People Are Seeing More Fireballs; Astronomers Can't Explain It...

Authored by T.J.Muscaro via The Epoch Times,

Just as it faces an annual hurricane season and tornado season, North America is also experiencing an annual “fireball season,” according to NASA.

“From February through April, the appearance rate of these very bright meteors can increase by as much as 10 percent to 30 percent, especially around the weeks of the March equinox,” NASA explained in a statement in late March.

”Exactly why is not known. Some astronomers think the Earth passes through more large debris at this time of year, causing an uptick in fireball sightings.”

But the relatively regular peak season appears to have been unusually active this year.

Fireball videos recorded worldwide between January and April 2026. The American Meteor Society said 41 large fireball events were reported in the first three months of 2026—nearly double the average number of reported events for that time period from the previous five years. Courtesy of American Meteor Society

The American Meteor Society, which has gathered professional and amateur meteor reports since 1911, said 41 large fireball events—observed by more than 50 people—were reported in the first three months of 2026. That’s nearly double the average number of reported events for that time period from the previous five years.

Mike Hankey, operations manager at the American Meteor Society, told The Epoch Times that this is specifically an increase in “sporadic” meteors that are not connected to any larger comet or asteroid or regularly tracked meteor shower. And the sudden surge is not due to an increase in the number of eyes on the sky, he said.

Astronomers who have dedicated themselves to watching the skies for the falling space rocks are not sure what caused the spike or if it is even a true anomaly—a one-off, unpredictable occurrence.

Hankey stops short of saying his data—an analysis of fireball events going back to 2011—are conclusive.

“I wouldn’t say that it’s an earth-shattering anything,” he said. “It’s just an observation, right? It’s just saying, ‘Hey, this is the most traffic we’ve ever had in any single month.’

“Without publishing a paper to prove that, I can’t say, ‘Oh, it’s not a statistical anomaly.’ Maybe it is.”

In the meantime, here’s what to know about these events.

What Is a ‘Fireball’?

The term “fireball” is essentially NASA’s designation for what kids would call a shooting star—a small piece of space debris whose self-destructive path through Earth’s atmosphere creates a streaking fireball brighter than the brilliant planet Venus.

The space agency released a meteor-focused FAQ page after multiple “fireball events” went viral in early spring.

Any space rocks that are more than a meter in diameter are called “asteroids,” and anything smaller is called a “meteoroid.” Meteoroids normally break off from a comet or asteroid, but on rare occasions have been found to be parts of the moon or Mars.

When either an asteroid or a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere and starts to streak across the sky, it becomes a “meteor.“ When multiple objects enter the atmosphere from the same origin point, that event is called a ”meteor shower.”

When a meteor reaches an observable brightness greater than the luminosity of Venus in the morning or evening sky, it becomes registered as a “fireball.”

“They enter the atmosphere at relatively low speeds,” Hankey explained in a press release. “Slower entry means the meteor lasts longer in the sky, is visible over a wider area, produces sonic booms more often, and more material survives to reach the ground as meteorites.”

Any pieces of the meteor that survive the trip through the atmosphere and make it to Earth’s surface are called meteorites.

A graphic illustrating meteor terminology. Illustration by The Epoch Times, Freepik, Getty Images

For example, on March 17, a fireball was spotted over parts of Canada and the United States, breaking apart over northern Ohio. NASA confirmed the falling object to be an asteroid six feet in diameter and weighing about seven tons. Upon entering the atmosphere at 45,000 mph, it became a meteor. Then, it got so bright it became a fireball that eventually blew up mid-air, resulting in meteorite fragments falling to the ground.

While this event caught the nation’s attention, NASA said it is not that rare.

“Meteors are actually quite common,” the space agency explained. ”They occur all the time, and fireballs can be seen on any given night. But they often occur over the ocean or unpopulated areas with no witnesses, or during the daytime, making them difficult to spot.

“Viewers who catch a clear view of one in the dark skies above are treated to a spectacular sky show—but one that is hardly rare.”

(Left) A meteor streaks across the sky during the annual Perseid meteor shower in Spruce Knob, W. Va., on Aug. 11, 2021. (Right) A fireball event observed in Black River Falls, Wis., on Jan. 24, 2026. Bill Ingalls/NASA, Justin J. via www.amsmeteors.org

Tracking Fireballs

Most of the time, fireballs are small objects that create a flash across the sky lasting only a few seconds, Hankey told The Epoch Times. However, some can be big enough to create a sonic boom and deliver some fragments to the ground, possibly causing damage to lives and property.

Regardless of the scale of the event, the American Meteor Society urges those who witness a fireball to file a report on its website, noting when and where they saw the fireball, how long it shone in the sky, whether or not they heard a sonic boom, and whether or not they observed the fireball break up into fragments.

Then, similar to how the National Weather Service sends out assessment teams to confirm tornado sightings submitted by its spotter network, the society tasks teams to assess the reports coming in. Those teams will officially confirm the falling meteor and send out recovery teams to search for and collect any surviving fragments. More than 200 fragments were found from the March 17 fireball event alone.

(Left) A still from a video captures a fireball in Kennerdell, Pa., on March 17, 2026. (Right) A still from a home security camera video captures a fireball in Ravenna, Ohio, on March 17, 2026. Courtesy of Jeff Campbell, David Hamann/American Meteor Society

The society also utilizes the 1,000-camera All Sky 7 network to keep as close an eye on the night sky as possible.

Hankey joined the society in 2010. A software developer by trade, he rebuilt the organization’s website and fireball reporting tool and continues to use Google Maps and Claude AI to streamline the collection and organization of the society’s data.

That data—often organically acquired as people file observational reports—produces new insights into the field of astronomy and space weather. Through this data collection, the society is able to figure out a meteor’s speed, size, and origin.

NASA, meanwhile, has its own eyes on the sky with the NASA All-Sky Fireball Network, a group of 17 cameras spread out across the country, run by the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office.

Three of those cameras are located in Florida, three in the northern Ohio/Pennsylvania area, and five in southern New Mexico and Arizona. Six others are found in north Alabama, north Georgia, southern Tennessee, and southern North Carolina.

NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office also focuses on understanding how much of a risk these meteor impacts and their apparently seasonal fluctuations pose to spacecraft flying in and beyond Earth’s orbit.

An illustration depicts NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft prior to impact at the Didymos binary asteroid system. The mission tested whether intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future. Steve Gribben/Johns Hopkins APL/NASA

However, most fireballs are very small and are very difficult to track.

“The objects are pretty small, you know,” Hankey said. “A golf ball will make a fireball. A bowling ball will make a huge fireball. Something that’s like the size of a chair would make a humongous fireball. But to a telescope a million miles away, it’s not even a speck.”

NASA’s planetary defense network specifically looks for space rocks that are 140 meters or larger—larger than a small football stadium—which are deemed large enough to cause widespread damage if they breach the earth’s atmosphere.

Unclear If Fireball ‘Spike’ Is an Anomaly

But Hankey noted that as more and more data are collected over the years, the recent, seemingly random spike in sporadic fireballs may turn out to be not so random after all.

He pointed out that another spike in large fireball events was logged in the first quarter of 2021, although that number was still less than this year’s: 30 events reported by at least 50 people each, compared to 41.

The American Meteor Society published a graph of the number of fireball events reported by more than 50 people during the first quarter of the last 15 years in March, 2026. Illustrated by The Epoch Times, Courtesy of the American Meteor Society

“If we see that same spike in 2031, I mean, it’s a long way to wait—five more years—but that might say something,” he said. “If we can say, ‘Look, the AMS saw this same spike in five-year increments,’ then we would hypothesize that we would see it in the fourth year. If we did, we could probably prove it, right?”

“I mean, I’ll probably be almost 70 at that point,” he added. “That’s just the way astronomy is.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2026 - 07:20

My back-to-work morning train WFH reads:

• Trade court rules Trump’s replacement tariffs illegal: A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of International Trade concluded that Trump’s 10 percent global tariffs are unlawful. Same trade-court ruling, second take. Watch the appeal closely — this one could rewrite the playbook on executive trade authority. (Politico) see also Trade court strikes down Trump 10% universal tariffs: The U.S. Court of International Trade rules the across-the-board tariffs exceeded presidential authority. Markets noticed. (Axios)

• The Nominal Anchor Still Holds: The Inflation Trauma Lingers, but the Fed’s Credibility Endures for Now. On why long-term inflation expectations remain remarkably stable despite the headline noise. Reassuring for the Fed; less so for the gold bugs. (Macroeconomic Policy Nexus)

• Why It’s So Hard to Spot a Stock-Market Bubble: Jason Zweig on the cognitive traps that make bubbles invisible until they pop. The math is easy; the psychology is brutal. A sudden surge in share prices makes us all think we know what’s coming next. (Wall Street Journal) see also The Real Reason Everything Feels So Expensive Right Now: Despite reassuring economic data, many Americans say their day-to-day costs are still rising. (Slate)

• The whining meant it wasn’t about the pied-à-terre tax It was about being personally singled out: Jonathan Miller dissects the manufactured outrage from billionaires over Mamdani’s housing tax plan. The volume is the giveaway. It was about being personally singled out. “While I very much admire what Griffin has achieved and that he should be rewarded for being innovative, smart and clever (I listen closely to his economic insights), his reaction to the mayor’s video clearly wasn’t about the pied-à-terre tax. It was about being singled out for buying the most expensive home in U.S. history, which has been exhaustively explored since he closed in 2019. I thought it was a bad look for him to talk about pivoting to Miami, which he already did the last time the pied-à-terre tax came up in 2019. However, I have no doubt he meant it when he said it.” (The Real Deal)

• ‘Blissful ignorance’: Milken elite bask in glow of roaring markets: The Milken Conference is always a good index of how the buy-side is feeling. This year: euphoric, oblivious, very interested in private credit.  (Financial Times free)

• Want to understand the current state of AI? Check out these charts. According to Stanford’s 2026 AI Index, AI is sprinting, and we’re struggling to keep up. A clean visual tour of compute, capability, capex, and revenue curves. The shapes tell you more than any of the white papers do. (MIT Technology Review) see also The AI Labor Debate: Three Views on the Future of Work: AI could hollow out jobs, reshape them gradually, create entirely new ones—or do all three at once. The case for starting to act now doesn’t depend on knowing which. Carnegie lays out the three serious camps in the AI-and-jobs debate — substitution, augmentation, and reshuffling — with actual evidence behind each. Useful structure for a noisy argument. (Carnegie Endowment)

• U.S. intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump’s Hormuz blockade for months: The CIA’s read on Iranian endurance is at odds with the White House’s timeline. Worth filing for the next round of strait-of-Hormuz brinkmanship. A confidential intelligence community assessment delivered to the White House also finds that Iran retains a substantial missile and drone arsenal. (Washington Post)

• A Look Inside the Case That Enshrined Political Power for Billionaires: A walk through the Buckley-to-Citizens-United logic chain. The donor class did not get here by accident — it got here by litigation. After Watergate, Congress tried to curtail the role of money in politics. But a pivotal Supreme Court case nipped it in the bud. Years later, new details are emerging on how wealthy Americans were conferred with a “right to spend” on elections. (New York Times)

• Yankees pay tribute to ‘iconic’ John Sterling during, after win: “I still do this, and my coaches look at me like I’m nuts,” Boone said Monday. “I don’t even know if they know what I’m doing. But as soon as the final out is made and I get up to shake players’ hands, I go, ‘Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeee Yankees win!’ And I’m shaking all my coaches’ hands. I got goose bumps thinking about that.” (ESPN) see also Broadcast booths around baseball tip their caps to John Sterling: The baseball world lost a legend on Monday, with longtime Yankees radio voice John Sterling passing away at 87. After more than three decades of calling Yankees games and injecting his one-of-a-kind personality into every moment, Sterling will leave a legacy in both New York and baseball on a larger scale. (MLB.com)

• The Stephen Colbert Exit Interview: “I Did Not Expect It to End This Way” As ‘The Late Show’ nears its final bow, the host opens up about the cancellation that shocked the industry, the win of going out as a “martyr” and his next act in Middle-earth. Colbert reflects on the abrupt cancellation of The Late Show and what it says about the slow death of network late-night. A more candid exit than the genre usually allows. (Hollywood Reporter)

Video of the day: Why Nobody Wants the Chrysler Building

Be sure to check out our Master’s in Business interview this weekend with Howard Lindzon, known as “The Larry David of Finance.” He is General Partner at the seed fund, Social Leverage, he was one of the first seed investors in Robinhood, which IPOd at $30B in 2021, eToro, Manscaped, and Beehiiv. Previously, he founded Wallstrip, a daily online video show acquired by CBS (2007). He also co-founded Stocktwits, which pioneered the “cashtag.” Recognized by Institutional Investor as a “Super Angel;” his podcast is Panic with Friends.

 

Wall Street bonuses hit a new record last year, edging toward $250,000 average

Source: Sherwood

 

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The post 10 Monday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

Norovirus Outbreak Sickens 115 People on Caribbean Princess Cruise Ship, CDC Says

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

More than 110 people aboard the Caribbean Princess cruise ship have fallen ill due to a norovirus outbreak, a common cause of gastrointestinal illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Caribbean Princess, owned by Princess Cruises, departed from the port of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on April 28 and is currently sailing in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to CruiseMapper.

The voyage dates were April 28 to May 11. The ship is carrying 3,116 passengers and 1,131 crew members and is expected to arrive in Port Canaveral, Florida, on May 11.

The norovirus outbreak was reported on the ship on May 7, affecting 102 passengers and 13 crew members, with diarrhea and vomiting identified as the predominant symptoms, the CDC said in an update.

Princess Cruises and the crew have increased cleaning and disinfection procedures in response to the outbreak, the CDC stated. Other measures include collecting stool samples from patients with gastrointestinal illness for testing and isolating passengers and crew members who have fallen ill.

The crew also consulted with the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) regarding sanitation cleaning procedures and reporting of sick individuals, the agency said.

“VSP is conducting a field response for an environmental assessment and outbreak investigation to assist the ship in controlling the outbreak,” it stated.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Princess Cruises for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

Norovirus is the leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States, accounting for 58 percent of such infections each year, according to the CDC.

Apart from vomiting and diarrhea, other frequently reported symptoms include muscle aches, headaches, abdominal cramps, and fever.

In March, a norovirus outbreak was reported aboard the Star Princess, also owned by Princess Cruises, affecting 104 passengers and 49 crew members. Last December, a norovirus outbreak on an Aida Cruises ship sickened more than 100 people.

Cruise ships are required to report cases of gastrointestinal illness to the CDC. The agency said that reporting symptoms to the medical center onboard can help health officials detect gastrointestinal outbreaks quickly and take steps to limit the spread of illness.

Medical staff would then evaluate symptoms to determine whether they meet the case definition for the illness, including three or more loose stools within a 24-hour period or vomiting along with another symptom such as diarrhea, aching muscles, or fever.

On average, norovirus causes around 900 deaths, mainly in adults aged 65 and older, 109,000 hospitalizations, 465,000 emergency room visits, and 19 million to 21 million illnesses in the United States each year, according to the CDC.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2026 - 06:30

These Are The World's Deadliest Countries For Journalists

At least 60 media professionals were killed in 2025 due to their journalistic activities, according to the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) database.

As Statista's Valentine Fourreau detsils below, by far the deadliest place for journalists was in the Palestinian territories, where 25 deaths were officially recorded last year. Palestine also topped the list in 2024, with 21 recorded deaths that year.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Following some way behind are Mexico with nine deaths, Peru with four, Ecuador and Ukraine with three, as well as Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan with two.

A single journalist was also killed in each of the following countries: Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, 140 journalists and media professionals were listed as “disappeared” last year, with the highest numbers recorded in Syria (37), Mexico (28) and Iraq (12).

Reporters Without Borders emphasizes that media professionals’ deaths are only listed in their database if the NGO can confirm it as being linked to their journalistic work.

This explains why these figures seem low and that they are subject to change as fact-checking is carried out.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2026 - 05:45

A BrAIve New World For High Yield

Authored by Luke Coha via BondVigilantes.com,

As the world grapples with how AI will shape and change our lives going forward from the mundane, like automated homes or more clever apps, to more existential threats (opportunities?) leading to job and possibly sector obsolescence and related, broader social implications, it’s definitely well accepted that the demand for AI computing power is enormous and growing.

Estimates vary, but they are all astronomical, ranging from $5 trillion to $7 trillion in capital investment needed to fund the global data centre and AI buildout, including adding 122 GW of power capacity between now and 2030 (according to JP Morgan). This scale of investment will require involvement from virtually all sources of funding, including public capital markets, private credit, governments and asset-backed securitisation funding.

While not nearly on the same scale as investment grade markets, high yield markets have been playing, and will continue to play, a role in this buildout financing mostly via the funding of data centres. This has important implications for the asset class. In very short order, AI related and data centre issuance has exploded from effectively nothing just over a year ago to nearly $40 billion today, with close to $30 billion issued since the start of the year.

This sheer quantum of issuance is huge and effectively amounts to an entirely new subsector created nearly overnight within the high yield market. The vast majority of this issuance is index eligible and currently represents approximately 1.6% of the Global High Yield Bond Index (and 2.6% of the U.S. High Yield Bond Index). What’s more, from estimates we’ve seen, expectations are for total high yield, AI related issuance to reach $100 billion to $120 billion over the next few years.

Should this manifest, it would represent close to 4% to 5% of the global index and 6% to 7% of the U.S. index, of similar scale as long existing and well established retail and capital goods subsectors. This scale, coupled with mostly above index level yields, makes it difficult, if not impossible, for active managers that are benchmark-aware to ignore. It will be imperative to understand the broader narrative as well as the idiosyncratic characteristics of the individual issuers. As stated, this is effectively a new sector to the market and participants, such as analysts, strategists and fund managers, need to, if they haven’t already done so, get up to speed quickly.

At the time of writing there are now 15 high yield data centre bonds totalling $39 billion (including neocloud provider CoreWeave). High yield data centre bond issuance has coalesced around similar, project-finance-like features but with important variations.

Source: Bloomberg, Barclays Research. Note: excludes issuance by neocloud CoreWeave, which has $6.5bn of regular-way HY bonds outstanding

Generally, bonds are being issued with five-year non call two-year structures and mostly amortising. By definition these issuers will have more leverage than traditional IG issuers but some will have financial backstops from the likes of Google, while others will not. Most will have high-quality tenants like Nvidia, and hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, while others will have a variety of tenants. Some are single asset facilities while others are multi-site and multijurisdictional. Some will be well advanced in their construction timeline while others will have yet to have broken ground. Some will have contracted power supply including back up power, and some are still negotiating power supply agreements… you get the idea. And that’s leaving aside the complexities around lease terms, cost overrun provisions, covenants etc.

There are already rumblings in the high yield market surrounding concerns that the explosion in issuance has bubble-like characteristics similar to that of telecoms in the early 2000s or energy in 2015 to 2017, when investor enthusiasm outweighed a sober assessment of risk. These same critics also worry about the potential for overbuild or overcapacity, i.e. the massive demand fails to materialise, or that despite the strong tenant base, these contracts have yet to be tested.

Conversely, proponents of the nascent space point to the undeniable demand for more compute capacity and expectations that any individual project disruptions or failures would be tolerated by their well-heeled tenants who, with strong demand for capacity, would support any centres that came into difficulty; and if not, demand is so great, other well capitalised tenants would simply step in. Further, regardless of long term dynamics, there is massive demand now and any project that is up and running, or close to, has a first mover advantage and any capacity concerns etc. are for projects well down the development pipeline.

Further, some view this as an attractive ‘yield to call’ play, inferring that as these projects are up and running and generating more cash, the issuer will have the capacity to refinance their high coupon, high yield issues at more attractive terms, arguably creating a potential short term opportunity for high yield investors.

Ultimately, being completely short the space due to uncertainties requires a high degree of conviction that the sector is mispriced and even vulnerable. Conversely, going overweight the sector is an acceptance of a broader narrative that has only recently manifested itself. All of which highlights that careful credit work on individual issuers and a broader understanding of these dynamics is paramount.

Source: Meta

Bottom line, balancing this supply, index and yield dynamic versus fully understanding the fundamental, technical and issuer risks and rewards is a real challenge for high yield markets. And with all things AI related, we need to understand if this dynamic potentially represents – and if so, how to adapt to – to paraphrase Aldous Huxley, a Brave New World.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2026 - 05:00

Singapore Remains The World's Most Powerful Passport In 2026

Your passport shapes how much of the world you can access. In 2026, the gap between the strongest and weakest passports spans nearly 170 destinations.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalists' Gabriel Cohen, ranks global passport strength using data from the Henley Passport Index, based on how many destinations citizens can enter without a visa.

Singapore leads with access to 192 destinations. That’s nearly five times the access available to citizens of the lowest-ranked countries. Meanwhile, the weakest passports allow entry to fewer than 50 destinations. The disparity highlights how geography, diplomacy, and stability influence global mobility.

The Top Passports of Asia and Europe

Following Singapore, there is a three-way tie for the second-strongest passports, with Japan, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates each offering access to 187 destinations without a visa.

The UAE has the strongest passport outside of East or Southeast Asia, though with a notable caveat: Emiratis lack visa-free access to the United States, unlike their peers in Singapore, Japan, or South Korea.

From there, Europeans hold many of the strongest passports by visa-free access, led by Northern and Western European countries like Norway and Switzerland (both 185).

While the 27-member European Union has a unified passport system, individual member countries still vary in visa-free access, ranging from 177 destinations for Bulgaria and Romania to 186 for Sweden.

Taking the average across this range, the EU’s overall passport strength stands at 183 visa-free destinations, tied with countries like Malaysia and the United Kingdom and slightly ahead of North American counterparts like Canada (182) and the United States (179).

The World’s Weakest Passports

At the bottom of the ranking, mobility drops off dramatically. The weakest passports offer access to fewer than 50 destinations, less than a quarter of what top-ranked countries enjoy.

These countries often face political instability, high emigration, or recent conflict, which can limit access to many developed regions.

African countries like Nigeria (44), Somalia (32), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (43) also rank low. Fast-growing populations and large diasporas have contributed to tighter visa restrictions for these nationalities.

A Tale of Two Passports

Taken together, passport rankings reveal more than travel convenience—they map global inequality. Where you’re born can shape where you’re allowed to go, making passport power one of the clearest indicators of opportunity in a connected world.

African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian passports tend to rank lower than their European or Western Hemisphere counterparts. Even higher-ranking exceptions like Malaysia or the UAE can still face limits on visa-free access to major destinations, particularly the United States.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The United Arab Emirates has the World’s Most Affordable Passport on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2026 - 04:15

Meanwhile In Scotland...

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

A trans Tamil immigrant on a temporary student visa has just been ELECTED as a Green Party MSP to Holyrood in Scotland – despite having no British citizenship, no permanent residency and no right to full-time work.

Where else would this be allowed to happen? It’s insane.

The candidate, Dr Q Manivannan (they/them), arrived in the UK a few years ago as a PhD student and was selected for the Green list in Edinburgh and the Lothians East. Scotland’s rules – relaxed under the SNP – explicitly allow non-citizens to stand for election and take office.

A trans Indian migrant who arrived in the UK a few years ago and is not a citizen or permanent resident was elected to the Scottish parliament as a member of the woke Green Party. Scotland allows non-citizens to become elected to office.

“Q Mannivannan” is set to earn over… pic.twitter.com/3ePA6B0le1

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) May 9, 2026

Trans Green Party candidate with no permanent British visa is elected to Holyrood https://t.co/KCSmyt3YuE

— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) May 10, 2026

Manivannan’s own victory remarks left nothing to the imagination. “My name is Dr Q Manivannan, I am a transgender Tamil immigrant, my pronouns are they/them.” And later: “I am, to some in this country, everything that the hateful despise, and I’m standing here as your MSP now with care.”

Q Manivannan, transgender Indian migrant now Scottish Greens MSP, arguing for 'trans pride'.

"Transness is Blackness. Transness is womanhood. Transness is disability. Transness is everything the world wants you to believe that is unlovable."

He goes on to defend Mridul Wadhwa,… pic.twitter.com/HJOQ6bXqBQ

— 'New Scots' Profiles (@NewScotProfiles) May 10, 2026

The individual is clearly not OK mentally.

He's also racist against White people and suffers extreme mental sickness according to his many posts about it all pic.twitter.com/GrEIiMqZu2

— ddsnorth ™ (@ddsnorth) May 10, 2026

This is not an isolated stunt. The Green Party has become a conduit for an unholy alliance of islamists and gender ideology obsessives.

Deputy leader Mothin Ali was pictured alongside a trans candidate, the awkward expression speaking volumes.

The guy on the left is the Green Party's deputy leader, Mothin Ali; the woman on the right is one of his party's trans candidates. The look on his face says it all. Is there a future for this marriage of convenience between Islamist extremism and woke crankery? I doubt it. pic.twitter.com/v9JJWOkRR9

— Never Again (@Never_Again2020) May 9, 2026

Other recent Green candidates reinforce the pattern. In Preston, new councillor “Tina” Balmer declared: “I want to help the city I love.”

? "I want to help the city I love" – Meet Preston's first ever Green Party councillor, Tina Balmer.??

Tina ffs! ?

Is it Tina but pronounced Trevor? ? pic.twitter.com/GkTmz9zJ4K

— Matt Casey ??????? ?? (@MattCas04807118) May 9, 2026

Here are more Green candidates that stood for election:

Wow these are Green Party Candidates ?

How would you describe this look? pic.twitter.com/FzA29MK4JT

— Benonwine (@benonwine) May 1, 2026

A small compendium of Green Party candidates, make up your own mind about what this says about the state of British politics. pic.twitter.com/9X4nDULsJg

— Kevin Lister (@KevsTribulation) May 8, 2026

"What’s interesting about these Green Party candidates is that they are actually men" pic.twitter.com/DkdTIuL4Ty

— Barry Robson (@barryrobson) May 8, 2026

And here’s the support they’re drawing…

Say hello to 'Kate', from the Redbridge Green Party. Not mental at all… pic.twitter.com/xkVGaXBqXI

— RagingDissident_ (@JustRaging01) February 27, 2026

They’ll lecture you all day long about ‘hate’, meanwhile…

How many Green Party Candidates investigated over antisemitic hate:

Just the thirty. pic.twitter.com/Nuftw4gVnz

— Tom Hawklin Jr (@TomHawklin10558) May 7, 2026

Many of them simply don’t bother to speak English:

GB News host Martin Daubney can't understand the Green Party and neither can we!

Political candidates in Britain should speak English. pic.twitter.com/au6CkSRdVp

— Turning Point UK ?? (@TPointUK) May 8, 2026

Meanwhile, UK Deputy Green Party leader had a meltdown when Piers Morgan asked if in her view women can have penises:

UK Deputy Green Party leader has meltdown after Piers Morgan asked if she thinks women can have “penises.”

“That’s a weird question. Piers it’s a weird question. The answer is the trans community in this country are treated appallingly.” pic.twitter.com/qWVPRg0fdU

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 9, 2026

He asked that question because during a previous exchange, Party leader Zack Polanski went full gender-ideologue, claiming women can have penises and dismissed biological reality.

The party is also pushing to teach schoolchildren they should have a “moral obligation” to accept mass immigration.

The Greens aren’t just pushing open borders and gender ideology – they are the vehicle that fuses the two into one destructive package.

Scotland’s sovereignty is now being exercised by people who aren’t even British citizens, while taxpayers foot the bill for six-figure salaries and the erosion of women’s rights, free speech and national identity.

This isn’t democracy. It’s demographic replacement dressed up as progress – and the Green Party is leading the parade.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2026 - 03:30

EU Prepares For 'Potential' Talks With Putin As US Slowly Reduces Troops On Continent

A recent report in Financial Times indicates the European Union is preparing for "potential" future talks with Russia and President Vladimir Putin at a moment of extreme doubts over both US military commitments and Russia's intentions in Ukraine.

Putin himself during his V-Day speech Saturday hinted for the first time that the conflict may be 'coming to an end':

"I ⁠⁠think that the matter is coming to an end," Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

The Russian leader, however, added he would be willing to meet Zelensky only after the terms of a peace agreement had already been settled. The Kremlin had rejected US President Donald Trump’s August 2025 offer to hold a trilateral meeting with Zelenskyy, Putin and Trump.

"This should be the final point, not the negotiations themselves," Putin said after the Victory Day, which marks Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 in World War II.

Sputnik/Reuters

Also on Saturday, António Costa, the president of the European Council, said to a press conference the EU will only talk to Putin at the "right moment". Costa ultimately sees "potential" for direct EU engagement with Putin

"We need in the right moment to have talks with Russia to address our common issues with security," the EU president had said.

"We don’t want to disturb the initiative led by President Trump," said Costa at a ‘Europe Day’ celebration in Brussels. He also spoke of preparations aimed at being "ready to do what we need to do” regarding Europe’s security.

And separately an EU official said: "There will be a moment when the EU will need to speak to Russia because it’s an existential issue for Europe. Now it’s not the time."

President Trump has recently blasted NATO as a "paper tiger" (though it wasn't the first time) and has said the US is withdrawing 5,000 American troops from Germany.

In response, European governments have accelerated discussions on deeper EU military coordination, including joint defense initiatives which bypass US protection.

Currently, the three-day Ukraine ceasefire announced and backed by President Trump appears to have held throughout the weekend, as no drone attacks have been registered on Moscow or other parts of the country. 

Trump had presented this as a window and opportunity to achieve a more permanent truce, and Putin is without doubt seizing on the initiative, but surely wants a final settlement in line with Kremlin aims in Ukraine.

Tyler Durden Mon, 05/11/2026 - 02:45

Why Socialism Fails

Authored by Deborah Palma via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Economics is not a zero-sum game in which one person’s gain comes at another’s expense; nor is it just about numbers or purposeless statistical aggregates, but conscious human action.

Custom image by FEE

Ludwig von Mises, in his work “Human Action,” explains that individuals act to replace a less satisfactory state of affairs with a more satisfactory one. This process is inherently subjective and teleological, meaning that the values guiding economic activity are rooted in individual choices, and not in physical objects themselves.

Economic calculation serves as the bridge between the subjectivity of human desires and the objective reality of scarce resources. Consider a quantity of steel that could be used to build either a hospital or a factory. Without a system of prices reflecting society’s preferences and the relative scarcity of resources, there would be no way to determine which of these projects creates greater value. Economic calculation, expressed through prices, allows for the comparison of alternatives, whilst directing resources toward their most-valued uses.

Similarly, consider an entrepreneur evaluating whether they should open a bakery. They must decide how much to invest in equipment, rent, labor, and so on. By comparing the costs of these factors with the expected revenue from sales, our entrepreneur can estimate whether the business will create value. If revenues are expected to exceed total costs and taxes, there will be profit.

Profit, therefore, is not merely a financial gain, but evidence that scarce resources have been allocated in ways that better satisfy societal needs, because society has, in an undirected way, decided its needs are satisfied this way. Conversely, losses would indicate that those resources should have been allocated to more valuable uses. Without prices, profits, and losses, the entrepreneur would have no way of knowing whether resources are being used efficiently.

In a complex economy with an advanced division of labor, individuals cannot rely solely on their own direct knowledge to decide how to allocate resources among many possible combinations. They require a common denominator that allows for the comparison of costs and benefits. This denominator is the price, which emerges from voluntary exchanges in the market.

Prices are not arbitrary numbers; they are determined by exchange values arising from the competitive interaction between consumers and producers. Price reflects the relative scarcity of a good in relation to all other possible uses of the same factors of production.

When an entrepreneur invests in new technology or capital infrastructure, they rely on monetary calculation to assess whether the value of the final product will exceed the total value of the inputs consumed. This “surplus” is profit, an unmistakable signal that value has been created by, and for, society. The opposite—loss—signals the waste of scarce resources.

The importance of prices becomes even more evident when we examine historical attempts to artificially control them. Throughout history, governments have sought to replace the market price system with centrally-directed mechanisms, and the results have been consistently disastrous.

One of the earliest examples dates back to the reign of Diocletian in the Roman Empire. In 301 AD, the emperor issued the Edict on Maximum Prices, imposing price ceilings on thousands of goods and services, including basic items such as wheat, meat, and clothing, as well as wages for various professions such as farmers, bakers, craftsmen, and teachers. By fixing prices below their market-clearing levels, the policy reduced the incentive for producers to supply these goods, since many could no longer cover their costs or earn a profit. At the same time, artificially low prices increased consumer demand. This imbalance between reduced supply and increased demand led to widespread shortages. As a result, many goods disappeared from official markets and were instead traded illegally at higher prices, contributing to the expansion of black markets and the disruption of normal productive activity. The policy ultimately proved unsustainable and was abandoned due to its failure.

More recently, similar policies were implemented in Brazil under the government of José Sarney, particularly during the Cruzado Plan of 1986. The freezing of prices, initially celebrated as a solution to inflation, quickly resulted in widespread shortages, empty shelves, and the emergence of parallel markets. Unable to adjust prices, producers reduced supply, exposing the inability of such measures to coordinate a complex economy.

More recent cases reinforce this pattern. In Venezuela, strict price controls implemented over the past decades have contributed to chronic shortages, the collapse of domestic production, and increasing dependence on imports. Basic goods disappeared from store shelves, while informal markets became central to the population’s survival.

These episodes produce the same outcome: scarcity. Prices emerge from decentralized interactions between individuals, reflecting their preferences and the relative scarcity of goods. Once formed, however, they also serve to coordinate economic activity by conveying information that guides producers and consumers in their decisions. When prices cease to reflect the relationship between supply and demand, they lose this informational and coordinating function. Instead of promoting order, price controls generate disorganization, shortages, and waste.

Mises’s thesis was challenged by economists such as Oskar Lange, who proposed a form of “market socialism.” Lange argued that a planning board could simulate the market through a process of trial and error, adjusting prices as surpluses or shortages emerged. However, Mises and his student Friedrich Hayek refuted this view, emphasizing that the problem is not merely one of data processing. The crucial point is that the data required for economic calculation, such as subjective preferences and local knowledge, only come into existence through real market exchanges.

Attempts to treat the economy as a system of simultaneous equations, in which equilibrium can be mathematically determined, ignore the dynamic nature of reality. The market is a continuous process of discovery, not a static state of rest. The economy cannot be managed like a problem of engineering or mechanical physics, because it involves constant change, subjective expectations, and genuine uncertainty, elements that no fixed equation can fully capture.

Under socialism, the abolition of private property in the means of production destroys the very concept of capital as a calculable value. When the state owns all higher-order goods (machines, land, and raw materials), there are no exchanges between private owners for these items. Consequently, there are no market prices for capital goods. Without these prices, the central planner, no matter how well-intentioned, lacks the necessary information to determine whether they are creating wealth or merely consuming the nation’s capital.

From the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 21:35

US Firm Unveils Ground Bot With Enough Power To Fire Laser Guns

Utah-based defense tech firm Hypercraft has unveiled a 300 hp diesel-hybrid-electric unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that can power directed-energy weapons, charge drones, and sustain a forward command post, all autonomously.

Defense Blog’s Dylan Malyasov reports that Hypercraft’s Razorback UGV can travel 280 miles on a single charge, reach speeds of 60 mph, and export 38 kilowatts of power, which is enough to power laser weapons and recharge drones.

Razorback is being positioned as a critical energy source for forward operating units that need power for drones, electronic warfare, ISR, counter-UAS systems, and communications. The UGV is also designed to move supplies and support infrastructure on the modern battlefield.

The role of UGVs on the battlefield is still being shaped in real time by the Russia-Ukraine war, where robots, whether ground bots or drones, are increasingly removing infantrymen from harm's way as the grinding fight evolves into a war of attrition fought by machines.

The wars across Eurasia, from Ukraine-Russia to the U.S.-Iran conflict, have validated a new style of warfare in which cheap ground robots and drones increasingly operate in ‘no man's land’ (front lines). The next phase is already coming: humanoid systems entering the battlespace as militaries look to push more machines, not infantrymen, into the kill zone.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 21:00

More States Enact New Laws Curbing Teachers Unions

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

New organized labor reforms signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week require a majority of members to be present for teachers union certification or recertification votes, increase fines for illegal strikes, and establish merit-based pay for educators.

Students join striking teachers as they demand higher pay and smaller class sizes outside Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2019. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In Idaho, after July 1, teachers unions will be prohibited from collecting dues directly from members’ paychecks, using paid time off for union activities, or recruiting new members during school hours.

A similar law in Arizona, which also bans teacher strikes and prohibits organized labor members from using any school property—even email addresses—for union activities, will be decided on by voters in the November election.

“They can’t consume taxpayer-funded resources during the school day,” said Rusty Brown, special projects director for the Freedom Foundation policy organization, which assisted state legislators with those measures and helps teachers opt out of union membership.

These ideas are expected to gain ground throughout the nation in the months and years ahead, Brown told The Epoch Times.

Individually, the Freedom Foundation’s Teacher Freedom Alliance has so far helped more than 272,535 teachers opt out of union membership, including more than 50,000 in 2025 alone, according to data provided to The Epoch Times. This includes educators in red and blue states.

At the state level, Oklahoma lawmakers have advanced legislation that would allow teachers to withdraw from a union at any time and would terminate “closed shop” provisions that prevent teachers from accessing alternative labor or professional organizations, such as the Teacher Freedom Alliance.

Brown calls this an “equal access and an end to a monopoly and captive audience bill.” Alternative organizations can offer teacher liability insurance and other benefits at a fraction of the price that traditional unions charge, he said.

Brown said he believes that the legislation could pass before Oklahoma’s session ends later this month, but the member withdrawal proposal probably won’t go through this session.

Alabama state lawmakers will consider legislation similar to Oklahoma’s next session, he said.

Maxford Nelsen, Freedom Foundation’s director of research and government affairs, said several factors prompted growing interest in pushing back against teachers unions. Members do not like that dues are automatically deducted from their paychecks. There is increasing animosity toward “zombie unions,” in which a limited number of members are informed or allowed to vote on matters. Labor organizations also engage in practices that create very narrow windows and bureaucratic hurdles for terminating membership.

“That’s the last thing they want to think about during their summer vacation,” Nelsen told The Epoch Times, citing one union’s requirement in which opt-outs were limited to the last 10 days of July.

Perhaps the most contentious issue, Nelson said, is how teachers union dues are spent. A review of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers unions’ websites shows that both heavily favor Democrats and promote transgender ideology; diversity, equity, and inclusion practices; special protections for illegal immigrants; anti-school choice measures; and other left-leaning policies.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into this progressive apparatus,” Nelson said.

A recent report from Defending Education, a conservative policy center, states that teachers unions at the local, state, and national levels have spent more than $1 billion on “far-left political causes” unrelated to collective bargaining since 2015. This includes school board races, political action committees, and campaigns against school choice.

“Given the outsized role that unions have played in the education system over the past 50 years, greater transparency on union spending is absolutely critical so that policymakers and teachers themselves can make informed decisions about the role that these entities should—or should not—play in the future,” Defending Education President Nicole Neily said in an April 27 statement.

The Epoch Times reached out to the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers unions for comment.

In response to prior Florida legislation that prohibited teachers unions from deducting dues directly from paychecks, the Florida Education Association contracted with a company to withdraw dues from members’ bank accounts after their paychecks are deposited.

“This type of ‘paycheck deception’ legislation is nothing new and has been wielded across the country to weaken unions and roll back working conditions,” the Florida Education Association stated on its website. “It’s no secret that this legislation is designed to diminish our collective voice.”

The Idaho Education Association teachers union implemented a similar system. It also denounced Idaho Gov. Brad Little for refusing to veto the legislation.

“Idaho’s students and the dedicated professionals who teach them will be worse off because of his choice,” the union’s president, Layne McInelly, said in an April 10 statement. “They deserve better.”

The Freedom Foundation is scrutinizing public organized labor groups across the nation, not just teachers unions. In Oregon, it recently submitted a complaint to the state employment relations board on behalf of a union member who said dues were deducted from his paycheck without his authorization. He asked for a refund and requested to opt out of the union, only to be told that the window to do so is Aug. 8 through Sept. 9, according to documentation provided to The Epoch Times.

Nelsen did not work on that case but said this type of practice by unions is common in an era of direct deposits and withdrawals and digital forms.

“There are no mechanisms in place to verify that the individual workers have authorized the form, let alone understand it,” he said.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 20:25

Kraft Heinz CEO: "Consumers Are Literally Running Out Of Money Toward The End Of The Month"

While the digital US economy, if proxied through the earnings growth and stock prices of AI companies and their "picks and shovels" support ecosystem, has never been stronger, the traditional US consumer, responsible for 70% of US GDP, has rarely been more depressed than right now (and according to the latest University of Michigan sentiment survey, Americans have literally never been more pessimistic). 

That was the take home message from the latest earnings week, when various executives across retail, restaurants and packaged goods indicated they are increasingly worried about US shoppers - especially those from the" lower half" of the K-shaped economy - with tighter budgets amid surging gas prices caused by the Iran war, and consumer electronics prices through the roof thanks to record memory chip prices.

“They’re literally running out of money at the end of the month,” Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane said in an interview with the WSJ . “We’re seeing negative cash flows in the lower-income brackets where they’re dipping into savings.” Sure enough, last week we showed that as a result of personal spending growth far outpacing personal income...

... the personal savings rate has collapsed to a 3 year low.

This underscores a remarkable trend: since the pandemic, Americans have continued to spend at surprising levels despite high inflation, keeping the US economy growing and thwarting recession fears, with much of the spending growth fueled by credit card debt, with February's $10BN+ increase in credit card debt the highest since February 2024.

But soaring fuel costs might be the straw that breaks the overlevered camel's back: “The war in Iran amplified consumer concerns about the cost of living,” Whirlpool. CEO Marc Bitzer said Thursday on a call with analysts. The maker of washers and dryers said it’s counting on purchases picking up after a harsh US winter slowed shopping, but the war caused a collapse in consumer sentiment. The company described the resulting 15% hit to industry demand as similar to the global financial crisis in the aughts. In other words a depression.

In fast food, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said confidence among shoppers isn’t improving and may be getting worse. The company cited “heightened anxiety” and gas prices that disproportionately impact low-income consumers.

Sit-down dining is also taking a hit. “Our price-sensitive, more value-oriented guests seem to be staying home a bit more,” Dine Brands CEO John Peyton said on an earnings call this week. The company, which owns the Applebee’s and IHOP chains, said it hasn’t seen a similar pullback in other income levels.

Meanwhile, eyewear retailer Warby Parker  said younger shoppers are feeling the pinch from higher-than-usual unemployment and student debt bills.

Gas prices, now at $4.56 a gallon on average, are at their highest levels since July 2022, according to data from the American Automobile Association. As shoppers put more of their income toward fuel, they have less money for discretionary spending like eating out. Enlarged tax refunds helped blunt some of the impact, but sentiment has still soured to a record low.

Americans are putting less away as they try to keep up, with the savings rate dropping in March to the lowest in three years. Meanwhile, economists warn the disruptions from the war in Iran could lead to higher prices for a range of goods over time, including groceries, putting even more pressure on low-income households and draining what little savings are left. 

Low-income consumers have already cut back on real gasoline consumption to try to limit costs, according to recent research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In the near term, Americans can draw down savings or tap credit cards, but the longer gas prices stay high, the more consumers will change their spending patterns to balance their budgets, said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank.

Planet Fitness on Thursday fell the most on record after cutting its full-year outlook on weaker-than-expected member signups during the typically busy New Year period.

The gym chain also said it paused the national rollout of a price increase to its top-tier membership, with CEO Colleen Keating making it clear why that decision was made. “The consumer and economic backdrop have shifted,” she said.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 19:50

Secret Israeli Base Hidden In Iraqi Desert Backed Operations Inside Iran

In a revelation sure to outrage Baghdad and broad swathes of the Iraqi public, Israel established a secret military base in Iraq's desert region to support air operations against Iran, related to the start of Trump's Operation Epic Fury, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Israeli forces even at one point launched airstrikes early in the conflict on Iraqi troops who approached the site and risked exposing it, per sources cited in the report. The outpost was reportedly erected under extreme secrecy shortly before the US and Israel launched the surprise, unprovoked aerial bombardment of Iran, and at a moment Tehran thought it was negotiating with Washington.

Illustrative: IDF image

The WSJ further said the secret base was placed there with US awareness and used it as a logistics hub for Israeli air force operations, further with Israeli special forces operating. 

According to details in the report, the site was to assist in any emergency special forces operations connected with the bombing raids on nearby Iran:

Search-and-rescue teams were positioned there in case Israeli pilots were downed. None have been. When a U.S. F-15 was shot down near Isfahan, Israel offered to help, but U.S. forces managed the rescue of two airmen themselves, one of the people said. Israel did carry out airstrikes to help protect the operation.

The Israeli base was almost discovered in early March. Iraqi state media said a local shepherd reported unusual military activity in the area, including helicopter flights, and the Iraqi military sent troops to investigate. Israel kept them at bay with airstrikes, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

In the end, no rescue missions became necessary, or at least as far as public awareness goes. There may be much that happened related to the outpost which remains classified, however.

The report further describes that after a US F-15 fighter jet was downed near Isfahan, Israel offered assistance, but US forces recovered the two crew members on their own. Strangely, the Pentagon has still issued nothing confirmable related to that operation, and not even the identities of the rescued pilots are as yet known.

The base almost was exposed in early March after Iraqi state media reported that a shepherd spotted suspicious military activity in the area, including helicopter movements, triggering an Iraqi military investigation.

Certainly if Iraqi forces had discovered it, the base would have been immediately attacked, especially by pro-Iran paramilitary forces.

The blue lines on the Israeli flag symbolize the Nile and Euphrates rivers – the borders of the biblical "Greater Israel"

In other news, Israel maintained a secret base inside Iraq and attacked Iraqi soldiers when they attempted to investigate it https://t.co/sHoetrHrOC

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 9, 2026

As the WSJ story becomes more well-known inside Iraq this weekend, rising anger and outrage is expected, at a sensitive moment that a new future Iraqi prime minister has been tapped.

"This reckless operation was carried out without coordination or approval," Qais Al-Muhammadawi, deputy commander of Iraq's Joint Operations Command, told Iraqi state media following the March incident.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 15:10

Bahrain Intensifies Crackdown On Shia Communities, Arrests Dozens Over Alleged IRGC Links

Via The Cradle

Bahrain’s Interior Ministry announced on Saturday the arrest of 41 citizens, including multiple Shia religious leaders, over alleged ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The ministry said security services uncovered the alleged network through "investigations, security reports, and previous Public Prosecution cases related to espionage involving foreign entities." The detainees are accused of "espionage involving foreign entities and sympathy with blatant Iranian aggression."

AFP via Getty Images

Around 30 Shia Muslim clerics were among the 41 arrested, as the Gulf monarchy intensifies a campaign of raids and arrests predominantly targeting Shia religious figures and seminary teachers in Bahrain.

The arrests mark a new security escalation by Manama and form part of a continued policy of restrictions against clerics in the country. The Bahrain News Agency reported that legal proceedings are now underway against the 41 detainees.

Earlier this week, Bahrain stripped three lawmakers of their seats in parliament after they publicly criticized the monarchy’s crackdown on dissent over its support for the US–Israeli war on Iran:

In a vote in Manama on Thursday, the Bahraini House of Representatives revoked the memberships of Abdulnabi Salman, Mahdi al-Shuwaikh, and Mamdouh al-Saleh. The three lawmakers publicly opposed the monarchy’s move last week to revoke the citizenship of 69 Bahrainis and their families, accusing them of “sympathizing with Iran.”

Bahrain has a majority Shia population but is ruled by the Sunni Al-Khalifa royal family. The kingdom hosts the largest US naval base in the region, home to the US Fifth Fleet.

That decision came less than two weeks after Bahrain revoked the citizenship of 69 people over alleged support for Iranian retaliatory attacks on the country.

The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy described the move as "dangerous" and a "blatant abuse of power," saying the individuals had not been publicly named and that their legal status remained unclear.

Since the launch of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28, Bahrain has escalated a sweeping domestic crackdown tied to alleged support for Tehran and opposition to the country’s western alignments.

#Bahrain’s regime has intensified a sweeping campaign of raids and arrests targeting Shiite religious scholars, including prominent cleric and seminary professor Sheikh Mahmoud Al-A’ali, amid the systematic crackdown tied to political expression and public positions regarding the… pic.twitter.com/aJ52unoTzb

— Alwefaq Society - English (@AlWefaqEnglish) May 9, 2026

Authorities have reportedly arrested hundreds of people since then, targeting Shia communities, banning public gatherings, detaining activists, and jailing dissidents.

In March, Bahraini authorities tortured Shia activist Mohammad al-Mousawi to death after accusing him of being an Iranian spy, with AP citing witnesses who described signs of beatings, cable whippings, and electrocution burns on his body.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 14:35

Hantavirus-Plagued Cruise Ship Begins Evacuations

Early Sunday morning, the Dutch-flagged cruise ship MV Hondius, anchored off Spain's Canary Islands, began evacuating passengers after a deadly hantavirus outbreak triggered a multinational public health response and put global health authorities on red alert.

"The docking took place at 6:30 a.m. and has been a success in spite of all the adversities," Health Minister Mónica García said in a statement quoted by Bloomberg News.

Health officials have found that "all passengers are asymptomatic," García added.

The U.S. government is evacuating American passengers from a cruise ship tied to a deadly hantavirus outbreak. A CDC team is currently in the Canary Islands assessing potential exposure and monitoring needs.

Passengers will be flown back to the U.S. on a medical repatriation… pic.twitter.com/CSrpbpMXLR

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) May 10, 2026

Ship-tracking data show that the Hondius was anchored in Granadilla Port, Tenerife, and has since docked.

Last week, the World Health Organization identified eight hantavirus cases linked to the cruise ship: five suspected and three confirmed by laboratory testing. This includes three deaths. There were 149 passengers and crew members on the ship before the evacuation.

The outbreak appears to have started after a Dutch man and his wife traveled in South America, then boarded the Hondius in Argentina on April 1. Both died weeks later.

The New York Post identified patient zero as ornithologist Leo Schilperoord, who was on a multi-month birdwatching trip in South America with his wife, Mirjam Schilperoord. Both died.

Hantavirus is typically spread through rodent droppings or contaminated dust. People can inhale contaminated particles when rodent waste is disturbed. Symptoms may take weeks to appear, making containment and monitoring difficult.

On Friday, President Trump was questioned by reporters about the virus-plagued cruise ship. He said the situation is "very much under control."

Polymarket odds of a hantavirus pandemic have remained under 10% for the last several days.

//--> //--> Hantavirus pandemic in 2026?
Yes 7% · No 93%
View full market & trade on Polymarket

We questioned at the end of last week whether the vaccine stock trade was back, with Moderna conveniently announcing it was working on a vaccine.

The story count for "pandemic" in Bloomberg news stories remains well below the highs of the Covid-era mass hysteria driven by corporate media.

Will WHO create mass hysteria? That is the question.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 12:50

Housing Market's Crucial "Spring Selling Season" Is In Tatters

Authored by Wolf Richter via Wolf Street,

Late last year and early this year, the story was that dropping mortgage rates, powered by big rate cuts from the Fed, would unleash demand in the housing market in the spring – the key spring selling season – and that sales volume would take off and that Realtors’ commissions would rocket to the moon.

And so that didn’t happen. Inflation has been reheating for months before the war and before the energy price spike. The energy price spike in March and April then added to that resurgence of inflation. The Fed is now talking about a possibility of rate hikes as next move. And longer-term Treasury yields, such as the 10-year Treasury yield, rose in March and April in response to inflation fears. Mortgage rates, which track those Treasury yields but are higher, rose back to the 6.5% range. And the housing market remained in the same-old-same-old frozen pattern that it has been in for four years after the price explosion from mid-2020 through mid-2022. And it continued in the latest week.

Mortgage applications to purchase a home – a measure of demand that may become actual home sales in the future, so a forward-looking indicator of home sales – dipped in the current survey week and remained near rock-bottom levels, down by 34% from the same week in 2019, according to data by the Mortgage Bankers Association today. That level of mortgage applications is below even the collapse of mortgage applications during the lockdown in the spring of 2020.

The average weekly mortgage rate for conforming 30-year fixed mortgages rose to 6.45% in the latest reporting week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association today.

For the past 7 weeks, this measure of mortgage rates has been back in the middle of the 6-7% range, the range it has been in since September 2022, except for some breakouts to the upside.

These mortgage rates are not high in a historical context; they’re only high in the context of the Fed’s QE which started in 2009 and took on mega-proportions during the pandemic.

Under its QE programs, the Fed bought trillions of dollars of securities, including mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which repressed mortgage rates below 3%. But this massive amount of reckless money printing was part of the toxic mix at the time that triggered the worst inflation in 40 years. With mortgage rates below 3% and inflation at 9% – negative “real” mortgage rates, better than free money – home prices exploded and are now too high. And that inflation has refused to go back into the bottle.

Pending home sales for March – deals that were signed in March but haven’t closed yet – also remained at rock bottom, down by 30% from March 2019. In January, they’d dropped to a record low in the data by the National Association of Realtors going back to mid-2010, and in February and March, they inched up from that record low.

And the much-hyped spring selling season has turned into the fourth dud in a row: 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026.

Mortgage applications to refinance a home instantly react to even small changes in mortgage rates. A dip in mortgage rates unleashes homeowners like a coiled spring to refinance a mortgage at even a slightly lower rate. And when mortgage rates rise after that dip, demand re-fizzles. These dynamics have been repeated several times since mid-2024.

Refis do nothing for the housing market, though they’re crucial for the income of mortgage brokers and lenders. But they may have a positive impact on consumer spending when they lower the mortgage payments and leave borrowers more money to spend on other stuff; or when they’re cash-out refis, the proceeds of which might then be used to pay down more expensive debts, or might be used for spending projects.

The up-front fees to be paid by homeowners when they refinance a mortgage – typically 1% of the mortgage balance – are generally added to the loan amount where they’re largely out of sight but increase the payment, which reduces the advantage of lower mortgage rates.

Homeowners can do a breakeven analysis with online calculators or through brokers and mortgage lenders, to see if refinancing a mortgage is worth it. When mortgage rates briefly drop and the breakeven analysis tilts their way, they pull the trigger, thereby creating these curious spikes in refis.

But even these spikes in refis since mid-2024 were relatively low compared to the two-year refi boom from early 2020 through 2021 when the Fed’s QE repressed mortgage rates below 3%, and everyone and their dog refinanced into these low-rate mortgages.

And now they’re part of the “lock-in effect,” when these homeowners avoid buying a new home, and thereby selling their current home, because the new home’s much higher price would have to be financed at a much higher mortgage rate, and that math doesn’t work very well for many people. But life does happen. My analysis: Update on the “Lock-in Effect” in the Housing Market: Below-3% & 4% Mortgages Fade Very Slowly

This longer view demonstrates the inverse relationship between mortgage rates (blue) and applications to refinance a mortgage (red):

In case you missed it: New Single-Family Home Prices Drop Further amid Inventory Glut. But Lower Prices Beget Higher Sales

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 12:15

Soaring Death Toll In Lebanon As Full-Fledged Israel, Hezbollah Fighting Returns

Full-fledged war has returned to Lebanon as the government has announced that at least 23 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes on Saturday alone. 

Stretching back into Friday, this brings the total death count to at least 50 killed over the past 24 hours of Israeli bombings, also as Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) late on Saturday said rescue operations were still ongoing for bystanders missing underneath the rubble.

Illustrative prior image: Getty

Heavy bombing has not ceased in southern Lebanon, as the Israeli military says it's trying to root out and destroy Hezbollah, including raids on the districts of Nabatieh, Bint Jbeil and Sidon, among others. Several were also killed in Tyre on Friday.

But Israeli forces have also absorbed casualties, with The Times of Israel describing the following serious drone strikes launched from Lebanon:

On Saturday, the terror group launched several salvos of explosive-laden drones and rockets at Israeli forces. One drone struck Israeli territory, close to the border with Lebanon, seriously injuring a reservist soldier and moderately wounding a reservist officer and another reservist soldier.

The troops were taken to Galilee Medical Center, which said the seriously wounded soldier underwent surgery and was now stable in the intensive care unit. The moderately wounded troops were scheduled for surgery later.

In another incident, the military said an explosive drone struck an unmanned engineering vehicle in southern Lebanon, causing damage. No injuries were caused.

There are reports of the IDF issuing evacuation orders for various areas, only to attack the so-called safe zones. For example the below comes via Israeli sources:

"In light of the Hezbollah terror organization’s violations of the ceasefire agreement, the IDF is forced to act against it with force and does not intend to harm you," warned army spokesman Col. Avichay Adraee.

Meanwhile, Lebanese media reported that Israeli airstrikes on Saturday killed at least 12 people, including in areas where no evacuation orders were issued.

Starting in late April a 10-day ceasefire brokered by Washington took effect, even as Israeli forces remain deployed in a strip of Lebanese territory several miles deep along the border. That appears to be effectively collapsed, also as Israel has been upping its targeting of Beirut suburbs of late.

Israel calls the Lebanese strip of land now occupied by IDF troops a 'buffer zone' - but Lebanon sees it as a land grab. Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally and leader of the Amal Movement - which is the other big Shia organization in Lebanon - has recently stated that if Israel "maintains its occupation, whether of areas, positions, or by drawing yellow lines, it will smell the scent of resistance every day." He added: "If they insist on remaining, they will face resistance, and our history bears witness to that."

Israeli airstrikes on vehicles south of Beirut killed 4 people, while strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 13, state media and the Health Ministry said.

Iran war: https://t.co/GEBscM5Zz2 pic.twitter.com/6mHpjCkVis

— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 9, 2026

Lebanese officials have also charged Israel with trying to erase the Lebanese presence in southern Lebanon in a genocidal act, or 'cultural genocide'.

This after Israeli forces have carried out demolitions in southern villages, targeting what they describe as Hezbollah infrastructure embedded in civilian areas.

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 11:40

Winning? Do We Need To Understand UBI

Submitted by Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

Winning? Do We Need To Understand UBI

Iran (and the potential for a deal) has continued to move markets. As the 30-year bond rose above 5% earlier this week, we got news that we have a new approach to resolving the conflict – a one-page MOU. Markets (ex-oil) rallied around various “deal” headlines all week.

Spider, Bret, and I spent some time discussing this on Friday’s Podcast – The U.S. Proposal to End the War (also available on Spotify and iTunes).

Information continues to leak out in dribs and drabs about how those negotiations are doing. There continue to be conflicting messages. In the back of my mind, I’m increasingly forced to remember what we mentioned at the start of the conflict – Iran has never won a war but has never lost a negotiation.

There was a time when that statement didn’t seem likely to be reflective of this conflict. From “unconditional surrender” to various other metrics (especially surrounding nuclear weapons capabilities) we seem to be drifting to – let’s open the Strait and figure out the rest later?

The U.S. has displayed exceptionalism on every military task that it has been asked to undertake during this conflict. While we have had a limited presence in the Strait, our maritime efforts have been successful in accomplishing the missions that have been defined. Yes, Project Freedom was short lived. Not so much because the U.S. couldn’t deal with the threat (we successfully defended ourselves against Iranian missiles, drones, and small boats), but because it became pretty clear that not many commercial vessels were ready, under current circumstances, to risk challenging Iran.

We did argue, earlier in the week, that the admin’s assertion that Iran only has a few weeks before its economy collapsed, was underestimating the Iranians. They in all likelihood have prepared for this economic pressure and likely have significant IOUs with countries like China (and possibly even crypto holdings) to survive months not weeks. A regime that will shoot 40,000 or more citizens in a week for protesting is not going to be overly concerned with “standard of living” issues. Finally, all the “hype” around the fact that Iran’s ability to store oil is running out and this is causing them to shut the pumps (resulting in long-lasting damages) seemed “optimistic” at best. Iran has been decreasing the pressure, reducing the flow, and giving more leeway to when their reservoirs fill up. They also have the ability to just pump oil back onto the sand (and there are some reports of oil slicks in the Gulf). So, yes, if they left their facilities on full pressure, and were worried about “dumping” oil, it might be a week or two before irreparable damage is done. But they aren’t doing that. Also, according to many in the oil industry, other countries in the region are employing the same tactics. It isn’t just Iran that faces an inability to load oil onto transportation systems (pipelines or tankers). Much of the region faces similar challenges from the inability/unwillingness to transit the Strait.

A deal would be good, but a good deal would be better.

We discuss our views, options, and even highlight a couple of possibly great outcomes in the podcast (linked above), but we do seem to be drifting towards expediency rather than something more comprehensive.

I am still in the camp that the U.S. will once again become frustrated with Iran and launch another set of attacks, to truly push this conflict to a conclusion that leaves the world much safer.

Do We Need to Understand UBI?

With the release of some formerly classified information, I probably should be talking about UFOs, but somehow I’m here thinking about UBI. UBI or Universal Basic Income is a topic I haven’t paid much attention to.

It reminds me a bit of some other economic theories that I paid little attention to, without doing much damage to my work. 

• Mint the Coin was a movement “predicting” or “encouraging” the government to mint a trillion dollar coin to avert the debt ceiling. It would get some traction periodically and every once in a while made me wish I spent some time even thinking about this “absurd” (in my opinion) “solution” to our debt ceiling.
• Brexit. Yes, Brexit eventually happened, but it took so long to play out (as does everything in Europe including their “inevitable” adoption of ProSec ) that it was at best an undercurrent of markets, and I would argue (as someone who largely ignored it), not an undercurrent to the global economy. Important for the U.K. for sure, but I think I saved myself a lot of time and effort by largely ignoring it.

The point here is that I’ve been “dismissive” of any conversation around UBI. The concept has seemed anti-capitalist and almost “un-American.” The U.S. has “safety nets” of all sorts. Every “capitalist” country has their own version of “safety nets” – some more robust than others. UBI always seemed “a step too far,” especially in the U.S., but I cannot help thinking about it, as I struggle to digest the data this week – the “hard” data as well as the anecdotal data.

For the second month in a row, we had (at least on the surface) very strong job growth – Back to Back Dingers.

If the only piece of economic data I had was the Establishment survey of jobs, I’d be pretty pumped for the economy.

But that is NOT the only piece of data we have. There are so many ways I could express concern, that it would take too long to write, and would become repetitive, so I will stick to what some other people said recently. Here are “paraphrased” comments that caught my attention:

• Recession-level demand slump in North America. (Whirlpool)
• Consumer sentiment is certainly not improving, and it may be getting a little bit worse. (McDonald’s)
• Consumers are literally running out of money toward the end of the month. (Kraft Heinz)

There are many stocks we can look to, in order to gauge the state of the consumer. HD (Home Depot), for example, is almost 25% off of its high from last October. LOW (Lowe’s) is off 20% from its high set in February. That tells me there is something off with the consumer (rather than something company specific). If people are not spending money on home improvement, that indicates a lack of optimism from consumers.

Since I’m not a huge fan (or even a small fan) of the various CONsumer CONfidence surveys, I feel almost bad referencing it for the 2nd month in a row. Yes, it hit all-time lows, but that isn’t what caught my eye. Okay, it caught my eye, but everyone saw that. This is the chart from that survey that I find most interesting.

Here we get the responses from the Republicans for the University of Michigan Survey. It is 85. Far above the 48.2 headline number (which is the one that set a new record low). At 85 it is well above the lows during the Biden administration.

But this is the lowest Republican sentiment while President Trump has been in office.

That, to me, is important.

I have never understood how or why Republicans and Democrats would have such a different view of the economy. Maybe, if somehow, it was picking up differences in regional economies (areas where Republicans reside are booming, and vice versa), but it seems counterintuitive that the difference on economic outlook is so tied to party. Which is why I largely ignore this entire CONsumer CONfidence set of data, but the recent erosion in the chart makes me think twice.

AI versus Affordability

I really, really, want to bring up the line from Apocalypse Now – “Charlie Don’t Surf.” Maybe I’ve been spending too much time fixated on the war.

But I really want to write something along the lines of “AI Don’t Spend.” Or “one person’s expense, is another person’s revenue.”

So far any concerns about job losses due to AI don’t seem to be showing up in the jobs data. This is likely because:

• The buildout of AI requires a lot of hiring. Not just making the components necessary to run a data center (chips, cooling, electricity, etc.) but also the actual construction of the data centers and all the “picks and shovels” around data center construction.
• AI, in most cases, seems to have slowed hiring, rather accelerated the firing of employees. Attrition is playing the biggest role in adjusting headcount to offset AI spending (and productivity, to the extent it is being productive).

I’m stuck believing that the pressure on the consumer, so far, is primarily due to affordability, rather than job losses.

Concern about the future of jobs or pay may be influencing consumer sentiment and spending (I’m going to keep making T-Reports so confusing that AI cannot replicate them any time soon), but the bulk of the issue is affordability right now. What the heck will happen if job losses, especially due to AI, increase?

Let’s use some “water” analogies here (to try to link into the surf comment).

• A rising tide lifts all boats. This is the sort of economic growth we are all used to. Everything does better. It doesn’t really matter what you do, or where you are, you do better. This economy does not currently have that “vibe” to me.
• We see who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. Always a good one, but not sure how relevant it is to today’s economy. I think we are more about all boats not lifting, than we are about a tide going out.
• If the water is rising and you are anchored to the ground, you are in trouble. Okay, I just made that one up. But we’ve all seen it in movies.
• The water level is rising in a room, where the “hero” cannot get out. There is real fear. If there wasn’t some fear of this, Harry Houdini probably wouldn’t be as famous as he is.

I think this latter analogy may be the most apt:

• The water is rising (affordability). More and more people are getting sucked into the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual struggle of making ends meet. If we want to go down the “k”- shaped analogy, more and more of the k is underwater. Maybe it was only the lower leg of the k that was struggling, but as the water rises (affordability), more of the k is being covered. We may well be into the upper leg of the k. I guess we better hope that is a K rather than a k where the upper leg is long and goes high, but I’m concerned it is not (I still stick with the i-shaped economy, where a handful is doing extremely well and the rest of us are seeing the water rise).

On that pleasant note…

Bottom Line

Anyone with a job that can be disrupted by AI should own AI stocks as a “hedge.” I cannot tell if I’m being facetious or serious, but it is something to think about.

It is too early to spend a lot of time trying to understand how UBI would work, but I suspect we will start hearing more about this rather than less as affordability remains an issue. The issue will decline once we get a deal with Iran, but the affordability issue is not going away (I restrained myself from calling it a crisis, but…).

On credit, I continue to think credit will do fine and like owning private credit as marks seem to be adjusting to a new reality. More for a “trade” than being married to the position. I will get a detailed report out this week, as I am actually not on the road this week!

On rates, our more detailed analysis from last weekend’s Living in an AI World stands. Largely rangebound, with 4.35% to 4.4% as the middle of the range on 10s.

Continue to focus on ProSec themes, here and in Europe. If we get a deal, expect the admin to turn more attention to things like electricity production and the processing, refining, and smelting of commodities (as well as their extraction). A lot is being done in the background, but the President remains a key driver and while his attention has been diverted, we haven’t seen as much progress on ProSec as we’d like (away from domestic-focused chip manufacturing). That should change!

Thanks for everything and best wishes to all the moms out there! Hope you and your family and friends have an amazing day today! (Hopefully, every day is amazing, but today everyone should focus on the importance of family, more than the average day, where things like “work” get in the way).

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 11:05

 

 

The transcript from this week’s MiB Howard Lindzon, Social Leverage, is below.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube (video), YouTube (audio), and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

~~~

 

Masters in Business with Howard Lindzon, Hosted by Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio

 

00:53  Howard Lindzon: Wow. If only my kids could hear

00:55  Barry Ritholtz: That. I know. They think you’re just an old man. They don’t even

00:58  Howard Lindzon: Know it. They wince.

00:59  Barry Ritholtz: Show, use the finger and ask for pity. Surgically reattached.

01:05  Howard Lindzon: Surgically reattached is a lesson of how lucky we are. What we’re you’re I’ve lived without a acute pain. Like first of all, when I, when I cut it off. It’s amazing how many people do do that.

01:19  Barry Ritholtz: Was it still dangling on or was it severed completely?

01:22  Howard Lindzon: You pick it up, you call 9 1 1 and you go As a Jew. I wasn’t sure if I boil it or freeze it. So that was the question I asked. 9 1 1. ’cause it’s never happened.

01:31  Barry Ritholtz: Well, as a Jew you were only supposed to take the tip off. Not

01:33  Howard Lindzon: The whole thing. I don dunno. If you cook it, I don’t know if you freeze it. It’s like lobster. So the woman on 9 1 1 said to Please don’t bleed out. I go, that is not helpful right now. Now as luck would have it, I live on Coronado. Good

01:48  Barry Ritholtz: Advice. Yeah.

01:49  Howard Lindzon: Out. Good advice. I’m like the one guy, hold on time. I call, write down, call 9 1 1. I go, let’s not talk. Get me a machine over to my house. Get me a robot. So living in Coronado is a magical place. You’ve been there couple times. And, and the great news about Corona is the Navy Bays, Navy Seals are there. It’s like the, it’s the greatest place.

02:05  Barry Ritholtz: They have a hospital right there. They

02:07  Howard Lindzon: Do, but I’m saying there’s cops and firemen everywhere.

02:11  Barry Ritholtz: Everywhere.

02:11  Howard Lindzon: Right. So literally as I’m dialing 9 1 1 IC it’s like they knew I cut my finger off. So, so as a miracle would have it. The the, the young. I’ve never really had to be in an ambulance themselves. Right. So, again, I’m lucky. And they took me off island ’cause they found a hand surgeon who turned out to be 30 years old, which freaked me out. Right. Because I thought he’d sew it on backwards or whatever. Right. Anyways, long story short, you know, I was at peace. Once you realize you’re gonna live. Yeah. ’cause it’s, I’ve never had that happen. Like, something like that happen

02:41  Barry Ritholtz: Was, were you gushing blood?

02:42  Howard Lindzon: Was it frightening? Yeah. Yeah. I, as a favorite of my wife, I went to the neighbors to bleed. So it was like the next day it was spotless in front of our house. Right. But as luck would have, everybody did a great job. The, the, the amazing thing, we make fun of so many things in America these days. The emergency system, I needed it. I don’t care what I pay in taxes. It was, it was amazing right

03:06  Barry Ritholtz: Now. And you still have 10 fingers?

03:08  Howard Lindzon: Yeah, I have 10 fingers for now. The joke in the family is, I don’t want it ’cause it’s kind of like a dead finger at this point. Oh

03:14  Barry Ritholtz: Really? Oh, will it be functional? Will you regain function?

03:17  Howard Lindzon: It feels like if I, if I’m using it, it just feels like a, a wet skin.

03:21  Barry Ritholtz: Right.

03:22  Howard Lindzon: And so I’m not happy, but the doctor was like, you can decide later. It was his, it was his

03:28  Barry Ritholtz: Fault. If you want a prosthetic or

03:30  Howard Lindzon: No, not a prosthetic. If you just want to work with a nub, it’s only a third of the finger. Right. So anyways, it’s, it was traumatic, but here we are. Wow. Alright. Yeah. There’s great stories. If you’re a storyteller. Yeah. Cut a finger off. I mean, if you want traffic on Twitter, bleed out.

03:48  Barry Ritholtz: Yeah. You, that’s, you get traffic. But no engagement. That’s the problem with Twitter. I wanna go

03:51  Howard Lindzon: Viral. I got nine chances. Well,

03:55  Barry Ritholtz: 21 if you wanna be accurate.

03:57  Howard Lindzon: Toes are not good in the operator. No fingers are good.

04:00  Barry Ritholtz: And 21, the 21st. No, go

04:03  Howard Lindzon: The 21st. You, you could be president.

04:07  Barry Ritholtz: So let, let’s roll back a little bit and, and start with your, your early education bachelor’s from Commerce University. Bachelor’s in Commerce from the university at Western Ontario.

04:23  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. It’s a famous business school for

04:25  Barry Ritholtz: Canada. MBA Arizona State and then famous

04:27  Howard Lindzon: For bums. Arizona State Business School. What does that even mean?

04:32  Barry Ritholtz: And then masters at Thunderbird School of Glen Global Management, which

04:35  Howard Lindzon: Was a great school now owned by Arizona.

04:37  Barry Ritholtz: Arizona State. And a great animated cartoon in the sixties and

04:39  Howard Lindzon: Seventies. Correct. Correct.

04:40  Barry Ritholtz: So, so what, given all that, what was the original career plan?

04:44  Howard Lindzon: Comedy? Yeah. I grew up

04:48  Barry Ritholtz: You and Martin Short, right outta Canada. Right.

04:50  Howard Lindzon: Not mine. He was already older. But I grew up in Toronto and that was, so when I was 75 watching Johnny Carson on my first tv, you saw everybody and it was like your living room. Right. And so it’s, Toronto had Second City. I had John Candy, Martin Short, Eugene Levy. Second City was before Saturday Night Live. And, and so I grew up just

05:11  Barry Ritholtz: Surrounding around the same time, weren’t they 74

05:13  Howard Lindzon: Little earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Three earlier. So I’m like 12 years old giggling, you know, and there was no internet. So you were like, go to the comedy clubs with your friends. Toronto had this clubs called Yuck Ys, which was a famous chain. Yes. Like the improv but of Canada. And you had Mike Myers,

05:31  Barry Ritholtz: Another Canadian. Yeah.

05:32  Howard Lindzon: Everybody exploding onto the scene at, at the same time. And so I was doing standup in high school, get out, but not good obviously. But Mike Myers would come, come up. Mike Myers would come up and kill. He was like 17 years old. Right. Jim Carrey’s. 14 years old. Right. And

05:49  Barry Ritholtz: Killing.

05:49  Howard Lindzon: Right. And so everybody wanted to be a comic. No different than like the Web 2.0. Everybody went to Stanford to be an engineer. Right. At certain, in nineties it was investment banking. Right now it’ll be robots and ai, it’s just what’s in the water. And I grew up with comedy in the water. And so that was the goal. And obviously, you know, with Jewish parents at the time, that ain’t flying. Right. Especially I wasn’t good. Right. And so I went to school.

06:15  Barry Ritholtz: You, you dropped that. You weren’t good as like an afterthought. I think if you’re successful and earning a living. Well I wasn’t even a Jewish parent will put up with you being

06:26  Howard Lindzon: Stand up. No, it would be nuts if

06:27  Barry Ritholtz: Warn like Jerry Seinfeld’s mom is fine with it. Yes.

06:30  Howard Lindzon: But I’m saying now, if my son came in and said I’m gonna go hit the comedy tour, I’d warn ’em how dark it is. But I’d say go make it. Go on YouTube. Like

06:38  Barry Ritholtz: Right. Go do you don’t to 10,000 hours. Don’t, don’t have to live in motels to

06:41  Howard Lindzon: Do 10,000 hours. Yeah. The faster you get those 10,000 hours and the better.

06:45  Barry Ritholtz: That’s right. So you grow up in Canada. Yeah. You start your career in Phoenix and San Diego and New York City. Yeah. I’m curious. That’s an interesting, you know, Toronto, Phoenix, San Diego, New York. Yeah. Yeah. How did that geographical upbringing affect your perspective as an investor?

07:06  Howard Lindzon: Oh, as an investor, I don’t know. Because as a, as a kid I was lucky. Yeah. Because if you’re Jewish in Toronto or New York at that area, you go to Florida, you know, the original Del Boca Vista. And, but my dad was different and he discovered Phoenix. And so in the eighties, like Phoenix was like swamp coolers. And he just liked the weather. And I don’t know,

07:29  Barry Ritholtz: I’ll let you on a little secret. The weather in Florida ain’t great. It’s humid. It, it

07:34  Howard Lindzon: It, well to my dad, obviously that’s the way he thought. It’s cold. It’s, yeah. So that’s the way he discovered Phoenix and bought a home. And I liked golf and biking. And so lucky for me, we had a, I went to, instead of going to Florida, we were going to Arizona. And so I would go to the football games as a kid and I was like a SU that was my dream giant is just, just, just go to Arizona State University. Which I ended up, you know, doing for grad school, which isn’t a great grad school, but it was party school. But that was my dream. Get outta Canada. Right. So I got lucky. I, you know, my parents exposed me to, you know, Arizona and I went to a SU at the time. It was amazing. And then if you’re Jewish in Phoenix, ’cause of the summers, right. It’s, it’s like New York goes to Florida in the winter. Jewish people in Phoenix go to this, go to San Diego in the summer to get out of

08:24  Barry Ritholtz: The right. They wanted, it’s closer to the ocean. It’s a nice weather. It’s

08:27  Howard Lindzon: Six hour drive and it’s 70 degrees.

08:29  Barry Ritholtz: And I love La Jolla and that whole area is amazing. So the whole,

08:32  Howard Lindzon: It’s called Zs. So Arizonans flood San Diego to to Del Mar. I wish. And so we grew up, Coronado not grew up, sorry, I I, my in-laws had a place in Coronado. And so when we had kids, I’m like, get out of the heat. If you’re not rich, you

08:48  Barry Ritholtz: Summered in Coronado.

08:49  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. We would, not summer, but a week here, A week there.

08:51  Barry Ritholtz: I wish California wasn’t six hours away if it was two hours away. A hundred percent. We were just in San Francisco.

09:00  Howard Lindzon: It’s fun again,

09:01  Barry Ritholtz: It’s a boom town. Yeah. Tales of an apocalyptic hellscape have been wildly

09:05  Howard Lindzon: Exaggerated. It’s, it’s still not my fa but it’s cool. It,

09:07  Barry Ritholtz: It’s less homeless than New York.

09:09  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. I’m not, I’m not just talking about homeless. The people are still,

09:13  Barry Ritholtz: They’re educated. Yeah. They’re intelligent. I mean if you’re, if you lose, if you’re

09:17  Howard Lindzon: Used, it’s not New York man, York City. It’s not New York. You

09:20  Barry Ritholtz: Could, you know, when you leave New York, I, I I I don’t know about you. I make a conscious effort to not be that New York abroad, even out of Yeah. It’s fun out of town. Yeah. California, especially San Francisco. San doesn’t feel like you’ve left town. I

09:41  Howard Lindzon: Love it. Yeah. I mean, I just have the California bug. Yeah, same. But coast to coast is a dream and I get to live it. So

09:47  Barry Ritholtz: It, it’s just a lot of travel.

09:48  Howard Lindzon: The thing about, and I do like Florida a lot, but same as you six hours like Phoenix or San Diego, Florida is like not on the map, no brainer. Right. It’s no, no one does it. Right. Like it’s not a thing.

09:59  Barry Ritholtz: Right. No. Phoenix to San Diego makes sense. Yeah. Phoenix to Florida, just like New York to Florida makes sense. Correct. New York to, so

10:07  Howard Lindzon: You asked, so you asked how that happened. Yeah. That’s the rite of passage. Instead of Toronto, Florida my whole life, I jumped to the West coast and then I discovered San Diego through my in-laws and my wife and man. Yeah. Well you’ve been to Coronado, it’s, oh yeah.

10:21  Barry Ritholtz: It’s ridiculous. Yeah. So let’s, let me, let me wrestle this. Yeah. Yeah. Back into submission. So you’ve worn a lot of hats. Yeah. You are a hedge fund manager, a founder, a CEO, a seed investor. A media personality. Yeah. How do you describe to people who don’t know you, what you do?

10:38  Howard Lindzon: It’s a great question. My in-laws are in their eighties and they, they still ask me, what do we tell people you do? And I’m like, who the hell cares? Well, and the world’s now decided that for you, no one cares. Right. So what do you do? Right? Like I think we’re getting back into like where it’s, it you should be proud to have like a, what do you call profession? I don’t have a profession. So you asked how I got started as an investing. I got started as investing ’cause I failed at everything else. And which is kind of the Larry David part of it is like, I stumbled into it because the internet is like water. It’d be like discovering California. Like internet was like tech. So the nineties were like, I didn’t understand it was semiconductors. Right. Were full circle. You’re

11:21  Barry Ritholtz: Not a coder.

11:22  Howard Lindzon: I’m not a coder. I don’t even know how things work. I never did Radio Shack. Right, right. Like, so the odd, I like walkie talkies were freaking me out. So the odds of me being in tech are, are, are part of the comedy full circle. We are now back in a tech world. Robots, chips, like real stuff

11:39  Barry Ritholtz: Global. They get a little secret. We never left. It just kind of fell out. Favor.

11:43  Howard Lindzon: No, I, I found the goofball era. Web two was the goofball era where you and I were social media. You could be the class clown and have scale. Okay, now that’s gone again and class clown. You, now you need to be a bully again. It’s, it’s, you need to already have distribution.

11:58  Barry Ritholtz: Right. It’s hard to build distribution today. So I’m

12:01  Howard Lindzon: Saying when

12:01  Barry Ritholtz: Being an early adopter is certainly an advantage,

12:04  Howard Lindzon: It’s super. But now it, it doesn’t matter. You have to have real tech chops. Again, you can’t pose like I am, like I have imposter syndrome for the right reasons. Right. Because I’m an imposter. Meaning the internet left a little opening in 2006 for goofballs. And we got to participate in an era of free growth. When Facebook didn’t charge you or have an AI algorithm that blocked you. You could say whatever you want. People go, he’s funny and you could scale for free. Which is why we had an internet boom. Web 2.0, internet boom right after the internet crisis. Now we live in an era where those people are confusing their genius for a bull market. Right. And we’re all sick of those people.

12:44  Barry Ritholtz: Can can I push back on you a tiny a little bit? Sure. ’cause I know you for so, so well, for so long hold the imposter syndrome aside. The early internet rewarded people who could communicate effectively, be it work your way through the media, be it blogs or short form blogs like Twitter or other social media or podcasts or video and YouTube. There’s a whole run of different ways to use the internet to scale. Yeah. So it’s not an imposter. You basically just kept tacking into what was working. Oh, this works. Let’s do more of it. Of

13:37  Howard Lindzon: Course. But the era was free. So you had the great financial crisis. No one thought effort, the internet was gonna happen. So meaning Uber couldn’t be possible without Google maps. Right. Like people say Uber’s great. It wasn’t possible unless there was an iPhone. The cloud

13:54  Barry Ritholtz: Maps or media five global

13:55  Howard Lindzon: Process, people would be taping, I want a taxi without Google Maps, no one would know where to go.

13:58  Barry Ritholtz: That’s right. And all of that only worked because of the bubble and the build out of global crossing and metromedia fiber. So I’m saying a thousand dollars a mile bought for pennies.

14:09  Howard Lindzon: No, but my imposter syndrome is born of, of course I have an ego, but my imposter syndrome was surrounded by crazy people who, who are mistaking. As I was talking to Tim O’Brien, if this was, we went from a world where strength matter, not that long ago world. That

14:24  Barry Ritholtz: A century world, not even a century, a world where

14:25  Howard Lindzon: This matters.

14:26  Barry Ritholtz: Right? No, you And

14:27  Howard Lindzon: I’m like, people just, the humility is gone. And I feel it’s with my kids and everything. It’s with the injury and everything. You have to have some humility. We need to get back to having some humility and laughing at our success and going, wait a minute, it was a bull market. Zero interest there erp, there was the free internet. Aws, right? You had YouTube, you had, if you d here’s my question. If you aren’t successful, that’d be more interesting. I want to talk to the guy like the Larry David commercial with FTX. I mean he is like, right. Oh, the circle who fire,

15:01  Barry Ritholtz: Who needs a wheel? Who

15:02  Howard Lindzon: Needs fire? That was such a great commercial. ’cause only Larry, David or f you know, I know the guys who wrote the commercial that what made that commercial great is Larry David gets the joke. Right?

15:13  Barry Ritholtz: You idiots. He’s in on it.

15:14  Howard Lindzon: You’re in on the fact that of course you made money, you worked at Facebook, it grew because the product was genius and tricked people into signing up. You did nothing except ride the the train. Now, I’m not saying smart people didn’t work there, but let’s remember Game of Thrones we’re all dead. The people that are successful today are Mark Andres and Shaman. The people that I can’t like, are hilarious to me. They have no humility is that Game of Thrones. There we’re all dead. First, second, first scene. Right. There’s a hammer in our heads and, and you and I might have a chance ’cause we’re the court gestures,

15:48  Barry Ritholtz: Right? That’s right. And

15:49  Howard Lindzon: If we dance well enough,

15:51  Barry Ritholtz: Dance with me Monkey boy. But

15:52  Howard Lindzon: Andreessen dead. Right? Jamag dead. Right. There’s just a pitchfork in their foreheads on the first scene of gladiators.

15:58  Barry Ritholtz: Well, if you, you know,

15:59  Howard Lindzon: So that’s the,

16:00  Barry Ritholtz: You have people like Da Vinci that were consultants to the king to help build weapons and things. So unless you can, you know, early days, days of Palantir. Unless you can say, sure. Hey, here’s how to make a better catapult. Sure. You know, those guys survive.

16:16  Howard Lindzon: So I’m saying I come along with like tweeting stock twits. Like, it was just enabling communication. Listen, I’m very proud of this stuff. Yeah. But I’m also can laugh about how stupid it is. Like I don’t have another trick. Like the internet left this opening. Kind of like discovering California, if you’re early to discover California made it pass the Indians and the mountains. Right? Didn’t get robbed by like

16:39  Barry Ritholtz: Murdered stampeded cash.

16:41  Howard Lindzon: Like right, let’s carry all our money in a stage coast pulled by horses at three miles an hour. What are the odds we get killed? Right. It’s impossible. So the internet left this opening and I snuck through it. And it’s fun to look back with some humor at the whole thing. You, you’re gonna let, I think the hole’s closed up.

16:58  Barry Ritholtz: Like Elon

16:59  Howard Lindzon: Owns the pipes. Zuckerberg owns the pipes. True social owns their version of a pipe. TikTok has an algorithm. How do you break

17:07  Barry Ritholtz: Through? Because those things get tired. And the next gen says, but there’s no scale. Just the way fa just the way Facebook became, oh, my parents are on Facebook. I’m out. I’m gonna go to Insta and then I’m gonna go to TikTok. And so there’ll be something new.

17:21  Howard Lindzon: You’re not questioning that. I’m just questioning. It’ll never have been e it’ll never be easier than when I made money. And I’m cool with that. I’m like, that’s the imposter

17:30  Barry Ritholtz: Syndrome. I don’t disa completely disagree with you. And you’re touching on a pet thesis. I love to ask, what would’ve happened to you had you been born a hundred years earlier or even

17:42  Howard Lindzon: Dad first

17:42  Barry Ritholtz: Seen, or even 25 years earlier. Right? Yeah. If you are born in 1940, what happens?

17:49  Howard Lindzon: I’m a furrier. Look at my ox mo

17:56  Barry Ritholtz: Beaver peltz. Look at my fur. I have all these beaver PEs.

17:58  Howard Lindzon: I have a, a cafe that has so many dishes on it that make no sense. Right. And I’m selling furs some, right. I mean, I had no shot. I have no

18:06  Barry Ritholtz: Strength. Right. Right. Just think about how fortunate you were. I cut my

18:09  Howard Lindzon: Own finger off.

18:09  Barry Ritholtz: Right? So if you didn’t bleed out your nine finger had forever. Well, but have watched to show the nick, you stick, you stick your finger into the fire and you ize it. That’s what the old timers would tell you. Get a bo get a piece of steel in the, in the fire. They’ll heat up the iron. You just burn it. And that’s your nine. All

18:28  Howard Lindzon: I thought about

18:28  Barry Ritholtz: Was like, Howie,

18:30  Howard Lindzon: What’s the, what’s the, is the ambulance gonna charge too much? And should I bleed at the neighbor’s house? Those were my first two thoughts. My wife will kill me that I’m bleeding in our yard.

18:39  Barry Ritholtz: Oh wow. Let’s do segment two. And I have to start by asking about social leverage. You’ve, you’ve been doing this for 20

19:30  Howard Lindzon: Years.

19:31  Barry Ritholtz: Yeah. So how from the first seed fund you did to today Yeah. Where you have a portfolio of 150 plus companies. Yeah. How has this evolved? First of all, what was the first company you invested in?

19:42  Howard Lindzon: So the first company I invested in was the, was so dumb car, cars direct 1998. The tippy top. As my wire left digitally, my fingertips or whatever bank it was coming from. It was worthless. Right. Meaning like it was a series Q

20:01  Barry Ritholtz: Right?

20:02  Howard Lindzon: It was But

20:02  Barry Ritholtz: You were just early. This was Yeah, yeah, yeah. pets.com eventually became, but I

20:06  Howard Lindzon: Was late in that cycle. ’cause was

20:08  Barry Ritholtz: Carvana would’ve been. Yeah. So

20:09  Howard Lindzon: I was a retail idiot. So I grew up, like I said, I went to a SU You’re gonna be a furrier. Right. That’s your chance. And so in a bad one. ’cause you know, so the internet comes along. I fall in love with stock market ’cause I had made some money at my, at my first startup and I had to be my own broker. And so Yahoo Finance, jim cramer street.com. Like they’re still around. Right. So, so those were my onboarding. Were the, were you were writing for the street.com.

20:37  Barry Ritholtz: So I was they were the dominant, like people who were younger. Don’t realize by the way, that

20:42  Howard Lindzon: Still massive. Right? Kramer’s still massive.

20:44  Barry Ritholtz: I I think the street.com doesn’t get the traffic. No,

20:47  Howard Lindzon: But Kramer’s

20:48  Barry Ritholtz: Massive. Well, yeah, well he’s on TV twice a day. But

20:51  Howard Lindzon: I’m saying this is 30 years. Yeah. So that was my imagine the introduction to retail investing. ’cause I couldn’t afford a Bloomberg. Still can’t. Right. So I think you can, I can afford afford the

21:00  Barry Ritholtz: Drapes. I think you could afford a Bloomberg Post. I

21:03  Howard Lindzon: Could, I wouldn’t know how to use

21:03  Barry Ritholtz: It post Robin Hood exit.

21:04  Howard Lindzon: I wouldn’t know how to use it unless there’s a phone line. What? Especially

21:07  Barry Ritholtz: Huh. Church. Especially with fingers. How you need all 10 fingers for the terminal.

21:12  Howard Lindzon: So, so I was inspired by you that street.com had murders, row of writers. It’s amazing to a new investor. Yeah. I just would sit and wait for articles to come out and Yahoo Finance. So I was on the message boards. Pearlman you like we were, the first download was on the message board

21:27  Barry Ritholtz: First. So Cars Direct was your first investment.

21:29  Howard Lindzon: And 10 years later I got 10% of my money back after it being successful. So, so my first thing was a disaster. What

21:37  Barry Ritholtz: Was your first successful investment?

21:38  Howard Lindzon: So my first successful investment was a cold call that I made pre-internet in a, in a company I probably talked about in the last show called The Grip. It was the, so Q So I had the good fortune of being an hour before the internet, before the internet, an hour before the internet. The thing before the thing was QVCI

21:57  Barry Ritholtz: Recall. Okay,

21:58  Howard Lindzon: So before the internet still on

21:59  Barry Ritholtz: TV

22:00  Howard Lindzon: QVC was the interim, right? Meaning there was the whole of Philadelphia was just old people on the phone saying, yes, yes, we’ll take your order and your credit card. Right? And if you were on QVC was a studio like this, what

22:11  Barry Ritholtz: Was the grip?

22:12  Howard Lindzon: And we had a product called The Grip. I recall this and it’s in the QVC Hall of Fame. So I made a cold call while I was a stockbroker to this kid. I thinking he was rich. ’cause back in the nineties, you, it was just like the movie Wall Street,

22:24  Barry Ritholtz: Dun, Brad Streets.

22:25  Howard Lindzon: You would get a newspaper and decide who you’re gonna cold call that day. Right. So I hated my job. That was my first job outta college. And I was cold calling to get rich clients. And I called this kid and he ended up needing money. Like he was just promoting himself.

22:38  Barry Ritholtz: He reverse pitched you.

22:40  Howard Lindzon: He he, he reverse pitched me. Right. And, and I, and I had to cobble up 25 grand from my mom and friends and I hated my, and I’m like, I’m in. And then he paid off his Amex with that 25. But by the way,

22:52  Barry Ritholtz: Every, every stockbroker and salesperson to appreciate a good sales pitch. Yeah. There’s soccer for a good sales pitch. Well,

22:58  Howard Lindzon: He was promoting himself and I was trying to sell him something and he sold me on his company. So what was, which turned out to be a home run company. What was the grip? It was, it was, he was a dropout. Mark Sced a unbelievable entrepreneur. And he had, he had made this product with five balloons wrapped around this Siberian millet. And we were the largest Siberian millet orderers in the world in the nineties. ’cause we were making millions of balls a month by, by hand and selling ’em with corporate logos on ’em during the whole nineties rather pharmacies. And this

23:29  Barry Ritholtz: Is the desk toy, a squeezey.

23:31  Howard Lindzon: But our genius was putting corporate logos

23:33  Barry Ritholtz: On it. Nobody had done that before.

23:35  Howard Lindzon: Well that industry was huge in the nineties. Corporate giveaways. Right. With trade shows and whatever. And we just got the right product at the right time and it worked. Oh my God. We were just, how many days we were the ball. There’s so many ball jokes, but they’d all get deleted here. We were the ball boys of the nineties. How many

23:52  Barry Ritholtz: Did you

23:53  Howard Lindzon: Sell? We did, we did 60, 70 million in sales. Get out. That’s amazing. And the margins were crazy because unlike retail, if you put Bed, bath and Beyond or compact on a ball, they own it. Right. There’s no returns. And so, so we just had this pet rock business where like Compact would call ’em, we need a million balls for com decks. And we’d just hire people, illegal aliens. And they would come into Phoenix and they would all cut their fingers off like making these things. But you made

24:19  Barry Ritholtz: It in the states. China.

24:20  Howard Lindzon: We made it in the States. China. We spent, we all our money was trying to figure out how to machine make these in the nineties. And we wasted so much money trying to like, get humans out of the process. Compact would order a million, pay you

24:33  Barry Ritholtz: Right in advance

24:34  Howard Lindzon: To start. Right. So we’d be buying cars. It was just two person company. Yeah. Like a bunch of like staff. And so we’d go out to lunch and buy cars because we were paid before we even started making the product. And, and so we were like, that’s how I learned business. Kind of like back to school.

24:51  Barry Ritholtz: School. And you started this on QVC? No,

24:53  Howard Lindzon: QVC picked us up and Mark used to go on TV and back back in the nineties in QVC if it was selling, they just kept you out there like a cartoon character. Right. They didn’t, they hadn’t scientifically gone to the profit per second Right. Model because they were surprised at their success. Right. So the grip appealed to like 70-year-old women who had carpal, like they just like squeezing little arthritis,

25:16  Barry Ritholtz: Little carpal tunnel,

25:17  Howard Lindzon: Little arthritis. So we created this $19 three pack that had soft medium. And I swear to God, you can’t make this up and soft, medium and firm and QVC just kept mark on stage all day and the numbers would go unbelievable. And, and it was a miracle. That was our first success. So that was, so I was very much, that was my first internet success. So when did social, sorry, that was my first success.

25:41  Barry Ritholtz: When did social leverage launch?

25:44  Howard Lindzon: So, so, so you, you and I both lived through this, the, the great financial crisis. And that was an era. So up until 2007, 2006, we lived in a world of financial leverage. Meaning, and we know what happened at the end of that stacking, you know, Excel came out. People didn’t have to, my dad, when I grew up with my dad in Toronto, if you did an acquisition, it was like 700 pieces of paper with pencil taped together. Then Excel comes out, which of course nothing, you know, everything’s made up at that point. And one, one sell off can change the world. Sure. But, but we became a, a world that the stacking things financial leverage, right? That was the banking era. And the end of the financial leverage era came in 2006, 2007 at the same time that social media came out. So the, the, the play on words was, I wanted do as an early adopter of social media, I was like, if an idiot like me. So the idea was social leverage, you can’t implode Right. With social leverage. Whereas this financial, you canceled. Of course. Well that was pre canceled. So I’m saying my thesis was, oh my god, an idiot like me, who knows the right three people can just grow their network for free forever. Right? And so that was the birth of the i the name social leverage.

27:06  Barry Ritholtz: It makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

27:08  Howard Lindzon: It was just like a play on words. Some, some people will call me and go, oh, you guys do social investing. And go, that’s the last thing I do. Meaning I’m not, there’s no impact. It was just the i the play on words of financial leverage to social

27:18  Barry Ritholtz: Leverage. I, I like it. But

27:19  Howard Lindzon: Good point. You can blow up on social leverage

27:22  Barry Ritholtz: Now. So So now you’re up to fund four.

27:24  Howard Lindzon: Fund six.

27:24  Barry Ritholtz: Fund six. Yeah. Wow. I have the I and the V in the place.

27:28  Howard Lindzon: The good news is you passed on all of them. I did pass on. So we continue to do well until you come

27:31  Barry Ritholtz: In. Right. Soon as I come in, it’s over. Well that’s

27:33  Howard Lindzon: When we shut down. And,

27:34  Barry Ritholtz: And I famously or infamously was an investor in stock Twiz. And then when you pitched me on Robinhood, it’s a line in the book how that’s the dumbest fing idea I’ve ever heard in my life.

27:48  Howard Lindzon: You weren’t the only one

27:49  Barry Ritholtz: And it was tha it was. I will, I will, I will. I You are in the

27:54  Howard Lindzon: Majority. You were in the majority. I

27:55  Barry Ritholtz: Own it in the book. And between you and me, I’ll say A, it was offbrand and B no doubt that the pandemic lockdown helped them dramatically Perfect

28:06  Howard Lindzon: Time. No, no, no. The the, the thing about ramen hood, ’cause I was there from day one and by day one, I mean they had, it was another company, right? Kronos Research before they were like high frequency guys and math guys. But you could only, this is about you ask about investing. It’s, you know, the life I’ve led boots on, like, just curiosity, your eyes, nose, ears, feet. You, you become a great investor by like it touching feeling, right? You gotta be on street level. The best investors are street level. I invest, I’m talking about private markets, public markets is a different thing. Street. So

28:42  Barry Ritholtz: Let’s talk about private, let’s talk about

28:44  Howard Lindzon: Street. So, no, we were talking about Robinhood. So, so the great thing about Robinhood is it’s not that I got it right? It’s like I was, if I didn’t get that right, I’m nobody. Meaning I had to get that right as a Yahoo Finance user street.com guy, E-Trade baby, you know what I mean? Twitter, user StockTwits founder. And, and I, if I had any nerve or any tech skills or any like real balls or whatever we’re gonna call it, I build my own brokerage. Like we, I was there to do all that. But in 2010, even till till Robinhood started, no one wanted to start it. Brokerage ideas were terrible ideas, right? So you have to understand that in 2013 when I saw Robinhood, no one in America, that’s shocking that no one wanted to build E-Trade 2.0. Right? But what the venture capitalists were doing, they were enamored. And this is where venture capitalists, I always goof on venture capitalists. They were enamored with the wrong thing. At the time. It was like wealth front betterment, right? The, the VCs were enamored with assets under management. A UM. They felt like Vanguard was the one to disrupt. So everybody wanted to be the next, if you’re a venture capitalist, you wanted to be the next vanguard. No one. And

29:56  Barry Ritholtz: I thought, thought that

29:56  Howard Lindzon: Was flawed. I thought that was flawed because the margins are tiny and, and you’re never gonna build something 10 times better than Vanguard. Meaning wait a minute, what’s wrong with Vanguard? And they’re, versus E-Trade. I’m like, it’s interface trade. You know, it was just ripping me off and I was a, I was the right guy to get that pitch at the right time. So of course I had to do that deal. It would’ve been, that’s what, that’s why the podcast with the guy who passed, if I passed on Robinhood, I’d be a more interesting guess. Like

30:26  Barry Ritholtz: It’s a Larry. So how much did you put into to,

30:29  Howard Lindzon: Well, we did a hundred. Like I, we had a, it was our first fund, so we were writing a hundred thousand dollars checks. So it was a hundred thousand dollars at 8 million. I thought it was expensive. 8 million, an 8 million valuation. Like at the time we were doing 3 million valuations. So, you know, we nego, like I met them by Ju and I flew up because they called me ’cause of StockTwits. So they called me and said, we have this app. They were, they were outta, they were outta money. And I flew up to Silicon Valley and they showed up wearing Google Glass Two idiots. Like, I’m like, immediately I’m out like no one, you know what I mean? Like, remember that era

31:06  Barry Ritholtz: Glass Holes is what everybody

31:07  Howard Lindzon: Called. I don’t know what it was, but I was immediately like, what? And two dorks. But they showed me the app. They had this guy, this Joe who was their designer who had been at Facebook and he showed me the app and that’s when I knew it wasn’t live. They didn’t have their finra they didn’t have their broker. So it was really early. But because of Stock Twist and Twitter, I knew that if you build it, they will come. If you build an a design like Uber, if you build Uber for trading, okay, what people didn’t get again was they were all betting hundreds of millions had been be invested in Betterment and Wealth front at the time. So the, the Silicon Valley was leaning into the Vanguard model, right? So no one wanted to do the deal because who needs another brokerage? And by the way, building a brokerage, getting SEC approval. VCs tough don’t like doing work. Right? They don’t like waiting a year.

31:58  Barry Ritholtz: It’s a grind. Yeah.

31:59  Howard Lindzon: VCs do not like doing investment. Now they do. ’cause there’s so much money in, in sovereign, you know, you can get so much money in charge 2%. But back in 2013, it was like, so me something that’s working, I wanna be the uber of that. So to take a year off and go get SEC approval to go do those things, they deserve to be It’s laborious. It it was, it’s tough. And you had to wait. You couldn’t just go launch it and get sued.

32:20  Barry Ritholtz: Thi this is in hindsight, if you want to be the next Vanguard, wait, their secret sauce is that they have such scale, they can charge four bips and still make money. You, you’re losing money at 25 bips.

32:33  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. And if you switch, you switch. Right? But they have so much assets. Right? So switching costs. So I could, we could talk about this forever. I was in the right place, right time, right. People pitched me, right. Valuation, everything worked. I could tell you a hundred stories of like everything lined up and it doesn’t work. Robinhood would’ve worked whether I showed up or not. Right? So we did a hundred thousand. Now obviously we helped them tremendously with stock to it. So we were like responsible for hundreds of thousands of early signups. ’cause stock with users love the idea of

33:00  Barry Ritholtz: Yeah, of course free trading.

33:01  Howard Lindzon: Free trade free. But also the API hooking into you could slide right on,

33:06  Barry Ritholtz: Right over

33:06  Howard Lindzon: And, and trade. Yeah. It’s pretty funny. Now that idea in oh seven when I had it Jack and Ave, like as a Twitter guy, I went to Jack and a Jack Yeah. And a, and Fred Wilson put me in the room with them. And I’m like, guys, what are you talking about? Kim Kardashian taking a poop on Kanye West. That’s not interesting. You know what’s interesting? The president’s gonna tweet one day and the markets are gonna move. Like this is literally pitch the conversation. My pitch to Jack and AAV set up by Fred, Fred Wilson, who was, they were like, kumbaya plane lands on a Hudson. Right? You know, we’re growing our beards. No. You know, like, I mean they were just the darlings. They didn’t need I ideas. So they

33:45  Barry Ritholtz: Were like, well it was, it was the town. The town. No,

33:48  Howard Lindzon: They weren’t massive.

33:49  Barry Ritholtz: They weren’t for the world

33:50  Howard Lindzon: Financial guys. They were kumbaya guys. They were builders. So my pitch fell on like, who are you?

33:56  Barry Ritholtz: They didn’t get monetizing Twitter through

33:58  Howard Lindzon: Brokers. They didn’t, it’s not about monnet. They didn’t understand what they had. Meaning selling ads against something that Goldman Sachs will pay infinity for. Meaning a new pipe where Bloomberg’s charging $2,000 to get real time information now like Osama bin Lain getting killed. The futures like in oh eight whenever Osama was finally killed. What year? 11, 12. I know where I was, right? Because immediately I checked the futures and they had already moved. Right? And that’s ’cause of Twitter, right? Because some guy in Pakistan saw it. And the futures move, right? Like that’s when it should have clicked is like, shut down everything, delay the feed 30 seconds. And you know what’s gonna happen? Goldman will call you Reuters, Bloomberg, they’ll see that you’re off by 30 seconds and they’ll pay you fortunes to get the real time feed. Right? You and me schmuck, it’s even seconds. And three don’t need real time. One

34:51  Barry Ritholtz: Second, it’s five minutes. Right?

34:52  Howard Lindzon: So my pitch to Jack and e with Fred Wilson was like, slow down the feed. ’cause 99% of the population and then we we’re there anyways with ai, no one, no one gets the real time feed, right? Slow down the feed, your phone will ring for the people that know that the feeds are not in real time and they will pay you infinity, right? To get the pipe. And they were like, no, let’s sell ads. So here we are.

35:17  Barry Ritholtz: So, so you haven’t talked about the cash tag, which I really wanna talk about something Stock Twits invented. Yes. A dollar sign and then a A PL is the symbol for Apple or

35:27  Howard Lindzon: So, so this is the Ginette store. So again, I didn’t wanna start a company, I just sold Wall Stripp, which, you know, which was my best work. But again, stupid work arguably. But my be no personally I’m most proud of it. You sell a company to CBS when you are literally an idiot, right? Is the dream. And

35:44  Barry Ritholtz: I think that’s a fair disclosure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Advised like

35:47  Howard Lindzon: They said, by the way, as they wrote as Les Ez wrote the che, he goes, I can’t believe we’re writing an idiot like this. A check. That was like, he said that,

35:53  Barry Ritholtz: That’s the quote.

35:54  Howard Lindzon: I said, please write that like you in your book, please write that you’re so angry. So anyways, they had just bought my company and literally a month later I’m like, you made the wrong acquisition. You need to buy Twitter. Like Twitter is

36:09  Barry Ritholtz: Said this to them, to,

36:10  Howard Lindzon: To Quincy at, at who had bought my company at CBS. And I remember there was no iPhone yet. And Twitter came out and I thought it was stupid. You thought it was stupid. We all thought it was stupid. It was just annoying. Andy Swan, an old friend, was like, I get this, this is financial. ’cause you know, at the beginning I’m on, we all had our Blackberry, it wasn’t even, it wasn’t even a native mobile app, right? It was just the web and it was all venture capital. And my shtick in 2006, 2007 was I just peed at the Gramercy. Like, so the VCs loved me. They were like, who’s this idiot talking about with bowel movements? And and then Andy Swan said, you know, this is like financial, this is like a new Bloomberg, right? And I said, and I just, so, so the hashtag was a thing and I’m like, it was all spam. Like if you went to Apple, like hashtag AAPL or hashtag Apple, it was like, I went to the store and bought a green apple. Right? Like that’s literally what people were saying it was. So now it’d be like, let’s a new Apples. But like at the beginning I was like, I bought a green apple. And I’m like, that’s spam. So I sent Fred Wilson the first message that I’m saying like, and back then Blackberry was the hot stock. And I’m like, I just bought dollar sign RIMM. And Fred Wilson is the godfather of all this and was an investor in Twitter. Sent me back a Texaco, this is genius. You need to start a company. And that’s what set me down the stock t it

37:27  Barry Ritholtz: Patch did Was Wilson an investor in stock? Twiz?

37:29  Howard Lindzon: No, because he was an investor in Twitter and he thought there would be a conflict.

37:32  Barry Ritholtz: It’s no conflict. It’s, I agree.

37:34  Howard Lindzon: But Fred is a Fred,

37:35  Barry Ritholtz: The

37:35  Howard Lindzon: Og, Fred Fred’s the OG Fred, full dis disclosure. Fred, Fred, Fred on strategy is if he bets on one, he does. And I, I follow Fred’s strategy. There’s other people who spray and pray and don’t care who they and 90% do that. But Fred was of the opinion back then as like, I work with you, there’s gonna be, conflicts are a thing. Like no conflict, no interest, of course. That that’s, he’s very cool that way, but don’t create conflicts just to create conflict. So in his wisdom, he was like, you know, what’s gonna happen if you guys get in a fight and yada, yada, yada. So he politely backed out. But we were backed by good VCs, right? Raising money was not my problem. The, my VC should have said Harry, you know, just not a good enough idea.

38:18  Barry Ritholtz: So as an investor in StockTwits, I always wondered why the hell didn’t Twitter buy StockTwits? Well,

38:24  Howard Lindzon: They don’t understand finance.

38:25  Barry Ritholtz: Is that what

38:26  Howard Lindzon: It’s, they should have bought it. You remember the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Yeah,

38:29  Barry Ritholtz: Of course. The whole

38:29  Howard Lindzon: Movie

38:30  Barry Ritholtz: Where they is about

38:31  Howard Lindzon: Getting, and then the last scene is this is a very important, again, media matters to investing into the, and it’s just a black hole. Forever Miles. Forever Miles, never to be seen again. Miles of miles. The best tech companies like Salesforce, he understands corporate dev. Sometimes you buy something to kill it,

38:50  Barry Ritholtz: Right?

38:51  Howard Lindzon: To say, and by the way, it’s not

38:54  Barry Ritholtz: Best.

38:54  Howard Lindzon: It’s cost me a fortune. They’re like my Newman, Twitter’s like my Newman from Seinfeld. It’s like Twitter, like, you

39:00  Barry Ritholtz: Know, now who’s dating themselves.

39:02  Howard Lindzon: So, no, but what I’m saying is they’re my Newman, like in Seinfeld, meaning these people, it was a clown car. As, as Zuckerberg said, there’s so many people that got rich.

39:11  Barry Ritholtz: It was a clown car. Non executing. I love the Linein Yeah. From Zuckerberg. You, it was in one of your recent posts, right? But,

39:16  Howard Lindzon: But Zuckerberg said it first,

39:18  Barry Ritholtz: Which was,

39:19  Howard Lindzon: It was a clown car. I

39:20  Barry Ritholtz: Don’t know. That crashed into a gold mine. Yeah.

39:22  Howard Lindzon: And so Twitter and the, the real problem with Twitter was it was a financial product. And Elon knows that better than anybody in the end. ’cause he,

39:31  Barry Ritholtz: Although he just,

39:32  Howard Lindzon: Well he monetized it by stuffing it in a shell company. It’s still like, it’s an asset. And he’s made tremendous mistakes to, to, to think that Trump end around of the whole thing. Meaning Twitter’s supposed to be a real time network, right? They have to poll true social, right? True social is worthless other than one guy who sits on top of Twitter, right? And you have to copy paste his tweet like so Twitter,

39:57  Barry Ritholtz: Well, on a different platform forgetting

39:59  Howard Lindzon: How bungled the company is, the fact that they owned real time and do not own real time. And that I’m the schmuck that came up with the original, like Trump is gonna tweet. Now obviously Obama was president when I had this idea. But like that the pipe matters. And who is king of the pipe? To think that Trump beat Elon at his own game is pretty insane.

40:20  Barry Ritholtz: He, he is savvy in ways that people don’t appreciate

40:23  Howard Lindzon: Insane the truth. Social exists, it’s worthless. But for one guy tweeting, right? Unbelievable. So it’s inconceivable

40:30  Barry Ritholtz: To, to bring back

40:31  Howard Lindzon: You bested my man of orange

40:33  Barry Ritholtz: To,

40:34  Howard Lindzon: To, so the poison cannot be in front of you.

40:36  Barry Ritholtz: So, so now 2024, you come back to stock Twiz Yes. As CEO. Yeah. What motivated that? Are the early investors gonna see an exit? What’s, what’s going on?

40:47  Howard Lindzon: That’s inside information.

40:49  Barry Ritholtz: No, it’s not public.

40:50  Howard Lindzon: No. So it’s

40:51  Barry Ritholtz: Not, it’s it’s, it’s non-public information. It’s like a but it’s not legal inside information.

40:56  Howard Lindzon: No. Stock just is like a, a corn on your foot. You can’t, no. I mean, listen, just can’t go away. Here’s the thing about venture capital is here’s the thing about venture capital. Not everything should be venture capital. True. Okay. So I joke about this with, with my finger. Like, like whose fault is it? Okay? I think stock is a great idea. The Cash Act was a great idea. Yeah. I’m very proud of that. Hundred percent. I’m not proud of having to run a company 17 years later. Not that it wasn’t my dream when I started Stock Twist is to be sitting here answering questions about how am I gonna make money? Let me bust your up, but you every right to do this. So what I’m saying is, I and young kids need to know this like math. Not everybody gets to have a startup.

41:38  Barry Ritholtz: Of course.

41:39  Howard Lindzon: Okay, well my venture capitalists, if they’re as good as they say and they are great, should have stopped me and said, this isn’t quite venture capitalist.

41:48  Barry Ritholtz: Let me push back on that. ’cause I knew you gonna go there.

41:50  Howard Lindzon: I am,

41:50  Barry Ritholtz: I am. And your venture capitalists, and we know a lot of the same people said, Hey, there was a window to get out. You wouldn’t have gotten a, an fu number, but you would’ve gotten a pretty good number.

42:02  Howard Lindzon: No, I never got a number.

42:04  Barry Ritholtz: There was never, I thought there were discussions that just never came to always discussions. Yeah. I thought you guys were on the one yard line.

42:11  Howard Lindzon: I’m discussing it right now. Openly, there’s always a price. Who, which camera? Camera two. No, listen, we have never, some things are only fairly valued for a second. Right. And some things stay overvalued or undervalued forever as we know from the market. For sure. And I think StockTwits I’ll take full responsibility. We’ve always missed a window of positioning, right? But the good news is stock TWI is thriving, right?

42:38  Barry Ritholtz: It’s doing well. This is a perfect,

42:40  Howard Lindzon: So I’m saying like,

42:41  Barry Ritholtz: Robinhood should be the,

42:43  Howard Lindzon: We were 10 years ahead of our time. If you think about where public, when, when I started stock to retail, investing was a laughing stock. Yeah. And it still is to most institutions,

42:52  Barry Ritholtz: Much less so today than it was. Correct. Now it’s

42:55  Howard Lindzon: So, so again, if you look at my portfolio,

42:57  Barry Ritholtz: The, by the way, the private equity, private credit wouldn’t be so hungry for retail investors if it was truly us.

43:05  Howard Lindzon: They call me every day, right? So there’s two worlds that I live in the world where retail doesn’t take itself seriously enough. And private equity guys call me CEOs of public companies call me to take like I’m in a crazy seat, right? Because I’m a goofball. Right? But I am serious, you know, like I am serious. Like I’m trying to be serious.

43:24  Barry Ritholtz: You used to be 60 40 goofball serious. Now you’re 40, 60.

43:28  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. It switches.

43:29  Barry Ritholtz: You’re the new 60 40.

43:31  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. I’m, I am. I can laugh at myself, but I’m trying to run a serious business. Right? Because, because it’s been a long time and we were just way ahead of the curve. Like Jack and Eeb didn’t understand what we have. Fred Wilson understood it. Right? There are very few people that understood. Very few people liked Robinhood until 2020. And GameStop, they like it for the wrong reasons. By the way, I don’t like the Robinhood that became like, I don’t, not, I call it the degenerate economy. But when I invested in Robinhood, I didn’t know the degenerative economy would exists. I didn’t know the prediction markets would exist. I didn’t know options would be their biggest product. I was just wanting to see options

44:10  Barry Ritholtz: Are bigger than crypto for Robinhood.

44:12  Howard Lindzon: Crypto’s Tiny Options is everything. Huh? 90% of their fucking profits will come from o Options. Any brokerage.

44:18  Barry Ritholtz: Wow. I didn’t realize that.

44:20  Howard Lindzon: How are they gonna make money on zero commission other than options, people

44:23  Barry Ritholtz: Doing YOLO trades payment for order flow margin loans.

44:26  Howard Lindzon: That’s just a, that’s just media being bad media.

44:29  Barry Ritholtz: I, I’m gonna tell you that the big shops like Fidelity and Schwab, the single biggest line owner line item of profitability are credit loans

44:38  Howard Lindzon: And money. Okay. It could be I’m 90, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t The

44:42  Barry Ritholtz: Financials, no. I mean at one point in time it was over half at Schwab. I don’t know what it’s today. Yeah.

44:45  Howard Lindzon: When we invested in Robinhood here was, my thinking is, first of all, I love the product. You gotta be a user of the product to be a good investor. I’m not the guy who’s like, here’s space check and here’s a biotech check. Right? What do I know? So yeah, the odds have to be stacked in my favor, first of all. But second of all, and they were, I was Yahoo. I was Yahoo Finance, I was you, I was blogging, I was doing everything right. And, and they came along at the right time. When Robin, the pitch for me with Robinhood was not that they were gonna make money, it was an 8 million valuation. Like, you know, at my event people were like, how are they gonna make money? I’m like, chill the hell out. They haven’t even launched a thing yet. The point was Schwab was paying $150 to get a customer

45:25  Barry Ritholtz: To acquire customer, customer acquisition

45:27  Howard Lindzon: Customer. Yeah. And my thesis was like Uber Robinhood would pay zero. So if you get a million people, even if they’re $4 in their account, it’s a hundred. That’s a good herb. Yeah. Those don’t come along very did. I think it could be $30 billion. I’m not so psycho that I thought I was investing in a 30, $40 million company. Billion, billion, billion, billion dollar company. So of course I’m not that smart. But what I’m saying is I saw the ARB and all they had to do was deliver the product. Now it went way beyond my expectations. That’s the Larry David

45:56  Barry Ritholtz: Part by the way. You didn’t gimme that pitch. The pitch was, I,

45:59  Howard Lindzon: I’m sure I did. The

46:00  Barry Ritholtz: Pitch was free trading millennials, the whole next generation. You’re gonna capture them before anybody else.

46:05  Howard Lindzon: Well, I knew that from Stockton. I knew I’d capture ’em. But if I say, if I mention the ARB trade, people are like, oh, they’re gonna have to raise so much money. There was a lot of problems.

46:14  Barry Ritholtz: No, the ARB trade in hindsight. Yeah, the trade A

46:16  Howard Lindzon: Trade would, was why I invested would

46:17  Barry Ritholtz: Would’ve been compelling. And, and again, I it’s a chapter, the, I’ll tell you a great, Hey, it’s so offbrand

46:24  Howard Lindzon: One great story. Go ahead. Because, because this is just a, an investing story. So we’re a very small fund. The first one was 6 million. We’ve, we’ve done, now we run a hundred million dollar funds and

46:33  Barry Ritholtz: You cap it at a hundred or

46:35  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. I don’t think you, I don’t think get our returns would be good. Yeah. We like writing one to $2 million checks. I get that. Stay in your lane is something everybody hates saying. But I think true in my world, unless you’re fee gathering, stay in your lane. Like people know what we do,

46:48  Barry Ritholtz: You’re gonna laugh.

46:49  Howard Lindzon: I I believe in that. I hate when people say it, but Right. I

46:53  Barry Ritholtz: Practice it. That, that’s an annoying way to say I disagree with what you’re saying, but Right. But what you’re saying is that’s skill. Hey, your expertise. Here’s my skillset. Yeah. I’m

47:01  Howard Lindzon: A good monkey.

47:02  Barry Ritholtz: I to apply my, the area I know best.

47:04  Howard Lindzon: So with ramen, so occasionally, and again,

47:06  Barry Ritholtz: Stars

47:07  Howard Lindzon: All long enough and I had breakfast with Fred this morning. We’re talking about like, you’re a legend. Josh is a legend. Like I’m around surrounded by legends. ’cause I’ve lived long enough, okay, I’ve lived long enough and I’m curious and I’m nice and I call people to say hello, I’m a salesman. So who do I see this morning? Fred Wilson. Like who did I run to? Tim O’Brien? Like I’m friends with like people that have, you have signal, right? Because you have what you’ve been on the street, right? And you have experience, not maybe in space, but in what you do. You have signal. So with Robinhood, and I had learned from Fred Wilson, like if you really believe in something just, and I’m not a poker player, I don’t ball, you gotta go in as a vc you have to, so Robinhood,

47:47  Barry Ritholtz: You’re, you’re convincing me to throw money into Fund vi and that’ll be the end of your run. But

47:52  Howard Lindzon: That’s different. Every fund is like a crop of wine. It could go depending on how you know we’re wrong all

47:58  Barry Ritholtz: The time. Well, 24 was a good vintage

47:59  Howard Lindzon: 2020. 2021. Terrible vintage. So, so, so when Robinhood was doing very well, but they, the two guys were like, it was not popular. Everybody, all the VCs had committed to betterment wealth front type model. Right? So now they needed to raise another round. And I’m like, they wanted a raise.

48:18  Barry Ritholtz: This is 14 or 15? 14. Yeah. So it was like, I think that’s when we spoke. Yeah.

48:22  Howard Lindzon: So they were like it and I’m like inexperienced. ’cause we write one check, we don’t have more money. So they call me up and they go, can you write us a term sheet? It’s a very sophisticated way of saying like, you won’t have to like actually invest, but if you come in like we can shop, like we can kind of shop around. You can shop it around. So I’m like, dude, screw that all I wanna invest. So over like July 4th week, I’m telling my partner, and I was two of us at the time, I’m like, let’s just write an 11 million. They needed to raise 11 million bucks and they wanted to raise it at some stupid valuation. Right? Let’s, it was 60 million ish. And I’m like, well we’re never gonna have to really write it, but even if we do, I can convince my friends like, this is the what. Right. And I called Fred Wilson and he goes, what are you calling me for? You know what to do. Let’s write a term sheet. I go, but we don’t have $11 million. And Fred goes, you’ll find it. Just, just do it like a six week. Right. Which is absurd. Now today people write billion dollar checks in an hour. Right. But like he goes, just ask for six weeks. Right. So, you know, word, you know, whatever. You’re typing it up, send him a term sheet by fax.

49:25  Barry Ritholtz: Back then you 10 fingers. So it much,

49:27  Howard Lindzon: Much better back. It was more, but, you know, 10 fingers more errors. So anyway, so we write up this term sheet, we send it to ’em and they shop it as they probably really in Index Ventures, y Hammerer, who’s like a, like one of the best investors, comes back with a term sheet of 11 million on 65 million. Wow. And like a five day close. So like, you know, they got what they wanted. Oh, and by the way, indexing their term sheet, put index in their term sheet. Like fuck, social leverage. Right. That’s a typical, like who are they? Right. Luckily by writing that term sheet, VLA Baiju did the right thing and they carved out like as much as we could. We couldn’t even raise a million on. So when we, so they carved us out, we put 800 grand in the series A. If we had done the 11 million, I’d be a billionaire.

50:17  Barry Ritholtz: Right. 200 x on, on the, yeah. That’s unbelievable.

50:20  Howard Lindzon: No way bigger, like at the peak. But like we’ve had better investments. We’ve

50:26  Barry Ritholtz: Better investments. You’re not sitting with the Robinhood shares.

50:28  Howard Lindzon: A lot of my LPs, we distributed the stock. A lot of my LPs have not sold, sold

50:32  Barry Ritholtz: Calls it nobody says

50:33  Howard Lindzon: I don’t ask. Our job is to deliver them. There

50:36  Barry Ritholtz: You go.

50:37  Howard Lindzon: The, the, the, the cash.

50:39  Barry Ritholtz: I wanna start with a quote of yours that I really love. Okay. Quote, the whole world has become a casino. Thanks to AI and prediction markets, we are all more productive and degenerate. Now let’s talk a little bit about the degenerate economy. Yeah. Explain to listeners what is the degenerate economy or the degen economy.

51:03  Howard Lindzon: Well, I don’t like the word degen. So when I say degenerate, I say it in the humoristic way. You and I are degenerate, right. Because we’ll buy a watch. We’ll bet on a game. We laugh at de degeneracy. We don’t, we don’t, we appreciate the art of de degeneracy versus meaning, meaning laser eyes was dumb. Right. But degeneracy is an art form, like speculation. And I live, I own and I joke that I own and operate two millennials. And when you own and operate two millennials, you watch, you look over their shoulders. Those

51:36  Barry Ritholtz: Were your first startups?

51:37  Howard Lindzon: No, my kids. Yes. By the those were your startups. Startups. My the only startups that matter. And did

51:43  Barry Ritholtz: Either of them merge yet? Do we have any m and a activity yet?

51:46  Howard Lindzon: No, we need, we need, I’m not talking about spinoff need

51:50  Barry Ritholtz: I not talking about dividends. I’m talking about are they married? No. So no mergers yet?

51:54  Howard Lindzon: No, my son was, my son was in a Are you on the board?

51:57  Barry Ritholtz: You should be chairman of their board.

51:58  Howard Lindzon: Are they on the board? I’m trying to get, you see adult also. I’m trying to get them fired. I’m trying to get medical checks to see if anything’s working. Right. So, so degenerate economy was born of this idea that I couldn’t believe where we went, like with GameStop. Like I was so stressed during the GameStop thing because really I’m so surpris, I hadn’t monetized, I hadn’t monetized our investment. I’m like, okay, on Robin Hood there, there was a weekend Yeah. When Robin Hood was worth 40 billion.

52:28  Barry Ritholtz: Right.

52:28  Howard Lindzon: And it could have been worthless. Right. Do you understand? Like

52:31  Barry Ritholtz: A hundred

52:31  Howard Lindzon: Percent. I wasn’t rich. And I’m like, it wasn’t even their blame. Whoever you want, people lost their minds.

52:39  Barry Ritholtz: Let me annotate.

52:40  Howard Lindzon: So, so let me just explain to you, if you have your phone, go

52:42  Barry Ritholtz: Ahead.

52:43  Howard Lindzon: What Robinhood perfected, which no one figured out. It was like when we used to play pinball, everybody, there was always that kid who was so good at it.

52:52  Barry Ritholtz: Crazy flipper.

52:53  Howard Lindzon: He could bump it. Well he could bump it without tilting it. Right. And he could just get the, he could just get the machine to dance for him. Tilt happened.

53:02  Barry Ritholtz: Everybody,

53:03  Howard Lindzon: The, the app was so well designed. The app was so well designed that everybody pushed the same button at the same time

53:09  Barry Ritholtz: And it couldn’t carry the, the, I remember it was scratching. Do you understand?

53:12  Howard Lindzon: That’s literally what happened. So that’s

53:14  Barry Ritholtz: What you were,

53:14  Howard Lindzon: It was a design flaw. You were, it was a design flaw. It

53:16  Barry Ritholtz: It wasn’t the design flaw. Nobody expected it to scale 10,000 x. No,

53:21  Howard Lindzon: But a if you push everybody to one button, right. Or or another button. Yeah. And then people come on see me say push this button and everybody’s like, let’s see what happens. And guess what, what happened? Crash. Crash. Not to be repeated again. Right. Hasn’t been repeated again. And the, that’s what makes the markets great. That hole was filled by the whole being created. Right. We haven’t seen another thing like this, although recently with Car Avis. But like GameStop broke the machine. Yeah. And almost bankrupted the company. Right. And and it was many lessons in there. The most important was Robinhood. None in their hubes or anything. They mistook success for a brand. When you build a brand in four years, not 40 years, you don’t appreciate that you have no brand value. Right. And I’m like, no one understands this. Like they were one of the first case studies and like why it didn’t deserve to be zero. Who knows what all the things that went wrong. But I’m just some guy that’s like, what the right. I’m like couldn’t. How embarrassing would it be if it goes from 40 billion to zero and you know, Galloway and all these guys were piling on and all these people piling on. I’m like, you don’t even understand what’s going on.

54:26  Barry Ritholtz: So wait, let me, let me tease this outta you a little bit. I thought you were going in a different direction. How degenerate the trading in things like GameStop and when Hertz was bankrupt and or was it Avis? I don’t even remember which. Some really foolish, reckless Yeah and and I, I think those of us with gray hair looked at it and kind of laughed. ’cause we knew exactly how that was gonna

54:51  Howard Lindzon: End. Yeah. The apes and all the a c stuff. I hated it. Right. But it doesn’t mean I can stop

54:54  Barry Ritholtz: It. That wasn’t your concern. Your concern was hey here’s a fire hose of new clients, new orders. This is the scale. This company needs to become wildly successful and they’re just not prepared to deal with the sheer volume. How could be, and if this crash goes on more for a couple of hours two days from now, this is a zero. It was

55:14  Howard Lindzon: A zero. We can argue, I don’t know the whole story, but I imagine someone called someone at the options clearing firm and said you’re bankrupt. And the VCs lucky we’re in so big. Didn’t they had had to put in more money.

55:24  Barry Ritholtz: They didn’t have the reserve cash. The margin trades have the of options.

55:28  Howard Lindzon: The cash. We’ll never know the real story. So,

55:29  Barry Ritholtz: So technically SIBO is the counterparty on all trades. Yes. And they also own the platform. So they demand a certain amount of capital if you’re gonna trade X. Yes. And they’re trading billions of dollars. Correct. They didn’t have that capital.

55:44  Howard Lindzon: So, so this is why my degenerative economy index was born. Meaning I don’t think AMCs in what’s in my index, which is outperforming everything is SIBO is one of my time number one positions who benefits. So my degenerate economy thesis is finding the companies that benefit from global degeneracy. You

56:02  Barry Ritholtz: Created this last year, two years ago, three years ago. All crush.

56:06  Howard Lindzon: It’s three. I had to share it

56:07  Barry Ritholtz: Just to put some numbers on this. Yeah, it’s gambling, it’s day trading. It’s meme coin speculation.

56:14  Howard Lindzon: It’s vaping. Unfortunately

56:15  Barry Ritholtz: It’s up 170%. The NASDAQ 100 over the same type of period isn’t even up a hundred percent. It’s up 94%. Correct. You’re almost doubling the nasdaq.

56:24  Howard Lindzon: And I give it away for free ’cause and I share the

56:27  Barry Ritholtz: Petition size. It’s not, why isn’t this an ETF?

56:28  Howard Lindzon: Because the VanEck always talks to me VanEck always like, why do you wanna be in the e TF business?

56:33  Barry Ritholtz: So do it. You know you use ETF architect. No I get it. Work with VanEck, but I

56:38  Howard Lindzon: Billion dollar product. Again, this is, I think part of like, you know, the age I’m at is like, I don’t wanna be someone yelling at me. That might that I Kathy would that I, I, as soon as I monetize it, it’ll go to zero. Like that thing will stop working. I love the idea that I can give it away for free. This goes back to the

56:55  Barry Ritholtz: Original

56:55  Howard Lindzon: Social media. Meaning what am I gonna make? It’s like y as soon as I start charging for it, the whole thing becomes

57:02  Barry Ritholtz: Fast, slow. I took ads off the blog ’cause they were annoying and ugly and the amount of revenue it made peanut was just too annoying. You you’re saying the same thing.

57:11  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. I’m saying like, hey man, I’m like, I got a little thesis. It’s not that complicated. I,

57:18  Barry Ritholtz: I love this thesis. I would, I think people would be

57:20  Howard Lindzon: Buyers. So she’d be always CE big hyper liquid now is in there and no one knows what hyper liquid is. I constantly What’s hyper liquid? Hyper liquid is the, is the thing. Meaning today all I get pitched on or by the next Robin Hoods and I’m like, the world doesn’t that another Robinhood. But all they keep talking about is, you know, we got perps trading 24 7 on hyper liquid. It’s, it’s, it’s the new salono, let’s call it. ’cause I’m not a crypto guy and I’m like, after getting a hundred pitches of the same product and they all talked about hyper liquid. I just bought hyper liquid.

57:51  Barry Ritholtz: And what what’s the market cap of that

57:54  Howard Lindzon: One?

57:54  Barry Ritholtz: Couple

57:55  Howard Lindzon: Billion. It’s like 12 people and one of the most profitable companies in the world side of Singapore. Like the guy has no freedom ’cause he is so rich. It’s like a system. It’s like a very fast chain.

58:05  Barry Ritholtz: What’s the symbol?

58:06  Howard Lindzon: HYPE hype.

58:08  Barry Ritholtz: Yeah. What a great symbol. Yeah,

58:09  Howard Lindzon: It’s a token. And you can buy it on Robinhood. Again, I’m not promoting, I’m just saying wait,

58:14  Barry Ritholtz: So this, you could buy it on Robin Hood, but does this not trade over the counter? You can’t get it anywhere.

58:18  Howard Lindzon: You can trade it as a, there’s a dat called PURR. And again, I’m not recommending it, but I’m long A little is a way that you can trade it over the counter. And, and again, you’re betting on the fact you don’t know anything about supply demand. You’re just Right. It’s the system that everybody’s

58:34  Barry Ritholtz: Trading on. Pure speculation. Pure speculation on other people’s speculation. That’s what is

58:39  Howard Lindzon: Speculation.

58:39  Barry Ritholtz: My thesis. This is squared.

58:40  Howard Lindzon: So anyways, what I’m, what? So the degenerate economy is about picks and shovels. We can’t stop if, if a young person like my son, and again I own and operate two millennials and, and they’ll, I don’t want them betting, my son will call me and goes, I can’t believe I lost a 20 team parlay. I go, who are you? Are we even of my, this is why I have to do a step in takeover of my son’s company. ’cause I’m like

59:04  Barry Ritholtz: Dick private, are

59:05  Howard Lindzon: You talking to me like you ask me to end my U 50 bucks to put on a 20 team parlor And you’re complaining about, so idiot three threat idiot. It’s so idiotic. So I’m like trying to teach them not to be idiots. You can have a degenerative economy, you

59:16  Barry Ritholtz: Just need a little bit of math. The problem is not enough kids, kids has taking math,

59:20  Howard Lindzon: Math important. And you also full circle on the general economy. You have the wrong teachers Right now I got brought on board by guys like you Kramer, the people who had experienced stuff. Fred Wilson. These kids are learning from Chamath and David Sachs. These guys were born of one generation. Right. They worked at Facebook. Right. They worked for Elon. You could, if you’re not rich working for Elon or Facebook, that would be interesting. Yeah. If you are rich and you’re kissing the nipple of Facebook and that’s not interesting. You are supposed to be rich. Right. Have some humor. Have So we’re, our job is to

59:50  Barry Ritholtz: Little humility. You’re a little hubris.

59:51  Howard Lindzon: Yeah.

59:51  Barry Ritholtz: So my job is to teach

59:52  Howard Lindzon: My kid is like more humility. Stop being a degenerate. Right. But the fact is, you can’t not be a degenerate when prices kids are yo lowing. Because they can and because,

1:00:04  Barry Ritholtz: And it’s frictionless. We, we

1:00:05  Howard Lindzon: Frictionless. And they’ll learn. Some of these kids will learn how to be good. Put sellers very or premium sellers. Very few. I understand. But the markets are very important. Meaning having a price on everything is fantastic.

1:00:16  Barry Ritholtz: And when I say old it’s only partly ’cause we know each other so long. It’s mostly because he’s an old man. 60 and is now 60 years old. Years ago, my wife and I, I I’m not a cruise person. We were young, we were broke. We used to use this website called vacations to go.com. You book last minute, it would cost you nothing like a week long cruise through eight islands in the Caribbean, 500 bucks food and drink included. Booze included. So as soon as they hit international waters, the casino opens. I am not a gambler. We walk through and I just decide to look at the roulette table. Not bet. Look at it. And this is the difference between my wife who taught fashion illustration and design is a visual person. I’m a little more of a math guy and I say to her, so we watching 20 minutes of roulette and it’s just, it’s so dumb. Yeah. I hate

1:01:46  Howard Lindzon: Losing money.

1:01:46  Barry Ritholtz: It it’s for for random stupid reason. Yeah. But I point out to her, look the red pays or red or black or odd, even pay two to one. But you have zero and double zero. So it’s not even odds. Correct. And then this group pays three to three to one, but it’s one in four chance of winning. So they’re making money and I’m going over all the math with her and she listens to all the numbers and says to me, I don’t know about the ratios of the math, but all I can tell you is I see people, I see theier taking off a whole lot more money than she’s handing out to gamblers. That, that’s the takeaway. Be theier not the odds. Correct. Be the house don’t be

1:02:32  Howard Lindzon: So CBOE hit all time highs. They’re

1:02:34  Barry Ritholtz: The house. Yeah.

1:02:35  Howard Lindzon: Have you ever hear anybody on social media talking about CBE? Never. Never. They love that. No one’s talking about ’em. So the other thesis that I have is trends with no friends. Okay. So, so I’m looking for trends. ’cause again, I run a huge social media site. Right. So I, if I have a choice between Nvidia and sand disk, everybody’s talking about Nvidia. You want, I’m not saying I know much about, we’re just

1:02:55  Barry Ritholtz: Talking about about Broadcom. Same

1:02:56  Howard Lindzon: Thing. Same thing. So on stock to I can look for tickers that are trending with very few followers. No, it doesn’t have to be. I don’t like small caps. So I’m like billion.

1:03:06  Barry Ritholtz: No, I mean earlier, I mean before it really goes up 10 x.

1:03:09  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. So I, so the one thing that stock to tell, and I have ai, you asked me why I came back to stock to, it’s two things. AI and the fact that like I can now code with clog code. And so I can call bullshit on engineers a little bit.

1:03:22  Barry Ritholtz: Oh, this could take six weeks. I need it by today. Well

1:03:25  Howard Lindzon: Again, there’s not today, but there’s not six weeks. Right. Okay. So so there’s that and then there’s the fact that we have all this data and we have a great community. So I wanted to come back and like see this thing through. And we’re, and we’re doing very well. The, the, the issue is now I can explain to people and I can pull out the data to show people trends with no friends. Meaning I wanna find, you wanna find stocks that are trending that have very little discussion.

1:03:50  Barry Ritholtz: Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. It’s

1:03:51  Howard Lindzon: Just intuitive. You meaning I-B-D-I-I learned on IBDI love price relative strength. We, I’ve just added a layer to that that matches high price, relative strength with low social, it’s almost like the moosh of Vegas. Right? I’m trying to find the stocks that No, even though I run a social media site, I’m like betting on the fact that like, they’ll discover this in time.

1:04:12  Barry Ritholtz: You should talk to Ben Hunt and what he’s doing with I love that Perent. ’cause they’re too

1:04:16  Howard Lindzon: Yeah, they have a narrative thing.

1:04:17  Barry Ritholtz: They’re too, but the combination of where the narrative is just starting to take off. Correct. Tipping and, and where the trends is

1:04:25  Howard Lindzon: Starting. I’m doing

1:04:26  Barry Ritholtz: This for 20

1:04:26  Howard Lindzon: Years friends. So that’s why I, so I give it away for free.

1:04:29  Barry Ritholtz: He’s quantified it. You

1:04:30  Howard Lindzon: Done it. Yeah. I hate the quant side. Yeah. I just visually see it. Right. From years of being a known quant. I went a UI don’t even know math,

1:04:37  Barry Ritholtz: But, but if you want AI to help you with this, I matters. I

1:04:40  Howard Lindzon: Gotta catch up on matters. That’s awesome. But, but he also sees the role a little darker than I see it. I’m a much more of an optimist.

1:04:46  Barry Ritholtz: You and I both. Yeah. So, but, but when I wanna know what’s the worst case scenario, like when the tariffs were first rolled out, not so much losing my finger, but his piece, the end of the pax Americana is true. Was the end point where if this really goes off the rails, this is how bad it could get. Well it’s

1:05:06  Howard Lindzon: Deglobalization, right. Which,

1:05:07  Barry Ritholtz: You know, but, but he, he works out the details. Yeah, he’s great. But again, you and I are both a little more of optimist.

1:05:13  Howard Lindzon: I’m much more simple. Right. If I see something going up, you want up, that’s my cue

1:05:18  Barry Ritholtz: To look.

1:05:19  Howard Lindzon: And then if it’s a certain market cap and then, then I check stocks to and I go, no one cares. I love that. Then I, I need to tell a story. Everybody needs to tell stories. Stocks are stories and some people are great at storytelling. The Palantir guy, the certain, but again, the numbers eventually matter. Right. And I’m trying to find companies going up. Right. And that’s not complicated. But then I have other layers to it and I need to understand the catalyst myself. Like if it’s just something I’ll never understand, it’s hard for me to ride the waves. So if I don’t really understand and use the product, the odds of me getting scared out of a trade are 99%.

1:05:56  Barry Ritholtz: So, so let’s talk about your,

1:05:58  Howard Lindzon: So that’s my index.

1:05:59  Barry Ritholtz: Let, let’s talk about your startups who are becoming degenerates. Yeah. Your kids given social apps, zero commission trading, all the options, stuff that’s going on for your kids’ benefit. What sort of guardrails, I don’t know if it’s the product regulation, educational, what do you wish was in place to protect them that isn’t there yet? And and let’s also add, these are not minors. These are late twenties adults out of school for almost a decade. Yeah. Real people. What guardrail should they have to protect them from their own most instincts? Well,

1:06:40  Howard Lindzon: Listen, we could argue let the be we put our, our negative hat on. It’s like you can go buy bullets at Walmart. So it’s like, what is a guardrail? Right? In a world where you can buy bullets and you know, everybody’s got drones. So I’m like more like, okay guys, if I hear that you did a parlay, we can’t be related. So like stop betting. Betting is different than investing. Right? So if, if, if Shane at at Poly market and their partners of ours, if they, if Shane or tq at at call sheet had pitched me those ideas at the same time that Robinhood pitched me their idea, I would’ve passed. Why? I don’t bet. I think it’s stupid. Right? Okay. Like I think it’s funny and I think prediction markets are news better than the New York Times. No offense because I like prediction markets. ’cause I don’t have an opinion. I just look at the price and I go whether I believe it or not. I think that’s the genius of it. But if, if Poly Market and Kashi went out to VCs and said, we’re the new news, their valuation would be a dollar. Right. Okay. No, they’re so we know the real story. They can’t tell what they really are good at, which is news.

1:07:41  Barry Ritholtz: And by the way, they’re not great at news. I understand.

1:07:43  Howard Lindzon: But either is news good at news? It’s

1:07:45  Barry Ritholtz: Probability of something happening.

1:07:48  Howard Lindzon: Not, but I’d rather not read someone’s opinion. I don’t need to see Elon’s finger on the news. ’cause that’s a stor. There’s, that’s not the real story. Give me the numbers. I know it’s fake, but I got a number. It, it’s not, if Mond isn’t 90% of my daughter’s mad. Right? But go Rachel, here’s what you do. That bet the other side you’ll make eight times. Or or

1:08:07  Barry Ritholtz: Put it’s 10 to one.

1:08:08  Howard Lindzon: 10 to one. But I would bet money on Madami. And if you really wanna change how you think about the world, go help somebody on the other side who has a chance go put in the time. Go help Mark Cuban if you really want to be,

1:08:19  Barry Ritholtz: I love what he’s doing on the healthcare side.

1:08:20  Howard Lindzon: But what I’m saying to my daughter, I said, call Mark, I’ll get you in touch with Mark. Do something but just complaining about the numbers that you see and the numbers were right. Whether, whether they, whether they tipped it in this, again, I don’t wanna get into all like the fraud and all the fake stuff about it, but the numbers are much easier than reading an opinion piece.

1:08:38  Barry Ritholtz: I’m gonna, can I tell share something fun. So yeah. So there was some of the early bets about outcome of the war and different events happening. And I said in a quarterly call, Hey, I don’t really know who’s putting, we don’t know who’s putting these bets in. Yeah. But if you stop and think about it, if you’re negotiating with another side, this being a psyop, ’cause you spent half a million dollars to move the outcome of something, that’s the least money the Department of Defense will ever spend. And anybody on this side is looking at this. Oh, they’re, they’re really gonna put boots on the ground. That’s look at the track record here. Here. Here’s A-A-A-A-A wallet that’s 10 for 10. Oh my God. We have to stop and think about, you don’t really know who’s using this, who’s betting this, who’s manipulating. But we didn’t know that guy who got arrested. That was a throwaway. That’s a, it’s still better. That’s

1:09:33  Howard Lindzon: A false flag. It’s still better than Russia and China using our social media against

1:09:37  Barry Ritholtz: Us. Oh my

1:09:37  Howard Lindzon: God. It’s forced. So I’m very forced.

1:09:39  Barry Ritholtz: And North Korea and Iran.

1:09:41  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. So I’m not saying I’m for, I’m an investor in poly market and college personally at crazy valuation. ’cause I wouldn’t have invested, like I just chased it in, in s pv

1:09:50  Barry Ritholtz: Personally the, the co founder of Calci, the woman, what’s her name? I

1:09:56  Howard Lindzon: Don’t know, but I know it’s a woman. I just can’t

1:09:58  Barry Ritholtz: Remember her name. No, she was a guest on the podcast and I was she great. She was really good. This is years ago. Yeah. I, I’m not this three years ago I should never even thought to put money into it. So

1:10:06  Howard Lindzon: That’s what I’m saying because I

1:10:07  Barry Ritholtz: Don’t, it felt sounded more academic than anything.

1:10:09  Howard Lindzon: It was academic. Yeah. And it still is because there’s very few people using these products for all the free press. It’s like Twitter. There’s very few people using Twitter. Right. All, well, Twitter,

1:10:19  Barry Ritholtz: Press aside. Well Twitters started getting the drain at this point. No,

1:10:21  Howard Lindzon: But I’m saying at the beginning it had a lot of power even though there weren’t that many users.

1:10:25  Barry Ritholtz: It was, it was, you know, it was a fraction of Instagram or TikTok. So put markets

1:10:30  Howard Lindzon: Is the same a fraction. It’s a fraction of the news. But I’d rather my son and daughter go to page two of Poly Market. ’cause you know what? They’re gonna see news that they didn’t, wouldn’t never look at it in the New York Times and go look at the election in Peru and now at least I’ll know the names

1:10:45  Barry Ritholtz: Or Venezuela for that or

1:10:46  Howard Lindzon: Venezuela. So I am super bullish for different reasons on prediction markets. And I know there’s like, obviously I have money on this

1:10:53  Barry Ritholtz: Side and this fits right into the Degeneracy index. It fits completely.

1:10:57  Howard Lindzon: How

1:10:57  Barry Ritholtz: Long does the DEN index run for? Is this a short term thing or does this have legs?

1:11:02  Howard Lindzon: Great question. That’s why I don’t want to charge for it. ’cause I think I’m a elect. ’cause Google and Apple are my biggest positions because they are the rails for the degenerative economy. They are the front facing tool of it.

1:11:14  Barry Ritholtz: And Apple ’cause of the phones and mobile, Google and

1:11:16  Howard Lindzon: Google ’cause of the phones and YouTube and the on YouTube store course the casino games all run on the app stores. Right. Like the free games that you have, they make a fortune

1:11:25  Barry Ritholtz: Off that Apple. Apple. Why not Amazon or Facebook? Amazon

1:11:27  Howard Lindzon: Just added to the beginning of the year ’cause of robots, axons in the

1:11:32  Barry Ritholtz: Portfolio. Not close to the Amazon web service ’cause of robots.

1:11:34  Howard Lindzon: Yeah, I mean it’s just am You can’t not own Amazon at this era in degenerate economy. ’cause they’re the center of it. Again, that’s which robot,

1:11:41  Barry Ritholtz: Which robot shops do. Like

1:11:42  Howard Lindzon: You can argue is a degenerate economy. But you have to own any

1:11:45  Barry Ritholtz: Of the robot builders you like.

1:11:46  Howard Lindzon: No. ’cause they’re too early. I mean personal investor in a few, but Clear, secure,

1:11:50  Barry Ritholtz: Give us some

1:11:51  Howard Lindzon: Names. Apron, which is just massive. Right. But again, it’s a personal investment. You

1:11:56  Barry Ritholtz: Have any interest in what Elon is doing with Gro and I

1:12:02  Howard Lindzon: Mean Yeah, but it’s a holding company. Like I, I don’t know what position.

1:12:05  Barry Ritholtz: It’s kind of random.

1:12:06  Howard Lindzon: So, so meaning

1:12:07  Barry Ritholtz: Tesla is a holding company for everything but SpaceX

1:12:10  Howard Lindzon: Or is that space gonna be the entity that goes public for

1:12:13  Barry Ritholtz: Space? SpaceX? I thought it was SpaceX.

1:12:14  Howard Lindzon: No, but I’m saying to SpaceX, why does he need two tickers? Like again, I don’t understand what the final being is. So why do I need to own some Elon holding company? I think I’m stupid. So

1:12:24  Barry Ritholtz: Because you’re betting on him and you don’t think he’s,

1:12:26  Howard Lindzon: Who cares? I’d rather bet on something. I understand.

1:12:29  Barry Ritholtz: Amazon, I’m with you. I’m not, I don’t disagree. I’m trying to

1:12:31  Howard Lindzon: F figure. Yeah. Another recent ad is it’s already doubled. It’s clear, secure, you know, clear. When you go through it, it’s lot clear. So to me if the world’s degenerate, you need security. So it’s more secure. It’s clear. Clear’s been a home run. They don’t have a lot of tech, but the great brand. Yeah.

1:12:45  Barry Ritholtz: And I thought they have tech isn’t it?

1:12:48  Howard Lindzon: I think they license a lot of the

1:12:49  Barry Ritholtz: Tech every, oh that’s not theirs. They don’t

1:12:51  Howard Lindzon: Own it. Yeah. So again, once you dig into a story, my conviction comes like how much of this they own, but they’re a hell of a brand and that the company’s been around forever

1:12:58  Barry Ritholtz: And they have the relationships. They’ve failed many times with FAA on the

1:13:01  Howard Lindzon: Airports and they can do so much more around stadiums. The brand matters.

1:13:05  Barry Ritholtz: What are you talking about? You go to watch a Nick game. It’s clear. It’s clear. Okay. You use clear on the way in.

1:13:10  Howard Lindzon: That was my bet. It’s just a clear trend. No one ever talks about it too. So it’s a massive uptrend and broke out and you never hear people talk about it. I like

1:13:20  Barry Ritholtz: You use either Chase Reserve or Amex, I wanna say platinum. You get, you get a credit towards any travel and Clear is just an automatic, it’s no brainer. Yeah. I’m Is it $150 a year? It’s fantastic.

1:13:34  Howard Lindzon: It’s, my son would call me and goes, that’s the greatest gift you ever got, man. I’m like, wow. When a 20-year-old knows something and an 80-year-old knows something. Those are good trends. Yeah. You know that’s a brand. Yeah. When it just a 20-year-old knows it not a brand.

1:13:45  Barry Ritholtz: Maybe it catches on. Maybe it doesn’t. Yeah.

1:13:47  Howard Lindzon: C-B-O-E-I love it. ’cause they power the whole thing. You can’t do this without C-B-O-E-C-M-E. The Merck, you know, is, you know, the New York Stock Exchange. Let

1:13:58  Barry Ritholtz: Me ask you a question, a direct investing question before we get to our favorite questions that I, I think a lot of investors have a hard time with. I started on a trading desk, so I’m okay with losses. It’s a given. But if you say to somebody, I want you to put a little money into these 10 or 20 stocks, half of them are gonna go outta business. Yeah. Maybe five or break even. You’ll make money on a couple and maybe one’s a home run. How do you deal with that? Really Fathead long tail. You not a math

1:14:29  Howard Lindzon: Guy indexing. I’m so into indexing. No, I

1:14:32  Barry Ritholtz: Mean on your, on your private seed state, like most of the seed investments you’re gonna make aren’t gonna give you return. It’s a great

1:14:40  Howard Lindzon: Question.

1:14:40  Barry Ritholtz: Return.

1:14:41  Howard Lindzon: I’m

1:14:42  Barry Ritholtz: Bearish. Do. Oh, I’m wrong all the time. I’m just

1:14:44  Howard Lindzon: Bearish on my industry. Right. I’d never, I believe it was a moment in time with Zer. I think it got the country through its unintended circumstances. We live in all these unintended circumstances.

1:14:55  Barry Ritholtz: Consequences, right?

1:14:56  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. Or ci. Yeah. Unintended consequences. Sorry,

1:14:59  Barry Ritholtz: By the way, not that you 60 wealthy, that happens a whole lot more.

1:15:02  Howard Lindzon: I’m wealthy just born at the right time. Lot of unintended circumstances. Zer is a good thing. Right? I’m not saying, I’m not saying I shouldn’t be ashamed, but

1:15:09  Barry Ritholtz: If you have assets, if you’re, if you’re a Yeah, a working stiff, it’s like I used to be, it was tough. Yeah.

1:15:15  Howard Lindzon: S and ps at all time highs, cash levels at all time highs. If I hear those two things together, what do I think of inflation? Right? It just has never been a better time to have assets. Right. It doesn’t mean I don’t know when it’s gonna end. I have cash and stocks. It’s a double whammy. The, the, so I’m lucky. I am so bearish on what I do for a living. Meaning what value do I add in a world of 6% interest rates tying someone up for 10 years when I could go buy sand disk right. In the public markets and get 6000% in a year. I’m not saying I’m smart enough to hold these things right? But in a world where Robinhood and a thousand Robin Hoods are gonna bloom, if you’re asking me my biggest bet, public markets do the work. You have an analyst in Claude, right? You can go see beaten up, no one’s following any stock. Everybody’s momentum investing. Go find 10 companies. So let, why would you do a startup investing? Every kid wants to be an angel investor. I’m like, dude, do it in the public markets. You have liquidity and you’re not locking up your clients for 10 years. But

1:16:17  Barry Ritholtz: You’re not answering my question. Okay. Which is how do you as an investor deal with the psychology of knowing most of your seed investments aren’t gonna work out? Is it just the nature of the beast? No. Or does that weigh on you at

1:16:33  Howard Lindzon: All? No, I think it, it aligned with how I thought of the world as as, as someone who believes their high integrity wishes, who, who wants people to believe they’re high integrity for my kids’ sake. And you know, the integrity of telling my investors that upfront is the release. Meaning I’m not telling my investors we’re gonna be 90% hit rate. If you give me money, you’re gonna hate me because you’re going to think the idea that I love is the dumbest idea. The Robinhood quote

1:17:02  Barry Ritholtz: Unquote Yeah. Dumbest idea I’ve ever had.

1:17:04  Howard Lindzon: You are betting on me to hang 30 pieces of art in Ma Howie’s gallery that Larry David Gallery and you will pick, and if I gave you the choice to invest in all 30, you would pick the two that went to zero. So you’re betting on me to dece the world my way. And then I’m not telling you we’re gonna make a hundred times our money, but my job is to find one company that’s a hundred bagger. Ah, okay. So I, so I have to know math, I have to do this, I have to have just get yelled up by my LPs when they read our quarterly letters and go, that was the dumbest idea. I’m like, you’re right. Like I’m embarrassed. But our job is to find a Robinhood and we found many of them, you know, life flock, Robinhood beehive. We just got one called alpaca. Again, a trend with no

1:17:48  Barry Ritholtz: Ai,

1:17:49  Howard Lindzon: Alpaca powers, a thousand Robin Hoods around the world. They’re like the eight modern apex. So I’m saying like, our job is to know what we know, take crazy bets and and sell that to our LPs is like, you’re investing for 10 years. This is like, you know, it’s not as good as it was in 2013 when rates were zero and, and, and now it’s a different game again. And I’m thinking like with you’ve got Claude and you can do an an, you can analyze the stock in like three seconds. I’m like the, the the, the everyone’s a CFA all of a sudden if they wanna be. Right. What a great time to be a public market investor. And yet everybody wants to be a private investor. So again,

1:18:29  Barry Ritholtz: It’s a it’s so funny coming from you. Yeah.

1:18:31  Howard Lindzon: Special. No, 2020. I’ve been writing about this since COVID is like, public markets are amazing because there’s so many stupid people making dumb bets on Robinhood and dislocation is everywhere and it’s only getting worse.

1:18:44  Barry Ritholtz: And the degenerative economy is gonna Dr. Continue driving this theme.

1:18:47  Howard Lindzon: Yes. And I think most people should index, but everybody should learn how to pick stocks too in this era.

1:18:53  Barry Ritholtz: I gotcha. Yeah. Alright, so it’s almost midnight. I only have you for a few minutes more and you have to end up at, at your events tonight. Cash awards tonight. Yeah. Cash Egg Awards

1:19:01  Howard Lindzon: And Breaking News. October Fest. October 6th. Coming back to New York. That’s our big event where

1:19:06  Barry Ritholtz: That’s

1:19:07  Howard Lindzon: Exciting. Yeah. A thousand people on the west side.

1:19:09  Barry Ritholtz: I’m, I am looking forward to that.

1:19:10  Howard Lindzon: October 6th if you want come hit me up.

1:19:12  Barry Ritholtz: Let’s do our speed round. Five questions,

1:19:16  Howard Lindzon: Two hours,

1:19:17  Barry Ritholtz: 10 seconds each. Okay. I’m gonna jump right into it. Starting with

1:19:21  Howard Lindzon: Boxers,

1:19:22  Barry Ritholtz: Who were your early mentors who helped shape your career?

1:19:26  Howard Lindzon: I think part, I hate saying this, I didn’t have good early mentorships, so I I really take pride in mentoring other people because I think Who

1:19:34  Barry Ritholtz: Were your later mentors? I hear Fred Wilson the

1:19:36  Howard Lindzon: Time. Yeah, you like people that I discovered, like the mentorship came from the community being the mentor led me, like Stock Twit being a giver opened me up to get mentorship. I think young kids are not getting good mentorship.

1:19:48  Barry Ritholtz: So just pure Karma. Karma. I love that. What are some of your favorite books? What are you reading right now? I know what you’re reading next. What are you reading now? Yeah,

1:19:56  Howard Lindzon: I got your, but I don’t read.

1:19:58  Barry Ritholtz: You’re on flights all the time. What do you do? Just movies.

1:20:02  Howard Lindzon: I’m so addicted to like HBO, Amazon.

1:20:06  Barry Ritholtz: So you’re watching series. Yeah, I

1:20:07  Howard Lindzon: Built, I’m just very into content

1:20:08  Barry Ritholtz: That content’s my next

1:20:09  Howard Lindzon: Question. What? But hang on. So you’re asking books. I still love the classic Shoe Dog for business. You know Phil Knight’s book? I love that. That was fun. I guess he’s biography. I I like stuff. I just, I just, my brain doesn’t work with books.

1:20:21  Barry Ritholtz: Huh. That’s really interesting. Yeah. Tell us what you’re watching on Netflix. HBO Amazon.

1:20:27  Howard Lindzon: I just rewatched the Nick. Have you watched the Nick on HBO Soderberg? Why does that sound so familiar? Oh, it’s about the 19 hundreds. The Knickerbocker Hospital.

1:20:35  Barry Ritholtz: No, I did not watch that best show. Really?

1:20:37  Howard Lindzon: This season it’s about, it’s like surgery wasn’t done until like Barbers used to do surgery in 1900. Right. All the rich oil guys started backing hospitals and that was the original tech surgery was tech. And it’s just an incredible period piece about the 19 hundreds and soho in New York,

1:20:57  Barry Ritholtz: Huh? I’ll check that out on hbo. It’s, give us one more.

1:21:00  Howard Lindzon: There’s very little good stuff on tv. I think Rooster’s pretty

1:21:03  Barry Ritholtz: Good. Can I tell you something from HBO

1:21:04  Howard Lindzon: Rooster’s

1:21:05  Barry Ritholtz: Is funny. You have that backwards. There’s okay, there’s too much to stuff,

1:21:07  Howard Lindzon: But I think I’ve seen it all.

1:21:08  Barry Ritholtz: Have you seen Landman

1:21:10  Howard Lindzon: Great. But that’s, that’s more like Harlequin romance kind of series. They’re fun to watch and the kids like ’em too.

1:21:16  Barry Ritholtz: Okay. But the Nick

1:21:17  Howard Lindzon: You’ll love ’cause it’s

1:21:18  Barry Ritholtz: Superior piece. You see three Body Problem if you want something a little more.

1:21:21  Howard Lindzon: No, but that’s sci-fi I think. I don’t like sci-fi.

1:21:23  Barry Ritholtz: You don’t like sci-fi? No, I just, so you didn’t watch The Expanse?

1:21:27  Howard Lindzon: No, I didn’t like that either. Oh my gosh. I try it and I never get into it, huh?

1:21:30  Barry Ritholtz: Yeah, that’s interesting. I like

1:21:32  Howard Lindzon: Degenerate stuff.

1:21:33  Barry Ritholtz: How do you feel about Spy, that sort of stuff? I love him killing Eve.

1:21:39  Howard Lindzon: Killing is good, was great. I like spice. I can rarely follow it. Well nine because I, I start have you start dozing up. Yeah, it was good.

1:21:46  Barry Ritholtz: Wow. Yeah. Really. How about any of the British period pieces? I,

1:21:49  Howard Lindzon: I love Brit Box. I watch

1:21:51  Barry Ritholtz: Bri Box. Alright, so the Crown Bridge, Bridger Tin,

1:21:54  Howard Lindzon: Not Bridgeton, but Brit Box is a great channel. Yeah, there’s that criter criterion for old movies.

1:22:01  Barry Ritholtz: If you have Brit Box, go back and watch. What was the name of that show? There was a show that came out around the same time as friends only coupling. And it had, oh, I’ll watch it. It has teeth. It’s, I mean, everything from the nineties is a little dated, but whereas friends was kind of milk toast and mushy. This has a sharp edge and it’s British, so it’s nasty and funny in a way that only the Brits can do.

1:22:28  Howard Lindzon: Okay. Yeah. So I’m a media fanatic, but not like I’m weird and I’m know that so bullish on YouTube, apple tv, YouTube

1:22:37  Barry Ritholtz: Is just great.

1:22:37  Howard Lindzon: I just love YouTube.

1:22:39  Barry Ritholtz: All right, so final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a college grad interested in either becoming a seed investor or a startup entrepreneur?

1:22:53  Howard Lindzon: Well, I think there’s no shame in being a number two, number three or number four. So chief of staff is the new CEO. So go be someone’s chief of staff. Like, don’t worry about pay or title. Worry about finding something that’s working this way. It’s, it’s much easier to go work for a company that’s just working. So go like, ignore the title, ignore

1:23:16  Barry Ritholtz: Low end job at a,

1:23:17  Howard Lindzon: Ignore the salary, right? Find a rocket ship and attach yourself, whether it’s manscape, you’re gonna learn more. You’re either, you’re gonna be smarter people around, there’s gonna be, you know, less aggravation, more work, but hey, like, if you’re really serious,

1:23:32  Barry Ritholtz: But you gotta grind it out.

1:23:33  Howard Lindzon: I tell my daughter is like, if you’re really serious about this, it’s gonna take a lot of work, but go do it. If you’re not serious, be a socialist. Like, it’s okay, but like, don’t commit, don’t fool yourself. Like go work for a rocket ship. Otherwise, dude, who are you talking to? So like, there’s no room anymore for these kids that, like, if you wanna start a company, do you know it’s 24 7? Right? And if you, and no one’s gonna like you. And if you wanna be a number two, do you know what it takes to be a number two? So I’m like, be honest, but like, go work for a company that’s working

1:24:06  Barry Ritholtz: More. And our final question, what do you know about the world’s of venture and, and seed investing today that would’ve been helpful 65, 70 years ago when you were first getting started?

1:24:17  Howard Lindzon: No, I think I luckily got the right mentorship entered at the right time. I think you have to do it for a while. You gotta get a crop, like if you’re gonna go do wine or weather matters. And same with tech. Like what matters with tech is you have to get, if you, if you were of the Google Glass era, not much worked, right? If you were in the Blackberry Fund 2008, no go. No go baby. So, so

1:24:39  Barry Ritholtz: Unless, unless you could have been an early investor in Apple or when they were public, when the iPhone

1:24:44  Howard Lindzon: First came out, I, I think the public markets are underappreciated because seed investing became cool because of Zuckerberg and because of a few of these rocket ships. See, I

1:24:51  Barry Ritholtz: Thought seed investing or venture investing really became cool in the nineties and then in the 2000 it kind of faded. No, it became,

1:24:59  Howard Lindzon: No, it’s never been more in, it’s never been more loved

1:25:03  Barry Ritholtz: Today. Oh,

1:25:04  Howard Lindzon: I go see these young kids, they, it seems like they know nothing and they all wanna be venture invested. I’m like, yeah. Have you ever bought a stock, like you get wounded like day one, like stock drops 20%. Like go open a Robinhood account and learn how to invest. Like if you don’t know the public markets, what are you doing in the private markets?

1:25:21  Barry Ritholtz: Gotta graduate to private.

1:25:22  Howard Lindzon: Yeah. I think the most, the guys that got who were interesting to me, and I’m not saying they still are the crossover investors, the people that like knew the public markets and then started doing private. And I think that was my edge. I knew how pricing worked, how mar whether I was right or wrong. I understood how markets worked and the seed investing, the prices made sense to me relative to public markets. Now the prices in private markets make no sense to me,

1:25:43  Barry Ritholtz: Howard, it is always a blast. When you come in, you’re bucking Bronco. I never know where we’re gonna go. You are not Larry David, you are the Zach Galifianakis. Oh, I love Zach of, of finance. He was

1:25:56  Howard Lindzon: Just on Conan watch out episode.

1:25:57  Barry Ritholtz: I should, I should put two ferns in here just for your arrival. Thank you, by the way, for, for being so generous with your time. And good luck at the cash tags. Thank you awards tonight.

 

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The post Transcript: Howard Lindzon, Social Leverage appeared first on The Big Picture.

Iran-Linked Media Floats Data Tax On Hormuz Undersea Internet Cables

An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked media outlet has signaled that submarine fiber-optic cables running through the Strait of Hormuz remain in Tehran’s crosshairs.

Tehran views Hormuz not only as an energy chokepoint but also as a digital chokepoint, with undersea cables beaming internet across the Gulf and into the global network.

Source: Retuers 

Tasnim published an article titled “Three Practical Steps for Generating Revenue from Strait of Hormuz Internet Cables,” pointing out that Tehran must reassess how it exercises sovereignty over the strategic maritime chokepoint.

Source: Retuers 

The IRGC-linked outlet said that submarine fiber-optic cables in the critical waterway facilitate more than $10 trillion in financial transactions each day, and claimed that Iran has been deprived of the economic and sovereign benefits tied to the digital economy.

Source: Retuers 

Tasnim warned that any disruption, cut, or damage to these cables, whether from natural causes or ship anchors, could impose heavy losses on the world's economy.

"These cables, which are laid on the seabed using advanced technologies such as DWDM and double-armored standards, carry the bulk of international internet traffic, cloud synchronization, enterprise virtual private networks, voice traffic, and financial-payment networks. From the perspective of the digital economy, any disruption, outage, or damage to these communications highways, whether from natural incidents or ship anchors, can cause irreparable losses," the outlet stated.

Tasnim lists three steps for how Iran should begin imposing fees on internet traffic routed through Hormuz:

1. Licensing and tolls: Iran should require telecom consortia and cable operators to obtain permits for laying and operating cables through the strait, with initial licensing fees and annual renewal payments.

2. Iranian legal jurisdiction over tech firms: Major technology companies using the cables, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, should be required to operate officially under Iranian law and cooperate with Iranian technology firms, knowledge-based companies, and media entities.

3. Iranian control over maintenance and repair: Iran should develop the technical infrastructure to control or participate in the maintenance and repair of the cables, turning cable servicing into both a revenue stream and a sovereignty tool.

Beyond the quest to charge data fees, Tehran has already imposed fees or tolls on vessels passing through the strait.

Last week, Iran's newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority pushed forward with a new protocol for commercial vessels transiting the strait. It’s unclear whether the protocol will incur a fee.

However, Iranians have made "demands for payments, payments for toll fees, as we say, for those vessels to be granted permission to sail," Dimitris Maniatis, CEO of maritime risk consultancy Marisks, told CNN.

The direct result of Tehran’s attempt to position itself as the gatekeeper of the Hormuz chokepoint, across energy, freight, and potentially digital traffic, will be to accelerate global efforts to bypass the strait. That means rerouting pipelines, tanker traffic, commercial shipping, and eventually undersea cable infrastructure away from Iran’s strait.

That effort has already started:

• World Starts To "Build" Around Hormuz; Japan Buying UAE Oil Bypassing Strait As ADNOC To Spend $55 Billion On Pipelines

.  . .

 

Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 09:55