Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Better Offline. I am, of course your host
Speaker 2: ed Zeitron. Now we're back in the studio in beautiful
Speaker 2: New York City, New York State. You need to check
Speaker 2: out the show notes. Of course, we have these beautiful
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Speaker 2: so on and so forth. But today joining me at
Speaker 2: Swaggage Claim are two of Barons's finest reporters, the legendary
Speaker 2: Nick Dever who handles the gambling industry, and the Wall
Speaker 2: Street reporting legend Rebecca Ungarno. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: joining us now, Nick, Yes, we have had so many
Speaker 2: people emailing about prediction markets, and you cover the gambling
Speaker 2: industry as well. How are they different? How are they
Speaker 2: not the same thing, because they very much seem similar. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think from a consumer point of view, there's very
Speaker 3: difference between these products. You put money on the line,
Speaker 3: if your team wins, you get paid out. So from
Speaker 3: like a layman's point of view, I think there's very
Speaker 3: little difference. However, there is a difference on a gambling
Speaker 3: In gambling, you're betting against the house, so the betting
Speaker 3: firm sets the odds that you're betting against, right whereas
Speaker 3: in a prediction market, your counter party is another trader.
Speaker 3: So trader or prediction markets are just essentially brokers that
Speaker 3: are putting two traders together on one contract. And I
Speaker 3: can explain that in a little more detail.
Speaker 2: If you like, please.
Speaker 3: So prediction markets sell what are called event contracts. So
Speaker 3: event contracts are futures contracts. They're also called binary options,
Speaker 3: and they're built around yes or no questions. So each
Speaker 3: contract is worth one dollar, and it has two traders.
Speaker 3: There's a trader on the yes side and there's a
Speaker 3: trader on the no side. So like, will this podcast
Speaker 3: go well, we can make that a prediction market. I hope,
Speaker 3: I hope it goes well.
Speaker 2: Let's get this. I'm just set that up right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So if person A thinks there's a seventy five percent
Speaker 3: chance that it will go well, and person B thinks
Speaker 3: there's a twenty five percent chance that it will not
Speaker 3: go well, person A pays seventy five cents and person
Speaker 3: B pays twenty five cents. Right, So if it turns
Speaker 3: out yes, the yes trader gets the twenty five cents
Speaker 3: put up by the no trader and makes and now
Speaker 3: has a dollar contract. Now, let's say on a second contract,
Speaker 3: person C thinks there's a twenty five percent chance of yes,
Speaker 3: person D thinks there's a seventy five percent chance of no.
Speaker 3: So these two contracts where the odds are flipped average out,
Speaker 3: and there's a fifty to fifty chance that this podcast
Speaker 3: goes well, right, right, So the price of the contract
Speaker 3: is the predictions, and prediction markets are just brokers. The
Speaker 3: businesses themselves are just connecting to trades.
Speaker 2: So where's the crypto side as well? Because I remember
Speaker 2: when polymarkets started it was a weird crypto thing. But
Speaker 2: is it still that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say it's still a weird crypto thing.
Speaker 3: They most of their business is still their international side
Speaker 3: where they just take I think it's US d T,
Speaker 3: it's some stable coin of that. They all of the
Speaker 3: contracts are traded on that. That's poly Market. They're an
Speaker 3: offshore run company. Yeah, offshore meaning right, yeah, I love this,
Speaker 3: yeah yeah, meaning not regulated in the US, not a
Speaker 3: US US based company. Contrast that with Calshi. Calshi was
Speaker 3: the first registered designated contract market by the CFTC that's
Speaker 3: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. They regulate all of this stuff,
Speaker 3: and so Calshi was the first firm to actually do
Speaker 3: this in what we would call like the legal way,
Speaker 3: whereas poly Market does not have to abide by the
Speaker 3: US regulations because they are not a US firm and
Speaker 3: they're trying to become They've gotten permissioned to operate in
Speaker 3: the US, but they're like slowly rolling that out. A
Speaker 3: lot of people in the US don't have Polymarket US accounts. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you want to trade on poly Market in the US,
Speaker 3: you're mostly using a VPN.
Speaker 2: A new zone, but you unique crypto to do it. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 3: For the international site, this feel was.
Speaker 2: Like it be rife with manipulation though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, definitely I think that there because poly market operates,
Speaker 3: you know, on the blockchain, it's generally all anonymous, and
Speaker 3: it's very easy to get any kind of market you
Speaker 3: want created, there's a lot of concern around manipulation. I
Speaker 3: think A helpful example is there was some football game
Speaker 3: or some sporting event, and there was a market for
Speaker 3: will someone streak at this event, you know, run onto
Speaker 3: the field naked, and someone did end up streaking, and
Speaker 3: the person that ended up streaking was someone who was
Speaker 3: trading on the market, you know, betting yes that someone
Speaker 3: would end up streaking, and then they went and did it,
Speaker 3: and so they made you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars,
Speaker 3: paid a small fine relative to the sporting people. And
Speaker 3: you know, now we have so you get into this question.
Speaker 3: I think a hopeful metaphor is like our prediction markets,
Speaker 3: a thermostat or a thermometer. Are they like accurately pricing
Speaker 3: the potential outcome? You know, are they saying that something
Speaker 3: is going to happen? Or by their very existence do
Speaker 3: they make something more likely to happen?
Speaker 2: Right, Rebecca, How's how are the banker's dealing with this?
Speaker 2: How's Wall Street looking at this? Because this it's tough
Speaker 2: to really grosp whether this is gambling or a futures contract,
Speaker 2: like banging on the chance of stock will go up,
Speaker 2: will go down, And.
Speaker 1: There's such a big difference right now.
Speaker 4: It's really interesting because the banks themselves, and this is
Speaker 4: separate from like the market makers or like you know,
Speaker 4: higher frequency trading firms. The banks themselves are very highly
Speaker 4: regulated by like three main agencies, the OCC the Office
Speaker 4: of the Controller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, and
Speaker 4: the FD I see. So they're how they regulated, and
Speaker 4: then they have a bunch of like state agencies that
Speaker 4: regulate them too. So far, the biggest banks have stayed
Speaker 4: pretty quiet on how they're thinking about these and they're
Speaker 4: you know, kind of waiting for this regulatory you know clarity.
Speaker 4: It reminds me a little bit of you know, bitcoin
Speaker 4: and crypto going mainstream, you know, ten eleven years ago,
Speaker 4: we're waiting for regulators. We're waiting for regulators, and banks
Speaker 4: are They're really complex. They have a bunch of different
Speaker 4: businesses where they could come in and you know, for example,
Speaker 4: on the banking side, the investment bankers, you know, have
Speaker 4: an interest in well, do we want to help them
Speaker 4: raise money? Do we want to help them raise capital
Speaker 4: or take them public?
Speaker 2: Oh, they're touching any of the fundraising.
Speaker 4: They they could my understanding, you would know better than me.
Speaker 4: On Calsham and poly Market who their investors are. Is
Speaker 4: a VC is a PE?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I think it's mostly vcs right now. But
Speaker 3: they're both targeting There was recent reporting in the Wall
Speaker 3: Street Journal that they're both poly Market and Calshi are
Speaker 3: targeting twenty billion dollar valuations.
Speaker 1: Now it's just crazy, just totally totally business though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's kind of the thing is there's not
Speaker 3: like the there's not a lot of difference between trading
Speaker 3: on poly market and trading on CALSHI, Like you're trading
Speaker 3: the same kind of the same contract and in effect,
Speaker 3: like it's the same kind of product that's being traded.
Speaker 3: So you kind of get into a similar thing that
Speaker 3: the sports betting businesses had to deal with, where fan
Speaker 3: duel and draft kings are essentially you know, identical products
Speaker 3: selling you know, identical products and trying to differentiate themselves.
Speaker 3: And so we'll see in the coming months how how
Speaker 3: that ends up working, Rebecca, on the on the.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, we'll be usually well, I mean, and on
Speaker 4: the trading side, it's a whole other like on the
Speaker 4: other side of the house exactly. Yeah, And like at
Speaker 4: the bank, so like you know, these massive trading businesses.
Speaker 4: It's so some of the reporting that we have so
Speaker 4: far and we're you know, working on this now and
Speaker 4: again the banks are being very tight lept on what
Speaker 4: they're saying about what they're getting involved in or not
Speaker 4: getting involved in. This is something that so the investment banks,
Speaker 4: they're like the bankers, the trading desks and then the
Speaker 4: research and that's totally separate, and there's like this firewall, right,
Speaker 4: so research analysts are definitely like looking at these things
Speaker 4: just like any other input, any other source of information.
Speaker 4: Of course, it's yes, there are differences, but it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: well what is cal she saying about this when you know,
Speaker 4: maybe a commodity's analyst who's looking at exactly exactly and
Speaker 4: just another input to look at. So that's all well
Speaker 4: and good. You can look at that. On the trading side, though,
Speaker 4: it's more complicated because again the CFTC, like Nick brought up,
Speaker 4: the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission that you know regulates
Speaker 4: crypto and you know, is now regulating some of these
Speaker 4: prediction marked auctivities. They have to weigh in and they
Speaker 4: have you know, to some extent, but they're waiting for
Speaker 4: kind of a more complete look at Okay, golden sacks,
Speaker 4: you know, traders or enter any other like big bank traders,
Speaker 4: Like what are we able to trade now? That is
Speaker 4: still kind of out there, right. There are event contracts
Speaker 4: like political elections and you know, things like that quote
Speaker 4: event contracts, right, and then there are other markets where
Speaker 4: on securities where it's like uh, that culture polymarket.
Speaker 3: Market you can you can do like will and video
Speaker 3: stock end the day up or down right, And this
Speaker 3: is something that is happening every day.
Speaker 1: Right exactly.
Speaker 4: And that's a little more complicated because then you are
Speaker 4: dealing with securities rather than just like some amorphis like
Speaker 4: event contract.
Speaker 2: So it's like complicated, but legally speaking that I'm sure
Speaker 2: someone will argue, well, this isn't a security because I'm
Speaker 2: betting on an outcome rather than scary itself.
Speaker 1: Totally, totally, totally.
Speaker 2: Also set us up for something kind of dystopian though,
Speaker 2: if these if banks or traders start trading on these
Speaker 2: markets where you have some of the bank interest and
Speaker 2: whether I don't know, a guy streaks ye oh, whether
Speaker 2: a place gets blown up, like this is where I
Speaker 2: think the fringes of insanity begin.
Speaker 4: Definitely completely, and I just like I'll want you to
Speaker 4: weigh in or yeah, yeah, yeah, but like it just
Speaker 4: opens a whole new for banks that are so regulated. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it opens up a whole new source of like potential
Speaker 4: liability and like you've done more reporting on.
Speaker 3: That, yeah, yeah, we've we've from what we've heard there,
Speaker 3: the banks are not as interested in those kinds of
Speaker 3: markets just because there's no like, you know, they don't
Speaker 3: have an election every single day, and like these destinies
Speaker 3: to make money, right, so there needs to be like
Speaker 3: a sustainable, constant kind of liquidity and like enough events
Speaker 3: for them to actually you know, participate in the markets
Speaker 3: and the kind of like securities related markets that maybe
Speaker 3: these banks would be more interested in that they would
Speaker 3: have a better edge on whatever. Those are still mostly
Speaker 3: on poly market, and I really doubt that you know,
Speaker 3: a tightly regulated like US based bank is going to
Speaker 3: want to be trading like in stable coin, like on
Speaker 3: poly market against you know, potential insiders all of this stuff.
Speaker 3: That just doesn't sound like appealing, I would imagine.
Speaker 2: But what about asset like the areas of the world,
Speaker 2: or like private equity vms or private credit firms? Aren't
Speaker 2: they different? And might they be dumb? Like might they
Speaker 2: get them? Might they get themselves involved in I just
Speaker 2: like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When I see the data
Speaker 2: center stuff, when I hear in this private credit the
Speaker 2: private credit stuff with like tricula and first brands and
Speaker 2: positive gen and uh, I forget whatever was it was
Speaker 2: the there was the one there's now one in Europe
Speaker 2: where that's us. Yeah. Yeah, the random Onneswer is just
Speaker 2: like yeah, you know when we said we promised you
Speaker 2: this collateral, we also promised it to seventeen other people. Sorry. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I worry that they are going to start, like are
Speaker 2: they allowed to It's.
Speaker 4: A great question and my reporting and it's a great storage.
Speaker 4: It's a great question. I'm not entirely sure like where, if,
Speaker 4: and how they're coming into these things. In other words,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be surprised. I don't know, but I wouldn't
Speaker 4: be surprised if one of the big private credit players,
Speaker 4: which is again like some of these things are they
Speaker 4: are just very lightly regulated banks, like to be clear, right,
Speaker 4: like they are lending money like and private credit.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is a huge put.
Speaker 2: So cool, so good.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 4: It's a huge debate right now, like is private credit
Speaker 4: means a lot of different things whatever, But at the
Speaker 4: end of the day, it is lending outside of the
Speaker 4: banking system, Okay, like that that is safe to say.
Speaker 4: So I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 4: there's you know, like a calshie like a polymarket, if
Speaker 4: there is you know, kind of lending from these firms.
Speaker 4: I don't know, but they are becoming the private credit
Speaker 4: you know, players are becoming so much more active in
Speaker 4: the private sector, and and just all these private, privately
Speaker 4: held companies where there's a whole matrix of like areas
Speaker 4: where they could become involved. I don't know that, and
Speaker 4: I would be curious, but it's probably an input that
Speaker 4: they're looking at too, like just a research you know, input, right,
Speaker 4: Like you know, we like we look at oh, what
Speaker 4: is it saying about that we take about the grain
Speaker 4: of salt, But like, you know, it's still something we're
Speaker 4: going to look at. But it's an interesting question.
Speaker 3: They are the predictions, yeah, sorry, they are. They are
Speaker 3: quite accurate. The you know, there's you know, we can
Speaker 3: there can be arguments made about whether or not they
Speaker 3: are like good for society, whether it's like an okay
Speaker 3: thing that we can bet on, you know, every single
Speaker 3: kind of I think the the CAUSHI CEO trect Mansur
Speaker 3: his quote is that you know, we want to make
Speaker 3: a monetizable asset out of every difference in opinion Jesus.
Speaker 2: Christ, which is like that's like, yeah, the paraphrase Will
Speaker 2: Manicer of Chapo when he was seeing a video of
Speaker 2: a new sport with two guys run into each other.
Speaker 2: You see, this is the kind of thing you do
Speaker 2: in like.
Speaker 1: Robo call, that's what it's giving.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, we could very like near future dystopian. Well,
Speaker 2: someone who spends a lot of time lives in Vegas.
Speaker 2: I just want to say, this is an insult to
Speaker 2: my beautiful gambling. Yeah, beautiful honest dice roll even all
Speaker 2: crapsless craps and not this crappy. Yeah, it's it's very strange,
Speaker 2: and I think we've discussed.
Speaker 4: That's a new state motto. By the way, I really
Speaker 4: like that our craps are not this crappy.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna rush into that T shirt.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: No, it's it is really scary though. Someone. I feel
Speaker 2: like someone's going to die from this, Like it's gonna
Speaker 2: it's gonna be this person dies by December thirty first,
Speaker 2: and they're going to get hunted like running men.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that's okay, So we're almost there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So recently, actually there was a bit of controversy over
Speaker 3: like I guess what we would call death markets on Calshi.
Speaker 3: So when the US attacked Iran. There were lots of
Speaker 3: markets on both poly Market and Calshi related to military
Speaker 3: action in Iran, whether it would happen or not, by
Speaker 3: when it would happen. Usually these are formatted in like,
Speaker 3: you know, military strikes in Iran by xedate. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: one of the contracts that both Calshi and Polymarket had
Speaker 3: wash Camanie out by x date. Right, so this is
Speaker 3: the supreme leader of Iran. Will he be out as
Speaker 3: preme leader by this date? So the like layman's interpretation
Speaker 3: of that would mean if he dies, he's out right.
Speaker 3: You know, that's probably how you would So was he
Speaker 3: in office anymore, he's dead, he's probably out right. So
Speaker 3: when on that Saturday Trump announced that he had been
Speaker 3: killed on poly Market, poly Market resolved their contract. Yes
Speaker 3: he is out right, right, But Calshi did not do this.
Speaker 3: They froze, well, they like pause the market for like
Speaker 3: eight hours to like figure out how to handle this.
Speaker 2: What is the consequence of posing the market just to him? Claire, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's just that there's no more trading happening, right, does
Speaker 2: the price move at all? So it's just frozen. It's
Speaker 2: just frozen.
Speaker 3: And what they did is they reset when they made
Speaker 3: their decision, they refunded everyone their stakes the value of
Speaker 3: their contracts at last traded price before death. So if
Speaker 3: there was like a seventy four percent chance that he
Speaker 3: would be out at twelve fifty nine and he died
Speaker 3: at one, then they would pay the Yes, contract would
Speaker 3: pay out seventy four cents, right, right, So they did
Speaker 3: that in order to isolate the death component, right because Calshi,
Speaker 3: in what they have told me, they don't want to
Speaker 3: allow people to profit on death. That's just not something
Speaker 3: they're interested in doing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: However, there was very large controversy around this because all
Speaker 3: of the Calshi traders who hopped on the Calshi and
Speaker 3: were like, oh cool, yeah, he's probably going to be out,
Speaker 3: I'll bet on this, they were Suddenly they did not
Speaker 3: get the money that they expected to. And Cawshi had
Speaker 3: like in its rules, in its rule book that was
Speaker 3: like laid out, there was like some fine print. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we get into this like weird question of like why
Speaker 3: didn't they pay because he was out?
Speaker 2: Like what was the death?
Speaker 3: They don't want people? Death was a carve out? There
Speaker 3: was a death carve out, so out by any other
Speaker 3: means but death. Now, the Commanie was like in his
Speaker 3: mid eighties, so it's kind of hard to imagine that
Speaker 3: he was going to resign or like, you know, they
Speaker 3: don't hold snap elections, so I don't really know. So
Speaker 3: it was just resignation, I guess that, you know, or
Speaker 3: like kidnapping like we saw in Venezuela. Maybe that was
Speaker 3: its own own yeah episode, Yeah, that was its own thing,
Speaker 3: you know, was was what happened in Venezuela. Does that
Speaker 3: count as like a war or just like an encourage?
Speaker 3: So we get into all these really weird questions when
Speaker 3: the quote unquote oracle of these prediction markets is only
Speaker 3: resolving based on very specific outcomes, and so at a
Speaker 3: certain point, the entire point of these prediction markets is
Speaker 3: that they provide ways to hedge outcomes that you can't
Speaker 3: find in other markets. Yes, there's no way to like
Speaker 3: hedge against that happening in the stock market, and like
Speaker 3: a clean way, right, but if like, like, okay, so
Speaker 3: let's say that I'm a business owner and I want
Speaker 3: to hedge against the pos stability that Trump does not
Speaker 3: finish this term from my point of view as a
Speaker 3: business owner, if he dies or resigns or is impeached.
Speaker 3: None of all of those three things fulfill the same
Speaker 3: thing for me, and I need a hedge against all
Speaker 3: of those outcomes. But if we don't allow these markets
Speaker 3: to resolve on death, and you know, we can argue
Speaker 3: whether or not we could we should, they by definition
Speaker 3: become less valuable hedging tools. And so you kind of
Speaker 3: get into this point spot where you're like, what are
Speaker 3: these actually for? Like who is the person that's hedging
Speaker 3: against Camanie resigning?
Speaker 2: Like you know what I mean? It feels like I
Speaker 2: don't know. I have a weird view of this and
Speaker 2: that I think prediction markets are scary and vile and
Speaker 2: they enable something, but I also think they're a condition
Speaker 2: created by the stock market brain take. But I think
Speaker 2: that the stock market has stopped being logical in any way,
Speaker 2: shape or form, and regular people, despite I would say,
Speaker 2: what was like three or four years ago and Robinhood
Speaker 2: went really nuts on options, I think that regular people
Speaker 2: do not have access to a logical or rational way
Speaker 2: of investing. Like you can't just invest in a company
Speaker 2: for being good. You can't invest in a clean outcome
Speaker 2: because you're going to dine up against hedge funds and
Speaker 2: whoever fast trading and such that you couldn't possibly keep up.
Speaker 2: They have information you don't have. There's no way you
Speaker 2: could possibly keep up. I'm not saying prediction markets are good.
Speaker 2: I think they're terrifying. They are RoboCop shit. But it
Speaker 2: feels like something that could only occur in a world
Speaker 2: where there is not enough other ways to accumulate wealth.
Speaker 1: I could not agree more.
Speaker 4: And I think that one thing, like to this point,
Speaker 4: It was a few weeks ago, and I might have
Speaker 4: even said it to you, but there was an AD
Speaker 4: and I don't want to say for a certain it
Speaker 4: was either Caulci or polymarket, but it came up on
Speaker 4: TikTok or Instagram, and it was an AD or like
Speaker 4: a user user generated content type thing where a woman
Speaker 4: was holding a coffee and the did we talk about this?
Speaker 4: And the tagline again it was for one of them.
Speaker 4: I don't want to misspeak, but it said, you know,
Speaker 4: like my bet will pay for my coffee, you know,
Speaker 4: like my you know, da da da. And I was like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, that is so bleak because it really
Speaker 4: speaks to this broad like and again financialization of everything,
Speaker 4: not I you know, that's a big conversation right now.
Speaker 4: It's talking about a world in which it is hard
Speaker 4: to accumulate wealth. I mean, just to state the most
Speaker 4: obvious thing, you know, and like, you know, just broad inequality.
Speaker 4: My bet will help me pay for my like again,
Speaker 4: and I get it, Like I get that on I
Speaker 4: get why that would be an advertisement, and like I understand,
Speaker 4: but that is so you know, it's like a young woman,
Speaker 4: a young person, and it's like, oh my god, that
Speaker 4: is what that is a symptom of, you know, sort
Speaker 4: of like the world we're living in. And I'm not
Speaker 4: saying that's good or bad. I mean it probably it's bleak.
Speaker 4: It's like very bleak.
Speaker 2: It's the growth. It's the same thing with sports scambling.
Speaker 2: And sports gambling seems for now like a lot more
Speaker 2: exploitative because they have the account managers who come and
Speaker 2: they're like, hey, you've lost three grand, why don't we
Speaker 2: give you two grand? Work of credit? Yeah, and all
Speaker 2: of these these ways that you could leverage that it
Speaker 2: is exploiting the fact that because if you think about
Speaker 2: other stock market is these days, what the fuck are
Speaker 2: you meant to do if you if you actually if
Speaker 2: you invest in a company based on its fundamentals, you're
Speaker 2: going to lose money probably. Yeah, It's like Oracle is
Speaker 2: twelve percent up right now. I think we're just going
Speaker 2: out in a week, so who knows where it will be.
Speaker 2: Even though they had like negative twenty four billion dollars
Speaker 2: cash flow, they're obviously misleading people when it comes to
Speaker 2: how like their capex because they're going to spend only
Speaker 2: fifty billion this year and they've already spent over forty
Speaker 2: that work. But if you, if you, because the market
Speaker 2: and their hedge funds have decided there's something else they'd
Speaker 2: like to do, you cannot join that. So what your
Speaker 2: other options you've got? I don't know, Betting on the
Speaker 2: slap fights, yeah, Micheal slap competition, you've got sports gambling,
Speaker 2: and you've got this big, impenetrable thing at the stock market.
Speaker 2: But then you've got these seemingly honest, easy bets of Oh,
Speaker 2: I can just bet on an outcome that's fair. Yeah,
Speaker 2: unless the outcome is full of asterisks?
Speaker 3: Yes, correct? Yeah, yeah, I think there was some there
Speaker 3: was some research recently. I don't know how I should.
Speaker 3: I saw this on Twitter disclaimer that like only thirty
Speaker 3: two and a half percent of prediction market customers are profitable, right,
Speaker 3: so two thirds of players are losers.
Speaker 2: I mean that's gamblingbling you.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think, yeah, we when we get into this,
Speaker 3: I think gen Z especially, there's a certain amount of
Speaker 3: financial nihilism just general, like dread visa via the future
Speaker 3: and how am I ever going to have a house
Speaker 3: and et cetera, et cetera, and oh here's poly market.
Speaker 3: They let me bet on you know, whether Trump will
Speaker 3: say China in his speech.
Speaker 2: And how many times he'll say it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this could be a fun thing.
Speaker 2: That I could make money on to it, like you
Speaker 2: could make you could pay for your coffee with it. Yes,
Speaker 2: and yes, I will admit. My favorite Cauchy story is
Speaker 2: the one that I'm sure both of you read, where
Speaker 2: it's they tried to hire a fifteen year old streamer
Speaker 2: and I quote your brother legal team confirmed that we
Speaker 2: can't work with minors. R N kind of sad DBH, the.
Speaker 1: R N and the TVHR.
Speaker 5: Brother.
Speaker 1: It really just brings it all together.
Speaker 2: It really brings it together. But also you need to
Speaker 2: watch Running Man because all of this just reminds me
Speaker 2: of that moment, just just like the I get your
Speaker 2: slop in a bowl on whether Trump will will say
Speaker 2: a difference, it's cool nuclear the N word, like how
Speaker 2: many times will he do that? And he's done that
Speaker 2: many times, by the way, did not joke indeed, which
Speaker 2: is yet another dystopian thing. Yes, it just feel like
Speaker 2: the actual solution here would be more regulation of banks
Speaker 2: and also getting rid of all of this. I think
Speaker 2: sports gamblings. I know you probably can't come out on
Speaker 2: this directly, but I think sports gambling is like one
Speaker 2: of the most noxious things because living in Vegas, gambling
Speaker 2: is everywhere, but it's also very very regulated. If you listen,
Speaker 2: if you look anything close to twenty one, they will
Speaker 2: come and card you, and they will chase you a
Speaker 2: wrend like they know I'm coming up on forty and
Speaker 2: they still like d me sometimes I'm beautiful en not but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you look you don't look a day over, you
Speaker 3: look youth twenty.
Speaker 2: But nevertheless it's you. It's because they know that gambling
Speaker 2: is scary and that it's addictive, and that a win
Speaker 2: can make you think every other one will happen. Except
Speaker 2: now it's just you can do it anywhere. You can
Speaker 2: just do it. Everything in the phone you've got every
Speaker 2: device you can gamble. Ah. There are Instagram accounts, yes,
Speaker 2: that just there's there's this one with a guy who
Speaker 2: just dresses up like an old man and has beer
Speaker 2: full of bush fridge full of bush light and it's
Speaker 2: just him being like and he's on a gambling site that.
Speaker 4: Is extremely extremely bleak. And I think it's yeah, and
Speaker 4: I think that like it is prompting like in the
Speaker 4: more traditional like so in banking and kind of like
Speaker 4: I think it is prompting these bigger questions and kind
Speaker 4: of existential questions about like, yeah, what is the difference,
Speaker 4: you know, in what we're doing and kind of like
Speaker 4: what is like what are we doing here? I mean,
Speaker 4: you know again, it's like it is going back to
Speaker 4: the regulation that is playing out right now. And that
Speaker 4: is why it's such an interesting conversation where you do
Speaker 4: have the Trump administration rolling back so many aspects of
Speaker 4: banking regulation separate from prediction.
Speaker 1: You know, forget prediction markets, all kind of things different.
Speaker 4: So one example is, you know, for years banks have
Speaker 4: tried to get regulators to go a little bit uh
Speaker 4: make the stress testing process you know again super important
Speaker 4: post where regulators every year will kind of simulate different
Speaker 4: like disaster scenarios again, like totally hypothetical employment shoots up,
Speaker 4: stock market crashes, you know, these hypothetical scenarios bank and
Speaker 4: they test the banks currently like with the amount of
Speaker 4: capital that a Wells Fargo or a JP Morgan has,
Speaker 4: can you weather this?
Speaker 1: Can you withstand?
Speaker 4: They always do very they always do very well with
Speaker 4: caveats obviously, but you know they come and say, okay,
Speaker 4: you know that could be a weakness.
Speaker 1: That could be a weakness.
Speaker 4: Private credit has also introduced an interesting, you know kind
Speaker 4: of wrinkle here because it is by definition there is
Speaker 4: you know, kind of this hidden leverage, and regulators have
Speaker 4: talked about that don't but they're not thanks correct and
Speaker 4: so that's a whole other, fascinating, you know kind of
Speaker 4: ecosystem where it's like, okay, you are a bank, I'm
Speaker 4: going to stress tests you, you are lending you bank
Speaker 4: are ed bank okay incorporated? You are going to lend
Speaker 4: to private credit lender Okay. But when you lend to there,
Speaker 4: there's not as much tracking what that what your borrower
Speaker 4: is lending to. So you can see it is hard
Speaker 4: to track where that money is going.
Speaker 2: And I read the other day. I think it was
Speaker 2: middle of last year the Boston Fed, I think it
Speaker 2: was said that fourteen percent of large banks loans went
Speaker 2: to private credit and private equity.
Speaker 4: It's a massive is a massive chunk and of loan
Speaker 4: growth overall. And I think that like when you go
Speaker 4: to so when you take prediction markets and you kind
Speaker 4: of take like the current regulatory backdrop, it's like and
Speaker 4: adds an interesting wrinkle because it's like, okay, by and large,
Speaker 4: a lot of the financial regulators are like, yes, we
Speaker 4: want to be Like. The bottom line is they are
Speaker 4: rolling back like traditional guardrails, you know, like around the banks,
Speaker 4: but now prediction markets like okay, and that is currently
Speaker 4: being like you know, kind of that is being sorted
Speaker 4: out right now, so we'll see. And like the CFTC,
Speaker 4: I want to say, is like the only regulator again,
Speaker 4: it's like the most relevant one here. It's like come
Speaker 4: out with like some guidance, but it remains to be seen,
Speaker 4: so you know, we'll see kind of how the administration
Speaker 4: handles that.
Speaker 2: I just I feel like right now now personal opinion
Speaker 2: not held by I guess I think that there is
Speaker 2: a massive regulatory problem with laying because right now my
Speaker 2: favorite example is open Ai. So open Ai signed a
Speaker 2: deal with AMD, except they didn't. It was just an
Speaker 2: agreement without any formal contract. AMD is not increased guidance
Speaker 2: oracle three hundred billion dollar deal with our open Ai
Speaker 2: can't afford to serve it, don't have the has to
Speaker 2: raise debt. Data centers aren't built. S k Heinez and
Speaker 2: open Ai. Samsung and open Ai signed a big deal
Speaker 2: to take forty percent of RAM, except they didn't. It
Speaker 2: was a letter of intent. All of these stocks have
Speaker 2: popped off of these deals. H nothing happened. It's very
Speaker 2: obvious there was never anything official. There should be regulated
Speaker 2: because people in the audience might hear this and say,
Speaker 2: that's not stock manipulation, But what is if that isn't?
Speaker 2: If that isn't and people could say, oh, it's marketing.
Speaker 2: Oh we used weezer words. But it's like it feels
Speaker 2: like things like this will lead to outcomes that lose
Speaker 2: a lot of money. There's a lot of people a
Speaker 2: lot of money, and unless we do something soon, it's
Speaker 2: own to get only gonna get worse. Because every time
Speaker 2: someone like this is not stopped, someone else doesn't. They
Speaker 2: just like fuck it. Why would we bother. That will
Speaker 2: lead into the prediction markets as well, because you could
Speaker 2: just start saying whatever. But that's actually that is the
Speaker 2: biggest thing with prediction. You can just say stuff.
Speaker 3: Now there's like over the the extent to which the
Speaker 3: stock market is reliant on like increasingly complicated bits of semantics. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's like we've just never we're ad like a the
Speaker 3: semantic indexes, the asters.
Speaker 2: Like letter of intent, agreement consideration too. There are deals,
Speaker 2: their deals, their agreements, but we've not changed guidance. We've
Speaker 2: not put any money. Now one's actually doing anything. But
Speaker 2: you know, it's just.
Speaker 1: Lest we forget a memorandum of understanding.
Speaker 2: Memory MOUs are the best. I love a good MoU
Speaker 2: They mean nothing, but they mean absolutely everyone. I love ANU.
Speaker 2: It's frustrating because I am not a particularly sophisticated trader.
Speaker 2: I may have only recently started putting money in the
Speaker 2: S and P five hundred after a period of not
Speaker 2: but it's and that's in an index, by the way.
Speaker 1: It's very responsible, very responsible.
Speaker 2: But the point loves the eighty twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love diversification.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. My worry is is that it's very
Speaker 2: obvious how you manipulate these markets, and without regulations to
Speaker 2: stop people, it's only going to get more ridiculous. You're
Speaker 2: just going to get CEOs that say things to create
Speaker 2: a market, possibly creating them themselves. And if they're a
Speaker 2: private company, that's not illegal, I believe. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So when we talk about like, mentioned markets are a
Speaker 3: good example of where I think a lot of the
Speaker 3: like more manipulation concerns are. So a mention market is like, Okay,
Speaker 3: during this podcast, will ed say fuck with We're like
Speaker 3: we're betting on that, like that, the odds are the
Speaker 3: odds are high. You just did it, Ben, Yeah, So
Speaker 3: like will Caroline Levitt at the next White House press
Speaker 3: conference say the word China?
Speaker 2: People?
Speaker 3: These are mentioned markets, So we're literally just betting on
Speaker 3: the words that will come out of someone's mouth.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So, a very high profile example of this is coinbase
Speaker 3: CEO Brian Armstrong. You know, at the end of an
Speaker 3: earnings call, there was a polymarket mentioned market for what
Speaker 3: will Brian Armstrong say on the earnings call? And and
Speaker 3: you know literally like right before the like moderator was
Speaker 3: like thanks for joining everyone, like right before he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: someone just handed me the polymarket for what I'm gonna say,
Speaker 3: So I'll just get through all these you know, Bitcoin
Speaker 3: web three. It just like went down the list and
Speaker 3: like paid all of them off. So he has come
Speaker 3: out and said that he was not trading on that
Speaker 3: market or involved in any way. But like we are
Speaker 3: opening ourselves up to like new ways that we can
Speaker 3: like manipulate markets. Yeah, insider trade and like when we
Speaker 3: create a market for everything and everything can become a
Speaker 3: bet more people than ever can become insider traders because
Speaker 3: there's just so much more things to insider trade on.
Speaker 2: Well, is a question, how do you how much is
Speaker 2: necessary to create a market, Like what how much money
Speaker 2: does it require? This is a good question.
Speaker 3: So polymarket pr has told me that the primary criteria
Speaker 3: for if a market can be created, because they field
Speaker 3: suggestions from their users. The primary criteria is if there's
Speaker 3: evidence of demand for the yes side.
Speaker 2: And the no side. That's it. What is evidence in
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 3: You know, if there's activity on Twitter about it, if
Speaker 3: people in the discord are like, please, I want to
Speaker 3: bet on this, it seems pretty ad hoc. I don't
Speaker 3: have much more detail than that, because they give me
Speaker 3: more detail.
Speaker 2: Imagine they don't need to yeah, yeah, it's not money.
Speaker 3: It's I mean, it's just like evidence of trading demand, right,
Speaker 3: and then they'll open it and then people can start
Speaker 3: right on it. You don't have to they have to
Speaker 3: be They don't have to be like, all right, you
Speaker 3: all have five hundred dollars ready to go on this,
Speaker 3: like there's nothing like you like, there's just as long
Speaker 3: as they can see that people will want to trade
Speaker 3: on it, they will make.
Speaker 4: It makes sense, yes, And that kind of goes to
Speaker 4: the question of just like thinly like with banks, like
Speaker 4: thin thinly regulated versus not thinly traded excuse me, versus
Speaker 4: not right. It goes to the question of like when
Speaker 4: banks look at something, they're like, we can't make a
Speaker 4: market out of like, you know, trading on this one.
Speaker 3: Two hundred thousand dollars in volume, Like there's just no
Speaker 3: way that like exactly huge bank is ever going to
Speaker 3: like yeah, you just open yourself up to so much.
Speaker 2: So it goes back to that, Yeah, I mean also,
Speaker 2: I guess banks I didn't even think if that ye
Speaker 2: banks went want will touch because there's not enough money
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 1: I think it's when I think of like a thinly
Speaker 1: traded like stock. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: It just goes back to liquidity and like the volatility,
Speaker 4: and like if banks can find a way to make
Speaker 4: money on something.
Speaker 1: Legally, they will, Yeah, yeah, they will.
Speaker 4: And so it's i you know, you could see a
Speaker 4: world in which and I'm not saying like there is
Speaker 4: no regulatory framework that would allow this.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not saying that because in the future, in
Speaker 1: the future you could see it, like who.
Speaker 4: Knows what that could look like. And so the banks
Speaker 4: are just like, Okay, we're going to wait for the
Speaker 4: regulators to say something. But like it comes to a
Speaker 4: question of also like internal enforcement, like banks all have
Speaker 4: like very very clear, you know, kind of rules around
Speaker 4: insider trading. Someone has non public information, if you trade
Speaker 4: on that, you will be fired. Like you know, that's
Speaker 4: very like well worn, you know kind of like but
Speaker 4: now with prediction markets, how do you enforce that? It
Speaker 4: is hard And so banks are like actively and again
Speaker 4: I'm just like talking about banks specifically. You could also
Speaker 4: talk about like chech companies, healthcare companies, whatever. But banks
Speaker 4: where like we have talked about this a lot, like
Speaker 4: being this nexus of the markets, and they do have
Speaker 4: a lot of information that you know, Okay, that's different
Speaker 4: from someone in another sector, like how does a compliance
Speaker 4: team enforce that? That is an open question right now
Speaker 4: that banks are like actively figuring out, and it's a
Speaker 4: really interesting question of compliance and enforcement.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Internally, it's just it feels like the wauls of breaking
Speaker 2: down around everything. Because before we do the prep call
Speaker 2: for this, we talk about analysts, for example, and I
Speaker 2: named someone. I'm not going to name people on this
Speaker 2: just for professional reasons, but people know who are.
Speaker 1: We're very professional, all very professor.
Speaker 2: I say, fuck, but there are these I need someone
Speaker 2: and you were like, that's not an analyst. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: it's becoming obviously because they're on CNBC, they're on Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: It's like, you've got these people pretending to be analysts.
Speaker 2: You've got these entities like private credit pretending to be thanks,
Speaker 2: You've got prediction markets pretending to be stocked. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: just feels like the walls are being torn down, and
Speaker 2: I know that this is gonna People aren't gonna like this.
Speaker 2: I don't think most people should have access to the
Speaker 2: stock market or gambling. I think that they are dangerous
Speaker 2: and I think or at least they should be regulated
Speaker 2: in such a way that it's less dangerous, not just
Speaker 2: open season. And then the third guy on Twitter is like,
Speaker 2: I'm an analyst, mate, you are a poster.
Speaker 1: Well that's the interesting question.
Speaker 4: And I mean, like I couldn't help but think in
Speaker 4: that moment of journalism, right, I mean, like obviously, okay,
Speaker 4: they're journalists and writers, and then they're like people who
Speaker 4: do not have the same are not held to the
Speaker 4: same standards, and that's a whole other conversation.
Speaker 1: But like with analysts, yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: I mean, like it's there are very clear kind of
Speaker 4: like you are regulated by FINRA, which is the self
Speaker 4: regulated you know, they're a regulator and they regulator. They
Speaker 4: regulate the brokerage industry, and like any quote cell side analyst,
Speaker 4: so like you know, an analyst who is again held
Speaker 4: to these standards like industry standards of disclosures and like
Speaker 4: conflict of interests and things like that, like that is
Speaker 4: quote an analyst. Yeah, you can be an of course,
Speaker 4: there are like other ways, but like that, you can
Speaker 4: be an analyst in and that is legitimate in like
Speaker 4: another sector or like another like on the by side. Okay, fine,
Speaker 4: that's all legitimate, but there are certain standards that you're
Speaker 4: held to if you're like, for example, you know, like
Speaker 4: a FINRA analyst, and like that's not analyst capital a analyst,
Speaker 4: and that's not always clear to like a viewer of CMOS.
Speaker 2: This is actually a question what is a sell side analyst?
Speaker 2: Because I have listeners who have lost this before, and
Speaker 2: I realized I haven't really defined it myself very well.
Speaker 4: You would not for sure you're at a brokerage, something
Speaker 4: like brokerage inside of a bank, or you're just like
Speaker 4: a standalone kind of brokerage a Morgan Stanley. Great great example.
Speaker 4: They have their investment bank and that's like okay, they
Speaker 4: have their bankers over here. And on the other side
Speaker 4: and it's not this simple, but like on the other side,
Speaker 4: you have the cell side, and that is these analysts
Speaker 4: who are writing research reports.
Speaker 1: They are held to FINRA rule two two for one.
Speaker 1: I think SECTIONNE six two two for one. Go google it.
Speaker 4: That covers everything that like a cell side analyst must
Speaker 4: be held to. They are on the cell side versus
Speaker 4: the buy side. So they are selling you know, like
Speaker 4: research and you know, versus like they're not managing a
Speaker 4: fund right like they are giving information, they're issuing a
Speaker 4: buy hold sell. They are giving price targets, they are
Speaker 4: looking at financial models. They are in a different spot
Speaker 4: than against someone on the buy side. That is like
Speaker 4: reading the cell side selling selling research, sell selling knowledge
Speaker 4: and wisdom. I don't know how the SEC defines that,
Speaker 4: I'll be very clear, And it's kind of like, I mean,
Speaker 4: it's kind.
Speaker 2: Of outdated this way.
Speaker 4: You know, it's almost like an antiquated thing sellside versus
Speaker 4: by high just kind of how like a wirehouse Like
Speaker 4: that's a very antiquated way of saying, like a big
Speaker 4: wealth manager.
Speaker 2: Big thing. That's scattering me at the moment. And I'm
Speaker 2: not naming anyone specific for professional reasons, but why is
Speaker 2: it that these analysts always set these massive targets and
Speaker 2: don't seem to be affected by reality. Because there is
Speaker 2: a nonspecific prominent data center analyst who quite literally went
Speaker 2: out on television yesterday and said the oracle was a goodbye,
Speaker 2: and it was that it's actually better when you look
Speaker 2: at the report. This is factually incorrect. It's not even
Speaker 2: an opinion thing. The cell side analysts always seem very
Speaker 2: positive even when reality isn't reflecting that. Shouldn't they know better?
Speaker 2: Is there a reason they would be more positive in
Speaker 2: general not talking about this person. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean it's like this is like one of my
Speaker 4: favorite issues. It's just it's really fascinating because it kind
Speaker 4: of speaks to like this proliferation of like anyone can
Speaker 4: put out research and like you can kind of like
Speaker 4: a lowercase a analyst versus capital a analyst. I think
Speaker 4: that the thing to always go back to is, you know,
Speaker 4: two thousand and one. I think two thousand and two
Speaker 4: new regulations were put in you know, spearheaded by Elliott Spitzer,
Speaker 4: who was the New York AG at the time, after
Speaker 4: you know, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley put you know, certain
Speaker 4: analysts had put out research that were like was super
Speaker 4: bullish and was total mismatch to how they were privately
Speaker 4: describing Amazon. You know, Henry Blodgett famously, you know, put
Speaker 4: out a report band from the industry that's all well,
Speaker 4: you know, chronicled. All new regulations were put in place
Speaker 4: around from security regulators around like okay, you are an analyst, Okay,
Speaker 4: you have to include all sorts of new disclosures, which
Speaker 4: is great, I mean, you know, and and again very
Speaker 4: high a member of my household. I think the language
Speaker 4: is something like me or a member of my household
Speaker 4: owns a security and X y z or something like that.
Speaker 4: And also, you know kind of these charts you'll see
Speaker 4: at the bottom of a report where it shows the
Speaker 4: stock price, like an Apple, for example, the stock price
Speaker 4: relative to like where their price target is to hold
Speaker 4: them accountable for like you know kind of what that's
Speaker 4: looking like and stop, uh.
Speaker 2: That would require someone to hold them accountable.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: And analysts are like, by and large, I mean, there's
Speaker 4: plenty of data on this, but like they are a
Speaker 4: very like bullish group. I mean the data if you
Speaker 4: just look at buy hold sell, like, they continue to
Speaker 4: be that and and the whole industry has really evolved
Speaker 4: where you know, this is a whole other conversation. We
Speaker 4: talked about this a little bit, but like people should
Speaker 4: be aware that like corporate access is you know, just
Speaker 4: a much bigger part of the analyst.
Speaker 1: Job and and all that.
Speaker 2: When you say access, what do you mean, Yeah, Like.
Speaker 4: You're an analyst at a again, a Morgan Stanley or
Speaker 4: a UBS. And just to call out two random ones
Speaker 4: you your clients, like a hedge fund investor, you know,
Speaker 4: like a big institutional investor access to the management team
Speaker 4: of the company that I cover as an analyst. So
Speaker 4: I'm covering I'm covering the you know, I'm a healthcare
Speaker 4: analyst and I'm covering Johnson and Johnson, and like I
Speaker 4: can connect, you know, like the investor who's reading my
Speaker 4: research with the CFO of Johnson and Johnson. I'm just
Speaker 4: calling out random companies, but it's that connection. It's that
Speaker 4: like link, and it's well, it's access.
Speaker 2: It's just access feels that feels like a bad thing,
Speaker 2: like that doesn't feel like it benefits.
Speaker 4: It is definitely a you know, it's one of these
Speaker 4: things that that analysts have to manage and like these
Speaker 4: one of these and I don't want to call it
Speaker 4: a conflict, because it's not inherently a conflict, but it
Speaker 4: is another kind of piece of the job that frankly,
Speaker 4: and there are many fantastic analysts out there who do
Speaker 4: manage that well and put out you know, have great relationships,
Speaker 4: but put out critical research, you know, like substantive research,
Speaker 4: and you just have to manage that. And there are
Speaker 4: many fantastic analysts who do. But I even said, it's
Speaker 4: not unlike sometimes being a beat reporter, where you have
Speaker 4: to maintain just like good working relationships with the people
Speaker 4: you cover, even if you're going to say an accurate
Speaker 4: but like critical fair thing, and then you just have
Speaker 4: to like move on again. Very different from the role
Speaker 4: of an analyst, you know, but it.
Speaker 1: Is there are similarities. I don't know if it's different,
Speaker 1: there are similarities.
Speaker 3: I just wait, I just want to make sure I
Speaker 3: please please, right, So, a sell side analyst writes reports
Speaker 3: about companies in a certain sector and puts those reports
Speaker 3: out publicly and disseminates them to other banks, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And then hedge funds can go to the analyst and say,
Speaker 3: I want your specific research that you've done on these companies,
Speaker 3: and also can you introduce me to their management team.
Speaker 1: That's part of the offering exactly, I see exactly.
Speaker 3: And therefore, to be able to connect clients to management
Speaker 3: and make money for your firm, you have to maybe
Speaker 3: you have to be a little more positive in your
Speaker 3: report on that firm than you normally would in order
Speaker 3: to be able to connect your clients with them.
Speaker 2: That's that's it.
Speaker 4: That would be the cynical take, absolutely, but the very
Speaker 4: fair criticism I would say yes, absolutely, I don't cynical
Speaker 4: take but but but it is it's just like a
Speaker 4: feature that and again they're like excellent, excellent, excellent analysts
Speaker 4: who just like manage.
Speaker 2: That's why we're being on specifically, but and.
Speaker 1: Who just manage that. And it's just like being again
Speaker 1: and again.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, there are differences, but it is not unlike
Speaker 4: you write a tough story on a company. You are
Speaker 4: fair and then you got to move on and then
Speaker 4: you got to like move on, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: But the thing is, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: I think access journalism is bullshing and I think we're
Speaker 2: in the beginning of history. As I wrote yeah last week,
Speaker 2: it is it's no longer useful to do access. Access
Speaker 2: journalism doesn't work. It doesn't get you anything. If a
Speaker 2: PR firm or a PR person at a company doesn't
Speaker 2: answer your question because they're mad at you, that's their
Speaker 2: fucking problem. This is not the opinion of my guests,
Speaker 2: is just me. I just when you told me this
Speaker 2: for the first time in the pre courl I was
Speaker 2: kind of I sat and thought about it a lot
Speaker 2: because it's like, you don't have to agree with me here.
Speaker 2: It feels antithetical to good analysis to be like, well,
Speaker 2: I can't be too mean, especially when your job is hey,
Speaker 2: should I invest in this, and it's like, well, you
Speaker 2: maybe should, because I I gotta get you the company.
Speaker 2: I got to make sure the company. Fuck that, I
Speaker 2: I don't know. This is the thing though, gets back
Speaker 2: to my wife feeling about the stock market. It's like
Speaker 2: that feels rigged. It feels like you've got analysts who
Speaker 2: go on CNBC Bloomberg and I'm sure people will say,
Speaker 2: oh Bloomberg, real traders use the terminal whatever. But it's
Speaker 2: like the growth of retail investors is what makes this
Speaker 2: dangerous to me, The fact that it's the easiest time
Speaker 2: ever to invest in stocks. If I felt like buying
Speaker 2: a stock right now, I could do so in a
Speaker 2: few taps. If that's the case, having or that should
Speaker 2: be the disclosure. Here's a good centrist path. I think
Speaker 2: that they should have to write down reintroduction they've made. Oh,
Speaker 2: they should say every time every time they've introduced a
Speaker 2: hedge fund, and they don't even need to name them.
Speaker 2: There's these say made introduction on this date. That way
Speaker 2: we could see because I bet there'd be a lot
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: Also, I'm getting all new ideas for Foyer requests.
Speaker 4: Not that they would be not that I had many
Speaker 4: who actually fall into that at all, because it's all
Speaker 4: private sector. But that's, you know, like, but I'm just
Speaker 4: I'm just getting ideas. I'm just getting ideas again, totally different.
Speaker 2: But but this is the thing what good journalism is
Speaker 2: because it's like, these messy little lines between informations are
Speaker 2: not disclosed exactly. It wouldn't be as big a deal
Speaker 2: if they disclose this stuff. But also the term analyst
Speaker 2: is used very vaguely these days, totally confusing people. Citriny
Speaker 2: research for example, that.
Speaker 4: People who are for example, again get to the heart
Speaker 4: of people who are like held to an industry reg
Speaker 4: you know, regulated industry standard that like is very like
Speaker 4: closely held, closely watch versus not. That's a perfect yeah,
Speaker 4: perfect example.
Speaker 2: All Right, I think we're gonna wrap it there. We've
Speaker 2: had a great time.
Speaker 3: Where can we find you two, I'm on x at
Speaker 3: Nick Dever Underscore, or you can check out my newly
Speaker 3: launched website Nicked and sorry, don't cancel the ed I
Speaker 3: can't believe you outed me at the end or Barons
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: Yes, you can find me on Barons dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, everyone, you can find me of course, where's
Speaker 2: your ed dot at Better offline dot com. This podcast
Speaker 2: that you're already listening to you love them one log
Speaker 2: later in the week. Thank you all, Thank you, thank
Speaker 2: you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 6: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
Speaker 6: is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
Speaker 6: and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T
Speaker 6: T O, S O W S k I dot com.
Speaker 5: You can email me at easy at better offline dot
Speaker 5: com or visit better offline dot com to find more
Speaker 5: podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really
Speaker 5: recommend you go to chat dot Where's youread dot at
Speaker 5: to visit the discord, and go to our slash.
Speaker 1: Better Offline to check out I'll Reddit. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening. Better Offline is a production of cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media.
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