What will 2025 bring for the economy, markets, technology, and geopolitics? Join Anthony Scaramucci and Wealthion’s co-founder and CEO, Steven Feldman, as they unveil bold predictions for a transformative year. Discover insights on a worrisome $8 trillion in U.S. debt rollovers, persistent inflation, and AI’s explosive impact on industries. They also delve into global polarization, Trump’s return to politics, and the potential for heightened market volatility. Find out how these seismic shifts will likely shape markets, investments, and society. Brace yourselves for a disruptive 2025!
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Steven Feldman 0:00
I think 2025, is going to be one of the most interesting years, and I think we should all brace ourselves a little bit, get some popcorn and let it roll over us.
Anthony Scaramucci 0:21
Welcome back to the wealthion network and the show. Speak up, of which I am, your host, Anthony Scaramucci joining us today, and will likely be a very more often than annually, but certainly annually. Last year, the founder of the wealthion network and the chairman and the CEO of gold building on international and a dear friend, Steven, I don’t like to tell people how long we know each other, because I’m lying about my let me put it through this way with Wikipedia in play. Now I really can’t lie about my age, but I still like lying about my age, but if I was not lying about my age, I would tell people we know each other for just under 36 years. Sort of scary, but welcome back to the show. And this is a special edition show on predictions. So last year, 2024 I went over the predictions with Steven this morning. We got a lot of things right. We’ll send out an email to all the wealthion people on some of the things that we predict. And of course, we got some things wrong. We’ll explain what went wrong for us. But this year, we’ve got predictions. Mister Steven Feldman, welcome to the show. 2025 is upon us. Is a first question for you. Is it going to be a good year, Steven? Let me get under my desk while you’re saying that. Is it?
Steven Feldman 1:41
Well, first, I just want to clarify that we met in kindergarten. I think 2025, is going to be one of the most interesting years, and I think we should all brace ourselves a little bit, get some popcorn and let it roll over us. It is going to be a year of some really fundamental macro events coming in and intersecting in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen in our adult lifetime. At the top of the list is we have a new president and but it’s not just the president. It’s what President Trump and others around the globe are ushering in. It’s the shift from globalization to polarization. It’s the shift from my brain to artificial intelligence. It’s the shift from cars that drive to driverless cars. It’s going to be the shift from markets that have been smooth sailing for two years pretty much always up, you know, by the dip to I don’t think that’s going to be the story in 2025 and I think the collision of all of these things is going to lead to a bit more, a lot more headlines than we’re typically used to.
Anthony Scaramucci 3:02
Well, I mean, I agree. I think it’s going to be a lot going on. You have a president returning to the presidency. This is the first time since Grover Cleveland, so it’s 140 years ago, we had a president lose an election, come back to win a subsequent election, the President’s team, I think, is more experienced. He certainly is more experienced, having spent four years as president. There was an article I was reading over the weekend that I will share with you briefly, then ask you to address Gideon Rockman wrote an article in the FT over the weekend, talking about a revisionist era, meaning we went from world war two to 2025 80 years, where we did have a template of a structure of world order. There was a balance of powers, a Cold War. There’s been tension, but there’s been kinetic wars that have been skirmishes. There hasn’t been a global world war, but three of the major superpowers now, China, Russia and the United States have what Gideon Rockman calls are revisionist leaders, where basically they’re going to flip over the apple card Steven on things like tariffs, things on geopolitical positioning. Donald Trump has said during his transition term is the 16, sorry, 12 week transition term. He’s talked about taking over Panama Canal. He’s talked about taking over Greenland. I guess he suggested that Canada would be the 51st State of the Union. And so is this just rhetoric that’s out there? Steven, do you think the world order that started in 1945 holds or do you think that these these leaders in 2025 are going to shake things up?
Steven Feldman 4:59
I. Think, I think the leaders are shaking up what the population is allowing to get shaken up, if that’s a word. You know, Trump jests that Canada is going to be the 51st state. And I guarantee in some Canadian newspaper, there’s a poll that says that 47% of Canadians would like to be the 51st state. And these things get traction because there is a is an impatience that I feel, that many humans have with the disparities of wealth, the reality that the emotional reality that they didn’t reach what they wanted to reach, or even worse, they reached a place and between artificial intelligence, tax codes, bad labor agreements that they’re not getting what they were hoping for. And I think that’s what’s letting this all happen. Trump is not an authoritarian without permission. Whether he got 50% 49% I’m not sure the exact statistic, but a lot of humans voted for somebody who was going to throw the apple card over. And I think in the Russian population and the Chinese population, they have less ability to do so. But at the same time, you look at Europe, which has first, ostensibly the best democracies that people have seen, and in Germany, you’ve got an ultra white ring, right wing Nazi affiliated party knocking on the door of government with the support of Elon Musk. So I don’t I think a lot will happen. That’s why my opening comments were. What I’m hoping for is that there’s the resistance, or some balance comes to keep things what we’ve always enjoyed in America was things in check. People didn’t vote so much because it didn’t matter so much. It was very little difference Carter died yesterday or the day before. And, you know, he he was, there really a massive difference between what Carter did and what Reagan did. It was almost imperceptible, except for the politics but the but the but the the today, the difference between what Obama was doing and what Biden was doing and what Trump is doing is night and day. And all I’m saying is, with this much change and it will happen, I don’t know how much of it will happen, there’s going to be quite a bit of chaotic unintended consequences. Are
Andrew Brill 7:36
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Anthony Scaramucci 8:16
Okay, so let’s get into war. Let’s get into war predictions, different categories, just for our listenership. Here, we’re going to talk economics, politics and merger of the year, investing, technology. We’ve got some fun predictions in here. I want to start with the economy. Give us the the wealthy on speak up, prediction, 2025 what it’s gonna what’s the economy gonna look like? How is it gonna shape up? You
Steven Feldman 8:45
know, it’s interesting in wealthion Generally, how two things are always conflated, which is the economy and markets and investing. So markets investing, you know, I don’t, I don’t foresee anything miraculous happening in the economy in 2025 I think the setup is pretty good. Generally speaking, low employment, inflation coming down, although maybe a bit higher than what had been hoped for. But at the same time, you see some macro things that are troubling in different markets. So for example, $8 trillion of treasuries have to roll over in 2025 what does that do to markets? All that money has, you know, that’s going to come out of some other wallet, right? You if a trillion has to get refinanced, and you can’t rely on the Chinese to do it, then that’s going to come out of other asset classes, it appears to me that the stock market is pretty, you know, on historical basis, is pretty highly valued. So you could see things happening in markets, and the economy does just fine. And I think that’s going to be the case. I think we’re going to see a lot more volatility. And. Investment markets, but the economy will just continue to muddle through on the back of some big capital expenditure spending, whether that’s the federal government or AI or data centers. So I feel like the economy will be fine. But I think the investing, the investing horizon, is going to be pretty rocky.
Anthony Scaramucci 10:19
Okay, so, so Fed rate cuts. We got it right last year, and we said there would be three rate cuts. It didn’t look like it was going to happen in the middle of the year. People are saying, Oh, no, way is that going to happen. But we did get it right. We got three rate cuts by the end of the year. Let’s talk about Fed rate cuts for a second. What do you think is going to happen as it relates to Fed rate cuts.
Steven Feldman 10:41
I think this, I’ll answer the question a second, but I think the strange thing that happened again, economy and markets, there were three rate cuts, and yet the long bond is higher. I don’t think a lot of people predicted that, and I think that could happen again in 2025 and so I think inflation at 2% is probably gone. The new normal, as we predict, is going to be probably north of 3% maybe exacerbated by tariffs. But I think this idea that we are protecting this terrific credit called the United States of America, with $36 trillion of debt and nearing $2 trillion of a deficit. Doge or not, it’s going to be a big deficit. I think it’s that’s the part which I I’m more concerned about. It feels like 25 basis points once a quarter is tinkering while having to reissue $8 trillion of debt is the thing that’s going to move the bond market. And my suspicion is the surprise is going to be negative. And does that cause banks to fail and real estate to crumble? If you see a 10 year at five and a half percent, which is our prediction, I don’t know there always feels to me that there should be a day of reckoning, but yet it doesn’t ever really seem to come. That could be because there’s blending and extending and pretending, or that this economy is so dynamic that capital zips out and then it zips back in someplace else, and no one needs no one’s even the wiser. All
Anthony Scaramucci 12:19
right, so let’s set that scene for for viewers and listeners. Though, if you have got $8 trillion rolling and rates are up, and the weighted average interest rate will probably go up about 60 or so basis points on the $35 trillion of debt Steven so there’s just additional burden, I guess when we reach an exponential moment where the interest rate payments, which are already more than the defense budget for the United States and are heading towards other things like social security and heading towards the Medicare disbursements and so forth, at what point does that signal to the market? So wait a minute. You know, the US is a little bit in trouble here. How are they going to afford all of this? They’re, they’re basically, they’re basically borrowing 43 to 44 cents now on every dollar that they’re spending. How is that going to be long term sustainable?
Steven Feldman 13:20
You know, as you when you introduce me, I’m also the owner of a precious metals business, and so part of my responsibility is to stay abreast of the macro markets. And you know, when you talk about this situation, I get accused of being a doomsday person, but I sit here and I say, if all of the debt had a role to today’s rates, that would be another incremental trillion dollars of interest on top of the existing trillion dollars of interest. We have a government that is wholly committed, wholly committed to keeping taxes down. It’s almost like political suicide to raise taxes. And so I and then I say to myself, well, when? When does it spiral out of control? What happens? Does it ever it? Can it go from 36 to 46 or do we have the wrong metric? Does does debt as a percentage of GDP mean anything? If you have a military that can just Denmark says, No, can just take Greenland, like, what are you going to do about it? I but I don’t, I don’t believe it in my heart. It makes me nervous, and it makes me more conservative. As an investor. I don’t like the picture, but when I sit there and tell people I’m nervous, they say, but you don’t understand the US economy. It’s so dynamic. Everything always has gotten solved. So this will get solved too. And I try to stay independent minded, but it makes me nervous. I don’t see a mathematical solution to this. I don’t know what Doge will do to cut but unless. Raise taxes. This thing could actually become a spiral. And you and I are old enough to remember when the bond market went on strike. Remember the bond vigilantes? You know, do they ever show up? Or it’s just, just keeps going on? Does it matter if it’s 3646 56 not sure. It matters. And then you get it. And then, you know, modern monetary theory. I don’t know, what do you think?
Anthony Scaramucci 15:25
Well, yeah, I mean, so, so I’ll lay out both sides. So the the one side is this debt spiral, the cataclysmic it’ll cause to us our living standards as we have to monetize the debt. It becomes, not unlike Argentina. You know, Argentina is different because everything in the world is dollar denominated, and so there have even more pressure on them. The US could theoretically print a $35 trillion coin and pay off all the debt, but that would just be devastating to inflation. It would be devastating to living standards for middle and lower income people. The other side of the argument is that we are in $1 denominated world, and the US can continue to slowly monetize its debt. You had 8% inflation two years ago, and so that’s effectively wiping out 8% of the government’s debt. And so we can continue to do this for another 1015, or so years, and you know, you’ll see the erosion. Like every empire, you’ll see the erosion. So, so this, this, this does bring up a good, good question, because it’s part of our predictions as we go to politics, Steven, let’s talk about the Department of governmental efficiency and its plan to cut government expenditures. You know, one thing that Elon Musk says that I totally agree with, and I think you agree too, but if you don’t, please disagree, is that deficit spending is just unfunded tax liability, and so somebody’s gonna have to pay it off. You’re either gonna pay it off through inflation, where you monetize the debt, and everybody gets weakened. Inflation is sort of this invisible tax, or you have a day of reckoning and you have some type of imposition of austerity, it’s it’s really one or the other, but when you’re spending the money, it does get paid off through a form of taxation, inflation, a silent, sort of comprehensive, very regressive tax or something more meaningful. And so I guess the question is, is there really $2 trillion worth of expenses that could be cut from the federal government if there isn’t? What could those do? What’s our prediction for Doge in 2025
Steven Feldman 17:38
let me go backwards before I go forwards. So, you know, part of what I hear in this conversation always is, well with inflation. The silver lining of inflation is that the debt will decrease, right? If you have 10% inflation, then the debt arguably is going down in real dollars by 10% in that year. But that also presupposes that investors are going to buy your bonds at negative interest rates. So the fallacy of that is, is that if investors want a positive real rate, then if you have 10% inflation, then a treasury bond should be selling for 12% or 13% now this, that’s the part of the market which never seems to wake up, but one day it might, and it’s going to be surprising. Now, let’s go to Doge. You could look at the federal government, and you can look at the budget. It’s obviously there to see. You can go and see the federal budget. And you know, you can, I suppose you can decide that you’re not going to buy F 35 I think that’s the one that’s the manned plane that doesn’t work that well, and they’re very expensive, and you can save some money there, and that they’ll call out $100 million off your defense budget. And then, yeah, and I always see these studies where, you know, they’re trying to figure out why mice are just depressed. And so you can save $150,000 there, getting to $1.8 trillion which is about, you know, sort of 30 to 50% of the federal receipts from taxes is going to take a thing, right? So it’s going to require something in Social Security, something in Medicare, Medicaid, massive defense cuts, infrastructure, all of the things that are near and dear to people’s hearts. And so what are you going to cut? You cut the Farm Bill? Well, the farmers voted for Trump last time I looked. And so, and all of this tension. And go back to the very beginning. Why is everything changes is because people are annoyed, and one way to make them more annoyed is to cut, remember that joke, which is, keep government out of my social security, that person who’s getting Social Security or is a year away, you tell them they’re now five years away. I mean the chaos. Said this is going to sow in this country and among the Populate, the populace is really, really tough. So I think, listen, there’s not a person on the planet who is for government waste. And we know there’s plenty of it. Is there 2 trillion of it? I doubt it. And I suspect when, when musk and some of his of the Silicon Valley elite club starts to talk about Medicaid and Social Security. That’s where Trump and musk start to have the true falling out. It already started on the visa and that, I thought, was lightweight. That’s lightweight stuff, right? Hey, we want to get some engineers to come in and, you know. And all of a sudden, Steve Bannon, the Maga world was, you know, at their throats. Let’s see what happens when you’re cutting the farm bill and you’re cutting Medicaid, and you’re cutting, you know, and you’re cutting Social Security,
Anthony Scaramucci 20:50
yeah, that would Stephen, that was lightweight. Bannon called musk, a globalist, a slave to the Chinese Communist Party, just though, this is the lightweight stuff we’re talking
Steven Feldman 21:01
about, right? That’s, that’s the undercard, right for this. That is the undercard of the but the heavyweight battle is when you touch people’s entitlements, which is the only way to save the money.
Anthony Scaramucci 21:12
Okay, all right, let’s, let’s whip over to another prediction inside the world of politics. Is the the January 6 participants, do they get pardoned by Donald Trump?
Unknown Speaker 21:27
Unfortunately, yes,
Anthony Scaramucci 21:29
they do, right. I mean, most of them do, right. I mean, he’ll, because he’s Donald Trump, he’ll, he’ll pardon enough for his base, and he’ll leave a few that he doesn’t pardon, and then he’ll leave enough for everybody to say nonsense to each other. Yeah, you know this.
Steven Feldman 21:44
Let’s take a tangent for a second, a slightly political tangent, which is, it’s not a political show, but how could given how politics and markets and emotions are all now so inextricably involved this part, and thing is getting out of hand. And you know, I don’t think it was intended to pardon family members and partisans. And it is and it, you know, if people are worried about having faith in government, this is, really could be one of the worst things that you could possibly do Trump. Trump pardoned his father in law. And quite a few people who, you know,
Anthony Scaramucci 22:25
really, he’s now the ambassador to France, the pardon father in law, right?
Steven Feldman 22:29
So and now, and they made the ambassador France, and then Biden, who has, must have, you know, not positive about all his capabilities, but his, his certainly, his political antenna could not have been further down by pardoning the worst murderers and rapists in the United States, which became five days of reading every story over and over about who was. You know, he
Anthony Scaramucci 22:57
went in that with the Pope, and the Pope told me to do it. So he did it, and he’s just, he just, at every moment he gives a another opening for Donald Trump to do,
Steven Feldman 23:05
just capable of doing. By the way, I want to be clear, they were not part in but their, their death sentences were commuted, right? But the the bannons of the world said they were all, they were all part right, right, of
Anthony Scaramucci 23:19
course. Well, that’s the misinformation game that we’re all playing. So alright, so we’re going to, we’re going to whip through a couple of these. So just say yes or no. Does Greenland become part of the United States in 2025 No, okay. Does the United States attack Panama? Yes or no? Well, I
Unknown Speaker 23:38
think we did that once. Um, no, but we do not. Okay, does?
Anthony Scaramucci 23:43
Does the country of Canada become a next by the United States?
Unknown Speaker 23:52
No, it does not. This is
Anthony Scaramucci 23:56
the wealthy on speak up. Reality check here. These are, these are predictions.
Steven Feldman 24:01
I listen. I this is what I would call field conditions. I’m my theory of field conditions. And Trump is a master of creating field conditions. He says outrageous things, provocative things. He throws hand grenades in rooms, and he sees what’s possible and and if it’s not possible, he either says he was joking. And you know, how could you possibly taken me seriously? And he gets away with that. But sometimes all these provocations end up leading to something else. And if you say enough sort of out there things, then the less out there things. Seems quite sane, right? So this is what he’s doing. And you know, no but so he’s not going to next Panama, not going to attack Panama, but he basically created field conditions to have a. Different conversation about rates for the Panama Canal and Chinese involvement there.
Anthony Scaramucci 25:03
All right, so you got some great ideas here, so we’re going to whip through them, because we’ve got to keep this a timely show. But I want to, I mean, this is a great M and A idea so so much so that we should probably be talking to our our our alums and our banking friends at Goldman on this, give us your M and A prediction for the year. Well,
Steven Feldman 25:24
you know, I, when I was thinking about these, I was just going through the mag seven, and, you know, they, each one of them is in everybody else’s business. And so the biggest reason that mergers don’t happen. Big mergers don’t happen is because there’s something, some notion that they’re anti competitive. But Apple has Apple Music, and so it’s hard to say that if Google or alphabet has Spotify, they could say, well, there’s no you have less competition. Well, that’s not true. Spotify still exists. It’s owned by it’s owned by alphabet and Apple Music still exists, and people listen to music on other and other ways. Also the radio still exists. And so I think you can make the argument that it’s not anti competitive for Google, which already owns YouTube, so it already has the biggest video service to add the podcast and the music. And I happen to know from being a Spotify customer myself, that it’s a fantastic business and fantastic business model. It’s like Costco, right? You’re there. All your stuff’s there, and all your lists are there. And if they raise rates 10% a year. Nobody goes anywhere. So I think there’s a lot of synergy to YouTube. It’s a lot more customers. And since also Google’s on the on the, on the edge, edge, edge of AI, the ability to meld all those things and give people their personal tastes is quite exquisite.
Anthony Scaramucci 26:58
And I think, I think it literally is an awesome idea. And you know, we’re gonna, after the show’s over, we’re gonna get involved here with somebody in m a pitch that idea to somebody. So let’s go. Let me buy
Unknown Speaker 27:12
the options first. Yeah, all right, well,
Anthony Scaramucci 27:15
we, by the way, just so you know, if you did do that, it’s not insider trade. I know inside information, right, exactly. So that’s the weird thing about our our industry, all right, so let’s go quickly to the Longs of the year, companies of the year, and then let’s go to some of the shorts of the year. Okay,
Steven Feldman 27:35
so full disclosure, I own both of the companies that are we’re predicting as the companies of the year. So the first one is Sofi, and run by a former Goldman alum of mine. And you know, I, I’m going to tell you a quick anecdote. GBI was looking to get some acquisition financing this year, and we went to it wasn’t a very large dollar amount, but it was a very attractive deal, and it was a good deal for the banks, and we could not get a bulge bracket bank to give us a loan. It was like, if the loan wasn’t $500 million they weren’t listening to us and and I sort of feel like the bank between private credit, which is taking over the lending business, and the fact that so banks aren’t even in the and they’re not in the small and medium sized lending business, that all of a sudden, the retail borrower, the retail banker, bank customer, is not as well served as it used to be. Enter Sofi, which is a bank has all sorts of lending services, all sorts of transaction services, very good, direct to consumer, has the naming right so the 40 Niners stadium and is beginning to have the brand be well known. It’s got a lot of velocity into all its businesses. I’m happy to say I bought it well under its current price, but I only, I really feel like it’s only hitting Escape Velocity now, and the macro is great. I do not believe that the average retail bank customer is being serviced so well by its local bank. And lot of those banks also have their own problems and not they don’t want to make any more commercial loans. They want to make any more loans. These guys are a leader in student loans, other types of loans. I think it’s a no brainer.
Anthony Scaramucci 29:38
All right. I like it. It’s cheap. Next one. So this one
Steven Feldman 29:42
is a special situation. And qxo is a company that is was founded by Brad Jacobs. Brad Jacobs is a serial entrepreneur, but not of Silicon Valley. It’s very, very interesting. He’s not a venture guy. He’s a guy. Who does roll ups of fragmented and what I would say, boring industries? The most famous one was XPO. XPO rolled up logistics, people who dispatch trucks and other moving vehicles to move goods across the country. It ended up trading, I think it trades today at like nine times book value. I had a friend who turned me on to Brad. I listened to a couple of YouTube videos. He’s a, he’s a, he’s a no nonsense, decent man who just has a cult of of of executives and investors who follow him around. He announced qxo, and when it did a reverse merger, and it was done at like, 10 or $11 which I’m happy to say is my cost basis, and now it’s at $15 give or take, they haven’t bought anything yet. They’ve had a couple of deals. One deal was rejected. It was a public company. But I think when the guy gets to start to get some velocity, he buys companies. He makes them more efficient. He’s adding artificial intelligence. He’s got rock star executives. Trump’s son in law, Kushner, is an investor for $500 million He’s on the board. I think the stars are lined up for this. And when, when the thing starts to print deals and get attention, I think the stocks have double between now and I think these to both these companies, markets aside, right? If markets go down 50% these guys are not going to double. But if markets move the way, just normal markets, I think both these companies are doubles in a year.
Anthony Scaramucci 31:41
Okay, let’s go to the shorts. Okay,
Steven Feldman 31:45
so I want to start with you with the short. I’m going to tie the short to to crypto. So I didn’t I know you are a big crypto purveyor, a fan, a pioneer. So you know, the one place, which I didn’t want to say is a short was, you know, either certainly meme coins. I’d say, you know, there are coins that have to go down to zero. They were just the worthless but, you know, got caught up. But I’m not even going to put those down, because people can’t really be short them. But the question is, how much of this, the Bitcoin, the MicroStrategy, how much of that is? Is it? Will it be corrected away? Does it go down, or is Bitcoin reached escape velocity? So even before I get to the two I mentioned, is there some view that these things have gone too long, is that there’s too much smoke and mirrors now, or it’s just the new platform 95,000 is now the new platform for the next year, which will be 130,000
Anthony Scaramucci 32:51
so, you know, it’s interesting. So I went to the Yale CEO conference about a week and a half ago, and these were all season CEOs. Fortune, 500 CEOs, some retired, some active. It would be unfair to list all the names, but names that you would know Steven and they had this, like little electronic switch, and there’s a poll they put up on the screen, is Bitcoin a meme coin? Is it just a meme coin? I mean, you know, completely worthless, just a trading token that people are trading. 65% of the respondents there, of course, I was there and I voted that it wasn’t, but I’m just letting you know that 65% of the people that were there voted that it was. And so it begs the question, I’m either completely wrong and I’ve missed this thing and I don’t understand it, and bitcoins a meme coin, as apropos to what you said, I believe that meme coins will trade to zero. Is Bitcoin a store of value or a meme coin? And so I believe that it’s a store of value, and I wrote a book about it, and you were nice enough to attend my book party and read the book. Even nicer, I read the book. Yeah, and, and, obviously, we put the book out on wealthion and gave people a 30% discount if they want to buy the book. But, but my, my, my feeling, is either that’s a sign that we’re incredibly early, that’s a sign that these corporations are behind the curve, or it’s a sign that I’m incredibly stupid, and there’s going to be a tsunami wave that wipes out crypto. So it’s, it’s one or the other, and, you know, I’m going to take the the side that these guys don’t understand it yet, are not willing to accept it, and that these coins, these mean coins. I do believe we’re gonna go to zero, but I don’t think Bitcoin is a meme coin. I do think that the world is adapting it and gold, as you know, it’s 5000 years old, but gold had to be adapted by the world’s population as a store of value. There’s uses for gold beyond just that, but. It did have to start somewhere with that sort of acceptance. Yeah, listen,
Steven Feldman 35:04
it’s a complex story. You know, it’s troubling on the crypto side that some of the use cases are, you know, less than savory, right? You know, there’s a lot of all ransomwares, and, you know, all, all all of the terrorism, all of the when people lock up your computer, they’re asking for Bitcoin. It’s unfortunate that it has that. If you took that out, I think people would feel better about it. I agree, by the way. I agree it’s a store of value. And I also agree that I thought the interesting thing that might have been the secondary question for the audience. That was the 65 that said was a meme coin. How many of them ever regret that they never bought any? I think that the believers are long Bitcoin, and the people who missed out and are full mode, they have it. They almost wish it would fail so they can say, I told you so,
Anthony Scaramucci 36:00
right? And that’s everything. People said that about Tesla. People said that about Amazon. Geez, I want Amazon to fail. You know, Warren Buffett once said at the element company conference, can you believe that this internet bookseller is worth more than the storied Sears, Roebuck, Sears row books, wonderful portfolio property and all these hard assets and so, so we, even the smartest among us, can get things wrong, but let’s go to these two shorts. You shorting long dated US Treasuries. We’ve, we’ve built the case for that elevated inflation, rising rates and computing,
Steven Feldman 36:37
I would be, I wouldn’t touch a long bond coming up for this year. And there’s a number of reasons. One, of course, is what we talked about is endemic inflation. When people start to understand that inflation can actually stay elevated, we’ll see what happens with the we’ll see what happens with the tariffs. But, you know, I was an economics major, and tariffs have always been inflationary, and maybe it’s the case that this is just a negotiating position, so we are in a better we get something in return that’s deflationary. But I think inflation is going to get is here to stay, and is going to just get worse. And to your point about the government can’t be too sad about it, since they got $36 trillion that they need to pay off. Second piece of it is there’s been an extraordinary issuance of, I was just in the FT yesterday, just an extraordinary amount of issuance of of of corporate debt that has occurred of late, and is projected to happen in 2025 as companies refinance their pandemic era debt. Third, $8 trillion of US debt has to turn over in a mark in a market that’s being de globalized. And so if you’re sitting there and Trump is threatening Canada, do you also want to own their treasuries, if you’re Canadian and if you’re Chinese, do you want to they get about to get 100% tariffs? Do you want to own their treasury? Now, Trump can go and make a deal and say, Listen, you have to buy $2 trillion worth of these, and we’ll lower our tariffs. Maybe, maybe that’s the deal he makes. But I’m pretty sure all bonds are long dated bonds are going to suffer next year. Can’t because of just the massive amount of issuance and the fact that real rates will require that second one you want to go to the second one,
Anthony Scaramucci 38:30
yeah, let’s go to quantum computing. Yeah. Okay. I’m
Steven Feldman 38:33
just intrigued by this one. This one, you know, when you’re invest an investor this, this has got to be like the luckiest thing that could ever happen to you. So the story of quantum computing, formerly known as beverage holdings group with let trailing 12 months of revenue of $386,000 and a market cap of, by the way, this is only a few days old, 2.2 billion. I believe it’s 2.3 billion or 4 billion today. So it’s trading for 5000 times revenue as one customer in quantum computing and trying to exit the beverage business. Listen, I’m all for emerging technologies and the fact that the stock market is turned into a public venture capital arm, right? Canada has had it forever. Canada has a Venture Exchange where companies like miners can go and raise capital, and you’re buying a lottery ticket, and the US capital markets are becoming the same thing. And that’s fine. In fact, it could be good, but I don’t think for the average investor, that they understand that yet, and so they can get their clock cleaned in these types of investments. Just a year ago, this company was trading at less than $100 million market cap. And so it’s up, you know? It’s up 25x I think the number might do is. Meaningfully south of that. So if you were long a beverage company and you held it through and you fell asleep for a few months, you’re up 25x it’s pretty great, but I think this is going to be a very rocky road, and I don’t see how quantum computing beverage company is going to beat Google. Okay.
Anthony Scaramucci 40:18
Well, said the crypto story of the year is that India and Turkey adopt Bitcoin as part of their foreign reserves and but we likely will see a Bitcoin crash at some point in the 2025 period. I don’t know. Could it go to 180 crash to 140 could it go to 100 crash to 60? Hard to know. But Bitcoin is a volatile asset, so if you believe in it long term, that’s great, but shut off the computer. Don’t look at it every fifth there are two types of people, Steven there are those that look at Bitcoin every 15 seconds, and there are those that lie and say that they don’t look at Bitcoin every 15 seconds, but actually do, but try not to look at it. Number six, Ukraine and Russia. There’s a fragile peace agreement there. Ukraine enters the EU, but it remains outside of NATO, and Putin, of course, gets to keep the lands he’s already conquered, and he firms up his position as the leader of the Western resistance. Number seven, there is a long term cease fire that’s eventually brokered between Hamas and Israel, and this will mean a reconstruction for Gaza. Aid will flow in there from Arab states and and the West, and this normalization of efforts between Israel and Saudi Arabia will happen as a result of this peace deal. Those are five, six and seven. Let’s go to number eight, unless you have something to say about five, six or seven. You know,
Steven Feldman 41:49
these are somewhat easy predictions, nothing. I mean, this is, you know, sometimes I remember when you read some of the Byron weens predictions, they always had to be outrageous. These are not particularly outrageous. I think both of these scenarios are on their way. Wars are always unpredictable, and I the coda to at least six and seven is they’ll be short lived, meaning whatever peace that you get in these very volatile regions with very volatile combatants. In the Middle East, you throw in sprinkling zealots and a lot of religion, and in Russia, you know one man who can decide the following day that he’d like a little piece of Romania. And then what is anybody going to do? So, you know, these are going to be fragile pieces. There’ll be a lot of victory laps that’ll go around them, especially among the new administration. Look, we got peace. We did this, we did that, we reordered this, we reordered that. But I don’t, I don’t see it holding because the world’s no longer tied together in the same way it used to
Anthony Scaramucci 43:01
be. All right, let’s go to AI. Some great ideas here related to drug discovery, arts and entertainment, perhaps making decisions on the sports field, making decisions as an administrator of a city like a mayor. Tell us a little bit about potential job displacement. And what do you think the future? What do you think 2025 yields for AI,
Steven Feldman 43:27
I think there’s going to be a massive acceleration. You know, I had this statistic in my head that probably everybody who knows and loves me hears way too much. The Wright brothers flew a plane, and then only 65 years later, we landed on the moon, and that was without the internet computers, you know, for the first 40 of those years, the first 45 of those years, and now we have artificial intelligence powered with quantum computers. And the speed of which AI is going to eat up the world is going to be startling to people and, you know, and the fact that AI right now most people who are sitting in my seat, you know, hey, I use chat GPT to edit the predictions. I wrote them out and I said, Hey, throw them in there and polish them up. And it was efficient for me. I’d have to send it to anybody to do it. And God bless but I also read in this weekend’s newspaper, in the Wall Street Journal, that management jobs are beginning to disappear, because the job of a manager, which was to find information from different underlings, is now going to be is already being done by AI and computers, and that’s only going to accelerate. And if you, if you want to be a historian, which I know you are, Anthony, about how we came to a place where. Populism was so important, and the sort of anxiety of the former factory towns, it was all around NAFTA. So NAFTA exported jobs to China and to Mexico, and there was no corresponding retraining of the people they were supposed to all elevate. But guess what? They did not, not as many of them did as we’d hoped, but there was no program in place to retrain the displaced factory worker, and now it’s coming up the food chain, and that is going to be about as dangerous of a dynamic. And you people in Silicon Valley think it’s awesome because they’re going to get a lot richer and but when it’s not like the country is going to get richer, it’s just going to like Amazon. It’s going to Amazon just sucked all the stores off of Main Street. AI is going to start to suck the jobs out of companies, and those companies will get richer, and the shareholders will get richer, but the people will be displaced. And I think that is going to be by the end of 2025 that is going to be a giant, giant theme, and America better get America’s government better get its hands around it, by the way. As an aside, and this is not about macro, you know, I’ll just tell you a quick anecdote. I was in California this week, past week, and I used to be there a lot for my job, and I knew all the streets and the 405 and the 10 and Wilshire and sunset. And now I have ways and Garmin and all things in the car, and I have no sense of direction whatsoever. I have no idea. I gotta look up to see which way the sun is and sets in the, you know, which way it sets, to figure out where I’m going. And I’m, I’m troubled that AI is might do the same thing to other, to our you know, if we’re going to start using it to write, are we going to not be able to have language? Are we going to start using it to manage? Are we not going to manage anymore? I mean, I’m not sure what the end game is. But, you know, in search of of extra income, are we going to give away our soul? By the way, that is a public service announcement. I’m not sure the answer, but I do feel like there’s going to be so many knock on effects to the hyper use of AI and how AI evolves. But look, it’s going to, I put a list of things down on this page. It’s going to impact everything. AI is going to write screenplays, it’s going to generate avatars. It’s going to be in positions. It’s going to be the manager of a sports team, it’s going to be the mayor of a city. It’s just going to be fed information and provide answers to things, and people are going to be shocked, in my opinion, about the things that this place is self
Anthony Scaramucci 47:36
driving cars. Are we going to have self driving taxi service sometime,
Steven Feldman 47:43
another thing that’s accelerating. So I was, I was, like I mentioned before, I was in LA. Waymo is operational in LA. They’re all over the place. I can’t tell you what, what the impact will be for Uber, but you download the app, you call the car. The car shows up. You don’t know. You know, for better or for worse, there’s a driver. Maybe you feel the driver makes you more safe. Some people think the driver makes you feel less safe. And these things are whizzing around. They drive at the speed limit. They stop. They do right on red. We saw it everywhere. And again, if you take my theory that you know, we’re accelerating, technology is accelerating. I think by the end of the year, there’ll be certain cities where it’ll be a valid competitor to the Ubers and Lyfts of the world. And if you wage five more years, it’s going to be, you know, I don’t even know why people will need but then go back to my AI, if everything is driverless. If cars are driverless and trucks are driverless, I somewhere around 1.5 million people in America make a living driving something. And what are you going to do with those people? They’re going to be a tad angry.
Anthony Scaramucci 48:51
All right. All right, let’s go to the Super Bowl. My friend the Super Bowl and I will point out we did get it wrong last year. Yes, chief went back and won the Super Bowl. Who’s going to win the Super Bowl? Well, if this is a Byron wean prediction on your part, okay, this is, this is one of those. If we get it right, we’ll be self congratulating ourselves. Go ahead. Well,
Steven Feldman 49:13
I will say this that every chiefs game I watch, it does feel like the reps are on their side, so they have an unusual advantage. But, you know, I’m a jet fan, which really you should all feel bad for me, really bad for me. And I watched a little bit of the game yesterday, and the bills are just a super team. They Josh Allen is looks invincible, and I’m gonna pick them for the Super Bowl. Now, the second best team that I’ve seen is the Detroit Lions with and the third best team I’ve seen is the Ravens. Any one of them can win. But I’m gonna go with the bills.
Anthony Scaramucci 49:52
It’s a big one, because they were in the Super Bowl four times. You and I have been old enough to see all these Super Bowls. They’ve never won a Super Bowl. All, and that’s a big one. And Josh Allen, of course, the jets had a chance to draft Josh Allen. They, of course they did draft Mr. Darneau, who’s the starting quarterback on the 14 and two Vikings. And so I’ll make a prediction that the Jets will not be in the playoffs in 2025 how’s that? That’s the
Unknown Speaker 50:22
safest bet.
Anthony Scaramucci 50:25
All right, all right, here, here, here are three, tongue in cheek, okay, Zuckerberg and musk the cage match actually happens,
Steven Feldman 50:35
wouldn’t we all like to see it, you know? I mean, we could just put everybody in there, Jake, Paul, Elon, Musk, Mark, Zuckerberg, you know, don’t we just want to see a few guys just deserve Elon’s
Anthony Scaramucci 50:49
one of the smartest people in the world. But don’t you think Zuckerberg, who’s 15 years younger than him, beat the hell out
Speaker 1 50:56
of him. It wouldn’t be close. And plus, he’s got the whole jujitsu thing, right? Right? Exactly. I mean,
Anthony Scaramucci 51:02
he’s like the, he’s like the Vladimir Putin of like social media, okay, this
Speaker 1 51:07
is a kid who got used to get thrown in the locker in high school. You know I
Anthony Scaramucci 51:12
see him now. You know him. Him and Bezos have muscled up, man, these billionaires on steroids, right? Okay, McDonald’s launches an AI drive through bots. So
Steven Feldman 51:23
that doesn’t work. This is true. This is no longer tongue in cheek, even since we wrote this, you know already, robots are flipping burgers, and so now you’re going to have a robot take your order, hand, you the stuff, flirt with you, and if you do it three times with the same credit card. They’re going to say hello through facial recognition. Hi, Steven. I know you like the Big Mac so you know, and you’re looking pretty good today, but you need to shave.
Anthony Scaramucci 51:49
All right. Taylor Swift, this is a big this is a big one. I love this one. This is
Steven Feldman 51:53
going to happen. I’m telling you, you can’t go from making $2 billion in a year, you know, to nothing. So she is, she’s going to see what happened with with wicked, right? So now, wicked is the biggest movie. So she’s going to do a show on Broadway. She’s going to be in a few in herself. It’s going to have her song catalog, and then she’s going to star in the movie, when the movie gets made, of the show, and she is going to make another three. It’ll be bigger than Hamilton and wicked combined.
Anthony Scaramucci 52:23
All right? And so you think she’s gonna drop her tour, it’s over. Sexy husband, Mr. Kelsey, and she’s gonna go to Broadway,
Steven Feldman 52:35
I’m telling you, Anthony, tour is over first second. She’s not going to do with the show every time, just enough to get it some heat.
Speaker 1 52:46
And I’m going to do my best billion dollar franchise.
Anthony Scaramucci 52:50
I’m going to do my best to pitch the Google Spotify merger talks and the Taylor Swift, the Swiftie revolution on Broadway.
Speaker 1 53:00
You gotta admit. These are two good ideas. Look, I
Anthony Scaramucci 53:05
like them, Steven, my friend. Happy New Year to you. You’re gonna have to come on. You have to come on before our six month checkup, though. So we can talk more macro economics, and I want to get into it with you. Why you started a gold business, which is flourishing, by the way, congratulations on that gold reaching its all time high this year. But why you started it? What, what went into it? And I want to talk about the ups and downs of that as well, because I think it’s helpful to people as you and I both know long term investors have ups and downs, and it’s how they ride those downs and make them actually successful investors. So we’ll we’ll follow up in January to discuss that. I look forward to Anthony. Alright, guys, that’s it for us today. Happy New Year. We will be posting an evaluation of our 2024 predictions, what we got right, what we got wrong. We’ll be posting our 2025 predictions, enhanced and edited by chat GBT, and then you can hold us accountable for next year until our next episode. Guys, have a great holiday and on to 2025 may be a healthy, successful and prosperous one for all of you,
Andrew Brill 54:23
that’s a wrap on another discussion here on wealthion. Thank you for joining us. If you need help being financially resilient, please head over to wealthion.com and sign up for a free, no obligation portfolio review with one of our registered investment advisors, and remember to follow us on social media for the latest news and information to help you invest wisely. And if you could like and subscribe to the channel, we greatly appreciate it. Don’t forget to hit the notification bell so you can find out when we post new videos to the channel. Thanks again for watching and until next time, stay informed. Be empowered, and may your investments flourish. And if you like this content, please watch this video next.
