SpaceX

• This is the most advanced tech company in World and needs to be celebrated an honored. 
• On hive price has tripled since election. Can’t even buy. Has $180b mkt cap. 
• President Trump in attendance. 
• Starship 6 launch! 
  • 120 meters tall. Statue of liberty 93 meters. 
  • Each Raptor rocket engine produces twice as much thrust as all 4 engines on a 747. There are 33 Raptor engines powering the Starship rocket booster. 66 747’s
• Booster and Starship landed in ocean for recovery – no chopsticks for booster this time. 
• Odd that Elon not invited to EV summit and Biden never acknowledged SpaceX!!
• Pointy Rockets

Elon on call with Sundar (happened to be in room). 

• X vs YouTube (BTW, I streamed the SpaceX launch from X to my TV). Also works with screen off. 
• XAI vs DeepMind
• Grok vs Gemini (BTW I signed up for Gemini in my Google Biz suite). 
• Tesla vs Waymo

Transition to Politics: 

• Ron Baron on Cost Plus contracts. 
• $18>98 billion.

Politics

Why discuss on a “Finance” podcast? 

Politics > Policies >  Business > Investments

Trump vs Harris spending on the campaign:

• Spending. How is Kamala in debt. Beyonce 10m? 
• Why did Oprah charge $1m for an interview?
• https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1855432554666664043
  • Campaign Spending;
    • Trump Raised $381.54 Million
    • Trump spent $345.42 Million
    • $10.4 Million was spent on Staff.
    • Kamala raised $1.003 Billion
    • Kamala Spent $1.37 Billion
    • Kamala Spent $582.53 Million on Staff.

Marc and Ben on Policy

• Leaders of A16z with $44b deployed. Portfolio

Recap at 2:00 min from Ben: 

• It was inarguably the worst four years in our career in terms of White House policy as it related to technology and and business more broadly.
• They did things that no White House has done and went far outside the law.” 
• Destroying FinTech and Crypto.
• US could fall behind in AI.

DOGE

Vivek and Elon to head Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

Why important: Maybe we CAN balance the budget without cutting entitlements?  

Milton Friedman on getting rid of federal agencies. Jump to 2:35. Nobel Laureate and Economist. Died 2006

• Also, like Chamath: Friedman believed the Federal Reserve System should ultimately be replaced with a computer program.

Elon explains why important. “There are around 428 federal agencies. There’s so many that people have never even heard of. I think we should be able to get away with 99 agencies.”

• They just output regulations. 

From Vivek: Here’s a key point about our mission at DOGE: eliminating bureaucratic regulations isn’t a mere policy preference. It’s a legal *mandate* from the U.S. Supreme Court:

• West Virginia v. EPA (2022) held that agencies cannot decide major questions of economic or political significance without “clear congressional authorization.” This applies to *thousands* of rules that never passed Congress.
• In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the Court ended Chevron deference, which means agencies can’t foist their own interpretations of the law onto the American people. Over 18,000 federal cases cited the Chevron doctrine, often to uphold regulations, many of which are now null & void.

From Elon: All actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency. Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know! We will also have a leaderboard for most insanely dumb 

Javier Milei: Afuera 🤣

Bitcoin

• New highs over $92k. Also a frothy indicator. 
• Michael Saylor seems like a genius! CEO of Microstrategy

Innovators Dilemna 

• Netflix and Tesla have one giant common denominator.  Kodak
  • ONLY PURE PLAY!!!
  • AND Profitable. Ford losing $55k per EV vehicle. 

Netflix

• $878…. All-time highs
• Jake Paul/ Tyson fight 
  • peaking at 65 million concurrent streams, with 38 million concurrent streams in the US.
  • 56% of all US TV viewing between 12am and 1am EST was for the Paul vs Tyson fight.
  • The Taylor-Serrano fight averaged an estimated 74 million live viewers globally and became the most-watched professional women’s sports event in US history with 47 million AMA in the US.
  • The event was #1 in 78 countries including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, the UK and the US, and in the Top 10 in 91 countries tracked for the week of November 11-17. 
  • Streaming issues and outage. Good learning. THEY’LL figure it out!!
• Squid Game. Dec 26
  • Most viewed non-english show ever. 
• 2 Christmas day NFL games. Sold out all advertising. 
  • Also partnering with sports betting! 
• Netflix ad tier 70m monthly users.

Tesla

• $346 yesterday. $1.1T market Cap. High $410 Nov 2021. So 20% to get back to high. 
• ‘Trump administration Clearly a big help for AI. Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team have told advisers they plan to make a federal framework for fully self-driving vehicles one of the Transportation Department’s priorities, easing U.S. rules for self-driving cars.
• Ron Baron on Tesla: Play at 3:23. Tesla $3-5 trillion in 10 years. 
  • Feels conservative. 
• Per Dan Ives. $400 price target. Wedbush’s Dan Ives boosted his target price to $400 a share, the highest among major brokers. “The Trump White House win will be a game changer for the autonomous and AI story for Tesla and Musk over the coming years,” wrote Ives.
• Robots in China!! Xpeng. 
  • IT IS SO OBVIOUS ROBOTS ARE COMING!!

Short squeeze: 

“The pain might not be over for Tesla short-sellers. We expect continued short covering in $TSLA due to the rally induced short squeeze. 

Example:

• $1m in account. 25% margin allowed. 
• Borrow $200k of Tesla. (someone lends it to you). You sell it for $200k. Do something else with money. That’s 20% margin.
• Price goes up 30%. You now have to give shares back. So owe pay $260k. 
  • Brokerage knows you owe $260k. So margin is at 26%. 
• You have to “cover”. Buy shares and payback… or brokerage sells for you!

Nvidia Earnings

• Earnings on deck. Could move markets.

College 

• Chamath PalihapitiyaParents: Help pick your kids’ college wisely. The more a college charges for tuition and claims their elitism, the more radicalized your child may be if they go there. 
  • So basically ALL colleges with “Encampments” were over $60k in tuition per year!

• From the WSJ:  Bosses don’t want “ivy”. 
• Point is go to a college, study something productive and go work! 

Recommendations

• The Penguin
• Joe Rogan and Theo Von!
• Lex and Javier Milei – Argentinian President.

Biden might be laughing his ass off right now!!

• Here’s a funny thread of conspiracy: Peppy walk & talk. Jill wearing all RED!!

Markets are booming ridiculously: 

• S&P 500 hits record high today at 6000.
• Bitcoin at $76,000.
• This does feel “frothy”

Fed Cut rates again. 

• Federal-funds rate to a range between 4.5% and 4.75%. All 12 Fed voters backed the cut.
• Bad for money markets good for economic growth.

Netflix

• $798. Call it $800. All time high on
• Mkt cap about $340 billion.
• Tyson vs Jake Paul. 3-part documentary. Fight on Nov 15. Next Friday at 5:00pm.

Palantir and Nvidia

• Palantir: Up 40% in the week.
• Nvidia: All time high at $148. $3.6 trillion. Largest company in world.

Tesla: 

• Stock at $326. $1 trillion market cap. Up 30% this week.
  • $410 is high. So still 30% upside.
• Musk bet the farm. Could have been deported. Govt is/was after him.
• Lawsuits done.
  • DOJ suing SpaceX for not hiring asylum seekers!
• ‘Gene Munster on Tesla and Robotaxi
  • Autonomy IS HAPPENING! Now less govt regulation.
• Robots: Xping in China showing of Robots. Why is this good?! Robot videos.
  • Robots ARE HAPPENING!

Politics

• Biden seems skippy!
• Key difference now is long form podcasts! I (and others) really got to know Donald, JD, Tulsi, RFK.  I didn’t hear an interview with ANYONE on Kamala’s team.
• Andrew Yang said HUGE mistake not going on Joe Rogan.
• BTW, don’t forget Rogan endorsed Bernie! He got screwed. So did Tulsi and RFK, because they refused to be puppets.

Dems: Time to return to “normal”

• Maybe have a primary next time!
• Immigration: Bill Clinton in 1995 on immigration.
• Forever foreign wars and industrial military complex.
• Over regulation 450 govt agencies!   and over-spending!
• Inflation is messy, but was clearly on people’s minds
• Defunding Police!?  People want clean safe neighborhoods.

Final Point: Good reset opportunity. We’ll be fine.

Wait One more thing:

• Epstein list!!! These guys are fucked! More than 150 names may be made public as part of a settled civil lawsuit against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell — who was found guilty of conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse underage girls for at least a decade — Maxwell “the mastermind” behind Epstein’s sex trafficking ring.
• Diddy videos! Probably funny.

University of Oregon: Leonard Serrato. Here what he has to say!

Recommendations?

• Get outside!
• Save and invest your money.

Opening

• I make mistakes on my podcasts. Please feel free to comment and fact-check me. It’s hard. I try to go hard and not pause. 
  • NFL on Netflix on “Saturday”. Wednesday is x-mas.  
• Oregon plays Michigan today. Ducks favored by 14.5
• Redmond:
  • Visiting parents. 
  • Very cold there.
  • Food carts and BEER!!! Need that in San Jose! Huge business opportunity! 
• Alaska Airlines thoughts. 
• Single digit golf stats: 

Markets

• Overall strong earnings, but seeing some pullback.  
• Can’t bet against these big guys.  

Wilshire 5000 to GDP Ratio: To calculate the total value of all publicly traded stocks in the U.S., most analysts use The Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index, which is an index that represents the value of all stocks in the U.S. markets. The quarterly GDP is used as the denominator in the ratio calculation.

Typically, a result that is greater than 100% is said to show that the market is overvalued, while a value of around 50%, which is near the historical average for the U.S. market, is said to show undervaluation. If the valuation ratio falls between 50% and 75%, the market can be said to be modestly undervalued.

• 2.0 almost at all time high. Last time at 2 was Nov 2021.  

CAPE Ratio:

• 35. 
• 38 in Nov 2021. 
• 44 in Dec 1999. 

Ford, Meta, Google, Microsoft, XAI

 

Ford Earnings. 

• • Ford to idle production of F150 Lightning. 
    • Ford has sold a mere 22,807 Lightnings so far this year—a far cry from the 180,000 the Dearborn factory was originally supposed to produce. The EV lobby and its friends in the press fawned over the Lightning when it debuted two years ago. The Lightning supposedly signaled that EVs had finally gone mainstream. Not quite.
    • Ford’s EV division has lost $3.7 billion during the first three quarters of this year—about $55,000 per EV—and expects $5 billion to $5.5 billion in losses this year.
• Tesla Net Income $2.2 billion.

Meta: 

These numbers are insane! 

• Revenue up $6b or 19%. $41b vs $34b
• Operating margin 43% from 40%. 
• Net income up $4b (35%). . $16 vs $12. 

Google /Alphabet Earnings

• Earnings release here. 
• Revenues up 15% to $88.3 billion.
• Total operating income increased 34%.
• Net income increased 34% and EPS increased 37% to $2.12.

Microsoft

• Revenue was $65.6 billion and increased 16%
• Operating income was $30.6 billion and increased 14%
• Net income was $24.7 billion and increased 11% 

XAI – 

xAI plans to bring online an additional 100,000 Nvidia GPUs at its Memphis, Tennessee training cluster within the next 2 months, for a total of 200,000 Nvidia GPUs, doubling the size of what was already the world’s largest and most powerful supercomputer.

• This is AFTER Jensen Huang praised xAI’s engineering, networking, infrastructure and software teams, referring to them as “extraordinary”. By putting 100,000 GPUs, Colossus has become “easily the fastest supercomputer on the planet as one cluster
• AI smarter than all humans combined by 2029
• By 2040 more humanoid robots than people.

President of the US

• Trump on Rogan
• JD Vance on Rogan
  • Tulsi and RFK have also been on Rogan. And Elon. 
• Kamala on Call her Daddy
• Hillary Clinton in 2008:“If they’ve committed a crime… DEPORT THEM! No questions asked. You’re gone!If you want to become a citizen you have to pay a stiff fine, pay back taxes, and learn english.
• PolyMarket: 60% : 40%
• Jeff Bezos on Washington Post – TRUST
  • We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.
  • Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. 
  • While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world? 
• Regulations: From Chamath: They also issue thousands of regulations annually, which far exceeds the number of laws passed by Congress during its biennial term. Given that these regulations touch nearly every aspect of American life today and the vast majority of federal employees within the agencies are.
• Remember the Whales, Sharks and Seal studies from SpaceX.  

Recommendations:

• The Penguin on Max. 
• Slow Horses on Apple.
• The Lioness on Paramount.  Not easy to figure out!! Hours on phone/internet with Xfinity. No humans…impossible.