes himself and he's always he does and he's always and he's proud and he and he's always wanted to be the richest guy and he likes the idea of getting the publicity. He never thought he got enough attention uh when he was, you know, 20 years ago when he was competing with Bill Gates. And uh it's just one of those things. It's just he's got a personality that that demands it demands this sort of thing. >> He's done a lot of work. >> I'm I'm thinking there's a new PR person involved. >> Maybe he's done also done a lot of work on his face. >> Something's changed a little bit. He used to have kind of a a longish um and he of course it's hard to tell because he always he keeps a lot of facial hair on so you can't really tell what what he might have. Looks like he went to Steve W's plastic surgeon. >> Well, if he was going to go to a plastic surgeon, Steve Winss would be the one to go to because these guys all, you know, know each other. >> Who was the other guy? Who was the actor that had all that work done? Uh, he used to be a fighter. Mickey Ror. >> No, I don't think he went to that guy. >> Oh boy, that's something. >> Yeah, that was a mess. That's a That's a one of those gone bad type up situations >> like reality show botched. Botched. >> Yeah. Botched. >> Tik Tok is in the news again. And by the way, uh the Tik Tok news, you know what that includes? Uh Oracle. >> Yeah. Yeah. They got in on the deal. >> They got in clearly. And you know, and and the the the left the the very liberal media is like, "How come how come none of us guys got in this? Only the friends of, you know, FO of FOT, right? Friends of Trump. Only the friends of Trump got in these deals. They're all >> Yeah, that's pretty pretty close to true. Hor Andre and Horowit. >> No relation. >> Horowitz and uh couple other all friends. You're right. They're all friends of Trump. >> Friends of Trump. FOD. Friends of Trump. >> Well, you know, that's what you do. >> I think that's what you do. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> You don't want Why would you get in on How would you get in on this deal if you were like some >> Trump hater? >> Yeah. >> Well, especially with this administration where he's making the rules. Other administrations, it may have been other parties making the rules and you get friends with somebody in some other division. Here, you go right to the top and you're like, "Hey, listen. Let's have dinner. Let's go to London. I'm going to say all sorts of nice things. I'll use big numbers. I'll make it look good. You know what? You invite Do me a favor. invite me to a dinner in London and I'll make some kind of crazy announcement that everybody's going to say is because of you that we did this. Great strategy. Zuck is >> you know he likes to he likes to socialize. >> Yeah. Sucker Zuckerberg did a great job at that. You heard his >> Well, Zuckerberg m did a reasonable job of of of I wouldn't say getting into the good graces but at least not being an enemy. But for a while he was. Do you remember that first term? >> Oh, absolutely. It was a real problem. >> They learned. They learned you might as well play. Uh pay to play is what the other thing that everybody's yelling at. What kind of a capitalistic society is this? And we have to pay to play. >> Nobody's paying anything. >> Nobody's paying anything. >> But they're playing. Everybody's playing. We saw the rate cut. You know what happened? Well, rates were up. And matter of fact, rates are rising again. They did dip down a little bit, but they're uh seemingly on the rise again. Diet stocks losing weight, all sorts of problems with those. Now, we're seeing some of them come out with maybe some uh uh pills. Again, this is a discussion about that. So, uh StubHub IPO update, we'll talk about that. And also, I just want to mention the other thing is the latest in the crazy. This is this is I I just this this happened during COVID with I don't want to step in this too hard because it's gonna blow up wrong. I just want to talk about this from the outside for a second that we get these kind of hairbrain ideas of what drugs may be doing bad or good or what could be used and everybody hops on. Now we have the whole Tylenol thing. >> Yeah. that Tylenol causes autism or there's a linkage supposedly even though like the autism society of of the world or whatever says no that's not true and FD no that's not true and this no that's not true but some supposedly this is what we talked about a few weeks ago that RFK Jr. is going after for whatever reason this autism thing and finding some cause somewhere. >> He's got to he's just made a big promise to do it. >> So now the Tylenol maker that makes the ingredient for acetaminophen is hit an alltime low two days ago. Popped up a little bit today. >> Yeah, it might not be a bad buy. >> I forgot the name of that company. We can look that up. It's not something that's that's well thought about. So here we are. It's Russia shutter by the way. You know what that phrase is? That that old market adage? You remember it? >> Uh, sell in May and go away. >> Yeah, close. Very same thing. Just just overlap the holiday Jewish holidays. It's sell rash of Bayam Kipper. What are you talking about? >> Is that really a phrase that anyone ever used? >> Go look go look it up. Yep. Yep. Yep. Seriously, it's one of those things, you know? It's like the Santa Claus rally or whatever it is. So, uh, there there's there was an old theory that all the I guess all the Jew traders, Jewish traders were off for the week and the markets would dip and there was these holidays that things were closed. I don't there's a bunch of reasons why, but I'm just telling you seasonally that's a thing. We talked about this last year, too. >> I don't remember talking about it. >> Yep. Sell rush set up by Yumkipper. >> When is Yum Kipper? >> Yum Kipper is next. Uh, Thursday. >> Next Thursday. >> Yeah. So, yes, Wednesday night it starts into Thursday. >> So, >> all right. >> Uh, Vanguard, quick quick point. Somebody a gentleman called me who was a listener to the show and I I wasn't clear with what he was talking about to be very honest with you, but he says, "I need your help." I'm like, "Okay." Uh, somehow he got our phone, my phone number of the of the comp of you know the business here and I picked up the phone this morning. >> It's not that hard to get. >> No, I picked up the phone and he says, "Listen, I'm having problems with Vanguard." I'm like, "Okay, it's not a client." He says, "I could get into this account this, but somehow my account is, do you know of anybody else that is having problem with Vanguard?" I said, "No, I do not. I haven't heard anything." "No, I'm sorry." I said, "You could look it up, you know, but I don't know nothing." He said, "Would you please mention on the on the show to see if somebody could help me?" That's all I know. So, I just did it. I don't know. They call him Vanguard himself and ask them. >> That's what I said. I don't know. He can't get anywhere. So, if anybody's having trouble with Look, if there's a big trouble with Vanguard somehow getting into your accounts, which by the way, we would have heard of this already. >> I would think so. Yes. >> Vanguard is not a little small shop then on our Twitter feeds, which we don't mention that or it's called X now. Uh, you know, at the real D'vorak or >> you know, I'm stuck at with this with this number. I think I've been uh some time ago I think they put a limit on how many followers I can have. I I'm totally convinced of this because other people have these issues. A very It doesn't vary that much. But I would like people to to follow me. >> What is your What is your What is your handle? >> The real D'vorak. >> The real D'vorak. >> John C. D'vorak wasn't available. >> No, it's that's a long story. I I started with the real D'vorak and I stayed with it. I one of these days I may start a new account. I bet you I can surpass my numbers in this account. Let's see if everybody goes and and good experiment by the way, right? Everybody that's listening can go and if you haven't done so already, follow the real D'vorak, follow Andrew Horowitz, and let's see if our numbers go up. >> Yeah, they won't. >> Yeah. Well, let's see. What the heck? We'll see what's happening. All right, let's talk about nuclear on fire. Have you seen these returns some of these stocks year to date like the uranium the uranium urf that has >> I know how's that go up that that's a good ex that is the indicator that this this segment is nuts >> nuts up 75%. >> Yeah, that and that's an ETF. >> That's an ETF that holds a variety of these names. Listen to this. These names I we've been talking about this for a while. We've had this on the game. We have this for clients. Um SMR new scale up 164% year-to date. Oaklo now Oaklow is up 518% year to date. >> We keep on we keep on trimming that position. Keep on making the it keeps going up. We keep on trimming it ever so slightly. Let's take a little bit off the top. One of the things that's interesting about this that's Amazon got involved in that. As a matter of fact, the announcement today with Open AI and Nvidia and they're setting up X amount of gigawatt something or other. They mentioned Oaklo again as the provider of the SMRs nuclear energy. There is so much there is so much required uh power that there is no way >> predicted >> predicted right there. Exactly. Yes, that's a good point. Very good point. >> Let's make that clear. >> Yep. There is but the the predicted hope for and the maybe power needs of these facilities they're building are absurd. And there is no way if it makes it to the completion phase that they're going to be able to power this with normal. Forget about solar, forget about wind, forget about >> no they that can't keep up in any way, >> right? >> You'd be better off with gerbles, you know, in a running in a little treadmill. >> But this there's a lot there's a lot of energy. We're going to talk about that. I have a let's see if I can find this on this list here. They could. It's possible that if you know the one of the problems with tech that people and it's hard to factor it all in because everyone's nuts about Nuke, but technology in general always gets cheaper and faster and smaller. And so these chips that are $5,000 a pop nowadays would eventually are going to be cheaper and faster >> Mhm. >> and smaller because that's just the nature of semiconductors. And if that's all true, there there somewhere down the road, probably in the god knows when, the next decade, uh if all this comes to fruition, there's going to be such an overupp of power that it's got to just decimate the the uh utility companies because they're going to have to lower the prices to next to nothing. >> So So this Mo's law this kind of Moore's law that you're talking about? Yeah. Moore's law, >> which is the idea that's things get cheaper, >> faster, and smaller. >> But you're saying it's going to require even more continually. >> But you're going to say it's going to require even more. >> Uh, >> no, they're going to be cheaper, faster, and more efficient. >> So, the energy needs aren't going to be as high >> at some point. They have to they have to decrease. And so, there's going to be an over supply of energy. and the overupp of energy should bring the price of energy down to next to nothing and it's going to destroy a bunch of utility companies. There's my prediction for the future. >> Well, let's talk about this. Nvidia is opening uh investing in Open AI on the 22nd. Yesterday, it announced a strategic partnership with Open AI, which includes an investment of up to a hundred billion. By the way, there's no such thing as like a $100,000 in anymore. You know, this is $100 million in anyone. No, no. Or $800 million. No, hundred billion. I mean, seriously, 100 billion, just for a moment, can we just talk about that? That's a lot. This a seriously, am I kidding about this? That's duh. That's a lot of money. That's a, you know, can you imagine? Could you imagine what things that you could buy the amount of of what you could build for a hundred billion dollars? I mean, that's just unbelievable. >> Yeah, I know. I want how many I how many houses >> big numbers >> I build for 100 billion. >> So depending on what you you could buy you could you could do let's see uh so if you could do yeah mid-range houses are about uh let's say 200 to $400,000. So you could do like something like uh 350 400,000 homes for that price for 100 billion lowcost housing which we are in desperate need of. You can buy you could a million a million homes that's like three million people housed. So they announced this partnership uh they're going to deploy. Now, the way they're doing these announcements all of a sudden, by the way, are in terms of power consumption. They said the agreement will help deploy at least 10 gawatt of Nvidia systems, which includes millions of its GPUs. The first phase is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2026 using Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform. So the point here is they're going to have these vast warehousy kind of things, right? These facilities stock full of computers. You can't you can't just have chips, you know? You need a computer, right? I mean, you need to plug the the chip into something. So you're going to have that, too. And you're going to have this massive server farm, I guess, is what we'll call it, right? >> Might as well call it that, for want of a better term. >> Yeah. with millions of of GPUs sucking up 10 gigawatts. And then when they talk about gigawatts, they talk about in an annual sense. So, you know, that's that's a major What do you think of this? >> I think this is a bubble. And what are they going to do with all this power? >> It's AI. It's going to create AI. >> AI to do what? >> Well, they they're hoping to get to the inference. They're hoping to get to, you know, the the next level because AI right now is just regurgitation, right? It's a little bit of grammatical help. It's it's coding. It's regurgitation of stuff they have in the LLMs. Now, the thing is that that's not really AI. That's that's that's that's powerful compute. They want to get to the inference level where it could actually think. >> Yeah. Good luck with that. You need some algorithms to do that. You don't need chips. >> You know how many homes can be >> Here we go again. Yeah. >> Do you know how many homes can be powered by 10 gawatt? >> I think it cities. >> 8 million homes. >> Cities. Big cities, >> right? 8 million homes. How many homes are there in in in California? >> Uh well, it's more than 8 million. I think we have 30 million or something like that maybe. >> I mean that this is a lot. This is the >> But the Bay Area is about eight. The entire Bay Area is about I mean there's about a million in San Francisco and there's another five, six or seven around the Bay Area. I'd say I'm guessing eightish. >> Yeah, this this is unbelievable. This this this is shocking the amount. Now Intel Nvidia again, Nvidia coming out with 100 billion. That was just on uh that was yesterday la last week. Intel is getting even more money. This was unbelievable. Nvidia is going to pour $5 billion again. It's like, you know, hey, uh, stocks up three points today. It's 5 billion. Hey, Intel, ring a dingy. Uh, listen, I got five billion for you. Do me a favor. Give me at U three points under market. And what we're going to do is we're going to do a partnership together that develops multi-generations of custom data center and PC products. We're going to manu want you to manufacture this X86 CPU chips, right, for the Nvidia's AI infrastructure, which I guess they'll use for this. and build system on chips CC's for PCs that integrate the chipsets and oh wow Nvidia uh pours this in stock doesn't do anything. Intel stock goes up like 18%. This is after Intel got the bailout for what was it $10 billion a few weeks ago with a below market deal to the US government. The US government's in in for like I think 20 bucks a share or less. >> Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Now, how do we get in these deals with below market? When I say we, not you and I. >> I don't think you can do it legally. >> I don't think you and I, I'm talking about the markets in general. How do they get this? They get this deal. And why is it not dilutive? Where are the shares come from? It had to come from Treasury. >> It has to be diluted. How else can they get And there's the Treasury shares that they can do buybacks on and then dump it back out. Not only so not only not only does this they get it below market value but the rest of us schlooks are getting are going to have diluted diluted shares which means that their earnings that come out are going to be diluted over a much larger base because they didn't pluck this stuff up from the open market >> because if they did it would have been at the market price this was below market that shares had to come from somewhere else and that's from treasury when I say treasury Just everybody's clear about that. I don't mean US Treasury. It's called Treasury shares that the company owns. When the company has shares, they don't release all of their shares. They usually hold back for different things like stock grants and options and things like that. Buying other companies. You've heard of companies say, you know, we're going to buy that company. It's going to be 50% cash and 50% shares. Where do they get that from? Well, they get it from treasury. And then that's also they they get more shares by doing buybacks which are uh when you have buybacks they're the reverse of dilutive and we've complained about this for years where the more shares they buy buy back the better your earnings are. Therefore let's just reverse our discussion. The less shares you buy back, the less it good, the less it is for um earnings, but more importantly, the more shares you issue, the more you have to divide over for the earnings that you make. Therefore, there's a concern. Meanwhile, nobody seems to care because they have Nvidia behind them now and the government behind them now. >> Nobody seems to care. That's a good Yep. >> Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Let's uh let's uh sha shaunter into saunter. Sauna. Shaunter is the word. Saunter. >> Yeah, saunter. Yeah, shaunter. I don't know what that is. >> I don't know what that is either. Uh let's saunter into Tik Tok, shall we? The national thing. This thing again. What you got to love about this administration is they have these they have these things that bug them. You know what I mean? There's like these pet peeves they have. >> Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of you a lot. Of course. But it's what it is. They they they focus in on and they can't get it's like a a dog with with a with something they're not giving up. It's like clamping down. Well, Tik Tok >> tennis ball, >> right? Donald Trump in an interview that aired this Sunday said that uh Rubert Murdoch and his son Latchlin are likely to be involved in the proposal to save Tik Tok in the United States. Just this is like a thing got to save Tik Tok, right? This is Because without us, Tik Tok is going >> well. First you threaten to shut it down, then you're going to save it. >> Yeah. Trouble. >> What are you saving it from? We're saving it from us. >> The whole idea is that there's a belief that the algorithm in let's just say this. Aren't there many other Chinesebased uh apps and things like that that we're all a part of on a regular basis? >> Well, I'm sure there are. It's just that they don't have the uh uh impro uh the the the the mojo of Tik Tok. Tik Tok caught on. It has a very simplistic algorithm we think and uh it's been demonstrated to me a couple times how some of it works and uh it's caught on. I think it it's just a fluke in some ways. Some things catch on. I mean, if you remember when Twitter first came out, there was a bunch of competitors with different names. Pounce was like one of them. >> Oh, I remember that. >> And everybody tried to do, oh, we can do that, the same thing. And uh and nobody it didn't have the mo there was there's a there was an element that was missing or it was just not as cool or people were already on on board with one thing. That's why blue sky hasn't really gone anywhere. It's just you get, you know, you're entrenched and next thing you know, you're running the place. It's just the nature of the business. It doesn't really like to hold a bunch of companies that are all doing the same thing in high regard. It just takes the one a let's use this one and we're all on board. >> Well, it's interesting also FOT friends of Trump, Larry Ellison and Dell Technology CEO Michael Dell are also likely to be involved in this deal. So, you got Rupert Murdoch uh and his son. Um now also out I think it was it was yesterday uh I think it was yesterday today. It was yesterday today um Carolyn Levit who is uh the White House press secretary said that the Tik Tok's algorithm will be secured retrained and operated in the US outside of bite dance control. It's almost like they're going to go and deprogram some kind of spy or something. Well, what they're supposedly going to do, and there there's some debate on whether they're going to get the algorithm, which most people think can be reverse engineered without any trouble. Uh I think uh that Instagram thing, real whatever that thing's called, where they have those just those Tik Tok like uh >> Yeah. Yeah. You have the death scroll. >> Yeah, that is pretty similar. It seems to work the same way. But the uh the the idea is they're going to go in they're supposed to get the algorithm or at least the part of it. I don't know what part, but they're going to supposed to go in there and take out the pinging uh to China. That's the only thing they're going to modify because supposedly Tik Tok, you know, it it it gets you going on some some videos of some sort and then every time you're as you as you keep scrolling through it sends a note to China supposedly. Hey, this guy's on to this thing as a typical American. Let's put it down as a We'll note that and spy on him or something. It's what they say. So that that's what they want to they want to remove the ping. >> As popular as Tik Tok is, there's a lot of reasons why. It has to do with also the the content style that's on there, >> right? And and the ability to do certain things with that actual platform. But >> yeah, there's a number of things Tik Tok does, right, that nobody seems to get a clue about. One of them is that with it's not all of them for I think you can disable it, but the most of the Tik Tok videos you can download as MP4s and you can post them someplace else and it has a Tik Tok logo on it. So it has a a you know a network effect where you have a a promotion. So I I can download. Oh, this woman's nuts. Let me download her video. And I post it on Twitter and it's placed a video on Twitter and there's a Tik Tok logo at the end plugging Tik Tok and nobody's figured this out. >> I know. It seems like this the easiest thing in the world. Everybody's so afraid. >> It's unbelievable how easy it is and it's and it's largely responsible for its success and everybody's so dumb about it. It's unbel It's incredible. >> I agree. It's just it's it's uh coming from weakness rather than strength. But if they do retrain for well a couple things and I don't think we know the answer to this. I don't think they know the answers to this. Like what's happening with updates and things of that nature? Is that China? Is that going to be US? Is it going to be, you know, again, supposedly Oracle's going to be >> It's going to have to be us. >> So if it's going to be us and who who is us is us >> or the Oracle programming team, who else would it be? >> Oh. Oh, good point you make there because Oracle has a really wonderful bank of social media platforms that they've put out in the past. Yeah. No, it's going to fall apart is what what you're implying because they always do. I mean, why don't you just give the product to Microsoft and let them kill it? Actually, give it to Facebook is what you should do. Those just shut it down, which they've been very good at also. But I don't know. Is it going to be the same TikTok? I don't know. What does the retraining mean? I don't know. There's so many questions with this whole thing. Seems um it's going to be interesting. And uh I wonder if the deal is actually even going to get go through and and and who's really checking on this anyway? >> I'll tell you this much, the audience for these things and Tik Tok would be the best example is fickle. >> Uhhuh. And if somebody comes al Chinese company let's say comes along with the ex Tik Tok people or another bite dense product called something else is a jazzy name and has an alternative and so you can move all your videos from Tik Tok to us and you all you have to do is push this button that would happen it would happen so fast you wouldn't know what was going on. This is like the collapse of MySpace. It took almost no time for everyone to bail from MySpace and go to Facebook. It was just like overnight, you know, Fox buys them. They don't know what the hell they're doing. The thing, you know, starts to slowly deteriorate. Facebook comes along with not really a much better product at the time when they first showed up. Next thing you know, boom, MySpace. It's I mean, it's actually I think they're still available, but is who uses it? Nobody. >> Who was Was it Tom? Tom from MySpace. Wasn't that the owner that that said hello to you when you >> Oh, I don't know anything. No, I never had a I don't know. I have no idea. >> Tom, guy named Tom. But, uh, the other thing is that when you think about some of the ways they're going to do this, there's some talk about the requirement to download a new program because the old program is going to probably have all sorts of like bugaboos in it, right? You know, like, oh my god. So, you're gonna have to download a new program. So, those people that download the new program, are you going to have to start from scratch? Oh, there you can do a you can uh you can do a download as an upgrade. It's just it wouldn't be that hard. >> Well, we'll see what happens. We have a meme alert, by the way. Eric John Jackson, a hedge fund manager who partly contributed to the trading explosion Open Door. And we talked about Open Door not too long ago, unveiled his new pick recently. Better Homes and Finance Holdings said his firm holds a bunch of this. Uh Better Homes soared 46% on Monday and I think it was up 35% today. He's touting the stock. So there you go. So New York New York-based mortgage lender that supposedly uses AI. They use That's what they did. AI. If you read the what they do, it's something about AI. AI AI. Reminds me of the of the blockchain mania we had a few years ago. >> That's what this is. That's exactly what this is. And he's But you gota you got to appreciate Eric Jackson for figuring this out. Who is he? I don't know. I've never heard of him before. Is he some dude? Some dude that got popular because he started pushing the open door. That stock OPEN, that stock went crazy after it was, by the way, Open Door was was a was an interesting company. It was owned by major players and LAR and a few others for a while. Stock came down. It just got obliterated. This is a company that would blindly go out and purchase houses online without even looking at them. And they have the same thing that Zillow tried to do and other places where they try to buy up the neighborhood and then start popping other houses in the neighborhood price up so the whole portfolio goes up in value. >> Yeah, good trick. >> Yeah, it didn't work out so well for Open Door. >> But, you know, there's still everybody's looking at this like, oh, it's something. Well, now there's the new thing better homes and I think it's BET 8. Uh, BETR, I think is the symbol. Kind of interesting. Uh oh, I found it. Shares of Ken View, symbol KV UE, are trading lower, largely due to reports from the White House saying that the uh there's a warning linking prenatal prenatable use of cinnamon to autism risk. Supposedly, there's some warning there already. By the way, this isn't like an, you know, earthshattering, but investors are really concerned. Thing is down hard. Was up a little bit today. Um they had a big revenue decline on their last last guidance. They cut their full year guidance in August 7th. But here's the big problem is it's not about oh you know you know nobody's going to buy this anymore. Nobody's going to use Tylenol. They're going to use something else. No. No. The lawsuits. What do you think about that? any parent that has had a child that used Tyler that used Tylenol who is grief ridden and guiltridden right now about what happened and her son is on her daughter's on the spectrum is now going to probably join some kind of class action lawsuit. >> Oh yeah, it's a good consideration. >> There's got to be especially if it is >> like John's like John's Mansville. >> Yeah. which was basically put out of business by this by a giant class action suit. That could happen here. >> Yeah. I don't I don't see how it's not same thing like the opioids with those companies. Those those companies were bad actors. This is different. But if you have the White House and they're going to for the next three years, you know, be on this thing and and RFK Jr. is not going to get off that train, right? >> No. and he's going to find more and more just pick the scab and pick the scab till there's nothing left. On another point, Fizer, one of the uh the one of these one of the companies that was looked at very very carefully by two fine podcasters during the co during the COVID era as John C. D'vorak and Adam Curry show is called No Agenda which is uh live Thursdays, Sundays, 2 p.m. Eastern time. Of course, can be found on all sorts of other places. No Agenda stream and where else. >> Yeah. And it is a podcast so you can always download it. >> Yep. Well, Fizer announced it will acquire clinical stage biotech Metera in a cash and contingent value deal. So, they're going to pay him and say they're going to give him uh uh money now and say, "You know what? We're going to give you more money if you reach a milestone in the future." And the deal includes a $47.50 per share in cash today, which was a 43% premium to their closing price last Friday, plus up to $22.50 in milestone payments tied to the development and commercial success of their lead candidate, which is a um obesity drug. Now Fiser actually closed higher on the news. So that's interesting. It >> was down today. Was I wrong? >> It was down slightly. I mean the whole market was down today, but I think that was a a good thing that they're branching out. We'll see. I mean, Fiser shares are looking ugly, too. >> Yeah. Well, it's on the game. I I picked it. >> Yeah. You picked it or I picked it? >> I don't know. I think one of us picked it. I think I picked it. I'm pretty sure I picked it because I was I have two uh and it was because of I think Well, I don't know. We'll we'll find out later. >> It's my name. I see it. >> It's got your name on it. >> Mhm. Cuz I said hated. It's a hated stock. >> Oh. >> All right. Moving on. Uh mortgage rates 10 and 30-year Treasury yields rose this week. This or this week? Last week and this week despite the Federal Reserve cutting it short-term interest rates. 10 year yield um little change since early 2024 even though the Fed cut rates multiple times since then. As a matter of fact, I have someone coming on the disciplined investor uh not this week but next week. His name is Barry Iiken Green. He is a professor at UC Berkeley in economics, very well known, very well respected and he has a whole thing about the dollar. uh what's going on with the dollar, the the eventual problems with it and bonds. uh wrote a recently paper that I read actually this evening uh on on um the betting sites and and and um why people are looking at certain things with regard to he used the betting sites as the basis for some of his research and about the feelings of where we are today and why uh interest rates are moving higher and there's a whole bunch of things going on but basically we'll talk about this the dollar and all that. He's a really interesting cat. I haven't talked to him since a good show. Yeah, I haven't talked to him since 2012 for whatever reason. I don't know why, but it's got him back on. Um, but 10 year Treasury jumped to 4.145%. It was down to 4% earlier this week. So, maybe sell the news maybe. But rates are going up. Listen, in Japan, this is big news. In Japan, the Bank of Japan is keeping short-term rates steady at 0.5%. Remember, they went negative forever. Years, years, and years. They invented the negative rates. Two board members proposed unsuccessfully to hike it to 75%. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> But here's the big news. One of the things that the Bank of Japan has been doing for years is buying in the open market ETFs and REITs. They've decided to start selling ETFs and REITs. One of the one of the things if you if you are a Japanese investor for the most part a number of years you didn't have a lot of concern because you think well things don't go well the bank of Japan is just going to start buying up the broad-based index ETFs in the market on the open market and also REITs now they're reversing that now you have to wonder is that going to cause a disruption remember because there was all sorts of weird things with the remember the currencies spreads we had all this weird stuff going on with um with with Japan and and the yen and and you know the propping things up with pulling down the yen. This could be an issue. I this is an interesting proposition and an experiment they're doing is is starting to um reverse out of their monetary policy that they've been in for 20 years. You know, the the monetary policy has been very very dovish. >> Yeah. Say the least. 13 years. 37 trillion yen worth of ETFs on his balance sheet. 13 years. Well, they can bleed it back out. See what happens. >> Uh let's see what else we got here. Um the the WHO, the World Health Organization, it's going to be recommending using weight loss drugs to treat obesity in adults. their their their expert committee quote unquote con concluded that the popular GLP1 drugs first developed by Nova Nordisk and Eli Liy are part of the solution for long-term treatment of of obesity. I want to share something that I saw tonight that I thought was really interesting. There was a study done that showed that uh and I quote this commentary of the results of this study. Digging deeper, our work indicates that about 70% of GLP1 users are visiting restaurants less or much less since starting the medication and users were most commonly reducing consumption of carbonated beverages, pizza, burgers, and alcohol. Now, I could tell you because I know a lot of people in the industry, there's something to be said about this that there is a clear pattern of lower alcohol sales and people sharing meals across the whole industry. >> Now, you're talking about this the the uh investment business, >> the restaurant industry. >> Oh, the Okay. You have people You have people that are in the business. >> Yeah. In in the restaurant business. Sorry. And they're and they're having they notice that there's a drop off >> drop off in alcohol sales, drop off in food sales. A lot of people sharing. >> I We're going to split that salad. >> Yeah. Yeah. What do you got here? Uh we got uh chicken wings. Six chicken wings for uh $6 a special. We'll split that. Thank you. >> I got a place. So that's I don't know if I obviously not good for the restaurant business nor the uh the uh I don't know if there's alcohol business uh the wine wine and food in general. Uh well it's an investment opportunity to short some of these operations. >> Well many of those operations are not doing well as it is. You look at many of these names the the chain restaurants. Look at Chipotle getting smoked. You know, you see all those >> Well, that's about time. >> Well, yeah. I mean, that was a long time coming, but but all of these names, I mean, McDonald's probably still I would think the McDonald's probably still doing well. Let's take a look at MCD. >> I don't know what of all the places that should be doing well. McDonald's is the bottom of my list. And not because I hate the company at all, but I have been testing their food for number of years and I stopped because the food has become about a year and a half ago to two years ago that became I think inedible. >> Stocks up 3.65% 65% year to date. Far below market, but still holding up pretty well. One year it's up 1.3%, 5 years up 38%. So, it's it's doing its thing. It's it's just a you know, cash cow, >> I guess. So, >> nobody uh it's one of those things that this people just $5 meals for goodness sakes. I don't know if the GLP1 users were frequently there anyway. I don't know. That you would think that would be one of the first places they would stop going to. >> Yeah, you'd think. >> You'd think the FDA issues Novo Nordisk a warning letter. This is kind of interesting. I don't think Tell me if we talked about this. I I this was a leftover. remember that Oprah special a couple years back or so that they were all about like h you know I did all these diets and dieting and for years and I was on the Weight Watchers thing and I bought into Weight Watchers and forget all that forget dieting now it's all about these drugs you know wobi ompic vtosa so the video origally appeared um it was March 18th 2024 it also be accessed through ABC's website. So the video subsequently appeared on Hulu on March 19th of 2024. Now FDA has determined that the video is false or misleading. The video misbrands Wovio's Epic Vtosa within the meaning of the federal food jug and cosmetic act and makes it a distrib distribution violation. >> No, we have not discussed this. >> Yeah. So Oprah was all over that. She had all these expert. It was the weirdest thing. was a 1-hour special, but all it was when I watched it, cuz I did watch, I'm like, "Oh god, what you talking about?" It was total infomercial. Infomercial. Infomercial. And And I was >> Yeah, they probably paid for the time. >> Exactly. And I guess it wasn't clearly. I don't know. It was The whole thing was misleading. >> Well, gee, huh? Misleading stuff on television. Misleading, right? All right, what else have we got here? Oh, there's a lot of stuff on this list. Um, H-1B golden passports. The White House announced that the new fee of $100,000 per on an annual basis for H1B visas. And of course, they had to walk it back because they just say things and they walk it back. You know, they don't they don't have anything. Let's let's see how this goes. So, they came out. >> The entire administration is one. It's a group of test marketers. >> That's all they are. They're like a beers, right? >> Yeah. They test market everything. Yeah. Nobody liked that idea. We're going to not going to do it. >> So, there was this $100,000 annual fee for H1B visa applications which is mainly used not mainly but it's used in the technology industry primarily with these major companies coming from India, China, etc. where they get these applications in and is a big concern. As a matter of fact, the Indian uh the Indian stock market took a bit of a of a move down on this news which was kind of interesting. >> Why? Well, because this concern that all of a sudden that Indians who who you know are here making all this money, sending money back home are going to have to pay $100,000 a year somehow and they're not going to have jobs. They have to go back to India. Desert later discussed that, well, it's not for the people that are here already. I don't know how that works. So, what's the point? If they're not here already and there's a $100,000 annual fee, so initial and annual fee, who's going to come? What's the point of this? Is it is it is it to dissuade any other people coming? And why if why just not why just not the new people? Why what happened to the people that are here already? I don't understand. Some of this stuff doesn't make sense. There must be a reason. >> Well, it's elusive. >> Yep. Uh there we go. Paul Atkins, chairman of the US Securities Exchange Commission, says his agency will propose a rule change following the Trump administration's call to switch quarterly earnings reports to semianual. He said the if if the rule change is approved, it will uh let companies decide whether they switch to semianual or stay with quarterly. Rule can be changed by a majority vote. This issue has been come under bait for a long time and uh supporters say that the six-month reporting schedule, well, that's going to free up companies to focus on their business as I guess. >> Yeah. What do you think of this? >> Uh I I have multiple thoughts on this. I think it is a little bit ownorous to do these quarterly reports on one hand. On the other hand, it's kind of good as an investor to find out what's going on with the company. Otherwise, we're not going to know for six months and that's a long period of time. On the other hand, do I really care to know about every granular point of point of what's going on uh you know every quarter, let's say? On the other hand, it gives us a lot of information about what's going on in the economy and how to plan properly from a financial perspective. So there's there's there's a lot of sides to this whole discussion. I I I'm kind of almost um I'm on the side of I like quarterlys because I like the transparency and I like the information. So I got to tell you that that I think is something very important on a semiannual base getting information. I think it's going to lead back to less transparency and especially for individuals who have really inability to get any information. It's going to put a lot of analysts out of out of work which is fine with me. Isn't that not great anyway? So retail investors are just not going to have the ability though to get information. So I'm not sure how that disrupts the market. Many companies will probably continue with the quarterly anyway. They have it already, so might as well just do it. >> Yeah, you're in. You already have it set up. >> Yep. >> We got a suckers alert. Elon's Musk's X AI is raising 10 billion dollars from investors and around that values the company now at 200 billion. sources tell CNBC's David Favor. And this fundraiser comes weeks after Musk raised 10 billion in debt and equity at what is believed to be around $150 billion valuation. Now, later on Friday, Musk called the report fake news because that's what he does, right? He's got this that's goes back to that uh said that AXIA is not raising any capital right now. Now if you look back on this back in March Musk he announced that XAI had merged with X the social network Twitter >> all stock deal right just we'll take it over valuing the total company at 80 billion that was in March social media company was at 33 billion that'sund round number let's call it 125 billion okay just as a number then it went for 150 just a few months later I don't I don't know. It seems to me that this is going to this is going to be a thing. This is definitely going to be a thing. That's why Tesla shares like $245. Makes no sense. Their sales suck. But I think what's going to happen is there there's this thought that we're going to see a roll in and a roll up of XAI, Twitter, and and and um and um space space uh SpaceX. >> Space X. >> Mhm. >> Twitter. >> Yep. XAI and uh Tesla, >> all of the all the companies combined. >> Yeah. Because I think that that that will help him towards his goal to get his trillion dollar payday. >> Oh, that's right. He's that's what his goal is. Yeah. >> So, let's just do every bit of financial engineering that's possible. >> Yeah. Yeah. And he's got some I think he it looks as if he's got some people that really know how to do this. >> Oh, he's good at it. He's very good at it. got a couple more stories, but let's let them uh bake till next week because it's time we got to talk about some stocks, don't you think? >> Yeah. This is a game that we play. It's not a solicitation to buy or sell any security. It's not a recommendation of any kind. Nothing on the show should be considered investment advice or a recommendation. If you choose to invest in any of the stocks mentioned, you should know that it may carry risk along with the risk of a loss of principle. You should also seek out professional financial advice for your particular situation. We assume no risk as these are not to be considered recommendations. Horowitz company myself or John Cedavarak may invest in any of the securities mentioned and we'll disclose that on the website under the weekly stock pick section. You can go to dhunplug.com and see all the names we discussed in the segment along with the performance information from the date discussed as well as any additional important disclosures. Do do you remember that guy that really would speak fast in like the 70s on TV? >> Yeah, he he did all kinds of ads. >> Somehow it reminded me of that. You can speed it up. >> He did all sorts of crazy ads, didn't he? >> Yeah, he was good at it. >> All right, so why don't you take this list and look through it? Some nice nice numbers on here. A couple of stopouts or at least one stopout, I guess. >> Yeah, one stopped at Generveled off and that was the end of that. >> I feel like um Iridex got stopped out, too. I have to update that. I think I feel like it got stopped out. M well the top of the list is all green and and nicely green. It's all in the good numbers except a couple of shorts are or still green but they're not like the rest of it. Shorts hard impossible at the moment to do anything. And then we have a mixed bag of stuff uh over the last few weeks and including uh except for Lyft. Lyft is one your one of your picks as a as a buy and it's a winner. And the other stuff is just Iridex is yeah doesn't look well that was a 20enter that might >> maybe maybe it's AP Mhler I got to look no AP Mer is still open um I I thought I saw it a stop but I'll have to look again down >> and uh there's then then you got Tesla short is not making out and neither is Oracle short which is my idea and uh it's you know which is it's a short but it's going to be a while. Y >> u that's about it. We don't except the big the big winner on there of course is still uh uh hallowy therapeutics uh at a 54% gain. >> That that was one of those reversy dipsy doodles as you call it where there was some discussion and concern about Medicare cuts and this place was this this stock was just going to get obliterated. It did get obliterated and everybody's like okay well I guess not. It's one of those uh things that came out and it's like nobody heard about it again. Yeah. >> Do you have any names for this week? >> Yeah, I do. I have two uh to new issues. I got them from I got them from television. >> Oh. >> But I like I like the theories that this woman expressed about these two stocks. Uh one of them is FIGR. >> FIGR. FIGR. >> And this is Figure Technology Solutions. Yeah, this is a stablecoin play, which I think I should have at least something in this regard. Stable coin being some sort of a screw ball uh notion is hard to understand, but uh >> Curry on the on the new agenda show keeps lecturing the audience about it. It's a uh he's a fan. It's a >> it's not a crypto. It is a uh it is a kind of a a way of beating the swift system. >> Yeah, it's basically stable coins. basically uh it's a it's a it's a think of it as uh a dollar just a stable coin. Matter of fact, we talked about that this week with I know that we doing a lot of promotion here, but um I have a Pat Kamusho who's an expert in >> crypto taxation and we talked all about stable coin this week and Barry Iiken Green also has a big issue about stable coin, how it's going to wreck us. >> Yeah, I I think that's a possibility but for but it's not going to do it tomorrow. No. >> Uh, so this is might be a good play. >> Okay. >> And then the other one is NTSK. And this stock is a and I like I like the argument on this too. This is a network security a new network security operation that has uh that is under uh if you if you line up all the network security operations side by side, this is the the best deal. >> Netcope. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That's been moving pretty hard the last few days. >> Yeah. So, that I'm I'm going to >> That's an IPO. That was an IPO, wasn't it? >> Yeah. Yeah. It just came out. Just came out. So, it could >> it could collapse. It could go up. I think it's going to go up. >> Hopefully, the system will be able to handle an IPO. We'll see. All right. Well, uh with that, we close this evening and uh I will we're going to watch for the sell rush and buy Kipper. We'll see what happens there and I'll talk to you again uh next week. >> All right. Gotcha. >> All right. Bye. There's a G. Not that one. >> You've been listening in on a conversation with John C. D'vorak and Andrew Horowitz. Hope to be with you again soon. Bye-bye. >> Now, I'm not broke, but badly bent. I'm not down to my last scent cuz I got a dollar, but it's my last dollar bill. Yes, sir. In my pocket there's a dent. All my dough is nearly spent, but I got a dollar and it's my last dollar bill. Oh, I'd love just one more buck. Fortune left me by chance. Now, here's a hint. I feel like a men. You can hardly tell by a glance. I don't care. No millionaire can give me the ISIS stack cuz I got a dollar. My last dollar bill. This podcast is intended forformational purposes only and does not constitute personalized investment advice. Investing involves risk including the possible loss of principle and past performance is not indicative of future results. The views and opinions expressed are those of the hosts and the guests and may not necessarily reflect those of Horowis Company Inc. an investment advisor registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration with the SEC does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Horowits Company is properly registered or is excluded from registration requirements. Any mention of thirdparty companies, products, or services is provided forformational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement. Hypothetical scenarios or forward-looking statements are for illustrated purposes only and should be viewed only as that and not as guarantees. Content is intended for US residents only and may not be applicable in other jurisdictions. Listeners should consult a qualified financial adviser before making any investment decision. Please visit our website for additional information, disclosures, as well as a copy of our form CRS.
DHUnplugged #770: The Money Tree
Summary
Transcript
Hello and welcome to D'vorak Horowitz Unplugged, an hour-long discussion of activity in the financial markets around the world featuring columnist John C. D'vorak and money manager Andrew Horowitz. This conversation is casual and unrehearsed. Let's join John and Andrew now. >> I'm John C. D'vorak. >> Wait, and I'm Andrew Horowitz. >> Well, there he is. >> That was weird. It's the 24th, I believe, of September, >> I think. Maybe >> 25th. >> 23rd. >> Oh, 23rd. 23rd. Tomorrow's the 24th. Then the 25th. Yes. Today's 23rd. >> My youngest child is about to turn 30. >> 30. >> 30. What? How old is your youngest? >> Uh my youngest is uh is 31. >> Yeah. I told him I told all the kids. I said, "When you reach the age of 30, when when my son reached the age, not my well, my girls are 35." I said, "When when you reach 30 to my son, everybody's off the the wagon train, you know, the easy street, the money train." So, the girls are like, "Wait, I got all then there's an argument, right?" Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The girls got it till they were 35. Why do I get screwed? I'm like, "Well, I I should have done a lot earlier." And And they're like, "Well, what do you mean?" Well, uh, like you know, you have phones, dad, it's so much cheaper to keep us on your phone and how about Netflix? You know, what do you what's the difference between I'll do it? One person, two this whole thing. In the end, nothing. They're scrunching passwords. >> Yeah, exactly. In the end, nothing's going to change. >> No, of course. Well, the password thing is pretty hard to stop, >> right? So, that's what we have going on. uh and a happy uh and a healthy and lash tova tikateu uh for all of our Jewish listeners that are celebrating Russashana. This is the the week of atonement. This is the uh the the the high holidays where we start in rashana celebrating the new year and we finish off yum kipper not eating angry and uh the good thing about the Jewish religion is we just get it over in one day. You know the the Christians they they have Lent for was it 40 days >> and 40 nights >> and uh the same thing you have how long is um Ramadan? Ramadan's >> for there was there was Ramadan's long as a month I think isn't it something like that >> something really long >> the thing is nobody does Lent anymore. >> I know people that do Lent. >> I don't know. I don't know. >> They make a big deal about what they gave up. You know I g I gave up meat. give up some candy for a little couple of days. >> I see somebody give up breathing some of these people, but that's another story entirely. >> Uh the other thing is that um you know, we have this this one day thing where it's it's all these sins. You don't have to um it's it's pretty easy. So no no Hail Marys and Fathers and all this stuff. It's um very convenient, but we live with guilt. That's what we do in our my religion. Uh, let's talk about what's going on. We have a brand new server, by the way. What you're listening to this on right now is our brand new, newly provisioned dedicated server with all the bells and whistles. So, thank you. The um website, the DH Plugged, is much faster right now. It's working very well. And and I got to tell you, John, I've done this a number of times over the years because, you know, you get these leases on these dedicated servers and then and the reason I do it is some people do shared servers for example, right? But then there's bandwidth constraints or you're sharing >> Oh, yeah. No good, >> right? You're sharing you're sharing it with somebody. >> Cost money. Do we should be getting donations for this? >> Yes. This is this is not >> You're not doing it for free. >> This this is not cheap actually. this one. This was this is a good outlay. Um but I get a three-year deal. So this is like the fourth time or whatever that I've renewed this or fifth time and um they reprovision a brand new server. This time though it was so easy. It was one giant copy. Maybe because I there was some tricks I need I I know we had to do and I wrote them down for some tech people to I'm like look when they do this I needed to make sure this this this this and it was I almost almost too smooth >> within within one one day of re of of provisioning uh and uh and changing all the things and you know the web getting everything up and running I literally shut down the other server just shut it down. I I used to keep them running for a while just in case. Shut them down. done. So, >> now you're getting overconfident. >> Yeah. Yeah. Now, oh, now now it's going to come to a screeching halt. We're going to get a DDoS deal going on here. Look, uh, for those of you that don't know, the way we do that is we we we well, we do it ourselves, but also ask our listeners to chip in a little bit. So, if you do want to help out and you want to have your name somewhere in the I don't know the annals of helping out with the new server, go to dhplugged.com and give a donation uh of any size, any sort, anywhere you'll find the little yellow button and we'll make sure that uh you are appreciated somehow. But, uh think about it. This is something you'll say, you know, I'm part of that. That's the reason they're running is because I gave money for that server. So, something good cool there. We need still a new stock. We We forgot to do this last week. >> Yeah, I noticed. >> We talked about it. We didn't do it. So, what do you what do you think? What do you have any thoughts on a on a stock that may be something either we've ran before, but or maybe something brand new? I mean, uh Fizer's in the crosshairs right now. There's um a bunch of healthcare. >> I I'm going to do a small cap because I think those are going to take off. >> So, what kind of name would that be? We're overdue for small caps to to start making some moves and which which might make it more difficult. We want to we want something that's difficult because we have the same names coming in over and over and over again. They seem to have some sort of a formula to do this and it it's been too easy on them. >> Ah >> on our regulars that >> random small cap stock that is popular. Uh, let's see. >> I have a pick that I'm going to use today, which is not only a small I believe it to be a small cap. Not only a small cap, it's a fairly new uh a new offering. >> This one is interesting. This one was up like 60% today, too. Lithium Americas. Why did it choose that one? >> What is it? >> Lithium Americas. This This one, >> that's a winner. Go with that. >> Lac I got to look at that one. Make sure it has enough lithium Americas. Let's see. Trading 82% below Morning Stars fair value estimate. Pure plane lithium producer recently entered production expect to benefit the rising lithium price in 2025. Rated with a narrow economic moat uh and standard capital high uncertainty rating typical of small castle growth potential nanuclear Etsy genius sports any of those. No, you like this one. >> I like the lithium play. >> It's interesting that one was >> it has a couple of dimensions to it that make it an interesting thing to try to predict. >> I want to just look at this because I I could swear this thing was up a lot today. L A C. Is that the symbol? L A. No. Okay. Cancel. Uh, just give me one more second and then I'll just L A doesn't have anything. What is that? It's No, you know, maybe Argentinia. Argentinian. Lithium. We should probably do this. I don't know. Lithium America's Group right here. It's LAC. It was up 78% after hours today. >> Oh, okay. This would be impossible to to track. >> I'm telling you, I saw this going. Lac >> could go down, could go up, it could go cram. >> Could die in the vine. It's a perfect stock for the game. >> I find I find that weird how that came up as a randomized small cap stock, but it must be something. >> Yeah. Makes it even more peculiar. >> Yeah. Very strange. Very strange. Okay, so let's talk about the some other things that are going on. Um the the nuclear sky stocks, the nuclear stocks are just doing out of control. That's unbelievable. We have a money tree market right now. Today was a bit of a down day, but that was because Powell was talking about how well maybe stocks are overvalued, he said, or they're fair highly priced. But aside from that, and that's that's not unusual for a market to come back a little bit after many days of an upward trend and things just going crazy. And there's a fascinating thing that's going on right now, which we're gonna have to talk about. This whole this whole uh circular financing and vendor financing that's going on right now. This is something we saw again, we talked about this a little bit last week, I think, when we talked about how we saw what was going with Oracle. Remember that? We talked about how Oracle's getting these big financing and doing these deals and it's it's the AI boom and they're getting money from Open AI. >> Show me the money, >> right? And then it's like, wait, wait, open AI is, you know, saying, well, we'll give you $400 billion. Like, by the way, I'm going to give Oracle a trillion dollars. How about you? >> Uh, I don't think I can go that big. Maybe a half a half a trill. >> Yeah. So, you know, this is the kind of thing that they're speculating this on the future. Well, there's more that there's even more that happened today. You know, they're talking about new facilities being opened up and money just wherever it's coming from. And what's really interesting is starting to be picked up by the mainstream media now in the business world. People are starting to ask questions like how where is this all going to come from? >> Wow. It's about time. >> Yeah. Where is this all going to come from? But right now, we're to the moon to the sky. money tree markets are just happening where it seems that this financing is just nontoppable and there's going to be the continuation of this for some time and that is what is driving almost every single day there's another announcement welltimed wellplaced and it usually involves Oracle which seems like all of a sudden there's a love affair with Larry Ellison and Oracle I you know I I'd like to look into this I I would bet that he has a new PR uh publicist What does he need one for at his age? He's 81 years old. What is he doing? >> He's always he's he likes himself and he's always he does and he's always and he's proud and he and he's always wanted to be the richest guy and he likes the idea of getting the publicity. He never thought he got enough attention uh when he was, you know, 20 years ago when he was competing with Bill Gates. And uh it's just one of those things. It's just he's got a personality that that demands it demands this sort of thing. >> He's done a lot of work. >> I'm I'm thinking there's a new PR person involved. >> Maybe he's done also done a lot of work on his face. >> Something's changed a little bit. He used to have kind of a a longish um and he of course it's hard to tell because he always he keeps a lot of facial hair on so you can't really tell what what he might have. Looks like he went to Steve W's plastic surgeon. >> Well, if he was going to go to a plastic surgeon, Steve Winss would be the one to go to because these guys all, you know, know each other. >> Who was the other guy? Who was the actor that had all that work done? Uh, he used to be a fighter. Mickey Ror. >> No, I don't think he went to that guy. >> Oh boy, that's something. >> Yeah, that was a mess. That's a That's a one of those gone bad type up situations >> like reality show botched. Botched. >> Yeah. Botched. >> Tik Tok is in the news again. And by the way, uh the Tik Tok news, you know what that includes? Uh Oracle. >> Yeah. Yeah. They got in on the deal. >> They got in clearly. And you know, and and the the the left the the very liberal media is like, "How come how come none of us guys got in this? Only the friends of, you know, FO of FOT, right? Friends of Trump. Only the friends of Trump got in these deals. They're all >> Yeah, that's pretty pretty close to true. Hor Andre and Horowit. >> No relation. >> Horowitz and uh couple other all friends. You're right. They're all friends of Trump. >> Friends of Trump. FOD. Friends of Trump. >> Well, you know, that's what you do. >> I think that's what you do. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> You don't want Why would you get in on How would you get in on this deal if you were like some >> Trump hater? >> Yeah. >> Well, especially with this administration where he's making the rules. Other administrations, it may have been other parties making the rules and you get friends with somebody in some other division. Here, you go right to the top and you're like, "Hey, listen. Let's have dinner. Let's go to London. I'm going to say all sorts of nice things. I'll use big numbers. I'll make it look good. You know what? You invite Do me a favor. invite me to a dinner in London and I'll make some kind of crazy announcement that everybody's going to say is because of you that we did this. Great strategy. Zuck is >> you know he likes to he likes to socialize. >> Yeah. Sucker Zuckerberg did a great job at that. You heard his >> Well, Zuckerberg m did a reasonable job of of of I wouldn't say getting into the good graces but at least not being an enemy. But for a while he was. Do you remember that first term? >> Oh, absolutely. It was a real problem. >> They learned. They learned you might as well play. Uh pay to play is what the other thing that everybody's yelling at. What kind of a capitalistic society is this? And we have to pay to play. >> Nobody's paying anything. >> Nobody's paying anything. >> But they're playing. Everybody's playing. We saw the rate cut. You know what happened? Well, rates were up. And matter of fact, rates are rising again. They did dip down a little bit, but they're uh seemingly on the rise again. Diet stocks losing weight, all sorts of problems with those. Now, we're seeing some of them come out with maybe some uh uh pills. Again, this is a discussion about that. So, uh StubHub IPO update, we'll talk about that. And also, I just want to mention the other thing is the latest in the crazy. This is this is I I just this this happened during COVID with I don't want to step in this too hard because it's gonna blow up wrong. I just want to talk about this from the outside for a second that we get these kind of hairbrain ideas of what drugs may be doing bad or good or what could be used and everybody hops on. Now we have the whole Tylenol thing. >> Yeah. that Tylenol causes autism or there's a linkage supposedly even though like the autism society of of the world or whatever says no that's not true and FD no that's not true and this no that's not true but some supposedly this is what we talked about a few weeks ago that RFK Jr. is going after for whatever reason this autism thing and finding some cause somewhere. >> He's got to he's just made a big promise to do it. >> So now the Tylenol maker that makes the ingredient for acetaminophen is hit an alltime low two days ago. Popped up a little bit today. >> Yeah, it might not be a bad buy. >> I forgot the name of that company. We can look that up. It's not something that's that's well thought about. So here we are. It's Russia shutter by the way. You know what that phrase is? That that old market adage? You remember it? >> Uh, sell in May and go away. >> Yeah, close. Very same thing. Just just overlap the holiday Jewish holidays. It's sell rash of Bayam Kipper. What are you talking about? >> Is that really a phrase that anyone ever used? >> Go look go look it up. Yep. Yep. Yep. Seriously, it's one of those things, you know? It's like the Santa Claus rally or whatever it is. So, uh, there there's there was an old theory that all the I guess all the Jew traders, Jewish traders were off for the week and the markets would dip and there was these holidays that things were closed. I don't there's a bunch of reasons why, but I'm just telling you seasonally that's a thing. We talked about this last year, too. >> I don't remember talking about it. >> Yep. Sell rush set up by Yumkipper. >> When is Yum Kipper? >> Yum Kipper is next. Uh, Thursday. >> Next Thursday. >> Yeah. So, yes, Wednesday night it starts into Thursday. >> So, >> all right. >> Uh, Vanguard, quick quick point. Somebody a gentleman called me who was a listener to the show and I I wasn't clear with what he was talking about to be very honest with you, but he says, "I need your help." I'm like, "Okay." Uh, somehow he got our phone, my phone number of the of the comp of you know the business here and I picked up the phone this morning. >> It's not that hard to get. >> No, I picked up the phone and he says, "Listen, I'm having problems with Vanguard." I'm like, "Okay, it's not a client." He says, "I could get into this account this, but somehow my account is, do you know of anybody else that is having problem with Vanguard?" I said, "No, I do not. I haven't heard anything." "No, I'm sorry." I said, "You could look it up, you know, but I don't know nothing." He said, "Would you please mention on the on the show to see if somebody could help me?" That's all I know. So, I just did it. I don't know. They call him Vanguard himself and ask them. >> That's what I said. I don't know. He can't get anywhere. So, if anybody's having trouble with Look, if there's a big trouble with Vanguard somehow getting into your accounts, which by the way, we would have heard of this already. >> I would think so. Yes. >> Vanguard is not a little small shop then on our Twitter feeds, which we don't mention that or it's called X now. Uh, you know, at the real D'vorak or >> you know, I'm stuck at with this with this number. I think I've been uh some time ago I think they put a limit on how many followers I can have. I I'm totally convinced of this because other people have these issues. A very It doesn't vary that much. But I would like people to to follow me. >> What is your What is your What is your handle? >> The real D'vorak. >> The real D'vorak. >> John C. D'vorak wasn't available. >> No, it's that's a long story. I I started with the real D'vorak and I stayed with it. I one of these days I may start a new account. I bet you I can surpass my numbers in this account. Let's see if everybody goes and and good experiment by the way, right? Everybody that's listening can go and if you haven't done so already, follow the real D'vorak, follow Andrew Horowitz, and let's see if our numbers go up. >> Yeah, they won't. >> Yeah. Well, let's see. What the heck? We'll see what's happening. All right, let's talk about nuclear on fire. Have you seen these returns some of these stocks year to date like the uranium the uranium urf that has >> I know how's that go up that that's a good ex that is the indicator that this this segment is nuts >> nuts up 75%. >> Yeah, that and that's an ETF. >> That's an ETF that holds a variety of these names. Listen to this. These names I we've been talking about this for a while. We've had this on the game. We have this for clients. Um SMR new scale up 164% year-to date. Oaklo now Oaklow is up 518% year to date. >> We keep on we keep on trimming that position. Keep on making the it keeps going up. We keep on trimming it ever so slightly. Let's take a little bit off the top. One of the things that's interesting about this that's Amazon got involved in that. As a matter of fact, the announcement today with Open AI and Nvidia and they're setting up X amount of gigawatt something or other. They mentioned Oaklo again as the provider of the SMRs nuclear energy. There is so much there is so much required uh power that there is no way >> predicted >> predicted right there. Exactly. Yes, that's a good point. Very good point. >> Let's make that clear. >> Yep. There is but the the predicted hope for and the maybe power needs of these facilities they're building are absurd. And there is no way if it makes it to the completion phase that they're going to be able to power this with normal. Forget about solar, forget about wind, forget about >> no they that can't keep up in any way, >> right? >> You'd be better off with gerbles, you know, in a running in a little treadmill. >> But this there's a lot there's a lot of energy. We're going to talk about that. I have a let's see if I can find this on this list here. They could. It's possible that if you know the one of the problems with tech that people and it's hard to factor it all in because everyone's nuts about Nuke, but technology in general always gets cheaper and faster and smaller. And so these chips that are $5,000 a pop nowadays would eventually are going to be cheaper and faster >> Mhm. >> and smaller because that's just the nature of semiconductors. And if that's all true, there there somewhere down the road, probably in the god knows when, the next decade, uh if all this comes to fruition, there's going to be such an overupp of power that it's got to just decimate the the uh utility companies because they're going to have to lower the prices to next to nothing. >> So So this Mo's law this kind of Moore's law that you're talking about? Yeah. Moore's law, >> which is the idea that's things get cheaper, >> faster, and smaller. >> But you're saying it's going to require even more continually. >> But you're going to say it's going to require even more. >> Uh, >> no, they're going to be cheaper, faster, and more efficient. >> So, the energy needs aren't going to be as high >> at some point. They have to they have to decrease. And so, there's going to be an over supply of energy. and the overupp of energy should bring the price of energy down to next to nothing and it's going to destroy a bunch of utility companies. There's my prediction for the future. >> Well, let's talk about this. Nvidia is opening uh investing in Open AI on the 22nd. Yesterday, it announced a strategic partnership with Open AI, which includes an investment of up to a hundred billion. By the way, there's no such thing as like a $100,000 in anymore. You know, this is $100 million in anyone. No, no. Or $800 million. No, hundred billion. I mean, seriously, 100 billion, just for a moment, can we just talk about that? That's a lot. This a seriously, am I kidding about this? That's duh. That's a lot of money. That's a, you know, can you imagine? Could you imagine what things that you could buy the amount of of what you could build for a hundred billion dollars? I mean, that's just unbelievable. >> Yeah, I know. I want how many I how many houses >> big numbers >> I build for 100 billion. >> So depending on what you you could buy you could you could do let's see uh so if you could do yeah mid-range houses are about uh let's say 200 to $400,000. So you could do like something like uh 350 400,000 homes for that price for 100 billion lowcost housing which we are in desperate need of. You can buy you could a million a million homes that's like three million people housed. So they announced this partnership uh they're going to deploy. Now, the way they're doing these announcements all of a sudden, by the way, are in terms of power consumption. They said the agreement will help deploy at least 10 gawatt of Nvidia systems, which includes millions of its GPUs. The first phase is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2026 using Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform. So the point here is they're going to have these vast warehousy kind of things, right? These facilities stock full of computers. You can't you can't just have chips, you know? You need a computer, right? I mean, you need to plug the the chip into something. So you're going to have that, too. And you're going to have this massive server farm, I guess, is what we'll call it, right? >> Might as well call it that, for want of a better term. >> Yeah. with millions of of GPUs sucking up 10 gigawatts. And then when they talk about gigawatts, they talk about in an annual sense. So, you know, that's that's a major What do you think of this? >> I think this is a bubble. And what are they going to do with all this power? >> It's AI. It's going to create AI. >> AI to do what? >> Well, they they're hoping to get to the inference. They're hoping to get to, you know, the the next level because AI right now is just regurgitation, right? It's a little bit of grammatical help. It's it's coding. It's regurgitation of stuff they have in the LLMs. Now, the thing is that that's not really AI. That's that's that's that's powerful compute. They want to get to the inference level where it could actually think. >> Yeah. Good luck with that. You need some algorithms to do that. You don't need chips. >> You know how many homes can be >> Here we go again. Yeah. >> Do you know how many homes can be powered by 10 gawatt? >> I think it cities. >> 8 million homes. >> Cities. Big cities, >> right? 8 million homes. How many homes are there in in in California? >> Uh well, it's more than 8 million. I think we have 30 million or something like that maybe. >> I mean that this is a lot. This is the >> But the Bay Area is about eight. The entire Bay Area is about I mean there's about a million in San Francisco and there's another five, six or seven around the Bay Area. I'd say I'm guessing eightish. >> Yeah, this this is unbelievable. This this this is shocking the amount. Now Intel Nvidia again, Nvidia coming out with 100 billion. That was just on uh that was yesterday la last week. Intel is getting even more money. This was unbelievable. Nvidia is going to pour $5 billion again. It's like, you know, hey, uh, stocks up three points today. It's 5 billion. Hey, Intel, ring a dingy. Uh, listen, I got five billion for you. Do me a favor. Give me at U three points under market. And what we're going to do is we're going to do a partnership together that develops multi-generations of custom data center and PC products. We're going to manu want you to manufacture this X86 CPU chips, right, for the Nvidia's AI infrastructure, which I guess they'll use for this. and build system on chips CC's for PCs that integrate the chipsets and oh wow Nvidia uh pours this in stock doesn't do anything. Intel stock goes up like 18%. This is after Intel got the bailout for what was it $10 billion a few weeks ago with a below market deal to the US government. The US government's in in for like I think 20 bucks a share or less. >> Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Now, how do we get in these deals with below market? When I say we, not you and I. >> I don't think you can do it legally. >> I don't think you and I, I'm talking about the markets in general. How do they get this? They get this deal. And why is it not dilutive? Where are the shares come from? It had to come from Treasury. >> It has to be diluted. How else can they get And there's the Treasury shares that they can do buybacks on and then dump it back out. Not only so not only not only does this they get it below market value but the rest of us schlooks are getting are going to have diluted diluted shares which means that their earnings that come out are going to be diluted over a much larger base because they didn't pluck this stuff up from the open market >> because if they did it would have been at the market price this was below market that shares had to come from somewhere else and that's from treasury when I say treasury Just everybody's clear about that. I don't mean US Treasury. It's called Treasury shares that the company owns. When the company has shares, they don't release all of their shares. They usually hold back for different things like stock grants and options and things like that. Buying other companies. You've heard of companies say, you know, we're going to buy that company. It's going to be 50% cash and 50% shares. Where do they get that from? Well, they get it from treasury. And then that's also they they get more shares by doing buybacks which are uh when you have buybacks they're the reverse of dilutive and we've complained about this for years where the more shares they buy buy back the better your earnings are. Therefore let's just reverse our discussion. The less shares you buy back, the less it good, the less it is for um earnings, but more importantly, the more shares you issue, the more you have to divide over for the earnings that you make. Therefore, there's a concern. Meanwhile, nobody seems to care because they have Nvidia behind them now and the government behind them now. >> Nobody seems to care. That's a good Yep. >> Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Let's uh let's uh sha shaunter into saunter. Sauna. Shaunter is the word. Saunter. >> Yeah, saunter. Yeah, shaunter. I don't know what that is. >> I don't know what that is either. Uh let's saunter into Tik Tok, shall we? The national thing. This thing again. What you got to love about this administration is they have these they have these things that bug them. You know what I mean? There's like these pet peeves they have. >> Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of you a lot. Of course. But it's what it is. They they they focus in on and they can't get it's like a a dog with with a with something they're not giving up. It's like clamping down. Well, Tik Tok >> tennis ball, >> right? Donald Trump in an interview that aired this Sunday said that uh Rubert Murdoch and his son Latchlin are likely to be involved in the proposal to save Tik Tok in the United States. Just this is like a thing got to save Tik Tok, right? This is Because without us, Tik Tok is going >> well. First you threaten to shut it down, then you're going to save it. >> Yeah. Trouble. >> What are you saving it from? We're saving it from us. >> The whole idea is that there's a belief that the algorithm in let's just say this. Aren't there many other Chinesebased uh apps and things like that that we're all a part of on a regular basis? >> Well, I'm sure there are. It's just that they don't have the uh uh impro uh the the the the mojo of Tik Tok. Tik Tok caught on. It has a very simplistic algorithm we think and uh it's been demonstrated to me a couple times how some of it works and uh it's caught on. I think it it's just a fluke in some ways. Some things catch on. I mean, if you remember when Twitter first came out, there was a bunch of competitors with different names. Pounce was like one of them. >> Oh, I remember that. >> And everybody tried to do, oh, we can do that, the same thing. And uh and nobody it didn't have the mo there was there's a there was an element that was missing or it was just not as cool or people were already on on board with one thing. That's why blue sky hasn't really gone anywhere. It's just you get, you know, you're entrenched and next thing you know, you're running the place. It's just the nature of the business. It doesn't really like to hold a bunch of companies that are all doing the same thing in high regard. It just takes the one a let's use this one and we're all on board. >> Well, it's interesting also FOT friends of Trump, Larry Ellison and Dell Technology CEO Michael Dell are also likely to be involved in this deal. So, you got Rupert Murdoch uh and his son. Um now also out I think it was it was yesterday uh I think it was yesterday today. It was yesterday today um Carolyn Levit who is uh the White House press secretary said that the Tik Tok's algorithm will be secured retrained and operated in the US outside of bite dance control. It's almost like they're going to go and deprogram some kind of spy or something. Well, what they're supposedly going to do, and there there's some debate on whether they're going to get the algorithm, which most people think can be reverse engineered without any trouble. Uh I think uh that Instagram thing, real whatever that thing's called, where they have those just those Tik Tok like uh >> Yeah. Yeah. You have the death scroll. >> Yeah, that is pretty similar. It seems to work the same way. But the uh the the idea is they're going to go in they're supposed to get the algorithm or at least the part of it. I don't know what part, but they're going to supposed to go in there and take out the pinging uh to China. That's the only thing they're going to modify because supposedly Tik Tok, you know, it it it gets you going on some some videos of some sort and then every time you're as you as you keep scrolling through it sends a note to China supposedly. Hey, this guy's on to this thing as a typical American. Let's put it down as a We'll note that and spy on him or something. It's what they say. So that that's what they want to they want to remove the ping. >> As popular as Tik Tok is, there's a lot of reasons why. It has to do with also the the content style that's on there, >> right? And and the ability to do certain things with that actual platform. But >> yeah, there's a number of things Tik Tok does, right, that nobody seems to get a clue about. One of them is that with it's not all of them for I think you can disable it, but the most of the Tik Tok videos you can download as MP4s and you can post them someplace else and it has a Tik Tok logo on it. So it has a a you know a network effect where you have a a promotion. So I I can download. Oh, this woman's nuts. Let me download her video. And I post it on Twitter and it's placed a video on Twitter and there's a Tik Tok logo at the end plugging Tik Tok and nobody's figured this out. >> I know. It seems like this the easiest thing in the world. Everybody's so afraid. >> It's unbelievable how easy it is and it's and it's largely responsible for its success and everybody's so dumb about it. It's unbel It's incredible. >> I agree. It's just it's it's uh coming from weakness rather than strength. But if they do retrain for well a couple things and I don't think we know the answer to this. I don't think they know the answers to this. Like what's happening with updates and things of that nature? Is that China? Is that going to be US? Is it going to be, you know, again, supposedly Oracle's going to be >> It's going to have to be us. >> So if it's going to be us and who who is us is us >> or the Oracle programming team, who else would it be? >> Oh. Oh, good point you make there because Oracle has a really wonderful bank of social media platforms that they've put out in the past. Yeah. No, it's going to fall apart is what what you're implying because they always do. I mean, why don't you just give the product to Microsoft and let them kill it? Actually, give it to Facebook is what you should do. Those just shut it down, which they've been very good at also. But I don't know. Is it going to be the same TikTok? I don't know. What does the retraining mean? I don't know. There's so many questions with this whole thing. Seems um it's going to be interesting. And uh I wonder if the deal is actually even going to get go through and and and who's really checking on this anyway? >> I'll tell you this much, the audience for these things and Tik Tok would be the best example is fickle. >> Uhhuh. And if somebody comes al Chinese company let's say comes along with the ex Tik Tok people or another bite dense product called something else is a jazzy name and has an alternative and so you can move all your videos from Tik Tok to us and you all you have to do is push this button that would happen it would happen so fast you wouldn't know what was going on. This is like the collapse of MySpace. It took almost no time for everyone to bail from MySpace and go to Facebook. It was just like overnight, you know, Fox buys them. They don't know what the hell they're doing. The thing, you know, starts to slowly deteriorate. Facebook comes along with not really a much better product at the time when they first showed up. Next thing you know, boom, MySpace. It's I mean, it's actually I think they're still available, but is who uses it? Nobody. >> Who was Was it Tom? Tom from MySpace. Wasn't that the owner that that said hello to you when you >> Oh, I don't know anything. No, I never had a I don't know. I have no idea. >> Tom, guy named Tom. But, uh, the other thing is that when you think about some of the ways they're going to do this, there's some talk about the requirement to download a new program because the old program is going to probably have all sorts of like bugaboos in it, right? You know, like, oh my god. So, you're gonna have to download a new program. So, those people that download the new program, are you going to have to start from scratch? Oh, there you can do a you can uh you can do a download as an upgrade. It's just it wouldn't be that hard. >> Well, we'll see what happens. We have a meme alert, by the way. Eric John Jackson, a hedge fund manager who partly contributed to the trading explosion Open Door. And we talked about Open Door not too long ago, unveiled his new pick recently. Better Homes and Finance Holdings said his firm holds a bunch of this. Uh Better Homes soared 46% on Monday and I think it was up 35% today. He's touting the stock. So there you go. So New York New York-based mortgage lender that supposedly uses AI. They use That's what they did. AI. If you read the what they do, it's something about AI. AI AI. Reminds me of the of the blockchain mania we had a few years ago. >> That's what this is. That's exactly what this is. And he's But you gota you got to appreciate Eric Jackson for figuring this out. Who is he? I don't know. I've never heard of him before. Is he some dude? Some dude that got popular because he started pushing the open door. That stock OPEN, that stock went crazy after it was, by the way, Open Door was was a was an interesting company. It was owned by major players and LAR and a few others for a while. Stock came down. It just got obliterated. This is a company that would blindly go out and purchase houses online without even looking at them. And they have the same thing that Zillow tried to do and other places where they try to buy up the neighborhood and then start popping other houses in the neighborhood price up so the whole portfolio goes up in value. >> Yeah, good trick. >> Yeah, it didn't work out so well for Open Door. >> But, you know, there's still everybody's looking at this like, oh, it's something. Well, now there's the new thing better homes and I think it's BET 8. Uh, BETR, I think is the symbol. Kind of interesting. Uh oh, I found it. Shares of Ken View, symbol KV UE, are trading lower, largely due to reports from the White House saying that the uh there's a warning linking prenatal prenatable use of cinnamon to autism risk. Supposedly, there's some warning there already. By the way, this isn't like an, you know, earthshattering, but investors are really concerned. Thing is down hard. Was up a little bit today. Um they had a big revenue decline on their last last guidance. They cut their full year guidance in August 7th. But here's the big problem is it's not about oh you know you know nobody's going to buy this anymore. Nobody's going to use Tylenol. They're going to use something else. No. No. The lawsuits. What do you think about that? any parent that has had a child that used Tyler that used Tylenol who is grief ridden and guiltridden right now about what happened and her son is on her daughter's on the spectrum is now going to probably join some kind of class action lawsuit. >> Oh yeah, it's a good consideration. >> There's got to be especially if it is >> like John's like John's Mansville. >> Yeah. which was basically put out of business by this by a giant class action suit. That could happen here. >> Yeah. I don't I don't see how it's not same thing like the opioids with those companies. Those those companies were bad actors. This is different. But if you have the White House and they're going to for the next three years, you know, be on this thing and and RFK Jr. is not going to get off that train, right? >> No. and he's going to find more and more just pick the scab and pick the scab till there's nothing left. On another point, Fizer, one of the uh the one of these one of the companies that was looked at very very carefully by two fine podcasters during the co during the COVID era as John C. D'vorak and Adam Curry show is called No Agenda which is uh live Thursdays, Sundays, 2 p.m. Eastern time. Of course, can be found on all sorts of other places. No Agenda stream and where else. >> Yeah. And it is a podcast so you can always download it. >> Yep. Well, Fizer announced it will acquire clinical stage biotech Metera in a cash and contingent value deal. So, they're going to pay him and say they're going to give him uh uh money now and say, "You know what? We're going to give you more money if you reach a milestone in the future." And the deal includes a $47.50 per share in cash today, which was a 43% premium to their closing price last Friday, plus up to $22.50 in milestone payments tied to the development and commercial success of their lead candidate, which is a um obesity drug. Now Fiser actually closed higher on the news. So that's interesting. It >> was down today. Was I wrong? >> It was down slightly. I mean the whole market was down today, but I think that was a a good thing that they're branching out. We'll see. I mean, Fiser shares are looking ugly, too. >> Yeah. Well, it's on the game. I I picked it. >> Yeah. You picked it or I picked it? >> I don't know. I think one of us picked it. I think I picked it. I'm pretty sure I picked it because I was I have two uh and it was because of I think Well, I don't know. We'll we'll find out later. >> It's my name. I see it. >> It's got your name on it. >> Mhm. Cuz I said hated. It's a hated stock. >> Oh. >> All right. Moving on. Uh mortgage rates 10 and 30-year Treasury yields rose this week. This or this week? Last week and this week despite the Federal Reserve cutting it short-term interest rates. 10 year yield um little change since early 2024 even though the Fed cut rates multiple times since then. As a matter of fact, I have someone coming on the disciplined investor uh not this week but next week. His name is Barry Iiken Green. He is a professor at UC Berkeley in economics, very well known, very well respected and he has a whole thing about the dollar. uh what's going on with the dollar, the the eventual problems with it and bonds. uh wrote a recently paper that I read actually this evening uh on on um the betting sites and and and um why people are looking at certain things with regard to he used the betting sites as the basis for some of his research and about the feelings of where we are today and why uh interest rates are moving higher and there's a whole bunch of things going on but basically we'll talk about this the dollar and all that. He's a really interesting cat. I haven't talked to him since a good show. Yeah, I haven't talked to him since 2012 for whatever reason. I don't know why, but it's got him back on. Um, but 10 year Treasury jumped to 4.145%. It was down to 4% earlier this week. So, maybe sell the news maybe. But rates are going up. Listen, in Japan, this is big news. In Japan, the Bank of Japan is keeping short-term rates steady at 0.5%. Remember, they went negative forever. Years, years, and years. They invented the negative rates. Two board members proposed unsuccessfully to hike it to 75%. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> But here's the big news. One of the things that the Bank of Japan has been doing for years is buying in the open market ETFs and REITs. They've decided to start selling ETFs and REITs. One of the one of the things if you if you are a Japanese investor for the most part a number of years you didn't have a lot of concern because you think well things don't go well the bank of Japan is just going to start buying up the broad-based index ETFs in the market on the open market and also REITs now they're reversing that now you have to wonder is that going to cause a disruption remember because there was all sorts of weird things with the remember the currencies spreads we had all this weird stuff going on with um with with Japan and and the yen and and you know the propping things up with pulling down the yen. This could be an issue. I this is an interesting proposition and an experiment they're doing is is starting to um reverse out of their monetary policy that they've been in for 20 years. You know, the the monetary policy has been very very dovish. >> Yeah. Say the least. 13 years. 37 trillion yen worth of ETFs on his balance sheet. 13 years. Well, they can bleed it back out. See what happens. >> Uh let's see what else we got here. Um the the WHO, the World Health Organization, it's going to be recommending using weight loss drugs to treat obesity in adults. their their their expert committee quote unquote con concluded that the popular GLP1 drugs first developed by Nova Nordisk and Eli Liy are part of the solution for long-term treatment of of obesity. I want to share something that I saw tonight that I thought was really interesting. There was a study done that showed that uh and I quote this commentary of the results of this study. Digging deeper, our work indicates that about 70% of GLP1 users are visiting restaurants less or much less since starting the medication and users were most commonly reducing consumption of carbonated beverages, pizza, burgers, and alcohol. Now, I could tell you because I know a lot of people in the industry, there's something to be said about this that there is a clear pattern of lower alcohol sales and people sharing meals across the whole industry. >> Now, you're talking about this the the uh investment business, >> the restaurant industry. >> Oh, the Okay. You have people You have people that are in the business. >> Yeah. In in the restaurant business. Sorry. And they're and they're having they notice that there's a drop off >> drop off in alcohol sales, drop off in food sales. A lot of people sharing. >> I We're going to split that salad. >> Yeah. Yeah. What do you got here? Uh we got uh chicken wings. Six chicken wings for uh $6 a special. We'll split that. Thank you. >> I got a place. So that's I don't know if I obviously not good for the restaurant business nor the uh the uh I don't know if there's alcohol business uh the wine wine and food in general. Uh well it's an investment opportunity to short some of these operations. >> Well many of those operations are not doing well as it is. You look at many of these names the the chain restaurants. Look at Chipotle getting smoked. You know, you see all those >> Well, that's about time. >> Well, yeah. I mean, that was a long time coming, but but all of these names, I mean, McDonald's probably still I would think the McDonald's probably still doing well. Let's take a look at MCD. >> I don't know what of all the places that should be doing well. McDonald's is the bottom of my list. And not because I hate the company at all, but I have been testing their food for number of years and I stopped because the food has become about a year and a half ago to two years ago that became I think inedible. >> Stocks up 3.65% 65% year to date. Far below market, but still holding up pretty well. One year it's up 1.3%, 5 years up 38%. So, it's it's doing its thing. It's it's just a you know, cash cow, >> I guess. So, >> nobody uh it's one of those things that this people just $5 meals for goodness sakes. I don't know if the GLP1 users were frequently there anyway. I don't know. That you would think that would be one of the first places they would stop going to. >> Yeah, you'd think. >> You'd think the FDA issues Novo Nordisk a warning letter. This is kind of interesting. I don't think Tell me if we talked about this. I I this was a leftover. remember that Oprah special a couple years back or so that they were all about like h you know I did all these diets and dieting and for years and I was on the Weight Watchers thing and I bought into Weight Watchers and forget all that forget dieting now it's all about these drugs you know wobi ompic vtosa so the video origally appeared um it was March 18th 2024 it also be accessed through ABC's website. So the video subsequently appeared on Hulu on March 19th of 2024. Now FDA has determined that the video is false or misleading. The video misbrands Wovio's Epic Vtosa within the meaning of the federal food jug and cosmetic act and makes it a distrib distribution violation. >> No, we have not discussed this. >> Yeah. So Oprah was all over that. She had all these expert. It was the weirdest thing. was a 1-hour special, but all it was when I watched it, cuz I did watch, I'm like, "Oh god, what you talking about?" It was total infomercial. Infomercial. Infomercial. And And I was >> Yeah, they probably paid for the time. >> Exactly. And I guess it wasn't clearly. I don't know. It was The whole thing was misleading. >> Well, gee, huh? Misleading stuff on television. Misleading, right? All right, what else have we got here? Oh, there's a lot of stuff on this list. Um, H-1B golden passports. The White House announced that the new fee of $100,000 per on an annual basis for H1B visas. And of course, they had to walk it back because they just say things and they walk it back. You know, they don't they don't have anything. Let's let's see how this goes. So, they came out. >> The entire administration is one. It's a group of test marketers. >> That's all they are. They're like a beers, right? >> Yeah. They test market everything. Yeah. Nobody liked that idea. We're going to not going to do it. >> So, there was this $100,000 annual fee for H1B visa applications which is mainly used not mainly but it's used in the technology industry primarily with these major companies coming from India, China, etc. where they get these applications in and is a big concern. As a matter of fact, the Indian uh the Indian stock market took a bit of a of a move down on this news which was kind of interesting. >> Why? Well, because this concern that all of a sudden that Indians who who you know are here making all this money, sending money back home are going to have to pay $100,000 a year somehow and they're not going to have jobs. They have to go back to India. Desert later discussed that, well, it's not for the people that are here already. I don't know how that works. So, what's the point? If they're not here already and there's a $100,000 annual fee, so initial and annual fee, who's going to come? What's the point of this? Is it is it is it to dissuade any other people coming? And why if why just not why just not the new people? Why what happened to the people that are here already? I don't understand. Some of this stuff doesn't make sense. There must be a reason. >> Well, it's elusive. >> Yep. Uh there we go. Paul Atkins, chairman of the US Securities Exchange Commission, says his agency will propose a rule change following the Trump administration's call to switch quarterly earnings reports to semianual. He said the if if the rule change is approved, it will uh let companies decide whether they switch to semianual or stay with quarterly. Rule can be changed by a majority vote. This issue has been come under bait for a long time and uh supporters say that the six-month reporting schedule, well, that's going to free up companies to focus on their business as I guess. >> Yeah. What do you think of this? >> Uh I I have multiple thoughts on this. I think it is a little bit ownorous to do these quarterly reports on one hand. On the other hand, it's kind of good as an investor to find out what's going on with the company. Otherwise, we're not going to know for six months and that's a long period of time. On the other hand, do I really care to know about every granular point of point of what's going on uh you know every quarter, let's say? On the other hand, it gives us a lot of information about what's going on in the economy and how to plan properly from a financial perspective. So there's there's there's a lot of sides to this whole discussion. I I I'm kind of almost um I'm on the side of I like quarterlys because I like the transparency and I like the information. So I got to tell you that that I think is something very important on a semiannual base getting information. I think it's going to lead back to less transparency and especially for individuals who have really inability to get any information. It's going to put a lot of analysts out of out of work which is fine with me. Isn't that not great anyway? So retail investors are just not going to have the ability though to get information. So I'm not sure how that disrupts the market. Many companies will probably continue with the quarterly anyway. They have it already, so might as well just do it. >> Yeah, you're in. You already have it set up. >> Yep. >> We got a suckers alert. Elon's Musk's X AI is raising 10 billion dollars from investors and around that values the company now at 200 billion. sources tell CNBC's David Favor. And this fundraiser comes weeks after Musk raised 10 billion in debt and equity at what is believed to be around $150 billion valuation. Now, later on Friday, Musk called the report fake news because that's what he does, right? He's got this that's goes back to that uh said that AXIA is not raising any capital right now. Now if you look back on this back in March Musk he announced that XAI had merged with X the social network Twitter >> all stock deal right just we'll take it over valuing the total company at 80 billion that was in March social media company was at 33 billion that'sund round number let's call it 125 billion okay just as a number then it went for 150 just a few months later I don't I don't know. It seems to me that this is going to this is going to be a thing. This is definitely going to be a thing. That's why Tesla shares like $245. Makes no sense. Their sales suck. But I think what's going to happen is there there's this thought that we're going to see a roll in and a roll up of XAI, Twitter, and and and um and um space space uh SpaceX. >> Space X. >> Mhm. >> Twitter. >> Yep. XAI and uh Tesla, >> all of the all the companies combined. >> Yeah. Because I think that that that will help him towards his goal to get his trillion dollar payday. >> Oh, that's right. He's that's what his goal is. Yeah. >> So, let's just do every bit of financial engineering that's possible. >> Yeah. Yeah. And he's got some I think he it looks as if he's got some people that really know how to do this. >> Oh, he's good at it. He's very good at it. got a couple more stories, but let's let them uh bake till next week because it's time we got to talk about some stocks, don't you think? >> Yeah. This is a game that we play. It's not a solicitation to buy or sell any security. It's not a recommendation of any kind. Nothing on the show should be considered investment advice or a recommendation. If you choose to invest in any of the stocks mentioned, you should know that it may carry risk along with the risk of a loss of principle. You should also seek out professional financial advice for your particular situation. We assume no risk as these are not to be considered recommendations. Horowitz company myself or John Cedavarak may invest in any of the securities mentioned and we'll disclose that on the website under the weekly stock pick section. You can go to dhunplug.com and see all the names we discussed in the segment along with the performance information from the date discussed as well as any additional important disclosures. Do do you remember that guy that really would speak fast in like the 70s on TV? >> Yeah, he he did all kinds of ads. >> Somehow it reminded me of that. You can speed it up. >> He did all sorts of crazy ads, didn't he? >> Yeah, he was good at it. >> All right, so why don't you take this list and look through it? Some nice nice numbers on here. A couple of stopouts or at least one stopout, I guess. >> Yeah, one stopped at Generveled off and that was the end of that. >> I feel like um Iridex got stopped out, too. I have to update that. I think I feel like it got stopped out. M well the top of the list is all green and and nicely green. It's all in the good numbers except a couple of shorts are or still green but they're not like the rest of it. Shorts hard impossible at the moment to do anything. And then we have a mixed bag of stuff uh over the last few weeks and including uh except for Lyft. Lyft is one your one of your picks as a as a buy and it's a winner. And the other stuff is just Iridex is yeah doesn't look well that was a 20enter that might >> maybe maybe it's AP Mhler I got to look no AP Mer is still open um I I thought I saw it a stop but I'll have to look again down >> and uh there's then then you got Tesla short is not making out and neither is Oracle short which is my idea and uh it's you know which is it's a short but it's going to be a while. Y >> u that's about it. We don't except the big the big winner on there of course is still uh uh hallowy therapeutics uh at a 54% gain. >> That that was one of those reversy dipsy doodles as you call it where there was some discussion and concern about Medicare cuts and this place was this this stock was just going to get obliterated. It did get obliterated and everybody's like okay well I guess not. It's one of those uh things that came out and it's like nobody heard about it again. Yeah. >> Do you have any names for this week? >> Yeah, I do. I have two uh to new issues. I got them from I got them from television. >> Oh. >> But I like I like the theories that this woman expressed about these two stocks. Uh one of them is FIGR. >> FIGR. FIGR. >> And this is Figure Technology Solutions. Yeah, this is a stablecoin play, which I think I should have at least something in this regard. Stable coin being some sort of a screw ball uh notion is hard to understand, but uh >> Curry on the on the new agenda show keeps lecturing the audience about it. It's a uh he's a fan. It's a >> it's not a crypto. It is a uh it is a kind of a a way of beating the swift system. >> Yeah, it's basically stable coins. basically uh it's a it's a it's a think of it as uh a dollar just a stable coin. Matter of fact, we talked about that this week with I know that we doing a lot of promotion here, but um I have a Pat Kamusho who's an expert in >> crypto taxation and we talked all about stable coin this week and Barry Iiken Green also has a big issue about stable coin, how it's going to wreck us. >> Yeah, I I think that's a possibility but for but it's not going to do it tomorrow. No. >> Uh, so this is might be a good play. >> Okay. >> And then the other one is NTSK. And this stock is a and I like I like the argument on this too. This is a network security a new network security operation that has uh that is under uh if you if you line up all the network security operations side by side, this is the the best deal. >> Netcope. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That's been moving pretty hard the last few days. >> Yeah. So, that I'm I'm going to >> That's an IPO. That was an IPO, wasn't it? >> Yeah. Yeah. It just came out. Just came out. So, it could >> it could collapse. It could go up. I think it's going to go up. >> Hopefully, the system will be able to handle an IPO. We'll see. All right. Well, uh with that, we close this evening and uh I will we're going to watch for the sell rush and buy Kipper. We'll see what happens there and I'll talk to you again uh next week. >> All right. Gotcha. >> All right. Bye. There's a G. Not that one. >> You've been listening in on a conversation with John C. D'vorak and Andrew Horowitz. Hope to be with you again soon. Bye-bye. >> Now, I'm not broke, but badly bent. I'm not down to my last scent cuz I got a dollar, but it's my last dollar bill. Yes, sir. In my pocket there's a dent. All my dough is nearly spent, but I got a dollar and it's my last dollar bill. Oh, I'd love just one more buck. Fortune left me by chance. Now, here's a hint. I feel like a men. You can hardly tell by a glance. I don't care. No millionaire can give me the ISIS stack cuz I got a dollar. My last dollar bill. This podcast is intended forformational purposes only and does not constitute personalized investment advice. Investing involves risk including the possible loss of principle and past performance is not indicative of future results. The views and opinions expressed are those of the hosts and the guests and may not necessarily reflect those of Horowis Company Inc. an investment advisor registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration with the SEC does not imply a certain level of skill or training. 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