Tariffs, Bear Markets and the Hidden Knowledge Worker Recession | Dave Nadig and Jason Buck

[00:00:00] Hey guys, this is Matt Ziegler. We are so excited to announce our new podcast, Click Beta. Hosted by me, Dave Nottig and Jason Buck, each month we'll have unscripted conversations about the clickbait around markets, the economy and whatever else is on our minds, all so we can discuss what this means for investors. We might even bring in some surprise guests along the way so you'll want to watch out for your favorite people showing up in the chat with the three of us.

[00:00:25] We're including the first episode in the Excess Returns feed, but if you want to continue to receive these new episodes as they come out, please subscribe to Click Beta wherever you get your podcasts. We're going to be on Apple, Spotify, everywhere else you can imagine and thanks for listening to Excess Returns. We are about to have some fun. One day it'll crash, I mean from your lips to God's ears as a longfall tail risk guy, but it's not looking like anytime soon or nobody knows.

[00:00:55] Even if it does, like, do I think there's a reasonable chance we have a 15 to 20% drawdown in calendar 2025? Absolutely. We're well due for it. Do I think that it lasts for more than three weeks? Absolutely not. Is it a rug pull when there is by definition no value or asset underneath it? There's something about this labor market that just feels really weird to me. My gut tells me that what we're actually seeing is that middle class knowledge workers are in recession.

[00:01:25] It all boils back down to Main Street, like politics of like looking someone in the eye, shaking the hand, but doing it digitally now. And like so you can build your cohort and your community. So I'm much more optimistic in that sense. Put offensive things about Jason Buck in the YouTube comments. Whatever you were just watching, that was Clickbait. This is Clickbata. We're about three humble markets people, not experts, but we do play explainer to clients in various places and spaces.

[00:01:53] We want to show you how the sausage is made. That's why we're here with Jason Buck, the Vol Guys Fall Guy in portfolio construction, teenage mutiny ninja turtle. Welcome to the show, Jason Buck. How are you doing today? Happy to be here. I didn't know we were humble investors either. I didn't think humility was a feature of this. This is clear. I'm out, clearly. I'm getting kicked out of the first few minutes of the first episode. And also this beautiful studio is brought to you by ReturnStack.com. Just got to give a shout out to the camping in Corey's basement.

[00:02:24] Exactly. That's okay. The only place better than mom's basement is definitely Corey's basement. Well, we also have, spoiler, Dave Nottig, the ETFs market, BTFD, BITFD, and 90s KMFDM bumper sticker and all-around product and strategy specialist. Welcome to the show, Dave. Good Lord. I had no idea. I knew you were going to do something like that. And I just, as soon as you started, I was like, oh God, where are we going? You always wanted to be a KMFDM bumper sticker. And Matt Ziegler. We have to point out, you are Matt Ziegler.

[00:02:51] And I am Matt Ziegler. I'm here. I'm playing host for this click beta experiment that we wanted to do. Because let's face it here. Like all three of us are financial professionals. We all touch different places. Me in the financial planning space. Buck in the fund manager space. Nottig in like the product specialist strategy consultant space. And we have to talk to people about these headlines all the time and they are exhausting. Jason, you've been in what? You've been in Florida for how many days now at conferences? How much time have you spent actually watching the news or doing anything of meaningful value?

[00:03:21] Absolutely zero. Yeah. I've been in Florida for nine or 10 days now. Last week was global alts week or alternate hedge fund week, whatever you want to call it with eye connections, uncorrelated. You know, it used to be like MFA contacts. It's always that time of year in Miami. I mean, so yeah, it's meetings from you're going from eight in the morning to 10 p.m. and that's going to bed early, right? That's not going out. So yeah, barely had my head above water, especially last week, but now now getting it a little above. But they're good. You weren't able to doom scroll the whole time.

[00:03:49] Exactly. Exactly. And I was just Dave, I was thinking like, man, we are just really POS is because we didn't come up with an intro for Matt. You know, he puts all this time in these intros. We're like, yeah, couldn't be bothered. Wait till episode two, man. It's episode two, all bets are off. We're going to try to do this monthly to start, but I think it's just a great way to see how three people, three different perspectives just stumble through the headlines and try to figure out what the hell are we going to talk to clients about? Because it does matter that we figure out how to understand this.

[00:04:17] So the ground rules, we've all taken pinky swear oath, something that we're not going to Google stuff as we go. We've got a grab bag of topics and some little headline polls. And we're going to talk through this in real time because, again, like we're surrounded by clickbait and we have to talk about this crap. Congratulations. I'm not doom scrolling for a week. We've got, Jason, a lot of stuff to catch you up on. Let's start. First one, trade war. What is it good for? I mean, should you engage in a trade war? I'm just curious.

[00:04:47] Have either of you ever, ever attempted to enact either tariffs or a trade war on any loved ones, friends, foes? You following this at all, Dave? It strikes me as a really questionable relationship strategy, honestly. I feel my relationships are like anti-tariff. I try to make things easier for my spouse, not more difficult. I suppose in parenting, there are occasions where you're like, well, you know, if you're going to have the ice cream, I get three or four scoops of that, too.

[00:05:16] Like, that's sort of my tariff, the dad tariff when the treats come out. But other than that, no, but that's sort of what we're doing, right? The dad treats for Trump as the treats come out? Yeah, I think that's kind of what we're doing. Buck, have you ever imposed a tariff or a tax on anybody? I am a big fan of the ice cream tax. I have subjected, you know, nieces, debues, and others to that on multiple occasions. It was funny. I was actually with my sister over the weekend. We were talking about we were raised in a way where there's definitely an accounting ledger in our family household. And it's a terrible way to grow up.

[00:05:45] And like, so even like, Corey was going to pick me up from the airport the other day. I was like, no, I'm taking an Uber. I'm not going to owe you anything. I'm like, you're not going to reach around for this pickup from the airport. So it's just like, I have fortunately come from a house of, yes, escalating tariffs. And that's what I've learned from all tariff wars. They escalate horribly and there's feedback loops. And I was rereading, have you guys read Thinking and Systems by Danella Maros? That's I was just rereading. It's a fantastic debut to absolutely love it.

[00:06:11] But it's just, you know, like any complex system that has feedback loops and, you know, and then they're going to battle with each other. You know, there's countervailing forces and feedback loops from the other side, which tend to escalate into a negative feedback loop. And, you know, that typically happens in tariffs. Right. And I think the other thing that's I mean, now we're being serious about it. The other thing that I think we're missing in some of this discussion is like tariffs is one thing. But these pauses we're putting on certain kinds of business activity that big G government is. I mean, remember, remember macroeconomics, big G government spending.

[00:06:40] So it's be this major part of how things work in the world. I'm all for fiscal stability. But what we're doing now is like we're just sort of putting a road bump in front of us and we have no idea what's going to happen. Like we have no idea what the consequences are going to be of the chaos that the last couple of weeks have been. So we're putting that on the back of tariffs. So I to me, it just feels like, you know, complex adaptive system that we throw in a grenade into. Yeah, we just see people are going to retaliate at all, too.

[00:07:10] Like this is going to escalate. And there was for years I lived in Brazil and Argentina and they just have massive importation tariffs. Like like what we would spend, let's say, on one hundred dollar pair of Nikes in Brazil would be like three hundred dollars. And it was like a Honda Accord was well over like one hundred grand by the time you had all that anywhere. You know, importation taxes were anywhere from three hundred to six hundred percent. You know, and you're just trying to, you know, they're trying to burgeon, obviously, the internal Brazilian industry. But these things just don't work out.

[00:07:37] Right. Because then what happens is you have an intervening country with Paraguay where they're just smuggling it all across the Brazilian border. And there was one point where I think it was the mayor of Sao Paulo got caught with a stolen Mercedes from the mayor of Buenos Aires that had gone through Paraguay. And so this is these are the things that happen in systems like that. And I always had, you know, when I was down there, my girlfriend or family at the time were always like, can you bring this in for us?

[00:08:02] Bring that in for us. And similarly with like my brother in law in Jamaica, like every time they go to Jamaica, their suitcases is filled with clothes and everything because of importation taxes and tariffs. For me, too, the like businesses, this stuff happens if you're a business and if you're I saw there was somebody did an economic paper. I think Kevin Weir shared it about like it was like the Maytags and the GEs. It was basically washers and dryers.

[00:08:24] And it was basically when tariffs and this stuff happen, the number one, the costs go up because if your competitions costs go up, you're like, I'm going to raise my prices, too, because, right, you know, sorry, guys, but I'm going to try to get these sales in still. But then business planning also grinds to a halt. Like if you're an international business and this stuff is here, this is just an incentive for you to be like, call time out. I don't know how to think about this giant change. It's safer for me to just pull back for right now.

[00:08:52] To me, the bigger issue is small businesses, large businesses, at least to have the ability to say, hey, you know what? We'll build up inventories and then we'll just take a look again in a year. I have some friends that are like board game designers, right? They do a couple of Kickstarters a year like that. Whether or not there's an extra 10 percent tariff on China is literally their entire profit margins. So this is what freaks me out. The downstream effects of this, a big company can have a shock absorber of just going. We pause these plans and we stopped catering. The executive lunch is the same thing.

[00:09:22] Yeah. The small business, that could be the entire. Well, and we've seen it. We've seen it in little. I mean, again, I'm not pretending to be an expert in anything I don't know. But like in the board game business, I know that reasonably well. You look at what happened in the first Trump administration and until the pandemic came, which kicked board game sales through the roof, you know, cost be damned. The tariffs were killing them because, you know, nobody's manufacturing giant cardboard boxes with die cuts and stuff in the United States. Nobody's doing little plastic figures with six touches of paint on them.

[00:09:51] All of that is being like literally all of it. None of that is done inside the North American Free Trade Agreement, much less the U.S. So there are whole industries that just sort of stop at least for a while until people refigure out their core cost structure. So, look, I get I get the points like I get all the counterpoints to why tariffs might be good. And, you know, I get all the American exceptionalism and rebuilding manufacturing and reshoring.

[00:10:18] I get all the positives that are theoretical out of this. But when you implement them with sledgehammers, it strikes me as really unlikely you're not breaking something. As to Dave's point, like small business owners, like I think about like my father in law, who's like a consultant engineer for like the manufacturing industry. Let's just say he like makes widgets that will go into like a motorcycle. So it's maybe one small piece, but, you know, very large order quantity and everything. But he's getting that, you know, manufactured a lot of times overseas.

[00:10:43] And, you know, just went through the COVID pandemic and disruptions to the supply chain that were a nightmare for him. Shipping costs went through the roof. The end client doesn't really want to pay for those increased shipping costs. So now he's getting squeezed and everything. Just when he feels like he gets his business back on track. Now he's terrified of tariffs because he's going to get squeezed again. Can he pass that through? Eventually businesses do pass that through. But it's just one thing after another of like all these exogenous factors. But as Dave's also saying, we kind of knew that in a way.

[00:11:10] It's interesting to me that like, you know, if you're Peter Zeihan, right? Like we we've had just this global, you know, oceans are protected, you know, by the American Navy. And so part of globalization was like this implicit thing that you could move everything offshore and you would have no hiccups. And so it's like these are this is what happens. This is why the cost is lower, because now you could have, you know, supply chain hiccups. You could have tariff hiccups and therefore is the cost now better to be offshore than onshore. But that leads to a lot of other questions.

[00:11:37] Like I was I don't know if you guys have seen like the state of Chihuahua and the city of Chihuahua in Mexico is like doing much higher end manufacturing, especially for like the auto industry. But then I bet they just got the shit scared out of them with, you know, the Mexican tariffs, you know, because like a lot of companies were moving to that that northern Mexico state till almost like we used to have those factories along the border, you know, when NAFTA first came in and into vogue. But it's just, you know, it's it's makes it tough to run a business. But then also at the same time, are we really onshore, right?

[00:12:05] Like the whole idea of nearshoring or onshoring is like my my family comes from the machine tool industry. So I've been around manufacturing most of my life. But, you know, that's the whole point of American manufacturing now is much more roboticized and now we can implement AI into the software packages. And, you know, so even like my family comes around CNC machines and everything. So you're cutting and dying like all that. There's not a lot of humans involved in that. And so, you know, that's part of the onshoring, too, is if if the zeitgeist is saying this is for the American worker, it's like there's no American workers in the factory. What's the old trope?

[00:12:34] It's like a dog and one worker and the dogs to make sure that the worker doesn't touch the machines and the humans there to feed the dog. Like, you know, like that's that's where we're at. That's the irony of the situation. I'm not sure it helps workers at all if we if we onshore. Well, it's going to change whether it's good or bad for labor. It's going to change how we do things. And that always creates opportunities and losers. You know, one thing that I've been thinking of pretty seriously, like I'm big in flying drones like FPV drones, you know, around with cameras on them and stuff.

[00:13:04] Those parts have come from China. They've come from Asia and those factories. That's all shifted. But it hasn't shifted so much because, you know, somebody opened up a fab in Arizona to start making all these little chips. It's shifted mostly because 3D manufacturing in your own house has now gotten so cheap that I can print carbon fiber parts I was ordering from somewhere for about the same price as I was ordering them from China. So why wouldn't I print them myself so I can tweak it and make it exactly what I want?

[00:13:32] I mean, I have a laser cutter which can cut plywood half an inch thick. I can make all sorts of crap that I couldn't have made before because the technology is getting smaller. And to your point, you've got AI, you've got robotics that starts getting into almost consumer level level stuff. I think this is just going to accelerate that. So, you know, a boom in small scale making, but that doesn't necessarily bode well for the overall economy. Dave, how do you think about sorry, Matt? I don't want to repeat, but like the I always think about that to like the in-house 3D printer and everything.

[00:14:02] Eventually we get to the point where like I'm selling like CAD drawings, but I'm almost like Spotify. I'm getting a few cents per CAD drawing. Like, do you think that aggregates into something interesting in a real asset light business for a designer? I think it absolutely already is. So like I do a lot of stuff with my laser printer. I mean, it's craft stuff right now. It's not like big scale stuff, but like for a group I'm part of, I'm doing 150 laser cut slate coasters that look really cool. That process is now entirely localized, right?

[00:14:28] There's no reason for me to have to involve anybody in doing that. And I think it's just a matter of time before that really does trickle up into meaningful chunks of manufacturing. You know, I am vaguely in that community. Like I followed the subreddits for it and stuff, but there are guys out there who are running both sort of 3D print labs where they're sort of mass printing like, oh, you want to do a board game and you need a thousand copies.

[00:14:51] I can make you the thousand figures you need for your thousand copies for 20 cents as opposed to the three cents you might have gotten them from China. That becomes like very viable and very doable. So, you know, the intellectual property is now you go get it on Etsy, right? So if you want to go print a 3D miniature for your D&D game, yeah, there's lots of tools you could go design it. You can also go on Etsy and buy one for 99 cents and print a thousand. Matt, what do you think?

[00:15:18] We make PA great again and we begin manufacturing back to the Rust Belt? I thought that already happened. Didn't they already solve that problem? Or did they just convert all the factories to condos and lawyer offices? Because that's what I did. That's definitely going to be a bull market in lawyers. That we know. I did my real estate closing for the house that my wife and I bought this year in like a place where I was like, I threw rocks through this abandoned factory building.

[00:15:46] Like I smashed these windows and this weird underpass crossing. Last question for both of you, just specifically on this thing, because. I feel the long game of that, like everything you just said, Dave, I feel the long game of that. I feel like if we committed to one strategy and stuck to it for five or 10 years, maybe we can create enough of a basin to say, here are the types of jobs and things that people will slowly gravitate towards. Now I can do this. Now I can do this manufacturing.

[00:16:15] And yeah, I mean, I know you're, you're half joking, Jason, but this is the Rust Belt is exactly where this stuff could actually happen. And because costs are low enough, there's enough access to energy and there's just, there's space. There's big old abandoned factory buildings. Right. That are just waiting for somebody to have any idea to do anything with. Jason, but you pointed out the labor issue, right? Which is like a lot of this stuff is no longer as labor intensive as it was, certainly in the manufacturing side of things.

[00:16:42] You know, so does that mean that we're not shooting ourselves in the foot with chasing out all of our low wage laborers? I.E. Yes. And no, like Corey and I were talking about this the other day. And I think it's Corey and I, and maybe it's somebody else. It's all a bland or blur for the last few days. But almost like that, that case shaped economy, right? Like is we are, are we already set up because we've already outsourced all of our low level manufacturing or coding and everything offshore already. And all the creativity and everything stays on shore.

[00:17:08] So it was American exceptionalism once again, set up for the world we're heading into with AI and robotic manufacturing. It's like, we're already kind of at that level and almost like Matt's saying. Yeah, we don't need the labor. And except for the labor then almost like the labor then is actually for, for physical reality, right? Like as we have a aging boomer population. Yeah. Like we have, well, I mean, less than 50 bits of us are actually growing crops anymore. So like that's already been basically, you know, created, roboticized and everything.

[00:17:36] And it's getting, these new AI tractors are wild too. I've been looking at, but then it's more about like the healthcare for the aging population, right? That's that immigrant population. Unfortunately, that's where they've, they've found the best niche maybe is in helping, you know, our aging, you know, boomer population as, as they go into senescence. So like, that's, that's another way maybe for the immigration then maybe, or maybe this does slow on immigration, but like, once again, I think we're betting, like, as we've seen, it's taken away tasks, not jobs necessarily. So, and then we always get creative.

[00:18:06] This is the first time in my life though. Maybe I'm just getting older and more cynical, but like, this is the first time with AI and everything I've started to think, man, this acceleration is so quick, especially in the last six to eight weeks. I noticed like, do we really do create that final gap where people don't have jobs that like we do have, we do have to talk about things like UBI, which was interesting to me is like, I always thought that UBI now has been all the bullshit jobs. Like people that are barely working maybe 10 to 20 hours a week, but putting in 40 hours a week at a job and like, we, they get a general baseline pay and not that baseline paid a lot

[00:18:34] of people's like over six figures, but like, and they feels like they have some modicum of like responsibility and everything. And that was actually the bullshit job. So like AI taking away those tasks is like, did we, so we actually had UBI. It just wasn't the way we thought of UBI. Right. But it was corporate subsidized. I mean, I get that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, I don't know. I mean, so that would imply like a great hollowing out of the middle class, which I think is, is a reasonable assumption. It's, but also like, to me, middle class is like a, it's a, it's a transient phenomenon,

[00:19:04] right? Like coming out of world war two, the U S was by far where we had 50% of the oil production, you know, every other developed country in the world was decimated by the, by war and bombings. It's like throughout history, you know, it's the road to serfdom, right? There's very little times where you have a sustainable middle class for a century or so, right? Like it's just the have and have nots. And yeah, does that, that manifest? And then one could argue though, in a way, Dave, that like, you know, the U S is like the true have and have not. And we have to think more globally.

[00:19:31] So it's not necessarily within our borders of, do we have an upper, middle and lower class? It's like the U S is the upper class of the world in a way. And that is, and that is valid. That is absolutely true. Especially as we retreat more and more, I do want to get back to the investment implications of this. We started this off saying we were going to talk about this, like how we have to deal with clients on this stuff. Is there anything to do about the chaos of tariffs? Because look, the market reaction was, I mean, sanguine is a word I've seen.

[00:20:00] They drink more than last week than I've seen in the last 10 years. Right. Like people have discovered that word because it was sort of like, yeah, you know, like it was, it was a healthy reaction, blood full in the face, sanguine. Right. And it went down a percent and a half and then it came back. Who cares? Right. I mean, that is, that's a Tuesday. That's not the reaction to a change in the global trade environment. But that was a, that was the thing, right? It was the world is full of sound and fury and the unsignifying nothing. Right. It was one day, like people are putting out shirts, like, you know, I think the result

[00:20:29] of that, I survived. Yeah. The one day tariff war. Right. And then, but like, okay, there's a couple of questions in there to your point. Like, by the way, I wanted to hit two points. I thought were funny when I did actually get my head above water. I saw like before this started, I think Warren Mosler tweeted out that like, you know, Canada could just levy a 25% tax on Canadian oil. You know, they don't have to wait for our terrorists. Like they could be like, sure. Here you want to pay 25% more for our gas, you know, oil and gas. There you go. And then I think, is this true? You guys probably saw it more.

[00:20:57] Maybe Matt, you did is like, you know, we had already Canada and Mexico had already sent trips to the border. And I think some upwards of 15,000. So they're like, okay, great. We'll give it 10. We'll take 5,000 away. Right. Yeah. This whole thing. And I don't know how much you guys feel like you did on, on this piece of it too. Like the investment side of this, I feel like I spent the last coming into the election, even like pre-election and then certainly through the election being like, this is the part of the playbook that we already kind of knew.

[00:21:27] Yeah. We all expected tariffs. I mean, if anything, I'm surprised that he caved so fast, you know? Right. That it was the one day tariff drama, but it kind of felt like the biggest thing that I had been talking about the longest amount of time that was the most obvious. Some version of this is going to hit. And the last thing you should expect is for it to play out like it played out last time. Cause last time when it played out and we went off the cliff and there was the whole period of being like, Oh crap, he really means this. Or like, this is really going down with China.

[00:21:55] And that was the great like unbundling of like East and West that we were going through. You know, those, those were greater forces were already in play this time. We don't have the same stakes and yeah, we're kind of throwing some stuff at the neighbors, but it's like me that the, the, you know, not to be boring about it. I think the, the, the impetus is on any new piece of information to move me off the rock that is corporate America.

[00:22:20] Because as much as I may or may not like this or the last administration, you know, the U S public markets are kind of like a hundred for a million. I mean, like they never, they, they really never let you, let you down in these moments of crisis. Yeah. They're going to go down at some point at some point. We're of course going to get some significant drawdown. Of course we are, but am I going to bet against America being in a position of power and authority and say 10 or 15 years out of this?

[00:22:48] No, I'm not going to bet against that. Like that seems not on the thing that we've already heard a version of. Like this is, this is, was always going to be a watered down version of a thing we already lived through. And it just, I don't know. I was having a hard time being like, ah, it's like, I don't know. This doesn't feel very watered down. For the Eagles in the super bowl this week. Well, but the, you know, are we just seeing, is this, is this, but that tariffs, is this

[00:23:18] another a cheese run? Like, what do we got? I always thought about it. Like, uh, we used to talk about like, you know, when we started to have some inflation, we were like, go find some Brazilian traders, right. That know how to trade inflation. Now we have tariffs. I'm like, go find some Brazilian traders, not to trade tariffs. Right. And, uh, but, but then going back to Dave's question about like, what do we invest in? And you guys are almost saying is like that American exceptionalism and like S and P 500 is like, not only do you have like the mag seven or whatever you want to call them now, like, you know, that those are very asset light businesses, right. That can take advantage of a lot of these situations.

[00:23:46] Um, and then you also have, you know, whether it's passive thesis coming in behind that, those huge flows or like Norwegian sovereign wealth funds or UAE sovereign wealth funds. Like you just have so much, you know, like kind of head, you know, tailwinds pushing you at your back. So like, like Dave's saying one day it'll crash. I mean, from, from your lips to God's ears as a, as a long fall tail risk guy, but, uh, it's not looking like anytime soon or, you know, nobody knows. Like, even if it does, like, like, do I think there's a reasonable chance we have a 15 to 20% drawdown in calendar 2025?

[00:24:16] Absolutely. We're well due for it. Do I think that it lasts for more than three weeks? Absolutely not. Right. That's the problem is we've seen like, do you, do you, let me ask you, Jason, you've been trading this way more intensely than I have. Do you think that if we hit that event, whatever that event is that causes everybody to, you know, start puking and, and really get out. Do you think it lasts more than a month? Do you think we have sustained downturn?

[00:24:42] Like an actual bear market where we have multiple quarters, where we say, well, it's an interesting question on multiple fronts. Uh, like how do we, how do we assess this? So, um, for example, like as a vol guy, it's always funny. Like when January 6th happened, right. Go check your vol, like vols down. Like doesn't make a lot of sense. Right. Like just like this, this, this industry is tough, right. It's where you're coming from. And then, yeah. And either way, whether you, whether it works out or not, like Trump injects volatility, right. You would think, right.

[00:25:10] But like even, but during his last administration, you know, we had, you know, 2019 was extremely or 2017, 2019, all those were like extremely low vol years. But to Dave's point, what was interesting is like 2008, it took us years for vol to decline back down. Right. You had this vol pop, you have the echo of volatility. It lasted several years before it declined back to, to pre 2008 levels. Right. Then you have like 2015, you got a little wobbles in Europe. You know, you got the 2018 volmageddon, you know, that have, that took like maybe a month or two to recover. Right.

[00:25:40] Then we get to COVID March, uh, 2020, you have a few weeks for vol crushes back down. Then we have August 5th. Now we're into days. So almost to your point, Dave, like, yeah, it would take something truly cataclysmic, I think for it to then have months or years to recover for that echo of volatility to pass through. I mean, is it plausible and possible? Yes. Is it always kind of a black swan in that sense for that truly cataclysmic? Yes. And that's why I can't predict it either. Um, but it's hard to see it right. Like in the last, like I said, we're conditioned to the last 15 years of, of vol spiking and

[00:26:10] crushing more rapid with more rapidity than we've ever seen in history. And have we all just been culturally indicated that that means by the dip, by the dip, by the dip, by the dip, by the dip. Right. The second you see it by the dip. I mean, you saw that with the tariffs, like everybody was just out there saying, you know, BDFD, BTFD. Yeah. So what about like when you put that lens on and you know how, and I don't, I don't want to use the word that was like long in the tooth that we're waiting for something nasty to happen to markets again.

[00:26:37] But is it just, does the game just become, you go look for like, what's the, what's the cheapest hedge I can find at any point in time? And just keeping, make sure you already have that cheap insurance policy in place. That's the other, the other beautiful piece to this. And you know, God, it's been years. Dave and I used to talk about this privately when he was writing out papers on vol and tail rest. It was great stuff. But like one of the things that he's alluding to and Matt, you're saying now there's this beautiful thing with like Hyman Minsky where stability breeds instability. Right.

[00:27:03] And actually tail risk protection becomes cheapest right before you need it most because everybody's, like you're saying, they think that the good times are going to keep going. They don't want to hedge at all. So it's really cheap to buy tail risk protection. So that is the good point is like in a, uh, universal sense, like Mark Spitznagel, Nassim Taleb. Yes. Maybe now you can be a hundred percent long S and P and you can just spend, you know, one or two or 3% in your tail risk hedges. Cause they're super cheap and you have unbelievable convexity there if it truly does happen. But meanwhile, you're participating, what we call it, our firm as in the white moose.

[00:27:32] Like if you're constantly waiting for the black swan to happen and you're missing out on those market gains, those market gains are what we call the white moose. So like, you got to think about pairing maybe the white moose with the black swan. Let's shift gears. I want to talk about one last thing. I just want to, on a, on a positive note, cause it was also the question is there was like, what do we invest in besides S and P 500 is, um, what has blown me away is we've gotten in, uh, kind of deep into this defense tech space and what the kids are calling the

[00:27:58] gundo, which is that Southern California coast where you have your, your andurils of the world and all these, um, new firms are springing up around it. It's been fascinating to see that the 20 year olds that are really building in America. I mean, yeah, they may be using like Hadrian and other robotic forms of manufacturing. And, and, but that is the on-shoring I'm seeing is especially in the defense tech space, like this newer generation is very different from the millennials, right? They're very, they're a lot more conservative. They're really into us exceptionalism military. They're into this like cold war with China, you know?

[00:28:27] So they're really trying to grow in that gundo. And then you have other people actually using the Rust Belt of Detroit, you know, near where I grew up to really build out manufacturing there now, granted it's a lot more roboticized. Um, but it is kind of fascinating to see that that has given me that optimism I see internally in the U S and manufacturing. And then I, I, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out though, too, it's always bothered my family that like, we always say like U S manufacturing is down. Yes. If we're comparing manufacturing widgets with like China or Vietnam or India that we offshored, but at the higher end of manufacturing, we've always been competing with Germany.

[00:28:57] And we've always been outpacing Germany still on that higher end of manufacturing. So it's also like, obviously there's a spectrum of like what type of manufacturing we're talking about, but I'm not sure Dave, like what happened though? Like I always thought like, you know, those, those factories that, uh, Matt used to throw rocks at, I thought we were going to use those. Like you're saying like centralized hubs for really high tech 3d printing. And it was more like you had a community 3d printer that you could go to, but it didn't seem those took off or maybe it's in dormant and it's coming back and like, you know, these things take longer. Right.

[00:29:24] I mean, my, so again, putting my, my crafter hat on, uh, you know, in my obsession with, you know, small scale fabrication, uh, the reality there is things are changing, I mean, much like computing, things are changing sort of on a Moore's law basis. So if you, if you look at something like the strength or the resolution of a plastic printer, like a, you know, an additive printer, uh, you know, a year or two ago, you could get stuff that was functionally equivalent to a, you know, injection molded part.

[00:29:53] You would get made in China or something like that, but it wouldn't be as smooth. It wouldn't be as strong, et cetera. Now with my, my $200 printer in the basement, I can print carbon fiber, right? So I can print a hook that I can hang from the ceiling on. That's, you know, the size of a hook that I would buy from the hardware store. Um, it's expensive, but like it is available, right? Anybody can do that with cheap, cheap hardware. So the idea of needing like community centers to do large scale, you know, to do more specialized

[00:30:21] or more expensive kinds of local fabrication, I think is being obviated by the fact that the tech is changing so fast that if you run a maker space somewhere to do that kind of work, the machine that you've got is probably already deprecated by something I can get for 500 bucks at home. And that's, that's the weird thing about that space. And those machines never have useful life again, right? That is that those are like old computers, right? They're like Pentium threes. They, they can get recycled, but you ain't going to find a use for them. That's it.

[00:30:49] Like I always think about, think about like before the industrial revolution, right? We all had bespoke clothing and then we became, we created these sizings during like the industrial that's really only been around for 150, 200 years. And like, so once again, even on like the clothing side, do we get back to bespoke clothing as we're starting to see like, you know, laser 3d imaging of yourself and like, as you're saying, one day it'll be in your house even. Well, just to blow your mind for science fiction with an app, I can scan you and then I can cut out a suit for you on my 3d laser printer. Right. That's just, I could do that right now.

[00:31:19] I still have to hand sew it. That's the only problem. And that's my point. We collapse. So there's two points in there. That's perfect. It's like, um, what's great about e-commerce and like younger entrepreneurs is like we collapse the supply chain, right? Like people are going straight to Mongolia to find the cashmere and then you're collapsing that cost. Right. And like, you're just collapsing the entire supply chain. And now you're saying like, if you print it in house, like you're collapsing that entire supply chain. Right. And people have to find different jobs. But like we always said, like, you know, 200 years ago, 97% of Americans were farmers. Now, now it's less than 50 bips, you know?

[00:31:45] And so the interesting challenge there though, both on the terror front and on the sort of, you know, the IP front is, you know, where virtually all of those machines are manufactured and with the IP is China. Right. So like all of those super high end, high efficiency 3d printers are on closed operating systems sent from China and they phone home regularly, just like DJI drones. Same thing. Like I have three DJI drones. They absolutely all phone home to China every single time.

[00:32:14] You can put a packet sniffer on them. I mean, it's not rocket science to see it. It sends so much information out every time you boot it up and it literally won't fly without doing that. So like those are real, like, you know, I'm not like a big, you know, China hawk in general, but like, that's real. That's, that's a real thing. And it's not stopping you from using them. Cause yeah. Cause like they're, they're great piece of machinery. I'm also not putting anything into my drone. That's that interesting. It's really easy to figure out where I live on the internet. But that's, that's why I got a shout out to Haas machine.

[00:32:43] So, so if you ever watch F1 or NASCAR, you see the Haas team. Haas builds the CNC machine. So they build the factories that basically build the internal factors. And they do a lot of like a lot of that in America that the huge, huge fan of those. But, oh, that was the other thing I remembered is like, I was, I think it was on Jim O'Shaughnessy's podcast the other day. I can't remember the exact guy's name, but he runs a nonprofit about, I think it was like merging technologies. He said something that like kind of blew me away. He's like, why would you donate a hundred million dollars to a building on your university campus? I mean, we know why people do for vanity sake, but he's like, if you could just buy a

[00:33:10] old warehouse for a million dollars and then donate, you know, a hundred million dollars to the people building the tech and the emerging tech that we need in that space. And then basically, so you bring back the old Tuxedo Parks, the old, you know, IBM's like the old Bell Labs. Like, I just think that's fascinating to think about. It's like, yeah, with a warehouse and maybe some, you know, CNC machines or printer, like you could be bringing back, you know, an incubator in that sense. I've got a buddy who I've known the family for a long time and industrial base dad comes

[00:33:40] home like post-World War II and he brings back, you know, the technology and the know-how from the military of how to basically carve stuff into metal of various shapes and sizes for labels, tags, and very functional purpose stuff, stuff we take for granted. You think it's like a sticker on the side of a crane and it's like, no, no, somebody actually needed this giant machine to do it. And his whole life was watching, you know, the family business evolve with the technology.

[00:34:07] And basically when you can't keep up, you just slowly watch yourself slip a little bit further and a little bit further behind. And at the end, before they sunset the business, finally, he was like, I'm one of like two guys in the country who, if you need a completely custom job done, I still have the machine that like my dad put together, like in the sixties or the seventies, I can still do this custom job because you can only do it by hand and with these things. He was just saying the other day.

[00:34:35] So it's like, we had to sunset that because of the competition that came in. But he's like, now he's like everybody else who is competing me away into the ground into nothing is basically like everything they do is stale and out of date in like years, if not months at this point. And he's like, I'm not going to restart the business just to go back in and like compete with AI and without needing like the workers and all the other stuff that was a hassle on the weird small run jobs that were being done. But he was literally talking about the idea he just said about like, give me the, just

[00:35:04] give me the space, give me the robots and the tools and really custom work all of a sudden is as a, as a lot of value for, for anybody who cares if you're not just stamping stickers on the side of, you know, tractor trailers or something. Yeah. I think it's a big question whether we have a cultural zeitgeist shift where people move from buying, you know, the, the glow in the dark ice cubes on Tmue for 36 cents versus having something custom made that they really care about. Right. I mean, that's a, that's a cultural shift and maybe, Hey, maybe tariffs get us there. All right.

[00:35:34] Well, speaking of that and people paying ridiculous things for a ridiculous prices for ridiculous things. This note is a family that crypto grifts together, at least stays on the blockchain together. Oh God. I mean, well, like, so first off personal experience working for a giant company, I was not allowed to touch any of this stuff at the beginning of COVID. And I just watched from the sidelines. Did either of you guys trade like, um, not even crypto, like just like any of the weird. Oh yeah.

[00:36:04] Coins and other shenanigans. I mean, I know you did Jason, but yeah, I didn't, I didn't like do the horse racing crap and stuff like Jason did, but I traded at FTEs and I traded crap coins and all that stuff. And no, I don't do any of that anymore. I still have some crap sitting in some wallets that I check in on once in a while. And, um, Hey, who knew I had, I had like a whole pile of constitution Dow. You remember that? The Dow that was going to buy this copy of the U S constitution, like roll it around somewhere. Um, and that all dissolved and faded apart.

[00:36:34] And for, it went down to basically nothing. And I looked at it the other day and it's like five grand. I'm like, who's trading this to bid this back up. I sold it. I'm not an idiot, but like. Okay. So what is this? What, what do you, how do you even start to think about or talk to another human about like the Trump coin thing or the Eric Trump ether thing today? Like, do you just avoid, I feel like I'm back in the old giant corporate overlord compliance space where I'm just like, just tell me, I can't talk about this. How do we even know about this?

[00:37:03] Cause I haven't seen it. What did, what did, uh, what did Eric do on ether? Just so I know before I say anything. So he basically made some comments the other day about, uh, let's see if I have this in this note here. Um, referring to the referring to it, he said, in my opinion, it's a great time to add to Ethan. So, you know, so, I mean, I've, let's see, I've owned Bitcoin from 2014, 2015 ish. Started by then.

[00:37:32] Like, and then I was, um, you know, I was early, which is definitely wrong by all standards when I was, I was buying crypto and breeding crypto kitties. Like when crypto kitties were like around, like that was the original, like crypto punks and everything. And, and board apes. Like, why didn't those take off? Like I had plenty of crypto kitties, um, but they're probably back now. If like, like Dave said, if I checked my wallet somewhere, if I can find it, this is probably like has some value. Um, but then like, but also like as a just entrepreneur, like NFTs in the space are really

[00:37:59] interesting from like, it's just a better capital formation than like an LLC, right? Like if I can put programmable equity and debt within that structure and get it on chain and securitized fully securitized token, there's really interesting things you can do there. Sure. But like there, yes, there's amazing things that we could do with assets on blockchains. A hundred percent. And I'm a big fan and I'm sure that when I die, the vast majority of risk on the planet will be traded on some version of something like that.

[00:38:28] But the problem is that the existing market for crap coins and NFTs is not that right. It's so far it has explicitly even anti that opposite. Like it can't be the thing that you're talking to be about a being. Maybe it is going to be now. I mean, I don't actually think we got, there was a, I saw a bit of the press conference that was just out on, you know, the new, you know, strategic Bitcoin reserve and what we're going to be doing on regulation.

[00:38:55] And Hey, you know, some of this is stuff I've been calling for for years, like comprehensive stable coin regulation and things like that. Do I think we're actually going to put smart regulation in place that lets you raise money on the blockchain like that? No, I think we're going to end up with a set of rules that some people will follow, i.e. Tradify people who want to be in the space and that most people, right. So it's going to be banking and gambling. Like that's basically what we're doing.

[00:39:21] We need super conservative banking and we need super aggressive, degenerate gambling, nothing in between. Yeah. This is how it's basically going to be like a market that is full of nothing, but triple leverage micro strategy and the S and P 500 with a, you know, floor. Like that's what a bar market. Yeah. What a bar. But Dave, like you're, you're in destruction and everything is like, is part of that that you'd like to see, like the cheapest I've found to like do it properly is like $250,000 to securitize the token.

[00:39:48] So to do it right under SEC regulation, it's like quarter million dollars for launch. You can see why people do the workarounds, right? Right. Like is that part of the point is that look, I'm not defending how much, how I'm not defending the friction of the U S securities market, right? Part of this problem is because we don't let companies go public without spending that kind of money too. Right. I mean, Sarbanes-Oxley put us all in a box. So yeah, I'm not, I'm not saying it's great. What I'm saying is removing all of the barriers so that basically anybody can just stand up a

[00:40:17] coin and say, Hey, buy my coin. I'll collect the money. I'm the only one who has it now. And whatever you can do to convince people it's worth something is just like, that's fine. Like that's, that's not a, there's no rule of law in that. That is literally just a license for graft. Could, could disagree more. I mean, I agree more. I'm sorry. It's like, it's just like, especially with like the, the whole, like the one with the Trump meme coin, like was it Friday before going into office? That's just like, you, you couldn't write that. Like there's like, there's like, that can't be real.

[00:40:47] And then you find out it is real. But then my favorite ones, did you see like the pastor's coin? That was kind of like brilliant rally or the inauguration thing. Yeah. He like rug pulled, like, was it like $70 million? I'm probably getting that wrong generally. But then he's like, we're going to build 120 churches with this over the next 10 years. Thanks. Like, it's just like later going to Brazil. Yeah. The most interesting rug pull yet, probably, probably in crypto. Jesus.

[00:41:11] It's, it's, I mean, is it a rug pull when there is by definition, no value or asset underneath it? I mean, like, like the actual disclaimers on the page where you go to look up Trump coin pretty much say right out of the gate, this is just a toy, right? They're not saying it has any utility whatsoever. They're not saying it's going to have any utility whatsoever. It is simply a collectible. That is all it is. It's just a thing to own because you want to own it.

[00:41:39] I mean, like I I'm better with that, honestly, than I am with your version of using NFTs to raise funding to run going concerns, right? At least this is just straight up a valueless purchase. It's like spending a million dollars on a black Lotus and a magic gathering, magic, the gathering sale, right? And then you can because you want it, but there's no, there's no economic value. So like, again, back to the watch word of what do we tell clients? Ignore all of this stuff, right?

[00:42:07] Actually trading real assets on blockchains. Yes, that's interesting. And there are companies in there doing really interesting work. And at some point, yeah, you're going to get a piece of securitized debt that's going to actually be on a blockchain and that's going to be a thing in your portfolio. But that's when you should start paying attention to it. Not because Trump launches a coin. But do you guys recommend any like Bitcoin, Ethereum exposure, like even in single digit percentages for people like some exposure to the space?

[00:42:33] For the same reason, I think you stay in the S&P 500 because like you kind of got to bet where the bet is. I personally have a moral quandary with Bitcoin. I own some. It's probably 20 or 30 basis points of my invested assets. I mean, it's de minimis. But I'm not willing to say I'm going to put 10% of my wealth or 40% of my wealth into this because that is fundamentally a bet against the United States of America, in my opinion. Right.

[00:43:00] Because you literally have to imagine a world where the value of the dollar versus the Bitcoin has collapsed. What about you, Jason? Do you guys allocate inside of strategies to it? I'm a fan of having some allegation to it. And if you're open to it, I'm telling you, you should have the allegation to it when I'm working with clients on this stuff, because I think it's the market capitalization of this asset class is not something that you should just blindly ignore. And we've got government structures now behind it, backing it up.

[00:43:29] So, well, we, yeah, we, we broadly diversify. And so to me, it's just another volatile asset that I can rebalance. Right. It's not necessarily what it is. It's almost like a trading sardine. And then it's having some exposure to that world for regret minimization. Because what if the Bitcoin maxis are right? It's a low probability, but like you don't want to. A million. Yeah. Right. You don't want to hear from them. Right. Like you just want to like. Oh, I had some, even if it was a tiny. Right. And then at the same time, though, this is what I'm curious about.

[00:43:58] Even though, even though Dave looks younger than me, um, he's got more experience than I do was like, and, but Dave throughout your life, you've been on like forefront of tech and all this other stuff that's going on. It's like, I always wonder though, how to, in this postmodern world, like where you may not agree with a lot of this space, it's like, how do you keep your, at least a toe in the space? Because if it's the future, right. Like, that's what I'm saying. It's, it's really easy as I get older to be like, nah, this is all bullshit and just be a curmudgeon about it. But like, it's also to have some participation to like understand what, at least what's going on.

[00:44:25] I mean, I think that, well, my answer is different than what I think the average investor answer should be is that I obsessively rabbit hole. Anytime a new technology stack like that shows up, whether it's, you know, blockchain, which I spent two or three years in, whether it's AI, which I spent about a year in. And I know that I'll never get, I'll never do that as a job, but I feel that's how I get that sense of how real is this, whether or not I should allocate to it. The crypto side of things has been just this giant regulatory unknown more than anything else.

[00:44:55] I don't, I don't really have much, many questions about the tech, right. So it's really just about regulation and that's a tough one to bet on. Right. So I feel like putting a big bet on Bitcoin, say two years ago was a big bet on regulation. Putting a, putting it on now is a little bit less of a bet because we obviously know what kind of administration we're in, but I'm not sure that means that, uh, you know, Solana is going to be the thing that moves. So I mean, I think that's still tough to say. I always love that.

[00:45:24] Uh, my favorite was like Jimmy Carter had to sell his peanut farm because he didn't want a conflict of interest going into the white mouth. Right. Yeah. Different era, different era. Are you going to launch a peanut coin? Can we, can we get a counter? Can we get a counter? We need Zine coin. We need a Zine coin. All right. I'll buy a Zine coin. If you put one out there, I promise. All right. Let's one other, let's get away from this and at least talk about, because I think this

[00:45:53] one I'm feeling, I know I've talked to both of you off offline about this just in the last, certainly in the last several months, but not the last like couple of years on this. I wrote down job openings and the reality of opening yourself up to finding a job. We're all talking about how great the labor market is. Wages, productivity, all this stuff is up. Everything's good. Look how low unemployment is. And it, it's frigging hard out there. I know some people in between stuff. I know some people looking to figure out how to like continue the freelancer thing or make stuff work.

[00:46:23] And on face value that it looks like they're doing lots of stuff and you'd think they're doing lots of stuff for good money and there's good things happening, but there's something about this labor market that just feels really weird to me. And I see it with clients. Are you guys sensing this too? Like, where's your experience where are these labor numbers? Do they feel real? I don't mean like fake news. I mean, does it really feel like employment in the United States is as strong as the data says it is? I have no knowledge to question the numbers that have come out. Yeah.

[00:46:53] As far as the vibe, this is a little bit of a Kyla Scanlon vibe session discussion, right? Give me this because I'm feeling this when I talk. I think my gut tells me that what we're actually seeing is that middle-class knowledge workers are in recession. So we know a lot of middle-class knowledge workers. That includes everybody who's a PM. It includes everybody who's an analyst or a writer. It includes financial advisors. It includes everybody who works at BlackRock for the most part, right?

[00:47:22] These are middle-class or upper-class knowledge workers. That market, I think, is actually pretty challenged right now. The problem is it doesn't really show up in the data that much because while it may be good jobs in the sense that these are people making six figures and with retirement plans, et cetera, and so on, their job counts exactly the same in those labor market statistics as the employee at McDonald's who started last week is 22. And I think that there's a lot of that, right? I think the pandemic wave has really...

[00:47:52] That's over, right? The restaurants are open. Services are happening. People are doing things again. New York is crazy crowded, right? None of those things are an issue anymore. So yeah, all those jobs are back. Hospitality jobs are all back. Middle management knowledge workers. I know a lot, myself included, I know lots of them are on the street. I'm thinking of Jason. I'm thinking of that UBI argument before too. Like, is this the core... Is that... Yeah. The middle-class knowledge worker... Pulsate jobs like mine.

[00:48:22] Is that the ultimate corporate subsidy where it was like, go screw around and do something else and we're just slowly automating the hell out of those people. Well, also, like you're saying that I think the more interesting part of you're saying is like our anecdotal experience, right? Like is like trying to figure out the job. Like you're saying, like, are we really at like four or 5% unemployment? You're not really seeing it or it's hard for us to grasp. And then also the circles that we hang out in are going to be vastly different too. Like that was one of my favorite parts of moving to Pennsylvania from California is like

[00:48:49] just being around people with like more normal jobs than like in, you know, like a Napa Valley or something like that where people have already made their nut and now they're half retired or whatever it is. And to see, like have more experience around 9 to 5 people and what they're doing is like, it's kind of fascinating to me. But like, I'm not... I'm seeing most of them still have jobs, right? But I'm also... I'm seeing none of them really talking about AI, right? Like, and I don't know if that's, you know, willfully not looking at AI because, you know, they one day the bus will show up at their door, so to speak.

[00:49:17] But and then I think it's interesting that like there's people like Russell Clark will argue that we're moving to a much more pro labor than pro capital world. I'm not sure that's necessarily true, but I think it would be a black swan for Trump in this administration to see, you know, that rise of socialism again. And that's what they're kind of fighting for in this AI world. And like you're saying, whether it's onshoring or the robotics and everything, it does feel like there's a bifurcation there. I don't know what that manifests at.

[00:49:44] And I don't know like yet where if we're truly at that level of unemployment. And then like, as we said, where do they collect the data and the numbers and all that stuff? Not getting into conspiracies, but like, you know, we were constantly changing the goalposts there of who counts as part of the labor force of fully gainfully employed. Right. So it's like... And those data sets are miserable. And I'm not... I mean, Mike Green has done some great work talking about problems with the birth death model. And like there's all sorts of problems with the way we calculate labor statistics. I don't think it matters because I think we're going to turn all that data off and we're

[00:50:14] never going to see it again. So I suspect we're entering a world with a lot less data. So if you... And then Matt, maybe you're better for this because I feel like this is a terrible question for Dave and I in that we've never been employable. So I don't, you know, we probably shouldn't even open our mouths about this topic. I mean, you feel like you're a little more employable than we are. But that was not a backhanded compliment. That was a straight backhand. Congratulations on your employability. Beat it, nerd.

[00:50:44] Right. I feel like, and I feel that sentiment, like that's the vibes check from my fellow middle class knowledge workers. And I think you, the way you said it too, same thing, like Northeastern Pennsylvania here. It's like, you talk to the doctors or the nurses, the factory workers, the other people, the neighbors on my street, I'm in a coal mining town, you know, like it's barely escaped coal mining town status. And I talked to those people, they're not talking about AI. Like we go to the bar for pizza.

[00:51:13] It's not an AI conversation. Like we're not talking about that. It might be some about manufacturing or whatever other jobs or whatever is going on in this area. There's that, but it's not an AI conversation. Then on the flip side of it, it's like, I don't think the middle management jobs ever really got here. Like the middle managed knowledge workers. Like I see where the ceiling of a lot of the industries are for people who try to go that path. And if, and if, if you're me, that's why you run kicking and screaming out of this area at 17 years old.

[00:51:40] And you're like, I got to get out and it's okay to come back. But I come back and I meet like a 30 year old or a 35 year old. And I'm like, oh my God, where are you going to go from here? Like, what are the other opportunities if you want them? But that's maybe part of my preternatural optimism is like, this is why you and I have moved to small towns in like Pennsylvania, right? Because like cost of living and where we're taking global arbitrage of how we can make money or whatever. And like, and then part of it, like that Dave was talking about earlier is like custom art, you know, maybe that's the bifurcation too.

[00:52:08] Things become commodities and ultra cheap, but then custom art projects and everything have enormous value. And I also even think about that in, in, in the food supply chain too. Like a properly grass fed, grass finished piece of beef is going to become enormously expensive and in some shitty factory version of me to become like, we'll just have K-shaped kind of everywhere. And everybody else is eating protein paste. Yeah. Yeah. Coming out of it too. Riding on their train. I mean, dude, people are doing a volunteer. There's all business about fuel based on that. Right.

[00:52:37] I mean, there's all sorts of people who are deliberately trying not to eat food. I don't know. I like food. I do like food too. Uh, I am fascinated by that too. And that's one of those things. I don't know how much of this you've run into in your, you know, relocation experiment, Jason, but the, like I went to a noise and drone festival in the lobby of a donut shop last year. Like these little maker art community just absolutely batshit crazy. Like wrestling, man. You got to find your local wrestling.

[00:53:07] Oh, we have it. Yeah. Like that. I mean, in the Midwest, local wrestling, we have one here in Pritchfield, Massachusetts, which is to die for. So like that stuff's going to matter. Sure. So the weird thing is like, you didn't get the trade off of those middle manager jobs that then accelerated into gross levels of pay, but you also retained. I feel like there's all these pockets in the country of stuff like this, where it's this tucked latent knowledge of people who still remember how to be weird and make something weird and fun. Well, I think it skips, right?

[00:53:36] Like, like IRL is going to become much more valuable. Like you're saying, they're a local wrestler, any sort of event with real people in real time. It's like, that's why like maybe Broadway succeeds or like Hollywood fails. Like, you know, this just with the rise of technology, but I'm sure they'll still be fine as storytelling. But that's, that's what I think is beautiful. It's like, I always talk to like, uh, boomers now, the empty nesters, et cetera. And you know, whether they wanted to get an e-com or they want to start a sub stack or whatever. And like, you're actually perfectly set up for it. Cause they're like, maybe they're intimidated by the technology or the AI.

[00:54:04] And I'm like, it all boils back down to main street, like politics of like looking someone in the eye, shaking the hand, but doing it digitally now. And like, so you can build your cohort and your community. So I'm much more optimistic in that sense of like the people, like you're saying, Matt, if everything just skipped by them now that like main street in, in, in a small town in Pennsylvania comes back because people are making, you know, things, making great coffee, handed it to each other, doing, you know, plays or shows or, or, you know, things like that, or running their business in a way that once again, it's about community again.

[00:54:31] That's why I think you and I were texting privately the other day about like Greg Eisenberg and the idea of communities, right? Like that's how you build now is more community-based than anything else. And, and people are still set up for community and craving communities. And, and people know how to do that, whether AI is involved or not. The, the, the challenge to me there is just capitalism has now devolved into a scale business, right? And so I, yes, I agree with that. I live in a small town in Western Massachusetts for that reason, right?

[00:54:59] I can go to six different theaters where people are putting on community plays and see local wrestling and go to roller derby or whatever the heck I want, because I live in the middle of nowhere. I worry that it's hard to turn. It's hard to bring that to Brooklyn, right? Like I've been to a bunch of cities where I was hoping to see that kind of community scene rebuilding. And I haven't seen it much now. It's some of that's my, myopia.

[00:55:27] And I like talked to my 25 year old daughter who, you know, and the city she's in, there's all sorts of organizing going on and all sorts of local stuff happening. So I hope you're right. I really hope you're right. It certainly feels like the way forward. I think you have to not have that experience of scaling the thing up to like not understand that that's like that option almost has to fly over your head. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like to your point earlier, Matt, like you had to leave these towns, go to like New York, Chicago, LA, whatever.

[00:55:57] And then come back. Right. Like we learn, like as we get older, right. What's important. Yeah. Cause if you don't know, then you're, and I'm sure this is like, this is my experience coming back. It's like, you're coming in with like the treasure from outside. It's like, oh, I can, I can talk to my friends about how to like connect with some of this stuff and figure it out. So many friends doing these crazy, like a bunch of us that all similar age that have come back to an area like this with that city knowledge or with that world knowledge of going like, oh, this is a great place to do this thing.

[00:56:27] Are you guys part of a local digital community of any kind, like a next door or like a local subreddit or anything like that? I mean, is there, is there a neighborhood group or a, a town, you know, social network for y'all? There is one, there is one out here in Massachusetts. Like I check it once in a while and it seems to have a couple hundred people. And it's not a disaster. It's mostly a disaster. Because I was on, I observed it's mostly a disaster. Lots of people fighting about wands. It was bad. Yeah. Well, that's what, yeah.

[00:56:57] We, when we were in California, next door was huge and I never was on it. But, but my fiance would always tell me like just the wild things going on on next door. It was like probably the most enjoyable association. Yeah, exactly. But that, but I want to go back to like Matt was saying, what I think is interesting is like the British philosopher, John Gray, used to always talk about, we oscillate between liberalism and barbarism. Right. And I always think about, you know, uh, you have like homostasis, right? Flat homeostasis, like small peturbations.

[00:57:25] But I always think about allostatic bands and they, they have large kind of ups and downs and waves to that. And we always try to think about the average cutting through the middle. Well, we never hit the average. And so I think about these things moving in, in wide bands. It's like, so we went from hyperscaling more recently is do we go back to hyperlocal? And that's, that's my hopeful optimism is that that hyperscale, this globalized world, all this tech we have now allows us to really bifurcate our digital lives in our, in our, in our personal lives and in real life.

[00:57:51] And we can go hyperlocal, but still compete if we want in a hyperglobal scale. And I think that all dovetails into the Peter Zion stuff too, in a really interesting way. And I think that's one of the other, that's one of the other US exceptionalism parts. And of course, biased because of the age band and everything else in this, but it's this idea of we can do that hyperlocal awareness and we have the right demographic. Inside of the US in this emergent generation where there's enough bodies to actually go,

[00:58:19] we're going to check out of more of that system faster. That was the people older than us that want this. Not to mention nowhere else better than probably like in places like sports and Jason, you and I, and our friend Roger there have talked about this extensively. Like what a great barbell we have between maybe like the 30 year old who wants the in-person experience and the 60 year old who still knows what the value of that experience is. And granted, they want different things from it, but just finding stuff we can rally around, whether it's a professional sports event or your favorite local wrestler or roller derby,

[00:58:49] which, um, you know. But we're all three great examples of this, right? Like we are, we've all lived in major cities. We've all can, could live in major cities if we want. We all go back to these. So I think about it now is like, everybody wants to go back to like the villages, like in the almost like a UK sense of like, if you have the village with just enough people and just enough community and just enough local things that you could still walk in and out of the village from your house, you know, within like a 15 minute walk. That's what we're really bringing back is this idea of village and community.

[00:59:15] And then what's better about that, the downsides to that historically though, is if you were different or weird or had, you know, maybe non, you know, heteronormative ideas, like that was really tough if you were in that village, but now you can have a global community online where you'll find your tribe that way. And then you could still, if you wanted that in-person, you know, relationships, you can be in a village where that's why I think that bifurcation is really fascinating to me in an optimistic sense. It's like, I can have that, uh, that real life global village, like just local village

[00:59:42] community, but then I can reach out globally to find like-minded people around the globe that might be into whatever, you know, weird esoterica I'm into. Right. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's true. I mean, to my mind, you just sort of described like 1993. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's what we were doing. In 1993, we were on, we were on Usenet forums and CompuServe instead, but I mean, it was the same, same basic idea because we could get, you know, those initial blushes of getting

[01:00:08] access to resources and like-minded people who'd seen stuff that you were seeing in front of your life. But yeah, I hope so. Um, I, I'm, I'm encouraged by young people. I think there's a, a middle-class middle-aged hollowing out. That's going to be real rough for a lot of people. That's fair. And no, Matt, I'm going to interrupt because I know you probably didn't have this on your bingo card, but both of you guys are music guys. So did you guys watch the Grammys? No. Yes. Dave, you're just totally out. Dave, is modern music just sucked to you, Dave? No.

[01:00:38] All I listen to is modern music. All he listens to is new music. That's what I care about. We're up for anything, right? I was glad Kendrick Lamar won. That was fun. I watched the clips, you know? You can't keep up with Dave's new music. I think I had like, at one point this morning, I had like eight open tabs from an Echo Beach post where I was like, this time you've officially like, I've got less than 50% of these new artists that you do. Wow. I've never heard of. That's okay. There was, there was two interesting things. One, I don't think they've done it before, but Matt, you correct me if I'm wrong.

[01:01:06] They did like five back-to-back performances, almost like a fireworks finale. And that was kind of cool. They did that like twice through there. That was kind of interesting to see them go like right back-to-back. You're talking about the multi-artist medley? Yeah. Yeah. I saw the clips of those. That was cool. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other one that I know Matt's going to be into because he's just such a Pennsylvania homer is like just the rise of Pennsylvania. So you had your power, Taylor Swift. Now you got your Sabrina Carpenter. I think I saw on Twitter, like the first shout out for Ballot Kenwood ever at the Grammys.

[01:01:35] And if you could spell Ballot Kenwood to tell me you're from Southeast Pennsylvania, you know, those sorts of things. I just know it as the home of Susquehanna, but that's apparently where she went for singing lessons. But I figured Matt had to, he will bring up anybody that's ever set foot in Pennsylvania that's famous. I will. I will. And, you know, I was, there was one point where Taylor Swift was saying something and I was like, we're going to get a Reading, Pennsylvania shout out. We're going to get it. It's coming. Like here it is. It didn't make it in there, but I was, I was like, oh, we were, we were so close.

[01:02:04] You know, all we get in Western Massachusetts is James Taylor. Boy, are we sad and tired of hearing about him. You know, I mean, at least you're not hearing about like stained anymore or something, right? You got the upside of that. We had, and then now that I'm in like Tampa today, like Dochi, like, like she gave a shot at the Tampa saying like, there's more creative artists there and A&Rs need to come there. I mean, who knows that's true, but like maybe it is. That's awesome too. If that's the case. If you haven't seen them, this is my plug for you, Dave. So this is the audience of one here. The Dochi acceptance piece was really awesome.

[01:02:34] She did a really cool thing. She's amazing. Plugging the hell out of Florida in the most like gorgeous way possible. Absolutely. Dochi's amazing. And Chapel Roan's, despite like there may be some. Chapel Roan? There might be some economic misgivings about some of the arguments she had, but at the same time gave a really compelling like speech for just, you know, you get signed to a label and you're told to do all this stuff and then COVID happens. And like, what are you supposed to do with your life?

[01:03:02] When like these people are telling, we expect this thing from you, but there's no ways for you to make money or survive on this. And how do you reconcile that as a young person? And that's kind of, I mean, that's, that's some tough stuff. And for somebody to actually be able to get on a stage and say that, I think there's actually value in saying those things. Yeah. Two, two really great speeches there. Uh, all right. Well, Grammy's recaps. I think I got three trade ideas from this conversation. I'm hoping we do this again next month. I'd saying, uh, well, don't trade tariffs. That's trade idea.

[01:03:32] Number one, friends don't like friends trade tariffs. Uh, crypto is apparently here, but maybe stay away from presidential meme coins unless you know, it's just a collectible for yourself and career advice to live by go be weird in a low cost place. Jason Buck, Dave Notik. Thanks for clicking beta with me here today. See you in a month. What do you say? See you in a month. See you in a week. You let me know. All right. I'll see what they say. Put offensive things about Jason Buck in the YouTube comments.

[01:04:02] Love him. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe and tell a friend. Matt Ziegler is a managing director at Sunpoint Investments. Jason Buck is the chief investment officer at Mutant Funds. Dave Nardig is an independent financial futurist and hopeful ETF expert. No information in this podcast should be construed as investment advice. Securities discussed in the podcast may be holdings of the hosts or their clients.