back to indexE84: Markets update, crypto collapse, Russia/Ukraine endgame, state of the podcast
Chapters
0:0 Besties discuss the one-month hiatus
7:3 Markets update: Fed decisions, goals, macro factors, root causes
32:19 Earnings estimate skepticism, labor force, job openings
47:17 How startups should think about the next 18-36 months
56:20 Crypto collapse, next shoe(s) to drop
68:41 Russia/Ukraine endgame, escalation, scrutinizing US alliances, sanctions failing
93:12 Will 2024 be Biden vs. Trump? Could it be DeSantis vs. Newsom?
00:00:09.760 |
J. Cal, you look like a failed hostage taker. 00:00:16.480 |
When you see my other projects drop, you're going to be crying again, okay? 00:00:22.560 |
Why don't you take yes for an answer, J. Cal? 00:00:26.720 |
Welcome to the All In Podcast with three miserable rich bastards 00:00:31.520 |
Do you want to explain why it took us a month to produce a new episode, J. Cal? 00:00:41.520 |
J. Cal thought the All In Pod was his, and then he realized it wasn't. 00:00:53.120 |
I requested, I requested to own 6% more of the 00:00:59.120 |
Back up to when you wanted to kick me off the show. 00:01:07.200 |
We can't talk about this for 45 minutes because what happened then-- 00:01:13.200 |
J. Cal doesn't like how I was concerned about the summit, and I bitched at him, and you 00:01:18.320 |
Finished the summit, and J. Cal wants to kick me off the show. 00:01:22.560 |
Brad Gerstner, Bill Gurley would have higher ratings. 00:01:28.720 |
It was actually, it started with Friedberg and J. Cal getting into it. 00:01:33.360 |
Do I get to explain the series of events or no? 00:01:40.560 |
I felt that if Friedberg wasn't enjoying his time here and was going to constantly complain 00:01:51.200 |
every week about every detail of why the show's not good, there was always the option for 00:01:56.240 |
him to maybe do half the shows and have Brad Gerstner do half the shows or have Bill Gurley 00:02:02.000 |
And so if he was going to be miserable all the time and worried about the show, I gave 00:02:07.360 |
him the option to have somebody else take his spot. 00:02:10.480 |
Did you or did you not say that this is your show, you're the leader, and you wanted me 00:02:17.280 |
You said you could summarily replace any of us. 00:02:19.440 |
Effectively, you acted like we all worked for you. 00:02:22.400 |
Sax, I don't think Schumat's replaceable, just for the record. 00:02:30.000 |
Friedberg, I do think, I mean, I could pull up the Brad Gerstner episodes. 00:02:36.320 |
But J. Cal told my mom and my wife that he thought I was replaceable on the show. 00:02:39.680 |
Guys, I would like to jump in by just summarizing this so that we can move on. 00:02:42.880 |
So basically what happened was we had an agreement that it was 25% each. 00:02:47.040 |
There was a moment where J. Cal believed that he deserved more. 00:02:50.880 |
We had to sort through a lot of the underlying issues that caused him to believe that we got to a 00:02:57.360 |
We now have a signed agreement that governs how the show and other things around the show and 00:03:04.960 |
We are 25% equal partners and now we can move on. 00:03:14.080 |
To be clear, my position, I do feel like this needs to be out here was if we're going to 00:03:18.160 |
make it into a media company, my request was, listen, I think I own, I should have 10% more 00:03:23.520 |
equity and I'll go to work every day and do the work. 00:03:28.000 |
And then you guys said you don't want to do it. 00:03:34.000 |
We just want to do a pod and we just want to talk. 00:03:42.320 |
If I want to get paid, I'll do them over there. 00:03:44.640 |
And here it's just a pod that you see every week. 00:03:49.840 |
Oh, by the way, if you guys want your intros, that's 1% each. 00:03:54.960 |
So when you guys are willing to pay me my 1% additional equity, 00:03:58.640 |
And when you want the all in summit 2023, that's another one. 00:04:01.120 |
We're going to get an invoice each week from J Cal now. 00:04:03.040 |
You're going to get it's going to be prorated monthly. 00:04:04.800 |
It's going to be 0.8% equity per month vested. 00:04:07.920 |
I just think it's so fascinating that we went through all of this. 00:04:11.360 |
You know, I don't know, storming wrong or whatever. 00:04:15.200 |
This this like a month of non taping and you know, and this like all this turmoil in our 00:04:26.880 |
I believe I should just so you know, I do this for a living. 00:04:33.520 |
Uh, and if you want me to be the de facto CEO of this, then I should get a little extra. 00:04:44.480 |
And then all your griffs, whatever, you know, you're spinning out from the production board 00:04:50.160 |
or whatever copycat app you're making, you can fucking do. 00:05:29.920 |
Welcome to another episode of the All In Podcast. 00:05:32.400 |
We're back for episode 84 with me, of course, the Sultan of Science, the Prince of Panic 00:05:37.280 |
Attacks, the Queen of Kinwa himself, David Freedberg. 00:06:03.120 |
And of course, with us is the Rain Man himself, David Sachs. 00:06:17.920 |
I wrote a very fair contract so that we can move forward. 00:06:21.040 |
And then you proceeded to break it in the first 15 minutes. 00:06:42.160 |
From some undisclosed location in a European city. 00:06:58.320 |
All the episodes have been released, including Pomerolaki yesterday. 00:07:10.560 |
As Saxis pointed out, that is not representative of what happened to growth stocks at the same 00:07:28.480 |
So maybe I'll just dump it to you first and then we'll go around the horn to Sax and then 00:07:35.680 |
But the thing that you have to do before you talk about what is happening now, I think 00:07:43.040 |
it's probably useful to go back and you have to really start at the end of the great financial 00:07:49.120 |
And the reason is there was a bunch of people. 00:07:52.400 |
People coming out of the GFC who confused what the US government and some European governments 00:08:00.320 |
At the time, there was the risk of a huge financial contagion. 00:08:03.600 |
So the US stepped in and the Federal Reserve started to use their balance sheet to buy 00:08:16.880 |
Then there was this body of pseudoscientists. 00:08:22.240 |
You know, a bunch of economists who coined this thing called modern monetary theory, 00:08:27.280 |
which basically said, hey, you can keep printing money and introducing it into the economy 00:08:33.680 |
to smooth things out and to actually drive long term growth. 00:08:37.840 |
And it turns out that a bunch of government officials fell for it. 00:08:43.200 |
And if you fast forward to 2022, so 14 years later, you know, governments around the world 00:08:52.080 |
They had printed something that was a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, 00:08:52.800 |
huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, 00:08:53.360 |
$35 trillion of money into the economy that should have never been there. 00:08:57.760 |
So the thing to remember is like we have not necessarily just been obfuscating true supply 00:09:04.880 |
demand in the last six or eight months when we've been talking about a recession or inflation. 00:09:12.960 |
It's just that it's been building up in the system. 00:09:14.960 |
So one of the things that we have to realize is that all of that money somehow needs to 00:09:22.960 |
If the true economic equilibrium is meant to be found, what is true supply? 00:09:28.880 |
What is true demand in the absence of government sloshing money around trying to prop up things 00:09:34.880 |
that should not be propped up or buying votes or all the grifts that these folks have engaged 00:09:40.640 |
in in the last decade and a half have to get undone. 00:09:46.160 |
So if you think about taking $30 trillion out of the global economy, you know, you're 00:09:51.760 |
Almost, you know, I think it's 85 trillion is the world GDP. 00:09:56.720 |
So like, you know, it's almost half of an entire year's worth of global GDP. 00:10:01.520 |
It's going to take three years, probably of the slow, meticulous, you know, running off of money, 00:10:10.320 |
So it seems like we're at the beginning of the beginning of something that's going to 00:10:14.800 |
Now that's separate from and that's separate from whether we're in a recession or not. 00:10:21.600 |
And so you have to look at asset prices today as a microcosm of a much larger trend that 00:10:28.800 |
has to be about fake money pushing asset prices up and now taking all that fake money out 00:10:34.800 |
and finding out what the real price of something is. 00:10:37.440 |
And I just don't think that takes six months. 00:10:40.000 |
So for all the people that were, you know, fingers crossed, hoping that this would be 00:10:48.000 |
I just think that's not how it's probably going to be. 00:10:55.120 |
That may mean the bottom doesn't happen for another 18 months. 00:10:58.480 |
So I think it's a we're in for a lot of choppy market action. 00:11:04.400 |
Sacks three asset bubbles, clearly all, you know, being impacted. 00:11:13.440 |
Then we had crypto this last two or three weeks have been absolutely insane in terms 00:11:21.280 |
That asset bubble and now record high inventories for homes record sales are now dipping below 00:11:29.360 |
the average of the last 20 years and we're seeing mortgage origination just absolutely 00:11:35.760 |
get crushed 6% mortgages just a couple of months ago. 00:11:42.560 |
So when you look at those three asset bubbles, do you buy chamats? 00:11:45.600 |
Hey, we're going to see even more deprecation these for another 18 months possibly or do 00:11:52.880 |
This has come down so violently that we're now bouncing along the bottom, bouncing along 00:11:58.160 |
Well, the stock market, especially growth stocks may have taken the majority of the 00:12:04.000 |
There are other asset classes and I think we're going to see the carnage start to rotate 00:12:10.080 |
If you look at residential real estate now, the prices are at the highest they've been 00:12:16.080 |
relative to median income since something like 2006 2007 before. 00:12:20.800 |
That sort of great real estate crash that precipitated the great recession of 2008. 00:12:24.800 |
So I think there are going to be more shoes to drop. 00:12:28.320 |
I just want to build on Chumash point about root causes here. 00:12:31.440 |
Milton Friedman once said that there's nothing quite so permanent as a temporary government 00:12:36.320 |
The temporary government program was quantitative easing. 00:12:39.440 |
We had this great recession of 2008 that could have turned into a depression. 00:12:45.520 |
They started this QE, which is basically the government intervening to buy bonds in the 00:12:50.960 |
They had never done that before and they loaded up their balance sheet. 00:12:54.240 |
The crazy thing is that program was still continuing until last year. 00:13:00.480 |
And so last year, it was continuing until last month and countries like Europe are still 00:13:07.120 |
9% inflation in Europe and they're still buying bonds. 00:13:10.480 |
So you go back to last year, the Fed bought 54% of the government's debt, despite the 00:13:16.000 |
fact that the economy was growing at like 5% GDP, that it was bouncing back. 00:13:20.480 |
The Fed was bouncing back really strongly from COVID that you had the stock market at 00:13:24.000 |
all time highs and yet they were still intervening with this massive QE. 00:13:28.880 |
And then when we got the surprise 5.1% inflation print last summer, they didn't stop QE till 00:13:36.960 |
They kept basically printing money and it's still going on and that's created massive 00:13:42.640 |
Now so the Fed, I would say, is the number one culprit here and Jay Powell is the number 00:13:48.160 |
But the number two culprit is the Biden administration. 00:13:50.320 |
And I think Biden did three things very early on in the first few months of his presidency 00:13:57.920 |
Number one, he canceled our energy independence on his first day in office, canceling the 00:14:02.560 |
Keystone pipeline and making it much harder to drill. 00:14:04.960 |
And of course, energy inflation is the one factor in this sort of overall inflation. 00:14:09.520 |
Number two, he pushed through that last $2 trillion of stimulus on straight party lines, 00:14:15.280 |
the ARP, the American Rescue Plan, after Larry Summers said economists in his own 00:14:20.160 |
party said this is going to create inflation, don't do it. 00:14:23.120 |
And then the third thing is, and no one really talks about this, is that Biden could have 00:14:27.520 |
used diplomacy in 2021 to basically find an off ramp to this Ukraine crisis before it 00:14:35.760 |
And if you listen to the economists, the international development economists like Jeffrey Sachs, 00:14:41.280 |
he basically says that Biden polled his cabinet and said, listen, should we negotiate and 00:14:52.720 |
So now we have this massive war in Ukraine that's fueling food and energy inflation. 00:15:00.240 |
And I don't even think there was any debate in his cabinet about this. 00:15:03.440 |
We may not be negotiating against Russia, but we're enabling them to print enormous 00:15:08.880 |
surpluses, meaning I don't know if you guys saw, but there was an article today. 00:15:14.000 |
Janet Yellen is traveling around basically convincing folks to 00:15:19.840 |
not include Russian oil from a bunch of import bans so that these Russian oil tankers can be 00:15:29.040 |
So that they can sell this oil to places like China and India, et cetera. 00:15:33.120 |
The rubles at a five time, five year high, the rubles at a five year high. 00:15:38.400 |
Europe gets on board and says, we're going to do it and we're going to take the lumps. 00:15:42.000 |
And then we go around Europe and basically say, well, we kind of want to fight this proxy war, 00:15:45.840 |
but at the same time, we want to try to fix inflation. 00:15:49.680 |
And it's completely disorganized what's happening. 00:15:53.440 |
So if you had six minutes in the pool for when Sachs would blame Biden for the economy, you win. 00:16:02.000 |
We talked about quantitative easing starting in 2008. 00:16:06.080 |
And I guess the question I would have for you, Sachs, is how much of the spending, 00:16:09.440 |
the free willing spending, you know, was from the previous administration? 00:16:16.880 |
I just want to make sure that we point that out. 00:16:19.520 |
And Republicans only seem to find their principles on spending 00:16:24.160 |
And I would like to see more fiscal responsibility, regardless of which party is in power. 00:16:29.120 |
And I'd like to see the Republicans be less hypocritical in their principles on this. 00:16:35.440 |
The economy was bouncing back strongly last year. 00:16:38.080 |
And Biden still pushed for this last $2 trillion of spending. 00:16:40.880 |
And then $1.2 trillion more in infrastructure. 00:16:44.240 |
And then remember the $4 trillion of Build Back Better where Manchin saved them from themselves. 00:16:52.640 |
Thoughts on, you know, this, these asset bubbles, I guess, and then the buying of the bonds 00:17:01.200 |
seemed completely unnecessary for some period of time. 00:17:03.200 |
If we are acting as the 50% plus buyer of bonds, what kind of distortion does that create 00:17:10.000 |
Because if the government's competing against other people in the marketplace to buy those 00:17:14.160 |
bonds, how could they possibly be priced correctly? 00:17:16.800 |
Let's just be very careful about our framing. 00:17:19.200 |
the US Treasury, which issues bonds and raises capital on behalf of the US government for 00:17:27.600 |
Then there's the central bank, the Federal Reserve. 00:17:30.480 |
And our central bank's job is to, number one, maintain liquidity in the capital markets 00:17:39.360 |
so that businesses can invest in growing their products and growing their businesses and 00:17:45.200 |
the economy grows while not providing too much. 00:17:49.040 |
And the second thing is that the federal reserve is not the only one that's going to 00:17:51.600 |
It's going to be the federal reserve that's going to be able to do that. 00:17:52.880 |
And the third thing is that the federal reserve is going to be able to do that. 00:17:54.880 |
And the fourth thing is that the federal reserve is going to be able to do that. 00:17:56.720 |
And the fifth thing is that the federal reserve is going to be able to do that. 00:17:58.000 |
And the sixth thing is that the federal reserve is going to be able to do that. 00:17:59.760 |
And the sixth thing is that the federal reserve is going to be able to do that. 00:18:01.040 |
And the seventh thing is that the federal reserve is going to be able to do that. 00:18:01.840 |
And the eighth thing is that the federal reserve is going to be able to do that. 00:18:03.120 |
And the sixth thing is that the federal reserve is going to be able to do that. 00:18:04.400 |
is to provide a stated goal of Jerome Powell, in particular right now, this changes over time, 00:18:09.920 |
but generally, the intention of the Federal Reserve is to make liquidity to make cash available 00:18:15.920 |
to banks, who ultimately make it available to businesses, in such a way that there's enough 00:18:22.320 |
cash in the system, that the businesses grow, and that people have capital to invest in growth, 00:18:27.840 |
while keeping inflation at 2%. So their long term target is 2% inflation. 00:18:31.760 |
And it's also correct me if I'm wrong, making sure that there's enough cash to support economic 00:18:36.720 |
growth. So remember, last year, you'll remember Stan Druckenmiller was very public about how insane 00:18:43.040 |
it was that the Federal Reserve was still buying bonds. And so there's one way to introduce cash 00:18:48.880 |
into the system is to make cash available as a loan to banks. And then those, you know, 00:18:53.360 |
banks use that money to loan to businesses, and it makes its way through the economy. 00:18:56.560 |
Another way is for the Federal Reserve to step in and actually buy bonds, 00:19:01.760 |
that other people would be otherwise using to buy bonds to go and invest in other things. So they're 00:19:05.520 |
effectively forcing liquidity into the market by taking bonds out of the market. And last summer, 00:19:10.720 |
or Q2 of last year, Druckenmiller was pounding the table saying, guys, 00:19:15.440 |
the economic indicators on how quickly the markets are how quickly the economy is growing, relative 00:19:22.560 |
to how much inflation there is, indicates that we should stop buying bonds, and we should stop 00:19:27.120 |
injecting liquidity into the markets. This makes no sense. It is nonsensical. And there 00:19:31.680 |
was no strong point of view from the Fed at the time, other than there was uncertainty about the 00:19:36.240 |
bounce back of the from the recession from COVID. There was uncertainty about what else was happening 00:19:40.160 |
in the economy, and yada, yada. But the numbers, the economic indicators were showing very clearly, 00:19:45.360 |
the economy is growing at a robust pace, low unemployment, and inflation is starting to pick 00:19:50.560 |
up. Holy crap, it's time to cool it off. And the Fed made a judgment call and their judgment call 00:19:56.080 |
really kind of was to keep going. And then we end up in this massive runaway inflationary problem, 00:20:01.040 |
where if you keep too much liquidity in the system for too long, you have inflation, 00:20:04.400 |
even if you have economic growth. And now by pulling the money out of the system super, 00:20:07.840 |
super fast, we reduce the inflationary effects potentially. But we take the economy because now 00:20:14.880 |
all this money coming out of the market means people are spending less and buying less and 00:20:17.920 |
businesses have less to borrow, the borrowing costs are high. And then that that's that's the 00:20:21.600 |
big vacuum. Hold on, let me go to Chamath and then Sachs. I just want to say one thing, the rate the 00:20:25.360 |
rate at which we pull the money out, which has had to be really, really fast over the last few weeks, 00:20:30.960 |
And that's the biggest concern right now is will that actually trigger a massive recession 00:20:36.400 |
So Chamath, I guess, one of the things we need to clarify here is the actual mandate of the Fed. 00:20:41.040 |
I was under the understanding that the Fed really was there to make sure of maximum 00:20:46.960 |
employment and that, you know, low interest loans were available. And price stability. These are the 00:20:53.600 |
not low interest rates, capital capital is available to grow without exceeding inflation of 00:21:00.880 |
That's okay. So maximum employment, price stability was also in the original 00:21:05.680 |
GDP growth, because remember, we can't ever pay our debt if our GDP is not growing, 00:21:08.880 |
okay, while minimizing while keeping inflation below 2%. 00:21:11.520 |
Chamath, whatever point you want to make, feel free to make but also I was just wanting to know 00:21:15.600 |
from you, where did the Fed go wrong with their mandate, if at all here, because we do have maximum 00:21:21.040 |
employment, we have out of control price stability. 00:21:24.000 |
Look, here's the thing you I think we have to also be sensitive to the fact that the Fed operates on 00:21:30.800 |
a certain class of data. And that data in the 21st century is pretty pathetic. Nick, you can probably 00:21:37.760 |
find this, but there was an article, I think it was in the New York Times, that really walked 00:21:42.320 |
through how CPI is calculated. And it's a bunch of people that work for the government that walk 00:21:46.640 |
around with iPads, building relationships with local businesses and all these random places all 00:21:51.600 |
around the country, and asking them to, you know, chit chat for 15 minutes and do these surveys. 00:21:56.320 |
Now, you would have thought that in 2023, or 2020, 00:22:00.720 |
what the government would have said to, you know, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, all the payment 00:22:07.360 |
rails, the banks and stripe is send me a feed in the following structured way so that I can actually 00:22:12.800 |
have an absolute precise sense of inflation, because inflation really only occurs when a good 00:22:18.160 |
or a service trades hands for money, right? And you calculate what did that thing trade at the day 00:22:23.920 |
before and what is a trade for today. So you could get an absolute precise sense of it. Instead, we 00:22:33.280 |
So if you read this article, your takeaway will be, oh my god, this is very rickety. And it drives 00:22:39.920 |
an enormous hammer that we use to try to manage the economy. That's the first thing. I think you 00:22:44.960 |
need to buckle your seatbelt because the next three, four or five months of CPI will probably 00:22:51.120 |
be very, very bad. 789%. Why? There are a handful of components that have gotten completely runaway. 00:23:00.560 |
The biggest one is rent. And so rent works on a three month lag, we're going to reintroduce what 00:23:04.960 |
the true owners equivalent rent is into CPI. So we can already forecast that CPI going up. 00:23:11.440 |
Oil is at 105 bucks a barrel. Russia is basically trying to break the bank 00:23:16.080 |
of Europe by now messing with their nat gas supplies. The German energy minister yesterday 00:23:23.680 |
said that if that happens, it could be a contagion equivalent to Lehman Brothers with respect to 00:23:28.880 |
energy. When you look at the energy supply, you can see that the energy supply is going to be 00:23:30.480 |
in the same position as the oil price. But when you play all of these things out, what you have is, 00:23:33.600 |
unfortunately, rampant runaway costs that really have no mechanism to get back and check in the 00:23:41.200 |
absence of some real governmental changes. Our policy on this Ukraine Russia war, you know, 00:23:46.800 |
how we intend to sort of work or cooperate or fight with China. All of these things have to get 00:23:52.800 |
solved. So in the absence of that, prices are going to continue to go up. And so what does the 00:23:58.480 |
Fed do? How does it operate? How does it manage the economy? And what does it do? Well, the Fed 00:24:00.400 |
is going to be doing a lot of work. And so what it's going to do is it's going to be doing a lot of 00:24:01.200 |
work. And so what it's going to do is it's going to be doing a lot of work. And so what it's going to 00:24:02.000 |
do is it's going to be doing a lot of work. And so what it's going to do is it's going to do a lot of work. 00:24:02.000 |
little credibility it has left, when there's eight and 9% inflation prints, and saying we think we're 00:24:08.480 |
done for right now, you can't do that. So they will overcorrect, because there's just going to be 00:24:14.960 |
so much pressure for them to act. All roads, I think lead to lower equity prices. And I think 00:24:24.000 |
what David said astutely is we've seen the first wave. But now it has to be done. And so what we're 00:24:30.320 |
doing is we're doing a lot of work. And so what it's going to do is it's going to be doing a lot of 00:24:30.960 |
work. And so what it's going to do is we're doing a lot of work. And so what it's going to do is we're 00:24:31.440 |
going to do a lot of work. And so what it's going to do is we're doing a lot of work. And so what we're 00:24:31.760 |
doing is we're doing a lot of work. And so what it's going to do is we're doing a lot of work. And so 00:24:33.360 |
we have gotten totally drunk on debt as a country. One of the most obvious places where we've been 00:24:40.480 |
serving alcohol far too late into the night is in the financing of all these private equity leverage 00:24:47.440 |
buyouts. Right? These are dangerous, these are sketchy companies that are sort of like, you know, 00:24:53.040 |
teetering on insolvency at times, where private equity comes in levers up the balance sheet with 00:24:59.200 |
debt, they price it right to the edge of what's legally allowed or what's financeable, and then 00:25:04.400 |
they go do it. But that's all assuming the economy continues to grow. And so if all of a sudden you 00:25:10.240 |
have some recessionary forces or prices go up and earnings don't, you'll have you know, a contagion 00:25:16.560 |
in the debt markets, you could have a contagion in the commodity market. So we're dealing with some 00:25:21.680 |
really real boundary conditions. I mean, real estate, 00:25:25.200 |
most of most Americans have most of their net worth tied up in real estate. And if we 00:25:29.120 |
see a 30 30% correction in real estate, it could be a real problem, particularly with rising interest 00:25:35.200 |
sacks, the dual mandate is hey, keep inflation 2%. And then keep the unemployment rate reasonable, 00:25:41.280 |
the unemployment rates amazing with still so many jobs out there, even with these layoffs. In fact, 00:25:46.400 |
one might argue we made too many jobs available to the point at which people maybe aren't working as 00:25:52.080 |
much or just, you know, under working and not taking advantage of these amazing jobs out there. 00:25:59.040 |
this going sacks now, that we can't seem to get inflation under control. And people are looking 00:26:05.680 |
at their 401ks, they feel a lot poorer, but is the demand side gone yet? Have have consumers decided, 00:26:12.560 |
I'm not going to buy the next house, I'm not going on this vacation. $6 gas makes no sense. $7 gas 00:26:18.560 |
makes no sense. I'm not going to go on this weekend excursion. I'm staying home. 00:26:22.160 |
Yeah, I mean, look, consumer confidence just had the biggest drop, I think in 40 or 50 years. We 00:26:28.960 |
if you look at like, right track wrong track polling for the country, only something like 24% 00:26:34.560 |
believes that the country's on the right track right now. If you pull people, are we in a 00:26:39.280 |
recession? And they don't look at like, you know, the quarter over quarter growth, they just look at 00:26:43.280 |
what they're feeling. 56% of the country says we're already in recession. It's about 70% Republicans, 00:26:48.880 |
about 50% Democrats. So the country is already hurting people already feeling it. And this is 00:26:55.760 |
psychological sacks, or are they actually making decisions? 00:27:00.080 |
Well, I think it's both. I mean, you start with the real inflation, and people feel it. 00:27:05.280 |
And they also hear about it in the media. And then they start to adjust their, 00:27:08.560 |
their decisions. And this is the problem with fixing. Yeah, this is a problem with fixing 00:27:12.320 |
an inflation problem is that is based on expectations. So once people start to expect 00:27:17.040 |
inflation, then businesses have to start operating as if there's gonna be an inflation 00:27:20.480 |
rate next year. So they have to start raising prices. And it's actually very hard 00:27:24.880 |
to put the horse back in the barn. And this is why I think, 00:27:28.800 |
I think the Fed is probably more likely to overshoot on raising rates is because if they 00:27:33.680 |
really want to stop inflation now, they really have to slam on the brakes. And then that's going 00:27:37.840 |
to lead to a recession. And if they don't, then we end up with like a chronic sort of 00:27:42.480 |
stagflationary situation where you get lower growth and inflation persists. So it's a bunch 00:27:48.240 |
of bad options right now. And I think to the point Freeberg was making earlier, you know, 00:27:52.320 |
this Ray Dalio piece that he just published as a blog on LinkedIn, he said, Look, what you want is 00:27:57.920 |
a Fed that's going to be able to keep inflation going. And that's what I think is going to be 00:27:58.720 |
the best way to do that. And I think that's what I think is going to be the best way to do that. 00:27:58.800 |
That is alert at the wheel, and gently applies the accelerator or the brakes based on what's 00:28:05.040 |
happening. And instead, what we had is the Fed was asleep at the wheel, they should have started 00:28:10.000 |
reacting gently to inflation last summer. Instead, they waited nine months, and now they're slamming 00:28:16.240 |
on the brakes. And this is a bunch of bad options. I think we you know, we are going to have a 00:28:21.200 |
recession the way this can make one suggestion. I want to put this out there because I sent it 00:28:28.640 |
in DC, please think about how we can change the way the Federal Reserve operates. But it doesn't 00:28:35.680 |
make sense to have humans with subjectivity, applying their subjectivity to a set of as 00:28:43.280 |
Chamath pointed out infrequent data that comes in chunks and comes in spurts, 00:28:47.440 |
and only having a mechanism of changing rates by 25% each month, or sorry, 25 basis points 00:28:53.360 |
once a month, we should have continuous real time monitoring of 00:28:58.560 |
economic data. And software or AI or some sort of informed set of models should then predict 00:29:06.000 |
what inflation and economic growth rates will be as that data comes in react in real time. 00:29:11.440 |
And on a daily basis, we should be adjusting the overnight rate in a one basis point increment. 00:29:16.960 |
So we can have the ability to more quickly, more efficiently and in a higher resolution way. 00:29:22.320 |
Yeah, smooth it out a smoother way in a higher resolution way make these adjustments. 00:29:25.600 |
It's silly that we're still operating the way we did in a pre digital age, 00:29:28.480 |
as it is with a lot of industries and a lot of bureaucracy. But in this case, 00:29:31.840 |
it's particularly prudent, and it's becoming particularly important and relevant, 00:29:36.160 |
as we're seeing right now with the stagflation risk that we're facing, where we could have 00:29:39.680 |
massive inflation and recession at the same time. Because if we had made smaller adjustments 00:29:44.800 |
every day for a period of time, as these economic data indicated that we should be making them more 00:29:49.600 |
quickly, we would not be in this problem. And I don't think that having humans and their judgment 00:29:54.560 |
should necessarily be the way that we drive. But listen, we don't need them making daily 00:29:58.400 |
adjustments. I don't think the Fed can fine tune an outcome like that. I just think that they 00:30:02.480 |
can't be asleep at the wheel for nine months. I mean, we should have AI running this 00:30:06.000 |
friggin thing. I mean, what's listen, I don't I actually don't think when you when you said that, 00:30:09.600 |
you know, Congress needs to somehow change that the way the Fed does business, I actually think 00:30:13.520 |
that the Fed has the correct mandate, which is the dual mandate of considering inflation 00:30:19.040 |
and unemployment. We shouldn't be basically junking that up by adding a bunch of mandates. 00:30:24.080 |
And actually, the administration has been trying to add mandates, they basically gave the Fed 00:30:28.320 |
a mandate around climate change, they gave them a mandate. Don't change the mandate. 00:30:35.040 |
multivariable complex, the tools, the tools to change. 00:30:39.280 |
Yeah, right. We really want to focus Fed and I think the administration has been politicizing 00:30:44.160 |
the Fed by giving them a bunch of mandates. Look, if you want to pursue those policies, 00:30:48.240 |
do it at HHS, do it in the Interior Department. Don't basically confuse the Fed and make them 00:30:53.680 |
pursue climate change or equity or what have you. I mean, that is just bad. But that is not 00:30:58.240 |
their remit, right? Their remit is controlling inflation. I really think this just comes down 00:31:03.360 |
to the fact that for nine months, they sat on their hands and ignored the inflation evidence. 00:31:07.840 |
Remember this word transitory? You know, we heard so much last year about inflation being 00:31:12.400 |
transitory. How'd they know that? You know, why didn't they start rethinking this quantitative 00:31:17.520 |
easing? The headline from the Wall Street Journal says it all how the inflation rate is measured. 00:31:21.440 |
477 government workers at grocery stores. Yeah, software should be taking 00:31:28.160 |
data from different feeds and software can learn. I don't I don't really care. And what are the 00:31:32.720 |
predictors of inflation? And what are the predictors of growth? And make a recommendation? 00:31:37.040 |
I don't agree with you that it needs to be real time. In fact, I think it would do more harm than 00:31:41.040 |
good. But I do think that we can know these things without sampling in such a porous way. 00:31:46.880 |
And you know, you can work with private companies to give you the feed of data 00:31:51.520 |
to allow you to do it. And now you know, we're going to look, we've had a system of overcorrect 00:31:58.080 |
ing and undercorrecting for years. The problem is the stakes get higher and higher as the economy 00:32:03.360 |
grows and becomes more complicated. And we have more leverage, and we have more leverage and we 00:32:07.840 |
have more industries that are leveraged and more asset classes that are leveraged like housing. 00:32:12.880 |
Because by even a few points, you could take everything. 00:32:16.960 |
I also want to tell you guys a quick story. One of the most interesting canaries in the coal mine 00:32:22.720 |
of all of this was two days ago. And what happened to Facebook, 00:32:28.000 |
and this sort of ties a lot of this stuff together in terms of like economics, inflation, 00:32:35.040 |
asset prices, equities, tech, we should we can try to talk about non sort of, you know, big tech. 00:32:41.920 |
But the everybody was saying, Oh, gosh, the market's gonna rip on the open, you know, 00:32:47.120 |
we were closed for Juneteenth. And then on Tuesday, the market, you know, the S&P was 00:32:51.840 |
up like 250 basis points 2.5%. And the Nasdaq was also up, you know, call it maybe three 00:32:57.920 |
hundred basis points, roughly. But Facebook was down like 400 points, right? So it's a big spread. 00:33:03.200 |
And why is that? And I was like, this makes no sense to me what is going on with this price 00:33:08.320 |
action. Everything was up, Apple was up, Google was up. And so I called around. And you know, 00:33:13.200 |
I was like, why is this happening? And this is the best explanation I got. 00:33:16.720 |
When you look at who the incremental buyer is, in the stock market, 00:33:22.880 |
it tends to give you a sense of whether prices can go up, or will continue to go down. 00:33:27.840 |
And the poorest informed buyer tends to be retail. And the most informed buyer tends to be these very 00:33:37.120 |
large institutional hedge funds. Right? So there's a spectrum. And Facebook is an example of one of 00:33:44.320 |
the big tech that is poorly owned by retail. So it's mostly owned by smart money. And the case 00:33:52.560 |
that smart money makes for owning Facebook is that it's got an extremely cheap price to earnings 00:33:57.440 |
ratio. And that's why it's so important to have a big tech. And that's why it's so important to have 00:33:57.760 |
a big tech. And that's why it's so important to have a big tech. And that's why it's so important 00:33:58.000 |
to have a big tech. And that's why it's so important to have a big tech. So you must own it. 00:33:59.280 |
And what they said was that they, you know, looking at the tea leaves of consumer demand, 00:34:05.360 |
what they actually re underwrote was that actually, it's not that the price to earnings 00:34:10.880 |
was cheap, it's at the E in PE was just wrong. And if they pass through all of these increases in 00:34:17.040 |
inflation, and you know, their earnings expectations into Facebook, it's actually 00:34:21.040 |
more like fair value at a lower price. That's why they sold it so much on a day where the market was 00:34:27.680 |
Well, eventually, you're going to touch all these other stocks as well that are going to go 00:34:32.720 |
through earnings revisions in this recession. This is where I think Wall Street has done a very poor 00:34:38.160 |
job on behalf of retail. If you look at the average estimates of earnings, you will be shocked 00:34:43.840 |
to hear that Wall Street actually has this year being record earnings next year earnings continuing 00:34:50.160 |
to go up. How is that possible? Well, how is that? How is it if we're sitting here? How do you see 00:34:57.600 |
how do you see earnings continuing to go up into these prints like this when you cannot pass through 00:35:03.440 |
you know, 80 90% increases in energy and cogs and whatnot? How does it I think the 00:35:09.520 |
what people would say is maybe they're going to lower their costs. And so with layoffs, 00:35:14.160 |
and lowering salaries and lowering spend on advertising, you know, the earn it the E could go 00:35:20.880 |
up if people because start belt tightening, and then we start having companies that are being run, 00:35:27.520 |
more, you'll have to sell, you'll have to sell fewer things, because there'll be fewer people 00:35:32.240 |
with jobs to buy things. But we have 10 million job openings. So this is the weird thing about 00:35:37.040 |
this recession is because we haven't let a lot of people immigrate into the country. But we have so 00:35:41.760 |
many jobs. Is that what you think the consensus view on Wall Street is that basically a bunch of 00:35:46.480 |
people get fired. And so that's why earnings continue to go up? Well, they stop hiring for two 00:35:51.120 |
years in advance, right? Facebook said they were hiring for like 2024. Their hiring plans were 00:35:56.000 |
looking at two years. And so they're going to stop hiring for two years in advance. And so they're 00:35:57.440 |
going to stop hiring for two years in advance. And so they're going to stop hiring for two years in 00:35:59.440 |
advance. And so they're going to stop hiring for two years in advance. And so they're going to 00:36:00.000 |
stop hiring for two years in advance. And so they're going to stop hiring for two years in advance. 00:36:00.320 |
You know, and that's their number one cost. I'm just putting out a theory. 00:36:02.800 |
I'll give you the counterfactual. I think Wall Street's wrong. Okay. And I think that 00:36:06.320 |
earnings are going to go down this year, and will definitely go down in 23. And so I think what 00:36:13.360 |
probably happens is the entire world of equities needs to get repriced at a lower price. And in 00:36:19.920 |
that, it's going to put enormous pressure on these cash burning non profitable tech companies. 00:36:24.880 |
Well, that's for sure. But in the ones that are profitable, Chamath, 00:36:27.360 |
they're aware of this Facebook just canceled like two of their prototypes they were working on to 00:36:31.760 |
save money. So that whole $10 billion into, you know, VR, I think they're trying to make that 00:36:36.720 |
number looks more smaller. Sacks, what do you think? Well, I think you're bringing up a really 00:36:42.000 |
interesting point with this, the 10 million, you know, job openings. And now that that number is 00:36:47.440 |
coming down really fast as companies close open racks, and they basically freeze hiring. So that 00:36:52.800 |
number is going to come down very, very fast. But one of the major contributors to inflation 00:36:57.280 |
is that the labor force participation has been very low, millions of people left the labor force 00:37:03.840 |
during COVID as a result of the stimulus checks and the freezing of rent and evictions. I mean, 00:37:10.240 |
look, rents the number of people's number one expense, if they don't have to pay rent for a 00:37:13.280 |
couple of years, a lot of them may not work or may not work as much. So we've had this problem 00:37:18.240 |
where we really need about 2 million people to re enter the labor force. And if you describe 00:37:24.240 |
inflation as too much money, chasing too few people, it's going to be a lot of work. And if you 00:37:27.200 |
look at the labor force, it's going to be a lot of work. And if you look at the labor force, 00:37:29.840 |
it's going to be a lot of work. And if you look at the labor force, it's going to be a lot of work. 00:37:31.680 |
And when you have millions of people dropping out of the labor force, you've got less goods 00:37:35.600 |
and services being produced that people want. So just reducing the money supply is not going to get 00:37:41.760 |
us out of this mess. We also need to improve productive capacity. 00:37:46.000 |
Just to put a number on that we peaked in the 1999 era at 67% of 00:37:51.680 |
participation in labor force. And then it's been down in this low 60 61 62. 00:37:57.120 |
And it continues to be low. But that is the solution here we get that 7% that gap. 00:38:01.600 |
You could change the demand side because if all you do is fix the demand side, 00:38:06.480 |
what you're doing is you're killing the economy to reduce demand in order to bring it down prices. 00:38:11.680 |
That's very painful. It's all pain. But what you also have to do is fix the supply side, 00:38:16.400 |
you have to increase the availability of all the critical inputs into the economy. So 00:38:21.600 |
labor obviously is one of them, but also critical resources, like energy, 00:38:27.040 |
you know, oil, natural gas, and so on. And that goes back to fixing the supply chain, 00:38:31.040 |
hopefully getting a resolution of the situation in Ukraine, the war. So if we could fix those things, 00:38:37.680 |
it's a way to improve the economy without creating more pain. 00:38:40.320 |
Freeberg, if the prices of just daily living of which transportation and housing and healthcare 00:38:46.160 |
are now the top three, I believe, groceries and healthcare, I think have flip flopped a couple 00:38:51.280 |
times in the last decade in terms of costs. If those things go up, would that make people want to 00:38:56.640 |
go back to work to pay for those things? Or does it create capitulation where people say I'm moving 00:39:00.320 |
in with my cousin, I'm going to lower my balance sheet? What is your prediction there? Are more 00:39:04.160 |
people going to go to work? Or do we still have this, you know, call it 10 million people in the 00:39:08.480 |
country who just don't want to go to work? I've mentioned this in the past, 00:39:11.200 |
but I think there's more. There's another kind of interesting outcome of this, 00:39:16.400 |
we've had several months in a row of pretty significant increase in consumer credit. 00:39:21.120 |
And I think the reason is, things are getting more expensive. 00:39:26.560 |
And I think that's because people generally do not like to reduce their spend on stuff or their 00:39:33.520 |
living their lifestyle. Once you get used to a lifestyle, like going out to dinner once a week, 00:39:38.720 |
or going to the movies every week, and you create a budget, you create a life experience around that 00:39:43.120 |
a model around that, it's very hard to say, Okay, I got to cut budget now. And I got to reduce my 00:39:47.920 |
life, I would rather say I'm going to keep doing that, or at least there's some inertia or some 00:39:51.120 |
momentum to keep spending on the things that you've been spending on. And the way you do that in a model 00:39:56.480 |
of a business is you take on more debt. And so there is a little bit of a nervousness that I have 00:40:01.360 |
had, that people's response generally, the consumer response to inflation, and to a kind of 00:40:10.080 |
a shifting income environment like this is not necessarily to cut as quickly but take on more 00:40:19.200 |
debt and keep keep buying. And so I am a little nervous about that. But I think that's the way 00:40:26.400 |
to do it. And I think that's the way that you can do it. I mean, I don't know if I'm going to be able to 00:40:29.280 |
do that, but I do think obviously, at some point, everyone has to figure out ways to generate income, 00:40:33.520 |
there have been a lot of these kind of ancillary markets that are typically the first to go these 00:40:38.160 |
extra services markets where people, you know, have found other ways to make money side hustles and 00:40:43.440 |
whatnot, that may or may not be as robust as they have been historically. And so people may need to 00:40:50.080 |
go back for more secure, stable income. And and these jobs get filled. I like I mean, as we all 00:40:56.320 |
know, this is the whole concept, I think behind build back better. It's not super thoughtful in 00:41:02.160 |
terms of the approach, I think, based on my understanding of where that money is supposed 00:41:06.880 |
to go, because it doesn't create long term jobs. But there is an opportunity to build new 00:41:12.240 |
manufacturing and new infrastructure jobs in the US right now, that could enable a healthy transition 00:41:17.440 |
here. But that legislation needs to be done smart. It can't be done with this, like, hey, let's build 00:41:21.920 |
a bunch of bridges. And then a bunch of contractors make a bunch of money and no one has any long term jobs 00:41:26.240 |
out of it. We've got to find ways to spend money on creating long term, sustainable, you know, new 00:41:31.760 |
industry here. Yeah, job openings 11.4. It's come down about six or 7%. So you know, it's going to 00:41:39.040 |
be trailing, but it's for sure we're seeing it in our industry with the hiring freezes that, you 00:41:44.240 |
know, we're going to work through those open jobs, what are the chances that inflation gets under 00:41:49.760 |
control in the next year? And should the Fed go for like the 1% slam on the brakes, there was some talk 00:41:56.160 |
about that, obviously, they went from 50 to 75. Remember, a lot of the elements that we were 00:42:00.240 |
kind of saying, Oh, my gosh, I can't believe the climate prices. So you know, wheat is down, 00:42:05.920 |
I think 30%, lumber is down 50%. Gas prices are coming down. So you know, there are some of these, 00:42:13.760 |
you know, commodity spikes that we've experienced over the past couple of quarters, particularly 00:42:19.920 |
recently, that are really that have had a significant part of the fueling effect on the 00:42:26.080 |
into ultimately end products and whatnot. And those are coming down. You know, there's a real 00:42:33.520 |
question of how quickly that flows through the economy and flows through to the price of goods 00:42:37.520 |
that consumers ultimately end up paying for. The gas prices right now are the biggest concern, 00:42:44.320 |
right? Like unless you can get gas prices under control, that always always has a massive impact 00:42:49.600 |
on spending on consumer spending, which drives a recessionary cycle. And so if I'm the Biden admin 00:42:59.480 |
Inflationary indicators as much as I care about getting the price of gas down. That is a super super critical number to face 00:43:05.180 |
Is this are these gas prices gonna change how Americans look at what car they buy because they're gonna get worse time 00:43:12.240 |
We had that they're gonna know people started looking at not buying SUVs. We could have $7 gas 00:43:17.840 |
Oh, I said there was a picture actually I tweeted in California 00:43:25.160 |
We could have $7 gas all throughout the country 00:43:27.320 |
But Jake out the you know, remember the average automotive automobile in the US lasts for 12 years 00:43:33.020 |
That's how often people change out their cars. So that's 8% of the fleet being changed per year 00:43:37.700 |
yep, and the interest rates for auto loans have spiked like crazy now with this change in the Fed rates and as a result the 00:43:44.840 |
Delinquency on auto loan portfolios has spiked like crazy. Yeah, and so, you know, yes sure theoretically 00:43:51.940 |
People will think about buying an electric car 00:43:53.560 |
But most people aren't thinking about that on average 00:43:55.560 |
For five or six years from now because that's the average of a 12-year cycle right five five years from now 00:43:59.860 |
Wait till all these peloton bikes need to get repossessed 00:44:01.860 |
well all these actually the the the weight for cars and the overpricing of cars has ended in the last two months and 00:44:08.080 |
There are multiple cars now in the market 25 30 K for a 50 plus mile per gallon car 00:44:13.540 |
I think this actually one of the silver linings coming out of this is people might actually 00:44:16.660 |
Stop buying as many SUVs or you know, I think our average is in the low 20s right now in 00:44:21.840 |
Europe's is in the high 40s. The problem is like, you know every other four miles per gallon 00:44:28.760 |
Acknowledges that you have to really ring fence and protect consumers, right? Like if you look at the securities laws 00:44:38.240 |
And Jason you've you know, you've been frustrated by some of the rules that haven't changed and when they change they change so slowly 00:44:44.460 |
but the reason is because sometimes that you want people to make good decisions and if you 00:44:51.740 |
You know give them a bunch of firepower. They're just gonna spend it and you know 00:44:55.840 |
what we really did was we gave folks just a ton of money and 00:44:59.820 |
What did they do they acted rationally they spent it. Yeah now we have to take it all back 00:45:05.880 |
And that's that's I don't think that's gonna be as easy or as simple as people think 00:45:11.820 |
What what percentage of the money supply do you think is in excess right now in the United States? 00:45:16.680 |
Well, look I told you this because I wrote this in my annual letter, but it's it's stunning that you know 00:45:20.820 |
The reason the stock market went up dollar for dollar was actually tied to the growth in the m2 money supply 00:45:26.520 |
The correlation was 0.9 - so for every dollar that the Fed printed the stock market went up by 92 cents 00:45:35.100 |
So, you know it stands to reason that if the Fed is going to take three to five trillion dollars of value out 00:45:42.320 |
Then we have to rewrite the equity markets by three to five trillion dollars at a minimum 00:45:46.840 |
and then you have to rewrite and rebase line for earnings and 00:45:50.720 |
So that's probably another twenty or thirty. Let's skin. Yeah, let's talk about the endgame here 00:45:55.000 |
the rates go up people stop buying homes people go back to work and 00:45:59.360 |
Energy prices come back down because people are not buying as much of it 00:46:05.620 |
Spending goes down and people rebalance and that takes a year the job openings could also disappear by the way 00:46:11.600 |
I mean like they're going down four hundred thousand a month is 00:46:13.940 |
You're assuming that all of a sudden like demand is stable, but it's not necessarily stable in it and it demand and in a demand 00:46:20.620 |
Contraction yes people get fired but then also new job openings change, right? 00:46:25.660 |
Yeah, there's fewer of them there. They're more specific in the way that people salaries go down, right? That's the salaries go down 00:46:31.920 |
That's the piece I'm waiting for that to me. That would be I don't know if you guys have early warning signs 00:46:36.060 |
But the two early warning signs I have in my you know 00:46:38.980 |
job of investing in early stage companies is when people 00:46:42.680 |
Well, what's the average salary for an engineer if that hasn't gone down by now, then it's a lagging indicator, right? 00:46:50.520 |
Salaries go down or people instead of laying people off sacks. They do salary cuts at a company. That is really hard to do, right? 00:46:58.220 |
That's yeah, I don't think they do some references in deals, right? 00:47:02.000 |
I think the way the salaries come down is that 00:47:04.420 |
Startups freeze their hiring plans where they lay people off and all of a sudden the war for talent subsides easier to hire people 00:47:10.760 |
And so there's no need to keep raising up. Are you seeing that? 00:47:13.580 |
Yeah, I think we're seeing the beginning of it, but I gotta tell you I mean I think that startups have not fully 00:47:20.420 |
Embraced or realized what what's happening? I just got back from the KOTU summit over the past couple of days 00:47:29.280 |
You know whose founders are Philippe and Thomas Lafont very smart guys 00:47:34.680 |
Very smart investors who've been public market sort of hedge fund investors for a long time 00:47:39.160 |
But also have a large venture fund to do growth stage investing some of the takeaways from that conference 00:47:44.500 |
some of the more vivid lines that stuck with me is that one of the speakers said 00:47:50.320 |
That he said that when it comes to runway for startups three to four years is the new two years 00:47:56.760 |
Because if you just have two years of runway, you're gonna need to raise in a year and in a year from now 00:48:04.500 |
They're predicting they're forecasting that capital availability is gonna decline about 75% the amount of money 00:48:09.960 |
That's venture money that's available the ecosystem down by three quarters 00:48:13.800 |
so if you try to raise in that environment either you're not gonna be able to or investors are gonna you know, 00:48:20.220 |
Have all the leverage you're not gonna get terms that you like so they were recommending three to four years of runway 00:48:25.760 |
So that is not what I think a lot of companies are 00:48:29.040 |
Possible the other thing that the other really vivid takeaway is that they did some polling of the startup founders who are in attendance 00:48:39.980 |
What the numbers basically showed is a is a contradiction on the one hand the founders sort of understood that 00:48:46.320 |
Intellectually that we're headed into a downturn. We're headed to a recession 00:48:50.120 |
And so the polling reflected that on the other hand if you ask the founders how they're gonna react to it 00:48:56.560 |
You're gonna cut a headcount or you're gonna accelerate your business to beat competitors. Everybody said well, we're gonna out accelerate our competitors 00:49:02.440 |
So everybody thought that they're the exception in other words, everyone understood we're headed for this massive recession 00:49:08.320 |
It's gonna be really bad, but we're gonna be the one company that doesn't need to cut. We're actually gonna grow 00:49:12.880 |
We're gonna accelerate during the downturn. So there was a real 00:49:15.460 |
contradiction in how founders are interpreting this 00:49:20.020 |
Advice and I have to tell you when I talk to founders in our own portfolio 00:49:24.040 |
What I see is, you know, we've now done multiple meetings where we lay out what's happening in the economy and they get it 00:49:29.900 |
They understand it and when we do a board meeting, they're like, okay, we're gonna go look at our plan and we're gonna reevaluate 00:49:36.660 |
We're gonna bring our burn multiple down to you know 00:49:39.400 |
The where it should be but then you know when you check in with them a couple of months later and you're like 00:49:43.840 |
Where are you on the plane haven't taken the medicine? 00:49:45.580 |
It's or the medicine is like a 10% cut and I'm like guys like 10% 00:49:49.920 |
It's a performance review. Yeah, like 10% you're doing every year 00:49:53.500 |
Anyway, yeah, you get rid of the the bottom like the C performers you promote the A's and B's and you get rid of the C 00:49:59.660 |
no one really wants to take the medicine yet and 00:50:04.160 |
I mean Sequoia has this great chart called survival of the quickest that we should put up on the screen and it shows two lines 00:50:10.640 |
One company is the one that takes the medicine right away brings their burn down to where it should be and then they're able 00:50:16.120 |
To grow from there and they really will out accelerate the competitors 00:50:19.820 |
But then there's the company that basically delays and waits and what happens is by the time they finally get religion to make the cuts 00:50:27.020 |
It's too late because even after they make the cuts they don't have enough runway on the other side burn the capital 00:50:32.180 |
Yeah, they burn the capital and then they're in a death spiral 00:50:34.220 |
So I think you know what what companies need to think about is this is a 75% reduction 00:50:38.600 |
Imagine if you did a hundred million dollar round last year, right? 00:50:42.700 |
If you go try to raise next year in the most recession that a hundred million dollar round might look like a twenty five million dollar 00:50:49.720 |
So imagine if you're burning an extra twenty five to fifty million more than you should be according to your burn multiple 00:50:56.100 |
You're basically burning the next round forget about the fact that the last round gave you all this cushion 00:51:01.160 |
Think about how much of the next round you're burning and if you re-orient your thinking around that it could lead to a change in behavior 00:51:13.060 |
Rounds where they were expecting forty or fifty million dollars in some cases like with 00:51:19.620 |
150k in revenue five hundred K in revenue. They were living in a two hundred 00:51:23.420 |
three hundred times revenue kind of world it was just insane and 00:51:28.000 |
You know, they're now coming back with ten million dollar caps fifteen million dollar caps on their notes 00:51:35.920 |
At a fifty percent discount and I said call me when you get to 65 and that's the best company 00:51:41.720 |
That's literally the best company. That's the best and the best founders to bet on right of probably most private companies is them 00:51:49.520 |
What is that valuation forty at fifty percent off? 00:51:53.020 |
It's less of a judgment on but it's just more an observation that we're at the beginning of the beginning 00:51:59.180 |
And again, we're at the beginning of the beginning 00:52:02.120 |
Okay for all of us that lived through the 2000. This was four years of sheer hell and a grind 00:52:09.980 |
now we have thirty trillion dollars that we have to work through the economy a recession we have to overcome a war we need to end and 00:52:19.420 |
People all of a sudden assume that two or three rate hikes and five or six months of headlines are enough 00:52:25.680 |
And on the margin, maybe they're right, but from my perspective, you know, it's less a judgment on but it's just an observation that we're at 00:52:33.680 |
the beginning of something that just fundamentally has to take some amount of time to work its way through the system and so I don't understand why 00:52:42.240 |
Would give up their liquidity in this moment right now. Why would you why would I why would I give up a hundred million dollars? 00:52:49.880 |
Because the cash the caps the cash gives you so much optionality. It's based so much optionality 00:52:55.240 |
So you're gonna be looking for distress and this is the thing 00:52:58.500 |
So you have a huge amount of capital leaving the ecosystem like we know tiger is basically out 00:53:03.060 |
I mean they were the basically the default provider of growth stage capital over the last couple of years 00:53:07.880 |
So you have a lot of liquidity leaving the system and then the liquidity that's in the system is waiting for distress 00:53:13.480 |
So you're right in it. There's a quarter. I mean like we talked about there's a quarter 00:53:17.780 |
A quarter trillion dollars of quote-unquote dry powder 00:53:20.300 |
I mean, I know Chamath thinks that people are gonna give that money back, but there's never 00:53:28.900 |
Yeah, look at that that tiger fund tiger raised a new twelve billion dollar fund that was announced in March and tech crunch 00:53:35.800 |
We covered it on the show a month ago. Yeah, the tech crunch on article saying was already deployed in six months 00:53:40.600 |
So I wasn't on that show. Oh, that was the one where Jake I'll try to replace you with Brad Gerstner 00:53:47.680 |
It's not a monthly might be better to keep up with these trends 00:53:50.800 |
Jake how you make a good point there creates go back this for a second 00:53:53.820 |
You said the founders were they're still anchored on this world of two to three hundred times ARR evaluations 00:53:59.160 |
Let me just tell you where the new valuation levels are and this is obviously in flux 00:54:03.200 |
But I'm pretty sure the valuation levels are at twenty to thirty times ARR. That's for a company 00:54:08.160 |
That's growing 3x year-over-year. Yeah 3x year-over-year. That's the best of the best the reason 00:54:17.580 |
Is that if you look at like the the multiples for like the best public SAS companies that are like say a forty percent grower? 00:54:24.760 |
Like a snowflake there at 8x. Yeah, so, you know, so basically giving more credit for 00:54:30.440 |
The higher growth rate. Yeah, right, but they really have to have that 3x growth 00:54:35.140 |
So, you know if you're a founder think about the fact that when you try to go raise next year 00:54:41.000 |
Assuming you're the best of the best you'll get twenty to thirty times ARR now think about your spending not 00:54:47.480 |
Last round's money you're spending the next round's money. If you could just reorient your thinking that way you'd burn a lot less money 00:54:57.400 |
You know in the 30 and 40 range and angel investors who never early stage angel investors seed funds that did not look at 00:55:08.160 |
Asking me because when I send a deal memo to 10,000 people for my syndicate people hit reply 00:55:13.180 |
People are hitting reply now and saying I did the math on this. This is the multiple 00:55:17.380 |
This is this this is the burn multiple. They're actually doing the math 00:55:20.280 |
So we all of a sudden have discipline that I have not seen in this investor class in the ten years 00:55:26.680 |
I've been doing it. So that is to me one of the great silver linings here 00:55:31.420 |
I think people are gonna do a better job with their personal balance sheets 00:55:34.600 |
They're gonna invest less in speculative stuff and they're going to invest more in the actual builders who have discipline 00:55:41.180 |
So we're gonna see this massive swing to discipline and we're gonna flush out all the people who don't have 00:55:47.280 |
Market think about all those folks like what's happened in the last six months. It's like they've been long unprofitable tech 00:55:53.260 |
It's got smoked by 75 to 85 percent. They've been long crypto that's gotten spoked by 65 percent more 00:56:00.840 |
Yeah, I mean if they weren't using a calculator then they sure as hell should be using a calculator now to figure it out 00:56:06.800 |
I mean people well you think about it. There's a whole group of investors who have only known the up market 00:56:12.120 |
There's a whole group of founders who only know the growth market if you're under 40 years old, you don't understand what? 00:56:17.180 |
You're about to experience and here we are. Let's that's a perfect time to segue into crypto bitcoins price is down 00:56:31.340 |
17,000 or so on June 18th the theorems price down 78 percent 00:56:36.280 |
And if you look at the craziness since the last all-in episode, you know this three AC three arrow capital 00:56:42.980 |
They're a crypto hedge fund that was letting people 00:56:48.440 |
They are basically closing a 10 billion dollar 00:56:53.520 |
Hedge fund at its peak they're insolvent according to the reports Terra Luna collapsed the 00:56:59.200 |
Founders and employees at that company are not being allowed to leave South Korea doesn't mean they're guilty, but it's certainly not looking good 00:57:08.600 |
There is a whole situation with Solana and a company built on top of it. So lend which is not Solana 00:57:14.800 |
It's an application built on top of it. I talked to Vinnie Lingard 00:57:16.980 |
My friend earlier this week about it. They had a whale who had 00:57:20.400 |
Tried to loan out a hundred million and they had to freeze their account because they thought the downward pressure 00:57:26.840 |
Since there's not many buyers in crypto right now could collapse Solana. So thoughts on crypto writ large. What is this gonna look like sacks? 00:57:38.240 |
I mean basically you had an extremely promising technology. I mean it is a promising technology, of course 00:57:48.220 |
price action got totally decoupled from the level of progress in the space and people were not valuing these things based on 00:57:55.440 |
Real customers real usage and real use cases, but it was became, you know, very speculative 00:58:00.720 |
And again, all this was fueled by the excess liquidity that was pumped into the system 00:58:04.940 |
So, you know, we've said it before that crypto is like a liquidity sponge 00:58:08.820 |
It sucks up when there's a lot of excess liquidity. It sucks up that liquidity, but now that sponge is getting wrung out and 00:58:16.180 |
You know part of the problem is with interest rates going up 00:58:18.720 |
you know, it's one thing when you have negative real interest rates and 00:58:21.600 |
And and and you can't earn a return on your money 00:58:24.840 |
then you start to get you basic people start to push the envelope and 00:58:28.380 |
Invest in more more speculative things but as you can get a real return in 00:58:32.880 |
Like they'll say there's like a real risk-free rate 00:58:36.000 |
Now there's alternatives for all that cash and then you got the problem of leverage as well 00:58:40.560 |
Which I think over the last few weeks the crypto space was heavily over levered and a lot of people got margin calls 00:58:46.080 |
And wiped out that's the contagion that's occurred and people were levered up five ten times 00:58:50.760 |
They're Bitcoin on these roads until these token sale things get litigated 00:58:55.340 |
I mean the amount God the amount of grift by so many of these venture firms in running these 00:59:02.200 |
Sketchy deals where they would put in some amount of money 00:59:06.120 |
This is my understanding of the scam because it was explained to me you put in a little bit of equity at some crazy price 00:59:11.320 |
And then you get these tokens and apparently there's no like you can just sell these tokens 00:59:15.960 |
Day one and so what happens is like you you price the equity 00:59:20.100 |
But it's meaningless because really what you're getting is the right to get some amount of these tokens 00:59:24.300 |
The price is crazy you sell it and then you just kind of walk away and apparently, you know 00:59:29.400 |
You do these deals where you just rinse and repeat this thing 00:59:32.060 |
Well, wait, wait till that gets exposed. I mean, it seems like a turn the firm that did this the most is Andreessen Horowitz 00:59:39.400 |
Chris Dixon, I think was considered like the best investor last year or the year before