Macro investor Jordi Visser joins Anthony Scaramucci to discuss how AI and tech are “destroying” the economic business cycle, potentially making recessions a thing of the past. Jordi, the former President and CIO of Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers, shares his insights on the upcoming lower-rate Fed regime, his outlook for Bitcoin, the impact of market concentration by tech’s Magnificent Seven, and why geopolitical risks are today’s biggest threats. Jordi also advises investors not to get caught up in fear-inducing headlines and “hot takes,” but to focus on long-term trends and data-driven strategies.
Investment Concerns? Get a free portfolio review with Wealthion’s endorsed financial advisors at https://www.wealthion.com
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/Wealthion and get on your way to being your best self.
Jordi Visser 0:00
Business cycles have been destroyed by technology. I don’t think we’re gonna have a recession defined by having millions of job losses. The biggest risk right now is related to geopolitics around the globe.
Bullish on Bitcoin, yes or no,
Speaker 1 0:14
the most bullish asset, as far as I’m concerned, it will continue to grow every year and outperform all other assets.
Jordi Visser 0:21
Welcome to wealthIon and speak up and thanks for joining us. Your host, Anthony Scaramucci, joining us today is Jordi Visser. He’s the former president CIO of a hedge fund called Weiss multi strategy advisors. He’s a former Morgan Stanley partner, but he’s now a private macro investor. I would like to talk about Morgan Stanley with you, too, if you don’t mind Jordy, because that’s one of my favorite firms. Let’s get right into it. You call it a recession obsession. So what do you mean by that we’re not going to have a recession?
Speaker 1 1:04
Hey, Anthony, it’s good to be with you, but start right off on it. Yeah, I don’t, I guess, since you’ve been involved in the markets a long time, I can say this differently than the way I tend to tweet about it and deal with it in videos, which is, I don’t think we’re gonna have a recession defined by having millions of job losses. So typically, a recession has, you know, you lose one and a half, to say, three and a half percent of jobs at this point, that would mean losing two and a half to 5 million jobs. And that, I don’t believe is going to happen. So the reason the the title was recession obsession is we continuously have people worried about recessions. Since 1984 only seven and a half percent of the days have we been in a recession. And that’s one of the reasons why, as people get worried about this, instead of focusing on a recession and deep losses, which both the S, p5 100 and credit spreads are not signaling. I think people should be looking more for what is happening, which is a regime shift, one where the economy is slowing, recession fears are rising for valid reasons, because we do have a weakening in labor, but a regime shift is different. And in this case, you’re gonna have the Fed cutting rates, and that’s a different situation than a recession.
Jordi Visser 2:24
Okay, so we’re both old school people. We’ve been around a long time. I see a recession as two quarters of contracting GDP. That’s what I was told in 1985 in an economics class, are you suggesting that we’re not going to get that?
Speaker 1 2:45
Yeah, I don’t. I don’t think we’ll get that. And to be honest with you, we had that in 2022 no one’s saying that was a recession so, and the reason was because nominal GDP was significantly higher. Job losses and nominal GDP declining are the way that I define a recession, and what you were taught in school. If you go into chatgpt and ask what a recession is, you will get different types of answers. If I said to you, both of us old school investors, what the hell is a mid cycle slowdown? That’s not a recession. That’s what people define as something that’s slowing down. But you can only have a mid cycle slowdown if you’re in the middle of some kind of cycle. So the argument I’ve made, and this is really because of AI and software, is that business cycles have been destroyed by technology, and that that trend has been going on. I gave you the stat on how many days since 1984 there have the economy’s been in recession. If you go back to 1945 to 1989 and take that prior 40 years, about 20% and then if you take 1920 to 1944 it was 34% so everyone has seen more of this laws curve, and I just believe that technology has made it much, much closer to abundance than scarcity.
Jordi Visser 4:05
So are you a New Yorker Jordy?
Speaker 1 4:09
I was born in New Jersey. I have a home in New Jersey, a home in Brooklyn, and spend a lot of time in Maine,
Jordi Visser 4:15
all right, but you, ever you, ever you remember the guy used to come on with the mustache that the rent is too high for mayor, the rent is too high. Okay, I got guys that come on this show they see the market is too high, the market is too high, and then they say, It’s too concentrated. You got the Magnificent Seven eating up all the valuation in the market. So respond to that.
Speaker 1 4:39
I think so. Let me take it back to the recession question. If you remember when Alan Greenspan came on during the middle, or maybe the beginning of the housing market and said why we wouldn’t have a housing unwind is because housing was a very localized thing, and we’d never have everything unwinding at the same time. Yeah, if I said to people, and they went, Well, is there a recession? The video I just did, the SOM rule has come into play. We’ve had an increase of 90 basis points in the unemployment rate. And going back to 1920 we’ve never not had a recession when that’s gone on. The Lei, year over year is negative. IP, year over year is negative. The ISM has been below 50 for 20 months in a row, yield curves inverted. Housing is definitely in some sort of recession, at least based on affordability being at all time lows. And commercial real estate’s clearly in a recession auto so I bring that up as part of the question of concentration, that there’s very few winners that are happening in the marketplace. And it is true from people that say that the stock market is also showing a recession, believe it or not, since night, or Since 2020 when we, you know, got through the that year of covid only, or about a third of the stocks in the s, p, 1500 are actually down from 2020 only half of them have outperformed inflation, which has gone at 20% so For the median income person in the country. It is absolutely feeling like a recession for manufacturing and all the places I mentioned, it’s a recession. And that means that we have a concentrated place where the winners are pretty much isolated to the mega cap tech names, to Nvidia and so depending on how you want to define this, the stock market actually is doing a good job of representing how the economy is doing. You just want to be in the stuff that’s growing, and that’s still, to this point, is related to AI and certain parts of technology,
Jordi Visser 6:28
all right. So I want you to be, you know, the Fed just had these conference meetings in Jackson, Wyoming, and, you know, he’s saying it’s time to cut rates. I want you to be the Chairman of the Federal Reserve for me, and it’s a private meeting. It’s just you and me. It’s not for public consumption, Mr. Chairman, did you guys screw up? Did you are you cutting rates too late? Did you wait to raise rates and now you waited too long to cut rates? Or are we okay?
Speaker 1 7:00
You know what? I’m sure you’ve heard this answer before, but I do it with with everything in my life, which is, I’m not going to sit there and say that they’re making a mistake, or they’re not making a mistake. I’m an investor. I’m playing by the rules. They’re going to cut rates. So that means that we’re in a different regime. And I’ll just take you through what the Fed has done since covid, and I use that as a marking point because I I know we’re gonna end up talking about AI. I know we’re gonna end up talking about crypto. A lot of things changed in March of 2020, and the Fed came in, they cut rates to zero. That didn’t initially work, but then it came out that they would basically buy all credit, and at that point, you should have, at that point, gone in and bought the market. The Fed was saying they were going to put backstop. But during the entire time of 2020, people were still fighting this and believing we were going into a recession. There were more bears than bulls. The entire time in 2020 in 2021, they kept telling people that inflation was transitory, and that was, you know, follow what they’re doing, and just don’t get involved in terms of guessing whether it’s right or wrong. In 2022 they came out and said they want the stock market to go down. They want unemployment rate to go higher, and we’re going to kill inflation. Don’t fight the Fed. SVB blows up. In 23 they come in and they basically say they’re not going to allow banks, the whole banking system, to go under. And that was kind of a place where people should get involved in the markets. And then we had the Fed pivot in 2023 in in the end of 23 and that ended up being a time to get involved in the markets. And now they’re saying there’s a cut. And I think the way the markets are responding and what’s happening makes sense. I don’t think this is an all lights on for the US stock market. I do think a regime shift is going to lead to different things. So rather than talk about whether it’s the right thing or wrong thing, I think they’re giving you something to say that we are willing to admit that we’re out of Goldilocks. Goldilocks, for me, is defined as a point where we don’t know whether the next thing is going to be a rate hike or a rate cut, and there’s really no change in opinions to where now we are, and now they’re saying we’re going to cut rates if people want to bet on recession. I think that’s a mistake. But I think there’s areas of the markets and areas places where in a world where the economy’s slowing and rates are being cut, like housing, like autos, where you’re going to start to see some investors feel more comfortable in those areas that have been hurt by rates defensives. I think those are going to start to outperform.
Jordi Visser 9:27
Okay, so before we get into the crypto and the AI and some the traditional markets, we’re still in our Fed meeting you and me, and you know, I’m worried, Mr. Chairman, perhaps you’re not worried, but I’m worried about the deficit, I sort of feel like we’re out of control. We’re doing one to $2 trillion a year. We’re, I mean, we’re spending money hand over fist. We we went from George Washington, George W Bush, 7,000,000,000,003 presidents, 28, trillion, and. Don’t care if it’s Joe Biden, Vice President, Harris, Donald Trump. It looks like it’s one to 2 trillion for the next couple of years. And so should I be worried? Or you’re the Fed chair? Put my mind at ease. We can just print money QE infinity and just nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1 10:21
So rather than Sam word, I do think this is the number one deciding factor of the next, let’s say 10 years, offset by the AI and crypto side. In fact, I think AI and crypto are needed because of this situation. So the debt’s been rising for a long time, like you said, and you can go back and look for federal outlays as a percentage of GDP, we’re at levels now. You know above 20% only times we’ve been higher terms of overall expenditures, was back during World War Two and during covid So we not only have expenditures now, but Medicare, Medicaid, I think their forecasts double over the next decade. In terms of the expenditure side, you mentioned the interest rate side, that is over a trillion dollars bigger than defense spending. This is not a problem that the US government is going to be able to get out of. So what does that mean for for stocks and for for the economy as a whole? Well, that probably means rates are going to stay higher than they otherwise should. So even though right now we’re talking about cutting rates, my belief is these expenditures and this fiscal dominance is going to lead to inflation staying sticky. And if inflation stays sticky, it’s going to be hard for companies to compete in this environment. A lot of the things I’ve written about are that people should expect more bankruptcies. They should expect delinquencies for the lower half of the income in the country, which we’ve seen, and that makes it feel like a recession. And I think the way that will impact stocks, because as of right now, there’s been a lot of enthusiasm from Ai, it’s not going to feel like a good economy. Productivity and efficiency gains are not good. And I think with the government forcing rates to stay at higher levels than they otherwise would be, and with almost 50% of the economy now, either directly or indirectly from government spending, people just have to adjust what they can invest in. And I think a lot of the economy will not be able to benefit from that, most of the companies or most of the areas that are going to benefit from the government spending are going to be the fact that we have a large obesity problem in the US. We have a large health care problem. We have a demographic issue which shows up in the Medicare and Medicaid. And so the money is going to be spent there. But it’s very, very hard to make money on the health care side, because, as we both know, if you have to pick two parts of the economy that have not improved since the iPhone came out, in terms of productivity and efficiency, it would be basically dealing anything with the government and going to a doctor or hospital, those are the two areas, and that is almost 50% of GDP now, and it’s going to stay at those levels for a long time.
Jordi Visser 12:55
It’s well said, and it’s very insightful, because I’ve never heard it said that way. So let me let me add a panelist. Okay, my guest speaker coming into the conversation is a crypto enthusiast, and so they believe that this sort of hyper debt cycle that we’re in is going to be long term destabilizing, and a result of which we’re going to choose things that are no longer controlled by central banks. So sort of like the like the central banking community and fiat currencies in general, there’s been drunk driving, and so we need to take the keys away from the central bankers and give them to something that’s more decentralized. Do you believe that? Or you think that’s a bunch of malarkey to use a Joe Biden term? Or do you think it’s some something in the middle?
Speaker 1 13:44
Well, I the so I’ll start by saying I think it’s something in the middle. And I’ll try to use an analogy, because the one thing about crypto enthusiasts, and this is where I’m going to be spending most of my time, is I’ve always considered myself a decent storyteller by using facts, meaning trends, actual dollars. One thing you and I have both had experience with with hedge funds in our careers and on Wall Street is there’s data for everything. And so if you want to find a good investment, you’re looking for revenues that are growing year over year. You’re looking for earnings that are growing. Well, the crypto market at this point has a lot of facts, finally, behind it. And I think Stan Druckenmiller put it well back in October. This may have even been at a conference you were hosting. I have no idea, but he basically made the point that he’s not invested, at least in 2023 in crypto. But he, frankly, should be. And I think the reason he said that, and it was very interesting is something that hit me back in 2020, in the directly in the eyes at some point when you’re a cynic in markets and you believe that, you know, everything is kind of like a Ponzi scheme, like the question is being asked at some point, if you’re talking about now, 16 years since the Bitcoin paid. Paper, and we’re near or at all time highs. We’ve had user growth that continues and will reach a billion users by the end of next year, going at a slower pace than we had the last two years in growth. At some point, something big is going on. And the analogy I was going to give is, rather than get into this is going to happen fast, and people are leaving the capitalist economy. That’s not going to happen. If you’ve read the quotes from Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger, that is the norm for older people. They believe this is a Ponzi scheme. They would never put money in it. The capitalist system has been based on the central bank and the government preventing us from going into a depression. And so crypto is gaining assets every year. Most of that growth, as you know, is actually coming from emerging markets. So when you look at us, you know what’s happening in the US. I think every part of the US, concentration in the globe, whether it’s dollars as a percentage of reserves, continues decline. Declines every year. It’s just above 50% we will probably break the 50% level next year or the year after. According to the IMF, you’ve had de dollarization that’s going on MSCI World right now is 72% the United States of America companies, we’re not 72% of GDP. So that number is based on our dominance in technology. Well, AI is going to lead to a lot of decentralization, and that’s one of the benefits of crypto. But the other thing that fits into the crypto side is this debt problem. I just think, with the user growth happening in emerging markets, with emerging markets needing to have banking, needing to have defi, they’re skipping a lot of the things that we went through, that the money will just continue to go slowly, and rather than think of this as a collapse, or something that happens overnight. The US government is defaulting every day by debasing assets in the US relative to crypto. And so since 2020, the last four years, crypto is up. I think 120% using Bitcoin, the S, p5, 100 has produced 50% since the end of 2020, bonds are down. Most other stocks are down. Around the globe. You’ve had no movement in MSCI World x the US since 2007 I think we’re just seeing an asset debasement that’s happening in slow motion.
Jordi Visser 17:15
the US dollar, though, trueflation, the US dollars down 25% in that period of time.
Speaker 1 17:21
I think people that are owning this stuff forget are getting they’re getting hurt, but it’s better for it to happen slowly over time. And this is Michael sailors argument, which I happen to agree with completely.
Jordi Visser 17:33
Okay, so, so bullish on Bitcoin, yes or no,
Speaker 1 17:40
the the most bullish asset, as far as I’m concerned, it will continue to, to grow every year and outperform all other assets.
Jordi Visser 17:47
Okay, so, you’re, you’re a sailor, like disciple. Then, I mean, he’s, uh, he, you know, I have, I mean, I probably should admit this, because it’s a, it goes out to the, I have 55% of my net worth in Bitcoin and and Sailor just wrote the forward to my new book, The Little Book of Bitcoin, and he yelled at me and told me that I’m not invested enough. Okay, so I don’t know, maybe we need to rethink that, but I have other investments that I just don’t want to sell, but, but let me, let me ask you this. Okay, step back for a second, and let’s talk about the world of traditional finance, which are stocks and bonds, and let’s say that I’m someone that’s coming to you for advice, and I want actionable things right at this second, Jordy, I say, Hey, listen, just sold my business. I’ve got XYZ amount of money. I need something actionable, but also something that’s sturdy and long term. What do I do with this money? Jordy,
Speaker 1 18:45
well, if people get a hold of a lot of money, number one rule of investing, we’re all making predictions on the future. So if you’re going to make predictions, don’t have all your eggs in one basket and diversify. Michael Saylor may have told you that 55% of your net worth is too little. I would say at this point, when you, you know, use any traditional thing that worked from 1920 to, you know, 2005 if you go back to when Ray Dalio and Bridgewater were getting people, you know, to put tons of money into risk parity. Risk parity was based on the belief that if you equal weighted the risk among stocks, bonds and inflation hedges, you would do well over time and outperform money market rates or anything. And it proved to be right up until a certain time period now, I think, and I wrote about this at the end of last year. If I was sitting there and as a person who’s made money, I would have at least 50% in money markets at this point, because they’re paying five and change percent. So you get that opportunity, I’d have 30% in Fiat or tradfi investments. That would be of stocks and bonds, and I do 6040 on that, and the other 20% would be in crypto. And the reason I went. At that root is because for the risk you’re taking crypto to have 20% you’re getting money markets and reducing the risk on the rest of your portfolio. So everything that I do and think about is about diversification, risk weighting to try and get you more than double digits per year, because if you compound at double digits and you have money in the bank, you’re going to do very, very well. So that’s kind of the argument that I’ve made.
Jordi Visser 20:21
This show is sponsored by BetterHelp, and these volatile economic times, there’s probably a lot more on your mind than just what you’re going to have for dinner. Scrolling social media and seeing everyone with giant smiles pretending that they don’t have a care in the world doesn’t really help either. Well, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. They worry about the same things you do. All the responsibilities of adulting can weigh you down. Now, you’re not alone. I tell my kids, my friends and my colleagues, don’t ever be embarrassed to ask for help. Sometimes that help can come into talking to somebody. The professionals at better help are there to listen if you need to talk to someone or thinking about giving therapy a try, get better help a try. It’s easy, it’s online, it’s convenient and flexible to fit your schedule, if you just fill out the questionnaire and get matched to a licensed therapist anytime, rediscover your curiosity with better help, visit better help.com/wealthy. On today to get a 10% discount on your first month. That’s better help. H, E, l, p.com/wealthion, okay, so three things you’d buy right now, Bitcoin,
for sure. Bitcoin,
okay, what a give me any stocks you’d like right now.
Speaker 1 21:43
I’ve never been a bottoms up person. I’m a macro person, if you ask me, right now, I’m looking dirt because of the regime shift for areas of the market that have been left behind during the Goldilocks period. These are more related to em. I would say, if there’s one contrarian type view that I have. Bitcoin is sitting near all time highs. I believe that emerging markets are going to benefit the most coming out of this period, and the reason is because they are adopting to digital payments faster than the US they are adopting to and driving the growth in the user base of crypto, the way that we’re going to deal with the Gini Coefficient, you talked about the concentration of of the US debt and the deficit. The other issue we have here is really a problem that goes with just trying to get more millionaires in the world and less billionaires without having to tax them. And the way for that to happen is to have more millionaires grow. And I think that’s going to happen by people in crypto. And so emerging markets, to me, are directly related to it. And I would go with that, and then, believe it or not, I still like Japan as an investment in this period. I think they’re benefiting a lot as being the country that needs to move to robotics the fastest. You know, I’ve made kind of jokes to people you can this may be something you’ve had on one of your interviews, but Elon Musk had said that by the next election, presidential election, so this election already has a huge force of crypto behind it, whether it’s the fair shake super PAC whether it’s Donald Trump attending the last crypto convention, but by the next election, Elon Musk says he’ll be selling humanoids, and they’ll be in people’s houses, and we’ll have artificial general intelligence, which will be greater than the smartest humans. So all of that’s going to happen over the next four years, and I think emerging markets crypto are going to benefit dramatically. And I think anything in those areas is better off than us stocks at this point.
Jordi Visser 23:48
Okay? I mean, very well said. So with that, we’re going to go to questions from our people, our viewers and listeners. Let’s fire in the first question. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions retail investors have about macroeconomic trends and how they can better align their portfolios with these realities? And that’s Jonathan from California.
Unknown Speaker 24:15
I kind of already, to some degree, talked about this, but I think in this day of hot takes where everyone is trying to capture people’s attention, people get too focused on words like recessions. They get too focused on Silicon Valley Bank. When things happen, they get caught in the news and they make emotional decisions. And I think because of the combination of more media and more, I guess, hot takes that are coming out, people lose focus that investing is a long term gain. It’s directly connected to the macro economy. And probably the most important shift that we’ve seen from anything occurred in 2000 Seven, 2008 so I always like to joke that tarp and a lot of the tools that the Fed was able to use in 2020, they came out the same time that Satoshi released the Bitcoin white paper. It was within months of each other, and that recognition of needing that to happen, those two events were critical, and they kind of overlap with each other. The government can now print money at an enormous pace, and has the tools to deal with situations like Silicon Valley Bank. I mean, we lost three three to four banks in a matter of hours or a weekend. Historically, that would have led to a panic, but because the government was able to guarantee deposits without having to guarantee deposits. Those tools were created and allowed during the great financial crisis, and that gets people more scared in terms of Bitcoin. So I would just ignore the hot takes, put your investments, diversify, and think about a system where crypto is going to continue to gain market share over the fiat system, and that’s going to take years and decades, not not days and weeks.
Anthony Scaramucci 26:06
Well said, Let’s go to the next one. You’ve talked a lot about technological disruption in the market. Can you share an example of a sector or industry where you see the most potential for disruption? Tom from Florida.
Speaker 1 26:22
this is a good question. I think there’s two major things, and I’ll I’ll describe the Actually, both of them fit into one category. So for those of the listeners and the viewers who have never read about DeepMind, over the course of the last four years, there’s been about four or five advancements from artificial intelligence that have been released by DeepMind. One of them is related to longevity. So the healthcare sector and longevity specifically is going to go through a massive disruption. People are going to live a lot longer than anyone can believe right now. And this comes at a time when the US life expectancy is actually going down. I think that’s a major change. And so the longevity in healthcare side healthcare, and what I mentioned about hospitals and doctors, there’s an inefficiency there that needs to be dealt with. And so the productivity games that’ll happen on the healthcare side, both by not having people be unhealthy, but also solving problems. And I don’t think people, most people, know this, but what DeepMind and alphafold three, which is one of the things that they dealt with, this, is going to help with drug discovery. So in the same way that we’re able to come up with ozempic, there’ll be more and more drug discovery that are impacted by a AI. So the healthcare side for sure, but probably the most important to everyone here is the advancements that are going to happen in things like nuclear fusion, which, again, there was an advancement by DeepMind on on that side, AI will allow nuclear to be much, much, much healthier in turn, or much easier to deal with going forward in terms of the safety. Safety has been the issue on the AI side, so look for that to happen. And then finally, GNOME G, N, O, M, E has allowed them to basically search for all materials that have not only been used but haven’t been used at the molecular level. So advanced materials, DeepMind has gone through, which means we’ll be able to find things that we can use in technology that we haven’t yet found yet. So those are the two areas for disruption.
Jordi Visser 28:34
I love you. It’s interesting. Chad GBT, I asked them to write a poem about Anthony Scaramucci chat. GBT actually likes me. It was a it was a beautiful poem. I asked grok on Twitter or x to do the same thing. Doesn’t like me. So, I mean, these AIs have personalities, just so you know. And as you would imagine, since I’m polarizing, I’ve got one AI liking me and one AI not liking me, so I’m going to talk to my therapist later about it, but, but let’s keep going. We got another question coming in. What are your thoughts on the future of the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency? It’s a good question. Do you foresee any significant challenges or changes to its dominance in the coming years? That’s Lisa from Colorado,
Speaker 1 29:21
so I talked about de dollarization, which, to me, is going to continue to happen, but will any currency be thought of in better terms than the dollar? No, I don’t think so during my lifetime. And I’ll just, I’ll use one little analogy. So when I was at Morgan Stanley, when I was 29 I got the opportunity to go to Brazil and open an office there for the firm. I lived in Sao Paulo, and I got to talk to a lot of different Brazilians during the 9798 crisis. And I left right after the Brazilian real devaluation, and I learned a lot about why the dollar was viewed the way. It was, and there’s a lot that goes behind it. People want to go to school here. We still have the best technology companies. People want to come work here. They want to come live here for safety reasons. I just don’t see that changing anytime soon. But when you’re at a point where 70% of the global reserves inside the central banks were in dollars, and that number is now approaching 50, I think it’ll become less of the reserve currency, but will still be the reserve currency. I just think it’s going to continue to decline. So it’s not a binary thing, and that’s the thing with most people in reading things on the internet or in newspapers, we get into these binary things, saying you’re the reserve currency. I just think it’s going to be less of a reserve currency going forward, but it’ll still be there.
Jordi Visser 30:43
All right, fair enough. I agree with you on all that, so you know, but that what I’m worried about is that you and I are so used to it that maybe we think it’s going to happen just because we’re used to it. But I do agree with you. Let’s go to the next one. I What do you think is the most underrated risk in the markets right now that investors might be overlooking? Great question by Alex from Massachusetts,
Speaker 1 31:11
I’m less worried on the economic side. I do think the Middle East and geopolitics, it may not be overlooked, but with the US stock market’s sitting at all time highs, I think the biggest risk right now with the Fed cutting rates and with the economy, let’s say, on the weaker side, is any kind of shock that could drive oil prices higher and supply disruptions would be an issue. I you know, I could sit there and say geopolitics involving Taiwan and China. But the reality is, I think the biggest risk right now is related to geopolitics around the globe. This is not a stable environment. We’ve seen elections like in France, you know, go away. That was unexpected. And I still think that we have this instability, because the majority of the people in the world or in a recession, when you have inflation, people, people feel it, and when you have a concentration of wealth in the top I mean, the numbers are staggering, and I think people forget this, but the US economy, two thirds of the consumption every year is driven by the top 40% it wasn’t that long ago that Jeff Bezos was worth, I think more than the bottom 40% in the US in terms of his net worth, and about 70% of people in the country still live paycheck to paycheck. So you can’t really have too much going on when companies are obviously feeling a little bit more pressure, where jobs are not being created the way in the past, which means we’re a little bit closer to the possibility of even a short term recession, and I think geopolitics would be a bigger risk than the things that people are worried about, like rates being too high for too long.
Jordi Visser 32:49
Okay, that’s well said, I have nothing to add there. Let’s go to the next one. All right, so Anthony, I own a theory of Bitcoin, ETFs and a swab account. Is there a way to invest in Solana using swab. Okay, so the answer right now is no. This is Kevin from Delaware. If not, when do you anticipate a Solana ETF might become available? Unless you get a dramatic change in the SEC I don’t see a Solana ETF becoming available anytime soon, and it’s primarily because they’ve already intimated to people that they think Solana is a security. Now the irony and the hypocrisy of that it has very similar characteristics to Ethereum. And so one would have to ask, why would Ethereum be a security? In salon, Ethereum be a non security, and Solana security? And so we don’t know the answer to that, because we have the worst SEC chairman in US history who’s an arbitrary and capricious fool and is causing a lot of damage to the process. So so you’re not going to get a salon ETF anytime soon. If Trump wins the election, you’ll have a chance to get one by the back half of 2025 I’m going to end it with the last question for you. You’re a brilliant guy, you’ve helped a lot of people in your career, but there’s something that you’ve missed in your career. And I’ll tell you what it was. For me, I missed Amazon, okay? And I’ll tell the quick story. I heard Jeff Bezos speak at the Allen and company Sun Valley Conference. I was a young man. He’s exactly my age. We’re only separated by $200 billion in net worth, and I was scribbling down all the great ideas that he had. And then the very next speaker at that conference was Warren Buffett, and he said, Yeah, I can’t buy this. It’s worthless, and it’s an internet bookseller trading at a ridiculous multiple. And can you believe it’s worth more than this storied Sears Roebuck, which has got all these great hard assets? And so I got it completely wrong, and I missed it, and it taught me something about being more open minded about my investing. And so my question to you, as you reflect back on your. Career, is there something like that that you may have missed, and if you have missed it, what did it teach you or not teach you?
Unknown Speaker 35:09
Yeah, I’m going to go a different direction. Maybe, I mean, it fits missed, but I am going to say this because it’s the way we started this conversation off, and it’s probably the biggest lesson I learned. So when I joined, you know, when I left Morgan Stanley, which was in 2003 I started my own hedge fund, which eventually got rolled up into Weiss. When I joined Weiss, it was 2005 and I had only traded emerging markets during my career Morgan Stanley. So I believe bad things happen, and they happen fast. So my grandmother had a huge influence on me. She was a depression baby born in 1920 don’t take any debt. And the lesson that I had to learn after 2008 was that worrying too much about hot takes and worrying too much about low probability events, even though it is a risk, can cost you as much money if you’re overly worried than about the other side, which is taking too much risk. And I think people, because they err to the side too much about not taking the risk, they just go in things they know. And the reason I bring that up, I believe the reason so many people have not yet in the United States invested in Bitcoin and in crypto, which is something I certainly was not involved in, from 2007 to 2020 and it was only in 2020 that I started to realize it wasn’t just the blockchain that interests me. It was actually the understanding as to what was going on. Michael Saylor, since we both brought him up, has a great, great quote that I think fits for everyone in terms of going through this, which is, Bitcoin, people don’t change on Bitcoin. Bitcoin changes people and their opinions, and so for everyone out there, and this is it. I was too worried. And if I wasn’t still focused on these tail events and worried about the next big crisis to come through, I wouldn’t sit there and be not looking into Bitcoin. You have to do your research. You have to become comfortable with going on. You have to get the numbers. You have to understand and this is a stat that maybe you know, people can just start with the 18th largest owner of US treasuries in the world are now stable coins. There is stuff going on with inside the crypto market, which people should become more comfortable with. But until you get the facts, until you see the user numbers, until you realize it’s 11 and three against stocks over the last 14 years in terms of the annual changes, you just don’t pay attention. So my lesson learned was, don’t worry so much about these 1% things that happen very, very seldom, and focus more on opportunities and spend your time on the research rather than the worrying.
Anthony Scaramucci 37:57
All right. I mean, those are fantastic comments the legendary Jordy Visser. I thank you very much for joining us, and I salute you for your amazing career. And of course, there’s lots of good times ahead. Thank you for joining speak up and I, I hope you’ll come back.
Unknown Speaker 38:12
I will. Anthony, thanks. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.
Anthony Scaramucci 38:16
If you like this video, you’ll like this video as well. Check it out.