As hosts, Derek and Tony, along with their savvy guest Dave Abate, dissect the mechanics of financial stability and the enigmatic pulse of social media on the latest episode of the "Capitalist Investor," they leave listeners with a wealth of insights. Here are the five hot topics worth noting from this episode.
1. Retirement Planning and Debt Management
One compelling topic that emerged dealt with the perils non-mortgage debt presents to those stepping into the golden years. With a potential for overspending and the risk of depleting resources, the trio highlighted the necessity of a measured spending rate post-retirement. They underlined that unsuccessful retirements often stem from premature retirement decisions or being pushed into retirement unprepared. To mitigate such scenarios, a consistent saving strategy paired with a balanced spending mindset in retirement is crucial.
2. Market Predictions and Economic Tremors
A significant portion of the dialogue revolved around JPMorgan's gloomy market forecast, with an 8% drop anticipated in 2024 due to a cocktail of sluggish economic growth and geopolitical unrest. Dave questioned the predictive accuracy generally possessed by financial institutions, particularly in light of the approaching election cycle, while Tony expressed skepticism based on the potential earnings growth and the likelihood of interest rate cuts buoying the market in 2024.
3. The Health Care Cost Conundrum
Another heated subject tackled by Derek, Tony, and Dave was the staggering inefficiencies in the US healthcare system, with particular focus on prescription drug pricing. They commended efforts like those of Mark Cuban to introduce pricing transparency and affordability, challenging the established revenue models and power dynamics rooted in the pharmaceutical industry.
4. The Influence of Social Media and Advertising
The conversation then pivoted to the dynamic realm of social media platforms, wherein Musk's perspective on advertising and the sustaining power of Twitter, or rather X, was debated. The hosts pondered the essence of social platforms as news sources with advertising models that can shake the core of traditional marketing strategies, as seen with "woke" advertising targeting specific demographics.
5. Corporate Innovation and Political Aspirations
A lighter, yet equally engrossing topic emerged as the trio compared Taco Bell's menu stagnation with the bold, and possibly facetious, proposition of Conor McGregor running for President of Ireland. McDonald’s rebranding efforts and Starbucks-esque transformations against the backdrop of political celebrity were not short of drawing parallels and raising eyebrows amidst discussions of financial and market trends.
Listeners, gear up for next week when Derek, Tony, and Luke take another deep dive into the delicate balancing act of financial foresight and cultural currents. Don't miss out on their assertive yet conversational takes on the capitalist landscape that continuously shapes and is reshaped by every minor and major tremor. Stay tuned, stay informed, and most importantly, stay critical.
As hosts, Derek and Tony, along with their savvy guest Dave Abate, dissect the mechanics of financial stability and the enigmatic pulse of social media on the latest episode of the "Capitalist Investor," they leave listeners with a wealth of insights. Here are the five hot topics worth noting from this episode.
1. Retirement Planning and Debt Management
One compelling topic that emerged dealt with the perils non-mortgage debt presents to those stepping into the golden years. With a potential for overspending and the risk of depleting resources, the trio highlighted the necessity of a measured spending rate post-retirement. They underlined that unsuccessful retirements often stem from premature retirement decisions or being pushed into retirement unprepared. To mitigate such scenarios, a consistent saving strategy paired with a balanced spending mindset in retirement is crucial.
2. Market Predictions and Economic Tremors
A significant portion of the dialogue revolved around JPMorgan's gloomy market forecast, with an 8% drop anticipated in 2024 due to a cocktail of sluggish economic growth and geopolitical unrest. Dave questioned the predictive accuracy generally possessed by financial institutions, particularly in light of the approaching election cycle, while Tony expressed skepticism based on the potential earnings growth and the likelihood of interest rate cuts buoying the market in 2024.
3. The Health Care Cost Conundrum
Another heated subject tackled by Derek, Tony, and Dave was the staggering inefficiencies in the US healthcare system, with particular focus on prescription drug pricing. They commended efforts like those of Mark Cuban to introduce pricing transparency and affordability, challenging the established revenue models and power dynamics rooted in the pharmaceutical industry.
4. The Influence of Social Media and Advertising
The conversation then pivoted to the dynamic realm of social media platforms, wherein Musk's perspective on advertising and the sustaining power of Twitter, or rather X, was debated. The hosts pondered the essence of social platforms as news sources with advertising models that can shake the core of traditional marketing strategies, as seen with "woke" advertising targeting specific demographics.
5. Corporate Innovation and Political Aspirations
A lighter, yet equally engrossing topic emerged as the trio compared Taco Bell's menu stagnation with the bold, and possibly facetious, proposition of Conor McGregor running for President of Ireland. McDonald’s rebranding efforts and Starbucks-esque transformations against the backdrop of political celebrity were not short of drawing parallels and raising eyebrows amidst discussions of financial and market trends.
Listeners, gear up for next week when Derek, Tony, and Luke take another deep dive into the delicate balancing act of financial foresight and cultural currents. Don't miss out on their assertive yet conversational takes on the capitalist landscape that continuously shapes and is reshaped by every minor and major tremor. Stay tuned, stay informed, and most importantly, stay critical.
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Capitalist Investor. As always, you have myself, Diamond Hands D, and like always, we got Tony the Tiger. What's up, Tony? I never take the day off. Let's go. And filling in this week for Luke, we got Dave Abate back. Great to be back, guys. He looks real excited about it. It was a last minute call to the bullpen. Luke was in Florida traveling back yesterday, and he got in the air and they circled back right away and said he landed and there was a bunch of fire trucks, so he was a little panicked. I talked to him last night. Yeah, airplane troubles are something you never. No, it's a modern marvel, but I don't think the normal person can understand how they get in the air and stay, honestly. So, all right, what are we talking about today? So we are going to talk about, I believe JPMorgan came out with a grim forecast for 2024. So we'll talk about that. We will talk about McDonald's and how they're trying to revolutionize themselves again and again and again. So we'll talk about what they're doing. Conor McGregor for President of Ireland, the man of the people. We'll talk about that guy. CVS, the pharmaceutical, brick and mortar, convenience store, whatever you want to call it, is to have a better cost structure for drug costs. That's cool. Can't wait to talk about that, man. I'm hot on that one. And then we're going to do a little financial planning conversation. Good thing we have Dave here. He's in the trenches every day working with our clients, looking at plans, taxes, investments, you name it. It is going to be why people are failing in retirement. Yahoo. Finance came out. Many Americans are unsuccessfully retiring these days. So why is that? And then canceled? It's a know we'll keep it for the A. It was a hot moment last week. Yes, it was. So we'll talk about that. We'll leave it for suspense and we'll get there. All right, so JPMorgan came out and said that they're expecting the market to be down 8% next year. Batten up the hatches, go to cash. I'm just kidding. All right, so the premise behind this analyst is slowing economic growth, rapid depletion of household savings and steepening borrowing costs. We've talked about that before. And there's banks are tightening on lending and geopolitical turmoil. Yeah, there's two wars going on and three could pop off at any time. So those are all valid points. What do you guys think? You want to go? Dave? Yeah. So I'll kind of be a downer from the start and say my crystal ball is broken. And what I'll say also is there's been ten of these, dozens of these next year predictions and they're all over the board. And the only thing that's kind of accurate is the track record for these predictions is terrible. No one ever gets them right. Every analyst on Wall Street was predicting a recession in 2023. How'd that work out? I mean, we have 5% GDP growth. Last time I checked, you need two negative quarters of GDP growth to be in a recession. So I'll play along with the game, so to speak. I'll take a little bit of a different angle. I think the biggest story next year is going to be the election, right? It's an election cycle year. The one thing you can kind of count on is there is a relationship between how the market is performing and who wins the election. Right. So the period that's kind of focused on is that six month lead up to the November election. And there is strong data suggesting if the S P produces a positive return in that period, there's a very good chance the incumbent stays in power. So that's the kind of the way I'm looking at it is there's going to be a lot of incentive for the policymakers to make that push, to make sure the numbers are saying the right thing so we can get the right policies in place, so we can have a strong run up for the voters. And then after November, I think all bets are off. Like, the wheels might fall off after that. That's when people panic every four years right after the election, like, oh, my God, that guy got in, let's get out, or that guy got in and let's get back in. I've seen both sides of that story. Good call. November. That's when the crash happens of next year, right? Yeah. I was going to hit on a lot of those points. The predictions sure to go wrong at the end or the beginning of every year. You've never seen more unanimous reporting or whatever. At the beginning of last year, everyone thought it was going to be a bad year in the market. Everyone was saying it was going to be a recession, and we all know what happened there. The people in this article are also known. Bearers right. I think the other guy was mentioned in this article was Morgan Stanley, and they had about a 4500 level on the S and P 500. But rather than talk about doom and gloom all the time, hit me with something. Obviously, anytime there's a period of prosperity, the people are going to predict the opposite to happen next. The bull case for 2024. I still think there's a case to be made for it, and we've talked about it a lot. It's really all related to interest rates and inflation. And I heard there's some rumors of, like, a March price cut, and that would be your bullcase for 2024. All right. If that actually starts happening, it would be a very good 2024. Good. All right, so I'm going to lean on that. I'm very confused because I'll start off with this. You're right, Derek. They're expecting 525 basis points or zero point 25% cuts next year after a rapid increase to 5% over the course of 2023. It would make sense that they do it. But the bull case is people have jobs and analysts are expecting 10% earnings growth next year. Earnings growth that helps the market. If things are up 10%, how can the market be down 8%? Right? So there's one thing I'm like this guy just predicted minus eight. And every analyst, a lot of our research is saying, this is what other analysts, this is what the average analyst is expecting, doesn't correlate. So another thing that doesn't correlate my thing is that the reason to cut interest rates is that oh, there's our timer. Cutting rates is a form of stimulus. A stimulus normally stimulates inflation. If something that Jerome does, jerome Powell, that chair does, to increase interest rates or I'm sorry, inflation by cutting interest rates, like he is fighting what he said he was trying to do to get to 2%. We are at 3% and we're still kind of we're still at 3% when again, everything else is up 30% to 60% over the last two years. But we'll talk about that. Cutting rates is a form of stimulus and if they stimulate, I would assume inflation reaccelerates. And nobody wants if I can think of this and I'm a like, you're telling me Jerome Powell and all the smart brain people, that Honda, Harvard, Princeton stuff, they don't know I something needs to be extremely broken. I keep on saying it. And that's like negative GDP growth, maybe negative deflation. Right. So, Tony, I think you're hitting on it and it boils down to the reason why they would cut rates in 2020. Something's broken. So one of two things has to happen. The more reasonable thing is something just broke, so now we have to fix it with cutting rates. The other path is this mythical soft landing where somehow they actually do get to their inflation target without having that recession, which seems kind of impossible, but it's that narrow strip that I guess the market is clinging on to when they say, hey, we can go higher from here without having pain first. Yeah, I mean, March is not far away. No. To start cutting rates. There's no reason for him inflation is still above three. It's not near two. What he said. I mean, I know we're spending a little bit more time on this one, but there's so many arguments on both sides as the bull and the bear side. But the other thing is a wild card. You guys ready for the wild card? Yeah, let's do it. You brought up political like it's an election year. What do you think happens? Because they're probing the Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, all these backdoor deals with multiple countries around the world that have shell accounts, putting money dropped into supposedly what if he gets impeached, literally? Not like an impeachment and impeachment inquiry or whatever they call it, but like an actual, like he's out and he is not the runner. Who does the Democrats have to run for them? I have no idea. Because Newsom did not do well against DeSantis. He got crossed against DeSantis and he stopped the debate. His wife stopped the debate. Did you see that throw the towel? Reminds me of that scene of Rocky. Yeah, I don't know. I have no idea. Maybe he should just because everyone was assuming it was going to be that guy. Maybe Musam should just stick to shitting. Jays in China with the little kids. It'S not a strong field. We'll just say that. No. All right, so we'll let you guys ponder on that. But there's a lot of conflicting. Who's right, who's wrong, man. It could go back. It could be just a volatile year in general. So we'll see. All right, moving on to McDonald's, mickey D's. Who didn't when they're a little kid, man. I always look forward to Happy mailman the toy. Absolutely. Friday night fries at the bottom of the box. So what McDonald's is doing is they're opening a Cosmic Kosmc and they're going to focus on mainly drinks and drinks like coffees and teas and smoothies and have like finger foods and stuff like that. Not the full blown trying to become a Starbucks. That was my main take. I think it's like a McDonald's version of Starbucks. Yeah. I like it from a business take. Like your highest margin items are your drinks. So absolutely. Makes perfect sense. 100%. I guess the part that I'm having, I'm struggling with. I don't know if McDonald's is a destination. Like, I don't know if that's what it's going to pop in people's heads for that reason. Right. It doesn't seem to have the cachet of a Starbucks of a Dunkin. My tea going to smell like a Happy Meal. I don't agree. You go to Starbucks for the experience because you know you're just going to get coffee or tea or whatever you're going to get from there. McDonald's, I'm expecting like cheeseburgers and know cheeseburgers, french fries. Is this lipstick on a pig? All right, so I agree. The highest margin business you can have is selling liquids. Right. Pop. Going back to my days of working at McDonald's when I was in high school and things like that, the one manager I asked him, I'm like, does this place make a lot of money? Childish questions. She goes, yes, it does, Tony. And I'm like, well, what makes the most money? She goes, if I can own anything in this store, it'd be the pop machine, the soda machine. Yeah. She goes, it costs pennies and we sell it for yeah. So the highest margin is right there. But the one thing that I noticed is another under the radar type of article I saw a week or two ago is that they are giving the Big Mac a facelift because they're getting their no pun intended. Their lunch eaten by five guys, in and out. Burger for a better product, like five guys is a delicious burger. Sure, it's nice and greasy, and it's awesome. It's nice and greasy all in one. Right. But what they're doing is silly. I started reading an arc. I'm like, what are you going to do to this Big Mac? Rather than putting eight patties down, they're putting six down to give it more freshness because they got to make them more frequently. Okay. They're rehydrating the pickles, and they're giving the sauce on. They said they had a team of chefs for, like, two years. More special sauce working. More special sauce working on how to recreate the Big Mac. Yes. Talk about an R and D project. But I'll let you guys I said my stuff, man. They're all over the map right now. Yeah, no, I think it's a great idea. I think what you saw in the restaurant business, in the fast food business during COVID you saw the menus shrink. They used to have huge menus before COVID With all the bottlenecks on the supply chain and all that good stuff, the menu is much more simple. So a concept like this for McDonald's, I think, makes a ton of sense. And we just talked about the depletion of household savings, which is most definitely a phenomenon that's happening right now. Yeah. If you can get a decent product at Cosmics instead of going to Starbucks, I don't know what I don't go to Starbucks anymore. But a coffee and a muffin got to cost you over $10 there. It's probably$12. Yeah. So I assume this will be much cheaper. And in America, cheaper is always better, and we'll always make money. McDonald's made the value menu popular. Right. But nothing's a dollar anymore. The other idea that I'm thinking is, like, I don't know why they abandoned the all day breakfast. Personally. A brinner is always a good thing. The mix between breakfast and dinner, you call it brinner. I can get down. I eat brinner all the time. Not all the time, but have that. Sausage egg Mcbuffin available all day. I'm pretty sure the all day breakfast is what brought McDonald's back from kind of a long slump. They have not really done anything to their menu. Like, you look at Taco Bell is notorious. I mean, God, I go to Taco Bell, and the menu is always constantly different to the point where I get confused. I'm like, man, I need, like, 20 minutes to absorb this, see what I want to eat. But they haven't really people add different sliders or wraps or something. They don't add any it doesn't seem like they add anything. They don't put out a commercial to want me to go there, then simultaneously buy a drink, and maybe one of their burgers just seems like they're lacking innovation. Anything else, guys? All right, let's hit Conor McGregor, man of the people we gonna thinking of running for President of Ireland? Is he really thinking about it, though? Is this popping off a comment? So I did come across his comments on immigration, so I highly doubt it. I don't think anyone actually wants to get into politics. It seems miserable. But that said, I think Elon Musk came out and basically said that wouldn't even be a fair fight. Like he would win 100%. No doubt about it. He's one of the most popular figures in the country and he's basically talking like, hey, I'll just do what you guys want. Yeah. Every week I'm going to come to. Ideas and I'm going to listen to the common man. Next thing you know, you got somebody bending your ear for an hour and I don't know. Go ahead, Dave. No, I think he's going to win. If he runs, he wins. I guess that can be. You could call that what did Trump call it? Like cleaning the swamp or draining the swamp. Draining the swamp, right. That's one way to do it. But when was the last time a celebrity was successful at being a. I'm pretty sure he was. That was mean that Jesse Ventura became a guy. Right? Well, Ronald Reagan was a film like I don't think he was at this level right. In his film career. Oh, yeah. He wasn't a household, like think about mean. I'll say it. It's maybe not the most popular take, but like, look at what is it, zelensky in Ukraine. I mean, that dude was an actor and now he's in a war. He's still an. I think you're as strong as the team around you. And who's he going to have around him that's smarter than him? Don't you want people that are smarter than you around you typically so that you can have the good brain trust or people as smart? Who's going to be his cabinet of whatever Ireland calls it? Right. Good luck. It's a good take. He'll go in there, but when real I know he was crying about immigration and stuff. I'm going to stop that and let's keep our country safe and have the right type of immigration. But okay, what about the other 50 problems that are poverty and drugs and where do you stand with all those? We'll be interesting to see what happens. All right, CVS, so you said you were fired up about this one. Oh, man. So long story short, and Mark Cuban has been working on this for a long time, basically, prescription drugs know, I don't know if it's corruption is necessarily the right word, but there are tons of third party fees and different things that are built into prescription drug prices that add significantly to the cost. And CVS has basically taken a pledge to help reduce those costs and bring a new system that basically brings more transparency through to the consumer so they see more what they're paying for. And because of this. It's bringing prescription drug prices down because people are seeing all these additional fees that are being put on there. So it seems like anything medical related or prescription drug related. It's always been a problem in this country for a very long time with costs just being astronomical. So it's a good thing. Hopefully this kind of what Mark Cuban is doing, kind of doing the online version of this is really helping to get the cost down for the consumer. I think it makes perfect sense. What this is drawing me to is Tony and I met with a client a couple days ago, and she shared that she had a relative that was living outside of the country in South America for several years and returned back to the US. And one of her first comments to our client was like, what is wrong with your healthcare system? It's broken. And our client was like, she didn't even have the energy to explain it to. So if people outside the US. See how we do things here, and it's just kind of it's it's so inefficient, Derek. You're like, there's so many layers of costs that middlemen that makes no sense. Yes. It needs an overhaul. Right? All right, so think of this. The largest company in the stock market is Apple. Their net revenues last in 2022 was near $400 billion. Microsoft, the second biggest company in the country, their net revenues was around 200 billion. $600 billion is spent on prescription drugs on an annualized basis. It is the biggest business in the United States. We're pretty dang close, right? I can't think of another 600 billion. That's pretty impressive. Right? And I think I saw some crazy stats. People are spending, like, one $200 a year on prescription medicines. I'm sure there's people that's spending a lot more and a lot less. Right. They are the biggest business. There are regulations for banks. There are regulations for stocks, investment accounts. I can go on and on. There are very few regulations for cost gouging in prescription medicine. Why? Because they make $600 billion a year, and they flood the Washington lobbyist. Lobby. They cost a lot of money. They spend a lot of money to make a lot of money is what they probably do. So you kind of hit the nail on the head, Derek. Like, I don't want to call it corruption, but people I'm sure there's a lot of tape around making any type of regulatory changes to our prescription drug. Mean, I don't know else to say other than that, but think about how big of an industry it is and how, again, you got to spend money to make money, and they got money to spend. There's a lot of people in power making money that don't want the system changed correct. On a couple of different levels of things. So I'll leave it at that. All right, well, good. We had an extra topic here today. So let's get to the last one before canceled. Just saw one of those typical articles out there, why are people failing in retirement? So we'll hit on a couple of points there, but I think the stats I saw in that article were pretty crazy. So basically, 37% of retiree age people had no savings at all. I had no idea this was even a thing. 71% of retirees had huge non mortgage debt averaging $20,000, which was crazy to me. And they said about 8% of retiree age people had a million dollars or more in savings. So a very small amount. So just one of the reasons people fail in retirement. I'll just hit on one for me, I think the debt is really what jumped out at me. I'm not sure what topics you guys had. So if I'm stealing your thunder, but having that non mortgage debt going into retirement, what essentially it means is that you're spending above your means. So one of the key components to financial planning is your spending number. What are you going to spend in retirement? So if you're constantly running debt your whole life and you bring that into retirement and you're spending above your means there, you're going to run out of runway eventually. It's not a good thing to, you know, understanding what you want to spend in retirement and spending within those parameters is going to be one of the most important things that you can do. Yeah, Derek, you're hitting on my number one, which is spending. And when we run plans for clients, the number one reason we see kind of a change in the results of the plan as we continue to model it is a difference between what was assumed, the spending rate in retirement and then it changed. Right. We bought the new house, we upgraded. Well, we didn't really account for that, so now we've changed the game on things. So that's kind of been the number one difference. And the number two reason that we see for kind of an unsuccessful retirement is really they shouldn't have retired in the first place. And a lot of times they were forced into retirement. They may have lost their job before they really wanted to stop working, but those are the two biggest reasons I've seen, were dislocations in terms of what we thought was going to happen and what's actually happening. Yeah, you retired too early. And we'll call it the famous irreversible financial mistake because it's going to be hard to go and get your job back and want to go back, and they'll want you back because you were making a lot of money, whatever you may do, because you were probably at the end of your career. Right. So getting back into the workforce is just very difficult once you pull the plug. Right. So there's that. So, Dave, I will say just ill timed moves sometimes. So budget. Yeah, I've seen plans with somebody who had a liquid net worth of 300 grand have a successful plan. I've seen people with $3 million plan blows up in their face, and it comes down to spending. And Dave, you and I met with one of our clients yesterday. The pedigree of a successful client plan, whatever you want to call it, is they saved, saved, saved. And the sacrifice of saving, they didn't do anything. And what I mean, like, they didn't treat themselves as much as they could have. They'd rather save than go out on a Friday night or Saturday night or spend $3,000 on a vacation versus 10,000. And that mentality. When you run it consistently for 10, 15, 30 years from day one, you're just wired this way. By the time you retire and you have this large pot of money, you obviously don't want to lose it. So you're going to continue to do what has worked, and that's not spend money. And we've had conversations with clients saying, this is going to sound really weird, but you better start spending money or you're going to die with it. In so many words, right. But they don't know how to they don't know how to turn on the spend mode, and they will probably pass away with an inheritance for other people because they just don't know. And we also don't know the future. We ran into another client. Some. Health issues have caused, but a couple of years ago, we're saying, like, hey, if you guys don't ramp up your spending, you want to know how to spend. We've been telling you for years you can get away with it. And I think that is one of the most valuable pieces of information our clients get from going through our process is they get almost permission to spend that access to understand what that cushion is above that their plan can handle, and then go, and now I have the green light to go ramp my lifestyle up. That trip comes up, I'm going to take it. I want to treat my family to a vacation. I've got financial approval from my guy to do it. And the thing is that we do give them that permission slip, but we also build in a lot of conservative assumptions when we build a plan. Most clients live in the 95. The average person is living to 85, right. So we have you living longer. We're tapering or tamping down rates of return of the average rate of return over the last ten years of the stock market has been 10%. If I put 10% in everyone's plan, everyone's fine. But we know that's not what happens historically, right. Because there's going to be the ups and the downs. And the thing that's detrimental to a plan is spending money when the market's down because you're locking in losses. So we taper down the returns by half. We usually use somewhere between five and six, not seven or seven and a half. We're expecting the worst and performing to try and achieve the best. So that's what I say. It's spending and it's mentality. And how you've just gone through life of saving. Were you a spender? Well, you're going to be a spender in retirement. I hope you spent and saved. You're going to need it. If you're a saver and don't spend, well, good luck breaking that mold is what I've seen. It's just I haven't seen it saying, oh man, I'm going to go ball out now. I'm going to spend $30,000 on a vacation. I never hear a client who's used to taking$3,000 vacations say, I'm spending 30 grand on this trip. Very rarely will you hear that. They just can't wrap their mind around it. Yeah, very true. Anyway, sorry guys, canceled. Your boy Elon. Your boy Elon. Maybe it's Dave. Is he your boy? I listen to what he says. Everyone's got his ear to that guy. Well, he was talking to Andrew Ross, sorkin CNBC host last talking and a question came up saying, hey, all these big companies are not they're ripping their advertising from the X or formerly known as Twitter platform. What are you going to do about that, Elon? And he said FM literally on the. Stage in front of in front of them too. Yeah, I think it was specifically Bob Iger from Disney and he was sitting in the audience and he even gave him a little shout out, hi, Bob. No Christmas cards exchanged. This. Know, he basically said he's not going to be blackmailed into doing anything, which is exactly what is happening. So you cut his marketing dollars. Right. Elon's. Does X survive? Does he rich? I don't know. I mean, I know he's a rich man, but is he rich enough to support a platform that has no marketing? Does he pick up more market share from those companies that agree with Elon's? Take right the free speech and you're not going to bully me. Does he get more support from people that were on the sidelines before? But that's where I mentioned this before. Is X or Twitter, is that just becoming a more conservative place for people to go? All you have in there are conservative mindsets. It is not attracting the liberal left. Kind of. I think it depends what algorithm you're on. True. I will say that my feeds are they're self fulfilling prophecies. I don't know. What do you guys think? I feel like with this banishment of woke advertising or not banishment, but they're not spending money. So it's going to attract to the people that aren't woke or liberal or whatever you want to call it. I don't know. Eventually markets obtain equilibrium. So if it is a successful platform, people will be forced to go there. And I think that's what you'll see because I think Twitter or X is too big to go away. I think it's ingrained in our culture. I don't think anyone's going. Anywhere else. So I think it's here to stay. I also don't think Elon cares about making money. How much money does he have? He has a lot. I think he's top net worth on the whole planet. So I don't think if this $44 billion company doesn't make money, I don't think he really cares about it. But it's kind of like nil the name, image, likeness from college football. It's the Wild West out there right now. I won't get into the specifics of it. There's money coming from all these different places. It's supposed to be for your name, image, and likeness. But what has turned into is paying kids just to go to the schools. Eventually, the people who are donating all that money will realize they're not getting any return on their investment whatsoever, and they're just throwing all this money at 18 year old kids and you don't really know how they're going to react. Eventually, that's going to dry up. Eventually it's going to get it to a point where it's a little bit more tolerable, I think the same deal on X. There's people that are going to there's always going to be people on there. What's the other platforms like Reddit? Truth. Truth social? Yeah, Truth. Reddit. I don't go to I'm not familiar with the. I mean, I guess you can throw an Instagram in Facebook, but I use that more for just personal updates, checking on people and what's your fabulous life on Facebook? I don't know. Like that kind of stuff. Right? Just catching up with people. X is an actual it's a new source. Right, that's what I was just about to say. Like a grassroots new source. And that's what he's trying to turn it into, is sharing information. Exactly. So who knows what we'll see? But, yeah, I don't think he's going to be intimidated by Disney pulling their crappy movie ads off of his platform because no one goes to see those movies anyway, I can tell you that for sure. Because they stink. They stink real bad. Well, keep us posted on your cartoon, your new cartoon watch. They're unwatchable. All right, guys. Well, Dave, thanks for joining us this week. You guys have any final parting words of wisdom? No, I'm spent. Yeah, that was a good one. We got a lot out there. Maybe next week we come together with our thoughts on maybe a national champion for college football. Maybe since we're all kind of Browns fans, we'll see how they fare next week and see if they're in it or out of it. Big week this week for the Browns. Yeah, sounds good. Can't wait. All right, well, thanks, everyone for joining us this week. If you have any questions, ideas for future shows, hit us up at Info@swpconnect.com and we'll talk to you next week. The opinions expressed in the podcast are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any investment, legal, financial or tax strategy. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. Please consult a qualified professional about your individual needs.