Financial Insights and Future Predictions

yo okay hey he got it fixed in time whoa you're kind of close Uh, yeah. It's hella close. How you doing? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing better. I'm doing better. And, like, shout out to everybody that definitely sent my wife well wishes. She's doing much better. She's feeling better. Still a work in progress, but she's doing alright, so. But she's getting back to Erica. And anybody that met Erica, you know. That's good to hear. She's a brave little toaster. Little toaster. Oh, my gosh. Okay. So, how are you? What's been going on with you? What has been going on with me? Well, I'm back from Afrotech. Okay. Which, did we talk about last time? I can't remember if. Okay. We were off. That's why. Right. But feel free. We can always talk about it. So for me personally, it was more Afro than tech. That's okay. That's okay. I think if you are just starting out in your tech career, I think it's a great place to start as far as job opportunities and meeting people. I will say that one thing that they are going to be doing for next year, it's in Houston again next year, October 27th through the 31st, I believe. One thing they're going to do for next year is to increase the offerings on the executive track. And I had the executive ticket. So I thought that was good. But I also didn't have very high expectations or just expectations, period, I should say, for the first for my first Afrotech. I had fun, ran into Hella Cousins. So shout out if you were there and I met you. That was really nice. And then, you know, Houston. the whole a whole vibe and i was definitely in the houston streets kicking it way too hard um and i'm looking forward to it next year um but i did meet a lot of cool people that i hope to follow up with and have them as guests on the show nice nice nice nice yeah 2025 is going to be a pretty jam-packed year for us especially since we'll be having a lot of very cool guests coming on to the show so i'm really really excited about that so all right so should we get should we get it popping Yeah, we have a lot to cover in this hour, and we have a hard stop at six. It's getting sticky. Oh, it is. I got that mop. All right. What's good, everybody? I am Mark Monroe, accompanied by my wonderful co-host, co-producer, co-creator, and all things Galactic. Give it up for none other than the wonderful GCEO. It's... Oh, my gosh. What did I say? I'm just kidding. It's Jill and GC and the place to be. What does it, cousins? and yeah that's all I got for right now okay well you know you're fresh from Apple Tech so we'll give you that one so there it goes okay there it is I was gonna I forgot about the song that we were doing but you know right when we're off air I think it was the Rihanna song but you know I know now you're gonna have that stuck in my head it was gone but now it's gonna be back y'all wait I do have to say Mark Hella hit this high note I was like okay what was the song again I'm not saying. Okay, there it is. I'm not saying because it's going to get stuck in my head. Okay, so JoLynn, like you said, we have a lot to get into with a short amount of time. Y'all, I hope you have your pen and paper ready because you guys know how we do. Yeah, here I am waving a pencil and my iPad is... My iPad is dead. It's dead. But, you know, we got a lot to get into. So I have it over here on my prompt side of the screen. So... I have multiple windows, Mark. Oh, you know, I'm ultra wide over here. So let me know where is it that we should start? How is it that we should get this popping? Should we get it popping with an I told you so? Or should we get it popping with? You definitely need your space to talk your ish. But how about we just let them know what we're going to cover in today's episode? Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. So today's topics that we're going to cover. Well, first of all, the title of the show is, go ahead, Mark. Oh, Trey talk? Will you be broke or rich in 2028? Will you be broke or rich in 2028? That is a good question to ask. Ask her that question now in the chat. And tell the truth. Answer it in the chat. Will you be broke or rich in the chat? And it's okay. It's like, look, we all start somewhere or we're all where we're at. So just give it. Give an honest answer if you can, you know, if you have to. Okay, I'm going to put my answer in. Lie, but we preferably. But yeah, so, all right. So goal to be, okay, so we got goal to be rich. I'm seeing a lot of rich. I'm hearing, ooh, I like this one. Richer, I love that. We got rich AF. Okay, yes, we got, all right. Bye-bye, I like that, I like that. JoLynn over here talking about it's a heist. uh and then somebody says after i finish this phd i'll be rich okay look i will be comfortable okay that all right all right okay all right so and then we got another rich af all right i love it i love it somebody says i what is it i plan to be rich uh right now my portfolio is on on the struggle bus but ready to fix it okay well i mean hey Get the wrench, get the screwdriver, whatever is necessary. Let's get to fixing it. All right. So, Jolene, so I'm guessing that we have, like, majority of the room right now is optimistic. I think we have some cautiously optimistic minds in the room, and that's okay. I haven't seen anything in the chat that says broke. Well, I wouldn't expect broke from Come Up Cousins, but, I mean. Rich, hunty. Okay. All right now. Oh, someone's still walking away. D'Angelo's still walking away. I see you little bro. Okay, D'Angelo. I see you. I see you. All right. So. Someone said it depends on how you define being rich. It's up to you. So you make your own definition. It's up to you. All right. Design your life. But Mark, the topics as we, just so that we can, you know, frame this conversation. Today, we're going to talk about the U.S. debt bomb along with the corporate debt bomb. We're going to talk about some M&A, a.k.a. mergers and acquisitions. Also, we're going to get into tariffs, the jobs lookout for 2025. And we're going to talk about two tech giants potentially going at it. OK. And how all of that impacts. your entire life um basically yeah so let's get into it where do you want to say look look i'm okay so i'm easy like sunday morning so let's go look all right let's talk about let's talk about the debt we'll move from broke to rich so let's talk about the debt okay all right so so we are we talking about u.s based debt are we going to talk about corporate debt let's go micro and then our macro then micro so u.s corporate So U.S. debt is above a little bit above $36 trillion. I think, you know, you had some pretty dope stats on here. Like, for example, 14% of interest, like the interest payments now represent 14% of the entire budget, which is exceeding military spending. So I want everybody to understand that military spending is one of our heaviest is one of our heaviest expenses. I think it's one of three. I think we spend in other areas like Medicare and all this other stuff. But I mean, still. I mean, if your interest payments exceed, say, for example, one of your top spends, that's something to think about. But I think we also need to pause, Mark, on this $36 trillion. Like, what? It's the U.S. It's just a number. It's just an arbitrary number. I'm just kidding. It's not an arbitrary number at all. That's not a debt. Nah, it's a lot of debt when you're spending $1 trillion in interest payments and not even really making a dent. Now you start to understand what students feel when they pay their student loans or when people are making those mortgage payments. Listen, I understand. I understand. So that's something that we definitely need to be attentive to because, of course, it's like, you know, when you see U.S. debt and you see how that goes across, like looking even more granular. like bringing it in micro so we live in seattle washington right and so seattle the city of seattle i mean ish uh was the city of seattle has a 261 million dollar deficit out of the eight billion dollar uh budget so our our city's budget is eight billion dollars and out of the eight billion dollars it's 261 million dollars in the hole so what does something like that do so i'm gonna explain it to you on this level so then that way you can kind of get an idea of what it looks like on a macro level which is the overall us so what happens you have like say for example the city of seattle that starts to decrease exactly how many jobs that they start to literally they either go some go furloughed Or some, they just like say, okay, hey, we're just going to cut recruiting in these particular departments, which means that if you're cutting in specific departments, let's say public works, where it's like people clean parks and everything else. Well, those parks are going to take a little bit longer to get cleaned up and everything else. If you're looking at other areas as it pertains to like where the budget goes as it pertains to education, the education spend or to nonprofits that benefit on, say, for example. Any of those fundings, or when you look at, say, for example, municipal projects, like, for example, cleaning up streets, roads, and all those other things, where a lot of small businesses, they rely on that contract work from municipalities. When those things get cut back, then that hurts the project. And then ultimately, if it hurts the project, then ultimately that's jobs that's also hurting. And when you think about it, it's like all states. ultimately have their own GDP and then you combine that all together and then that's ultimately how you get to the overall U.S.-based GDP. So go ahead. No, I was going to say I do want to share that like with the when I think about Seattle's budget and this deficit, how it will impact the nonprofit sector. Like I just went to the Urban League's annual breakfast and while sitting there before the event was over, they were able to. raise 1.3 million dollars um during this breakfast that started at like eight o'clock in the morning um there was over 2 000 people there right um and what when i think about how these organizations are the organ the nonprofit organizations in seattle do the majority of the service work so they usually stand in the gap for when um there's like a job issue, like if there's less jobs, then they try to place you with different jobs or supplement like your things that have to do with a lack of income or reduced income. So think paying light bills, think utility bills covered, packages for when newborns are born, even assistance in purchasing a home. So if the city is reducing their budget, then you can imagine that also the state would be. it has impacts for the state as well. So now the organizations will be competing for some of those dollars. So if they're competing, that means that there'll be less to offer. So that means more people will be suffering because if you think about it, Washington state overall is a blue state. And so if we have the federal government reducing money, that's going out to all these organizations is going to have major. implications for not only just the nonprofit sector, because again, that kind of captures the gap that tends to happen, but it's going to have impact on just everyone that lives in Washington State. And then you look at that as a small example, and then you kind of step back and then it impacts even more people. You know, you look at the city of Seattle, we're one of the smartest, most educated. and the most millionaires per capita, that's great. But at the same time, those aren't the only people that live here. So we really have to take into consideration, how is this going to impact everybody on this spectrum from broke to rich? Exactly. You nailed it right there in the head. And so, you know, somebody asked in the chat, like, you know, i think it was uh cousin kareem um or someone that acts yeah he said who is u.s in debt to so like for example an easy way to look at it is remember when japan started going on remember when japan was like the topic of discussion towards the middle of the year and when japan started becoming a part of that topic of discussion the market started to dip as soon as we started to see what was happening in japan yes there you have it So Japan is one of the largest holders of U.S.-backed debt. Of course, you got China, you got United Kingdom, and then, of course, you got places like Germany and Canada. but i mean really it's like you know japan and china that ultimately hold a lot of those notes um I can't really give you the exact number last time I talked. I think it was like 1.1 trillion as it pertains to countries that they had invested. So when you see things that happen and that get erupted in the bond market, now you see what's happening as it pertains to what's happening on that U.S.-backed debt side. Who's investing into what? Well, it's the... One of the problems, though, Mark, with the U.S. debt is that it's not looking to it's not going to be slowing down. No, we'll probably reach 50 trillion dollars if, you know, at the rate in which that we're doing, probably within the next 10 years, we'll probably have a 50 trillion dollar debt. Yeah, which is anyway, it's hard to conceptualize. That's that's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. Like, it's it's kind of like it's. And that's why I was asking, like, is it real or is it like more like an arbitrary number? I think that sooner or later we'll come to a point where it's like when things slow down, we'll have no other choice but to ultimately start to pay off large portions of that debt. But I think that we have to get to a place in which the United States economy is very much so booming. And that's really letting you know a sign of the times as it pertains to where we are economically. George, not George. I'm sorry. Why am I saying George? Jerome Powell does not think it's sustainable. No, it's not. I mean, nothing is ever sustainable. I mean, it's just like having a checking account. And then ultimately, like, you know, your checking account has a balance. And then it also has a credit balance. And then once you exceed that credit balance, you know, it's like you start getting into no man's land. You can keep going. Like, for example, hey, you're going to take out loans. Okay. So then your checking account balance is negative. Then your credit balance is negative. Then essentially your loan balance is negative. And it's just. It's a snowball effect where, as you can see, it's not sustainable. So ultimately, sooner or later, things are going to have to get reeled in. And Uncle Charles said it best. Like he said, monopoly money. Right. They're going to be printed like crazy. So, okay. Now with the corporate debt, now if we take it from macro to micro, what is that setup looking like? um so remember those times when interest rates were low and everybody was ultimately out there borrowing and just like hey we're borrowing at these rates and they're not borrowing like a lot of them weren't borrowing at fixed rates they were borrowing at uh variable rates and so now a lot of those chickens are coming home to roost and so you're now starting to reach those moments in which that you reach those maturity points now of course they can go through like banks and ultimately if it's like relationship based which a lot of banks are they want to keep the relationship so like a lot of your major fortune 500s should be fine should okay all right um but if they're not and essentially it's like that can eat significantly into their profit margins and then essentially then you have to start looking at those companies very differently as it pertains to growth because their growth is being cannibalized by the debt that they have to pay so and then which can also stunt their growth significantly as it pertains to Well, if your growth is stunted based upon profit margins, which means that essentially you can't really make the investments, which means that you'll probably start like, here's an easy way to notice. You'll start seeing companies that start doing layoffs where they have to start cutting back on, say, for example, staff. Because why? It always comes down to the bottom line and the cash flow always dominates the conversation. Here's the thing that I want everybody to like, if you can, if you've got children or if you got like, dude. children teenagers whatever or even just you're just amongst friends i strongly urge for everybody to get the board game cash flow like if you can i know that we i know that a lot of us grew up on monopoly which is great and it's a very arbitrary board game but if you want something that's a little bit more realistic to help you understand not only just the the like how to mentally get out of the nine to five and getting into that next phase and also understanding like when to take risk and when not to take risk and everything else look the idea is ultimately to literally play that game because he'll give you some understanding d'angelo says that he's triggered because the last time that he was here you know i wiped the floor with him in the game but you know hopefully he learned we should um we should organize like a national cash flow day party and have everyone like you know play the game health they can host their own game and we all play at the same time and then and just tag us like just tag us like you Like for real, like we should get to the point where we actually start playing teams. Yeah, I'll ref because I don't want to be the cheat code. Let me make a note. Yeah, so and what I want you to do is I want you to look at it from like it gives you different perspectives also. Like people always sit there and when they play the game, they wonder why it's tougher. to get out of the rat race when you're like the doctor or anything else and we always pride ourselves on these high paying jobs but not understanding that with high paying jobs you're also your expenses are just as high and everything else you know it's it's kind of like assumed and so essentially like you know your passive income has to supersede your expenses so again like all in all to say bringing it back because i know i was kind of going on a tangent but i hope that people kind of like grab the gym out of that one and here comes another one So when you see companies that are like having to pull back, like, let's say 10% of their workforce or 7% of their workforce, you know, okay, imagine if that's 7% of their workforce, what does that calculate as it pertains to dollars? That's billions of dollars in which that that company has now just saved. So in those billions of dollars that is now saved, it's letting you know that it's trying to protect profit margins, and they're going to try to protect profit margins at all costs. If they don't, then essentially, like, again, it stunts growth. And so again, when growth. has done it then essentially then they can't go any further they can't make any other investments towards the future and you're starting to see companies like that that are ultimately like okay hey they joined the ai race but they were slow to join the ai race and then essentially it's like now that they're in it it's like okay they kind of like don't know exactly how to navigate and now they're like talking about laying off large portions of their of their workforce and even then you're like okay well now the conversation as it pertains to mergers and acquisitions acquisitions are starting to jump into the conversation. Well, okay. Should I just go ahead and just cook? Cause I can just cook. Like if we want to get your apron and your chef's hat. So, so when we start looking at mergers and acquisitions, it's going to be like the companies in which that are, that are just struggling. So you're going to have the companies that are just like struggling to like literally get into gear. And just because they're publicly traded companies and they sit on the stock market doesn't make them ironclad and they're not defensible. I mean, look at what happened with Supermicro. Somebody had called me the other day asking me about Supermicro and saying, hey, are they safe? And I'm like, I don't know, because literally it's like if I'm not even looking at the stock and if I'm just looking at the company itself, I'd wait until the audit is complete. But I mean, you're going to have companies like Intel. Like I said, Intel is definitely on watch for an acquisition. They need to pick up something. That'd be funny if it was AMD and it was government sponsored. Wow. Your favorite and little boy blue. Interesting. Listen, you know, sooner or later, we have to come together and not be enemies anymore. We understand how much we need each other. But yeah, you're going to start seeing companies that are going through mergers and acquisitions because they say that it's the strategic move to do. No, it's not just a strategic move to do. It's ultimately like giving you a way out. And ultimately, it's like when essentially like you've already cut your workforce and everything else. Now you've prepared your financials to look beautiful for any potential suitor and any potential acquirer. Like that's the secret to the entire game. Anybody that you ask, if you ever go ask a lawyer or. or if you go ask anybody that's in finance, they'll tell you your financials always must look beautiful. If your financials don't look beautiful, then nobody wants to buy it. So we got companies out here intentionally making themselves eligible for the MA. Okay. So, I mean, listen, look, I feel for some of the companies that are like going through that. that are going through those struggles like their capex spending is starting to drop uh so which means that their capex spending drops which means either one they're ready for they're they're in growth phase but you can't be in growth phase if your capex is being spent so let's just retract that so then that means that essentially that oh well then that means that we're making investments for the future oh wait a minute but you cut back your workforce okay right you can't use that so let's retract that well so we're just trying to prepare ourselves and ultimately just hunker down No, you're not. Because again, it's like. okay well why are you selling off these assets or ultimately cutting out these departments and putting them on the shelf at your company see again it's like you know just just pay attention people like if like i said the people have been paying attention to all the things that are happening in music and if you're following look if you're so good at following drake versus kendrick lamar as it pertains to drake you know calling hr on kendrick lamar then you should be able to go and check and see what's going on in the markets and see what's happening within some of these companies and sitting back and asking the the questions with a side eye. Hey, yo, are you getting ready to get acquired? Like, cause look, some names sound right. Right. Made in the mirror, like, okay, let me make sure I look good for, you know, Apple right quick. Better find a mop is getting sticky. Because like I said, I try to warn everybody ahead of time saying, hey, the companies that you trust are the companies that have strong cash. Like the companies that have strong cash are the ones in which that you trust. If they don't have strong cash on their books and everything else. I mean, think about it. We just went through X amount of time period. And. companies like Apple and Microsoft were still making a hundred and, and even we'll throw even meta into that conversation. And even we'll throw an Amazon. These four companies were bringing in a hundred billion dollars in revenue over a three month span. A hundred billion with a B. Oh, okay. So speaking of we're still on this topic of mergers and acquisitions. Do you want to talk about, actually, no, what? Maybe. Okay. Let's talk about, well, okay. When I think about the mergers and acquisitions, like it naturally makes me think of, you know, competition and who's competing against who, because the more you can scoop up, you know, to make your bottom line that much, that much better. by acquiring another company that already the smaller venue already has the technology or whatever so that you can compete against another big dog um let's talk about two giants right now amazon and nvidia so there's competition between the two because you know uh amazon now is stepping into the ai uh chip maker market so that they can essentially compete against nvidia so My question mark is, okay, so it may be likely that we'll have more. Oh, yeah, there goes the article. It may be likely that we have more cloud companies looking to compete in this arena to kind of get rid of the third-party chip maker reliance. It'd be funny if Meta is one customer to Amazon for that AI chip. Well, So, okay. So in the short term, I don't see when I think about Amazon versus NVIDIA in the short term, I don't see any immediate risk just given NVIDIA's market leadership. But if we're looking at it in the long term, what are the potential risk and threats when it comes to NVIDIA going up against Amazon? Yeah. Other players? Yeah. Your biggest risk is the other players. Like, you know. you don't have to out swim you don't have to out swim the sharks you just have to out swim the guy you're scuba diving with right like and honestly listen if i'm nvidia i'm not afraid as it pertains to amazon stepping in to compete within this ai chip space you know i'd kind of expected it like google's already there i mean apple's got its own rendition Microsoft is still using its various providers through the cloud services. And you see many other players. And of course, AMD is also ramping up into that space as well. So I think that it's providing a lot of legitimacy. I think the thing is that NVIDIA embraces the fact that, okay, there's going to be competitors. But at the same token, we've got folks in whom which are legitimizing the space in which that we're in that ultimately enriches it. My biggest... hope for nvidia is is that they don't become complacent like i think that they've had a blueprint of what it looks like when you have been the leader for a dominant period of time because let's put it into perspective nvidia has just become the dominant like chip company but once upon a time once upon a time it was actually you know somebody else which was intel now intel is why because intel got complacent Yeah, slow to adopt, slow to move. Exactly. So with that being said, it's like, I think that as long as NVIDIA still stays on its course, as it pertains to, hey, let's keep innovating. Let's keep pushing the envelope. Let's keep being the leader that ultimately like, okay, we keep going to different arenas. They're going to be just fine. But I did try to give people a forewarning and saying that, look. Be advised, you know, Amazon has dominated the cloud space for quite some time. They have remained number one for quite some time. And the way that they do is they iterate, and then essentially get to a place of scale, scale it, continue to scale. As they're continuing to scale, they're continuing to make iterations, even within those scaling periods. So I think that is something that they've been talking about underneath the hood and is now just like hitting the foray. But if we journey back a little while, I could have sworn we kind of had this conversation a while back earlier this year. when I think it was like around the summer that I was trying to let everybody else know that, Hey, look, don't be surprised if you see an, if you see Amazon step into the space to challenge companies like Nvidia within AI chips. And don't be surprised if they also look to bring on a massive customer, AKA like a meta into the conversation. I think that that's going to be, I think that that's going to be the interesting conversation. As we move forward over the next nine to 12 months. Well, one of the things too, that we've talked about since 2020, when we first came on was how Amazon, like their whole philosophy really is a startup model. Yes. All of their different branches, departments, whatever you want to call them, are separate companies are all ran like startups. So when you have that philosophy, you are able to pivot because it's a part of your culture. And that's probably one of the mistakes that Intel did not have. And they became almost like a tech, I mean, I guess, dinosaur in that sense, because they weren't able to move quickly like a startup. So when you have, you know, a company like Amazon stepping into the foray, it's like, OK, you got to pay attention and see what they got going on. And pay attention to any potential mergers and acquisitions, like just because they have cash. So just look and. be on your and look at those cash balances like stay stay stay tuned to those those cash balance sheets because you know and then on top of that when those 10 q's come out and 10k's come out um pay attention because you know acquisitions fall underneath those like you can you can see like what is it that they acquired even though that they don't publicly they don't they may not publicize it but they do have to mention those things legally and they have to be reported to the sec as it pertains to what was acquired so uh i would just you know i would just be very attuned to what's happening there and i think that we're we're coming to the end of phase one as it pertains to this ai craze now what does that mean you're going to probably start seeing a lot of companies dump off or you're going to probably start seeing a lot of companies hit that struggle period because now it's like okay hey investors are their expectations become even more stronger and essentially they're going to be looking to okay hey well what does it like you had a lot of hype that went behind it but now what does that turn into as it pertains to like how does that portray an actual dollars or an actual performance so that's going to be the big that's going to be some of the biggest questions and which that's going to be sitting at the feet for a lot of these companies as we move into phase two and if they can't if they can't meet that that's just like a startup that raises money out of some high ridiculous valuation and then when it comes to this point where it's like okay hey have you met this valuation and they haven't met it then essentially that's ultimately how CEOs get fired. I'm not saying that any publicly traded CEOs get fired at this point, but ultimately that could spell doom and gloom for some of the companies as it pertains to shareholders wanting to be involved. So again, just something to pay attention to for sure. Yeah. And I realized when I said, Oh, let's go from broke to rich. As we were, you know, going over these topics, I forgot one of the topics that I wanted to cover. which was tariffs. Yes. So we have this potential tariff coming up, or tariffs, I should say, on China and Canada and Mexico. So those are the top three. And with this new administration, they're basically saying, okay, we need to impose this 25% tariff on those three to combat... Okay. Well, they say it's for drugs and immigration reasons, like to stop the flow. So then why did the autos go negative when that was announced? Well, we already know what happens when you start to cut back on immigration when it leads to jobs, which we'll talk about jobs next. But the whole piece about stopping the inflow of drugs. My question is, one, how are they how are they going to track this? Like. How do they know when they're successful when it comes to that portion of it specifically? And then two. Let's talk about like the real implications of these tariffs, because you got major companies like Walmart already saying, look, we're raising the prices. If you if a boy says 25 percent, the prices are going to raise automatically. Don't ask us no questions. Don't you know, don't call corporate customer service. You know, Karen, stand down, pipe down. Like they're already saying they're already saying that we're going to increase prices. So if we're looking at this, like in the context of. investors. And we're looking at this in the context of like, where, how is this going to impact our portfolios or where we should be looking to conduct like our analysis of this impact? Where do we go? What are we looking at here? What's really the impact for us? That's a lot of, that's a lot to unpack, but ultimately that you're looking at, you're looking at at least a 1% rise in inflation. So now what's interesting about that, Mark, is Yeah. All of this talk during election season was like, you know, prices are too high. So that's why I'm going to vote, you know, red or whatever. And now we're looking at the increase of consumer goods. But it's not going to be instantaneous, though. That's the beautiful part about it. It's not going to be instantaneous. Remember how slow it took for inflation to rise, even with COVID? Yeah, so much to the point where they said that, oh, this is just, you know, temporary. You know, it's not going to stick. And it got sticky. now i got you look i i knew it i knew it it was it was bound it was bound to get jolene it was bound to get you oh lord well my mom's gonna be more expensive too now okay you're gonna get your mop now so just okay so for everybody out there they're like yo what is the running joke here as it pertains to like this whole sticky conversation so the sticky part is like we were listening to tyler the creator's song and he has a song sticky so listen at you you know if you got kids you know it's such a great album it really is album of the year um all right so let's talk about it a little bit further though all jokes aside so the best way that i was ever explained to as it pertains to like when we think about politics and when we think about like when when when people run on specific campaigns um a wise man once taught a young man and he said you know he said a guy literally went to go visit uh before he had to make a choice he had the opportunity to go look at what hell was going to be like and what heaven was going to look like and when he went to go look at hell hell was like this amazing place and everything else it was lit it was popping and everything else and when he got to heaven when he showed him heaven heaven was just like so dull and everything else boring and everything else and then when he asked him he was like when you make your decision you have to stick with your decision and the guy was like yo he was like i want to go i want to go down under and the guy was like are you sure and he was like yeah and so he went he ended up going to hell and then when he got to hell it was nothing like how he pictured And he was like, wait a minute, you tricked me and everything else. And he's like, that's what it's like to actually be campaigned and marketed to. So I'm not saying that essentially that like what Donald Trump is going to do as it pertains to within his campaign or within his presidency is ultimately going to literally, you know, drop the entire like economy and everything else. Though I have this. Here's here's my personal opinion. I think that in three years. you know it's gonna get very sticky and very muggy and very hot for a lot of people within this economy and within this country and they're gonna be like okay this is i'm not feeling good about where we are and it's not because of the fact of all the other like you know statements and comments and all this other stuff they're gonna look at it purely based upon what ultimately got him uh that what got him elected and that was like pretty much um the economy he ran on the economy now the question is can you fix the economy if you can fix it great but then at the question is is it going to be a temporary fix and then it ultimately starts to rear its head the question that the reason why i say three years is because i expect the economy to start to slow down the economy has been like literally running in high overdrive just trying to get inflation down and on top of that trying to do xyz Remember all these conversations that we kept talking about as it pertains to corporate debt and U.S. debt and all those things? Well, when you have to reel those in, certain things start to also have to get cut. I mean, you're going to have to try to balance budgets and everything else and you're going to go through some pain. So the question is, like, what is that going to look like for the long run? And so will people feel better about where they are? four years from now that's the question but if you're bringing on the tariffs conversation which ultimately makes it rise by at least one percent this could be a challenging situation in which that like because when you think about it tariffs ultimately hit the companies and who much that they're trying to serve and i have to applaud like companies like apple that literally held it down for their customer base and didn't raise the prices But not every company is like that because not every company has like pricing control when they can control the supply chain and logistics side of the and on top of that, the manufacturing process. So they have power over the entire process. Not every company is going to have that. And so when they don't have that type of power, then they're going to have to adjust their prices to ultimately meet. the fact that okay hey it's either that or we're selling things closer to a loss like you have to look at some industries like 22 is a good profit margin for them but any any disruptions within that like you're literally going to say that it's like they're going to feel the effects especially like retail stores like walmart or target they're going to feel the effects you know when you think about like industrial companies or when you think about agriculture they're going to feel the effects and ultimately the consumer is going to that like who does it pass on to it passes on to the consumer the consumer is going to feel that pain so okay one of the things that besides being able to control like supply that um apple was able to do to keep those prices down um with some of their esg um policies so what other you I mean, especially with being able to recycle old phones and then make something new, which people were happy to turn in old phones just to get the discount and then buy a new phone, which is probably parts of their old phone. But anyway, what how can ESG or other ways that ESG can have a positive benefit on this potential? rise in prices for some of these other companies? It depends upon how it depends on like the control that they have within their supply chain and their process. I mean, also when we think about ESG, it also depends upon how is that they're making decisions. Most ESG is you fix things today. So then that way you don't have to deal with it tomorrow. You fix you fix today's lazy. So that way you can you can solve tomorrow's crazy. Like that's literally the concept of what we think about when we think about ESG. You're solving environmental, social, and governance problems today. So then that way, when things get crazy later, it's less crazier for you because you're already prepared for it. So if companies are ultimately doing that, then they're going to be fine. I mean, to a certain degree, but again, it depends upon how much of the process do they own. If they have control of, okay, gotcha. Yeah. If they don't own a massive part of the process or control of the entire cycle of things. that could spell a problem like for example the reason why we say apple can control the problem is because of the fact that every single iphone that they sell isn't like nine times out of ten we're at a place now jolin that every single phone that that people buy today is recycled material from somebody else's phone that they were using that now you're using that has been made from it's actually pretty ingenious because you're still selling it at the same price you're not even selling it at a discounted price You're selling it at the same price, but yet you're using the same materials that ultimately created, let's say, the iPhone 8, iPhone 10 or iPhone 12. Well, but that's the beautiful thing about it, though. Carbon, carbon positive now. So they went from or is it carbon positive or carbon neutral or negative? Everybody wants to get to neutral. Look, I'm getting a little tongue tied here because I know that we got other subjects that we got to run to. But whatever it is, is the good side. That's Apple where they are now. And every company wants to be in that process. Yeah. All right. So now we got to go back to this U.S. job market. Yes. Sorry, we've kind of been all over the place, but we have. Well, we already know how unemployment is looking right now. Right now, it's a little under 4% at 3.9%. This is. and it's going to increase to all they're saying is going to increase to well when i say well over that even a tenth of percentage point is too high when it comes to um unemployment rates in the u.s market so they're saying when i say they i mean like economists are projecting 4.2 percent so the question is um how is this going to impact impact the market? And what what sector should we be looking at? It's kind of crazy, because when we look at it, like if you notice, like, if you ever see that a company lays off like a massive amount of folks, then you know, have you ever noticed that the stock typically jumps? Yeah, because they're, they're decreasing their profit margin. Well, either that or they're keeping their profit margins the same. also getting rid of expenses and of course investors look that as a knee-jerk reaction to say oh hey they're getting rid of expenses um or they're they're decreasing expenses um i think that some companies are better well positioned i think that there's a lot of companies like for example within the tech sector that like literally went through massive layoffs and i think that they overlay it off people yeah now they're trying to now they're trying to go back and hire quite a few people because they realize okay hey we're hitting this place and we're starting to hit like massive amounts of demand here and we don't have enough talent and staff to be able to supplant or to be able to supply for the demand so i think that like other arenas you're going to see that that opens up um my biggest thing is just that you know i'm looking at it from the standpoints as it pertains to cost like a lot of times people will sit back and say you know mark you're you keep saying cost you keep saying cost and i'm going to keep saying it because at the end of the day it still comes down to cash flow. If cash flow, if cash flow statements and balance sheets are strong, then you're good. If cash flow is ultimately decreasing, then there may be some challenges ahead. And with that being said, you know, I think that some industries are going to see like, for example, like agriculture has definitely been needing talent but the thing is is that essentially the cost as it pertains to you know to acquire that talent especially here in the us is too high now we're talking about things like manufacturing um where you saw that like i think in as the fall in the early fall we saw a lot of unions go on strike we saw a lot of folks like literally asking for pay raises um which is which is fine um but at the same time it's like okay hey they don't understand like some people just don't understand you know for that that bump in 30 as as it pertains to salaries it's going to come from somewhere yeah and at the same time that boeing i think settled they also like turned around the next week and said hey look listen we got to do some layoffs yeah so look i mean somebody asked the question like i thought that they or us can't compete or with uh fiscal structure and then somebody said uh i thought they laid off to prepare for ai some companies did that but ultimately but what was the what was the overall objective there you lay off to prepare for ai to do what i mean you still need people to process that ai you still need people to you still need to hire people to be able to support that AI infrastructure that you have. You can't do like, and I think that a lot of folks thought that they could just like literally implement AI infrastructure and say, okay, hey, well, you know, we're going to be okay. We just implemented and we're good to go. And that's not the case. You need a system that ultimately supports it. So do I believe that there's going to be new jobs created in 2025? Yes. I think that we'll start seeing newer jobs come in in 2025. that support a lot of those new new age arenas and for the folks out there that are like literally looking to bring their kids into tech um wow this is what happens when you this is what happens when your room is smart your room is like all right hey now there's your marker right and and then it's motion censored um i think the thing is that people need to understand though is When we look at jobs, there's going to be a ton of jobs that are going to be created. There's going to be a lot of new jobs that are going to be created. And I think the thing is, like, if people are wanting to know how to win, you know, you're investors now. You've been, like, if you've been watching the Come Up series since 2020, then every single breadcrumb, and honestly, truth be told, I stopped speaking in riddles back in 2022. Okay. Everything that I've been saying has been going straight up off. Like, look, I'm shooting straight from the hip. So, like, straight no chaser. Literally, if you if you got kids that are interested in being content creators, look, I'm sorry, that's a hobby. If it's not paying you if it's not literally something that can sustain you over the next five years, and literally set you up with a strong retirement plan, then you need to have a backup. And if you if you need that backup, then you need to get an education. And if you need it, it can either be college, or it can be like programs in which that they have 18 week programs and everything else. But I'm telling you right now. That essentially, if you're not embedded somewhere as it pertains to STEM, especially within the tech space, understanding exactly like, okay, hey, now that we've ended phase one of AI and understanding that the next phase is even going to be even more lucrative than phase one. Like, think about it like this. Phase one is just the hype. Right. Phase two is the investment. Like, that's the part that people don't understand. Like, you're starting to see phase two in certain places where it's like you have companies that are like raising money at astronomical valuations. Yeah, that happens in phase one when you see hype, but now it's like people want to see the result of that hype. And then after they've seen the results of that hype, the next thing that they want is like, okay, that they've seen when they see progress reports. It's like, oh, wow, this is even bigger than I thought it was going to be. Okay, when's the next time that I can invest in this? So again, you're going to start seeing, you know, you're going to start seeing more investment. You're going to start seeing billions of dollars. What I saw at Afrotech was how big cybersecurity could be and is getting, as far as jobs go. And I was shocked. I was sitting there listening to, and I cannot remember her name, but I was sitting there listening to a really good session on why, you know. black and other plc should go into cyber security and you know i don't want to work um like i was sitting there i was like oh my gosh like i was actually interested um so if i ever returned to um the the workforce it would probably be in cyber security because the way they made it sound it just it just blew me away listen okay so I can't take my headphones off because that's the only way I'm going to have to hear you. Listen, if you want to get into cybersecurity, go now and go study your CompTIA and get your Security Plus. It's not that hard. It's just like getting an 8A certification or anything else. You can go study up on Coursera. If you really want to start making investments in yourself, go on Coursera and spend the $600 for the year. It's more than what you like. If you really think about it, like if you add up every single drink that you add that you go spend at the bar in a year, you spent more at the bar than you did on, say, for example, your own improvement or coffee, go spend the $600 and then literally go get as many certifications as you can. So in which that you can learn, learn the space as it pertains to the new things that are coming through. Oh yeah. I'm about to cook. And then essentially if you want to, I mean, if like. there's tons of jobs in which that you can get that are either through the government or also within other companies where it's like there's a ton of ai companies out there or there's a ton of data center companies out there that are looking to hire people and they're getting paid six figures anywhere from 120 to roughly 180 000 a year and you didn't need a college degree you just needed a few certs underneath your belt and understand exactly how data centers work and also understand good customer service and essentially they'll hire you i mean the ultimate objective is just look Be curious and through your curiosity, ultimately let your curiosity run wild and learn something like when you when you're curious, you learn. And when you learn now, the next objective is is to literally take that learning and to apply it. And that's ultimately what we want for you guys. There's no secret play here. There's no run the play and all this other stuff. If that's what you want to do as it pertains to stepping into cybersecurity. If you want to, if you even want to go further, go get your Cisco Networking Academy or your Cisco Networking Professional certification. I mean, I think that one's a little bit more pricier, but I think that it came down. They used to give it out in high school for high school students. I think they still do. If you're if you want to be ahead, say, for example, in high school, go take classes in college for while you're still in high school and get the two years underneath your belt that can like literally spearhead you for college and also not only just take the basic courses, but take things that are within the STEM fields also. So that way you can round up your curiosity. Go get involved with, say, for example, folks in whom which that like. A lot of corporations out there have a lot of programs in which that are mentored, uh, focus in which that they can literally give, like literally take your kids on field trips to their actual corporate offices. There's a lot of programs. Like I know here in Seattle, they have the black or cheapest program, which was through the YMCA. I'm probably sure that that's national across the country. If not go start one and ultimately do it. There's, there's so many things in which that you can do. Oh, should I keep cooking or should I stop? You know what? I'm going to keep cooking. Cause it's getting hot in here. All right. So another thing is like. If you want to learn AI, don't just spend all your time on chat GPT and everything else, because that's just a generative AI. It doesn't measure your creativity and everything else. Go learn the infrastructures. If you're in software or if you want to learn about software, go take a few Python classes. That's the language for AI and machine learning within itself. I mean, you don't have to be a guru at it, but at least you can be knowledgeable at it and understand the infrastructure as it pertains to where we are. Go look at the jobs in which that are altered. If you're in HR... I mean, I'm going to give you a little, I'm going to give you a little bit of tidbit. A lot of HR is actually starting to be fragmented where they're starting to put HR across the different sectors of the business. So HR is no longer. generalized anymore. It's actually being infiltrated through the business and they need less people there. So make the pivot, go towards operations, go towards DevOps, go towards business development, go towards accounts, those types of things. And also start learning the tools in which that ultimately make you even more competitive. I mean, even if you're not even looking for a job, even if you're not looking for a job, learn these things because then you get to learn the infrastructure and why it's valuable. And why is that other people find it viable and valuable and then essentially go look at the companies in which that are there. Here's another tidbit. Now that we've done hardware, now it's time to talk about software. So now that we've been making all this massive investment dollars as it pertains to AI hardware, now it's time to have AI software. It's time to have their moment in the sun. So companies like Adobe, C3 AI, and many others like Snowflake and many, many others. It's going to be their turn now where they get to partake in the sun and also have their valuations creep up just a little bit. So, again, there's so much opportunity out there. I mean, my thing is, it's just like, look, y'all. Well, Mark, I just heard another challenge for 2025, which is everyone take $600. And use that as your investment in yourself and get as many certs as you can on Coursera. So and, you know, one thing is you can look at it like, OK, a bunch of us are going to get it on in this sector. Another bunch of us are going to get it in this other sector. And then that way you all can share the information as far as not the cert, but you can share like what you've learned and you can apply that to your investing. Yeah. i mean that's ultimately the thing and here's the thing it's like sooner like everybody's jumping into like all these different things that's great like everybody's running towards the trend but look towards like we taught you guys well enough to well enough by now like look towards not only just what the trend is but be cognizant of what the market needs like that's the thing like what does the market need like when we think about why entrepreneurs do so well it's because they create something that the market needs they build something that's valuable that has a unique selling point to what the market needs you know don't get me wrong cyber security is huge it's very huge data centers are going to be even more huge energy is going to be huge also because of the fact of the amount of processing power and everything else that essentially we have to rethink exactly what energy looks like yes you know so again like what is it that the what is it that the world is leaning towards what is it that the world what is it that the world wants what is it that the world needs right now what is it that economies need right now what is it that industries need right now you know and if you don't even want to think about what they need right now look at what they need upcoming what's coming soon you know the writing is on the wall if you guys just literally just stop Listen to some of like you'll you'll start noticing a trend after you look at some of the verbiage and earnings reports when they tell you about their consumer base. Like a lot of these earnings reports will tell you about consumer behavior or their customer, what they've learned from their customers, because investors want to know what is it that you've learned from your customers? Whether what are your enterprise customers are telling you and what are your consumers telling you? It paints of it paints an interesting picture. So, yeah, well, look, I'll say that. I'll say that. I'll say that for another day. I feel like I feel like I feel like I water the the garden way too much. I don't want to I don't want to flood it. Well, you know, it's about that time. It's exactly six o'clock, a.k.a. the hard stop. This was a jam packed episode. And this is definitely one to play back. and get all the notes get all the gems um do you have any closing remarks before we shut it on down better find them up it's getting sticky uh nah but real talk i mean we'll we'll talk about it more as we go through uh as we finish 2024 going into 2025 we got some interesting conversations and the conversation will continue to get interesting even well into 2025. I mean, I know that it's a holiday coming up for everybody. So have conversations with everybody, not just the stock, but you know, we're, we're more than just the stock market. Like, and that's just a place in which that ideas sometimes become validated. but start looking at other arenas as it pertains to like let's start asking each other the question where's the opportunity where's the when where will the next opportunities come from and what will they look like start having those conversations where you get to understand like from other folks like what makes dan ives is so what makes dan ives the best analyst on wall street is he literally goes and talks to people he literally asks them questions not not super duper high level but just basic questions how's inventory going here you know just start having those those simple based conversations it's simple based conversations you'll learn a lot if you're if you're really just listening but outside of that of course enjoy your time with your loved ones because the holiday is upon us so be safe uh also don't get too full of yourselves uh hug someone uh tell them that you care and also uh just you know i'm thankful i'm truly truly thankful I'm thankful for my wife. I'm thankful for my friends. I'm thankful for my family. And I'm thankful that I have another opportunity to bless the stage as I was able to do today. Jalyn? I gotta go. So I'm thankful and I gotta go. All right. On that note, be sure to like, comment, and subscribe. We definitely want to hear what you guys think. Best comment gets pinned to this video. Let us know what you think. I'll talk to you guys later. Until next time, I'm Mark Monroe. I'm Jalyn G.C. in the place to be. And this was...

yo okay hey he got it fixed in time whoa you're kind of close Uh, yeah. It's hella close. How you doing? I'm good. How are you?

I'm doing better. I'm doing better. And, like, shout out to everybody that definitely sent my wife well wishes.

She's doing much better. She's feeling better. Still a work in progress, but she's doing alright, so. But she's getting back to Erica.

And anybody that met Erica, you know. That's good to hear. She's a brave little toaster. Little toaster.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. So, how are you?

What's been going on with you? What has been going on with me? Well, I'm back from Afrotech. Okay. Which, did we talk about last time?

I can't remember if. Okay. We were off. That's why. Right.

But feel free. We can always talk about it. So for me personally, it was more Afro than tech.

That's okay. That's okay. I think if you are just starting out in your tech career, I think it's a great place to start as far as job opportunities and meeting people. I will say that one thing that they are going to be doing for next year, it's in Houston again next year, October 27th through the 31st, I believe.

One thing they're going to do for next year is to increase the offerings on the executive track. And I had the executive ticket. So I thought that was good.

But I also didn't have very high expectations or just expectations, period, I should say, for the first for my first Afrotech. I had fun, ran into Hella Cousins. So shout out if you were there and I met you.

That was really nice. And then, you know, Houston. the whole a whole vibe and i was definitely in the houston streets kicking it way too hard um and i'm looking forward to it next year um but i did meet a lot of cool people that i hope to follow up with and have them as guests on the show nice nice nice nice yeah 2025 is going to be a pretty jam-packed year for us especially since we'll be having a lot of very cool guests coming on to the show so i'm really really excited about that so all right so should we get should we get it popping Yeah, we have a lot to cover in this hour, and we have a hard stop at six. It's getting sticky.

Oh, it is. I got that mop. All right.

What's good, everybody? I am Mark Monroe, accompanied by my wonderful co-host, co-producer, co-creator, and all things Galactic. Give it up for none other than the wonderful GCEO. It's... Oh, my gosh.

What did I say? I'm just kidding. It's Jill and GC and the place to be. What does it, cousins? and yeah that's all I got for right now okay well you know you're fresh from Apple Tech so we'll give you that one so there it goes okay there it is I was gonna I forgot about the song that we were doing but you know right when we're off air I think it was the Rihanna song but you know I know now you're gonna have that stuck in my head it was gone but now it's gonna be back y'all wait I do have to say Mark Hella hit this high note I was like okay what was the song again I'm not saying.

Okay, there it is. I'm not saying because it's going to get stuck in my head. Okay, so JoLynn, like you said, we have a lot to get into with a short amount of time. Y'all, I hope you have your pen and paper ready because you guys know how we do. Yeah, here I am waving a pencil and my iPad is...

My iPad is dead. It's dead. But, you know, we got a lot to get into. So I have it over here on my prompt side of the screen.

So... I have multiple windows, Mark. Oh, you know, I'm ultra wide over here.

So let me know where is it that we should start? How is it that we should get this popping? Should we get it popping with an I told you so?

Or should we get it popping with? You definitely need your space to talk your ish. But how about we just let them know what we're going to cover in today's episode? Let's do it.

Let's do it. All right. So today's topics that we're going to cover. Well, first of all, the title of the show is, go ahead, Mark. Oh, Trey talk?

Will you be broke or rich in 2028? Will you be broke or rich in 2028? That is a good question to ask. Ask her that question now in the chat.

And tell the truth. Answer it in the chat. Will you be broke or rich in the chat?

And it's okay. It's like, look, we all start somewhere or we're all where we're at. So just give it.

Give an honest answer if you can, you know, if you have to. Okay, I'm going to put my answer in. Lie, but we preferably.

But yeah, so, all right. So goal to be, okay, so we got goal to be rich. I'm seeing a lot of rich. I'm hearing, ooh, I like this one. Richer, I love that.

We got rich AF. Okay, yes, we got, all right. Bye-bye, I like that, I like that. JoLynn over here talking about it's a heist. uh and then somebody says after i finish this phd i'll be rich okay look i will be comfortable okay that all right all right okay all right so and then we got another rich af all right i love it i love it somebody says i what is it i plan to be rich uh right now my portfolio is on on the struggle bus but ready to fix it okay well i mean hey Get the wrench, get the screwdriver, whatever is necessary.

Let's get to fixing it. All right. So, Jolene, so I'm guessing that we have, like, majority of the room right now is optimistic. I think we have some cautiously optimistic minds in the room, and that's okay. I haven't seen anything in the chat that says broke.

Well, I wouldn't expect broke from Come Up Cousins, but, I mean. Rich, hunty. Okay.

All right now. Oh, someone's still walking away. D'Angelo's still walking away.

I see you little bro. Okay, D'Angelo. I see you.

I see you. All right. So.

Someone said it depends on how you define being rich. It's up to you. So you make your own definition. It's up to you.

All right. Design your life. But Mark, the topics as we, just so that we can, you know, frame this conversation. Today, we're going to talk about the U.S. debt bomb along with the corporate debt bomb. We're going to talk about some M&A, a.k.a. mergers and acquisitions.

Also, we're going to get into tariffs, the jobs lookout for 2025. And we're going to talk about two tech giants potentially going at it. OK. And how all of that impacts.

your entire life um basically yeah so let's get into it where do you want to say look look i'm okay so i'm easy like sunday morning so let's go look all right let's talk about let's talk about the debt we'll move from broke to rich so let's talk about the debt okay all right so so we are we talking about u.s based debt are we going to talk about corporate debt let's go micro and then our macro then micro so u.s corporate So U.S. debt is above a little bit above $36 trillion. I think, you know, you had some pretty dope stats on here. Like, for example, 14% of interest, like the interest payments now represent 14% of the entire budget, which is exceeding military spending.

So I want everybody to understand that military spending is one of our heaviest is one of our heaviest expenses. I think it's one of three. I think we spend in other areas like Medicare and all this other stuff.

But I mean, still. I mean, if your interest payments exceed, say, for example, one of your top spends, that's something to think about. But I think we also need to pause, Mark, on this $36 trillion. Like, what?

It's the U.S. It's just a number. It's just an arbitrary number.

I'm just kidding. It's not an arbitrary number at all. That's not a debt. Nah, it's a lot of debt when you're spending $1 trillion in interest payments and not even really making a dent.

Now you start to understand what students feel when they pay their student loans or when people are making those mortgage payments. Listen, I understand. I understand. So that's something that we definitely need to be attentive to because, of course, it's like, you know, when you see U.S. debt and you see how that goes across, like looking even more granular. like bringing it in micro so we live in seattle washington right and so seattle the city of seattle i mean ish uh was the city of seattle has a 261 million dollar deficit out of the eight billion dollar uh budget so our our city's budget is eight billion dollars and out of the eight billion dollars it's 261 million dollars in the hole so what does something like that do so i'm gonna explain it to you on this level so then that way you can kind of get an idea of what it looks like on a macro level which is the overall us so what happens you have like say for example the city of seattle that starts to decrease exactly how many jobs that they start to literally they either go some go furloughed Or some, they just like say, okay, hey, we're just going to cut recruiting in these particular departments, which means that if you're cutting in specific departments, let's say public works, where it's like people clean parks and everything else.

Well, those parks are going to take a little bit longer to get cleaned up and everything else. If you're looking at other areas as it pertains to like where the budget goes as it pertains to education, the education spend or to nonprofits that benefit on, say, for example. Any of those fundings, or when you look at, say, for example, municipal projects, like, for example, cleaning up streets, roads, and all those other things, where a lot of small businesses, they rely on that contract work from municipalities.

When those things get cut back, then that hurts the project. And then ultimately, if it hurts the project, then ultimately that's jobs that's also hurting. And when you think about it, it's like all states.

ultimately have their own GDP and then you combine that all together and then that's ultimately how you get to the overall U.S.-based GDP. So go ahead. No, I was going to say I do want to share that like with the when I think about Seattle's budget and this deficit, how it will impact the nonprofit sector.

Like I just went to the Urban League's annual breakfast and while sitting there before the event was over, they were able to. raise 1.3 million dollars um during this breakfast that started at like eight o'clock in the morning um there was over 2 000 people there right um and what when i think about how these organizations are the organ the nonprofit organizations in seattle do the majority of the service work so they usually stand in the gap for when um there's like a job issue, like if there's less jobs, then they try to place you with different jobs or supplement like your things that have to do with a lack of income or reduced income. So think paying light bills, think utility bills covered, packages for when newborns are born, even assistance in purchasing a home. So if the city is reducing their budget, then you can imagine that also the state would be. it has impacts for the state as well.

So now the organizations will be competing for some of those dollars. So if they're competing, that means that there'll be less to offer. So that means more people will be suffering because if you think about it, Washington state overall is a blue state. And so if we have the federal government reducing money, that's going out to all these organizations is going to have major. implications for not only just the nonprofit sector, because again, that kind of captures the gap that tends to happen, but it's going to have impact on just everyone that lives in Washington State.

And then you look at that as a small example, and then you kind of step back and then it impacts even more people. You know, you look at the city of Seattle, we're one of the smartest, most educated. and the most millionaires per capita, that's great. But at the same time, those aren't the only people that live here. So we really have to take into consideration, how is this going to impact everybody on this spectrum from broke to rich?

Exactly. You nailed it right there in the head. And so, you know, somebody asked in the chat, like, you know, i think it was uh cousin kareem um or someone that acts yeah he said who is u.s in debt to so like for example an easy way to look at it is remember when japan started going on remember when japan was like the topic of discussion towards the middle of the year and when japan started becoming a part of that topic of discussion the market started to dip as soon as we started to see what was happening in japan yes there you have it So Japan is one of the largest holders of U.S.-backed debt.

Of course, you got China, you got United Kingdom, and then, of course, you got places like Germany and Canada. but i mean really it's like you know japan and china that ultimately hold a lot of those notes um I can't really give you the exact number last time I talked. I think it was like 1.1 trillion as it pertains to countries that they had invested. So when you see things that happen and that get erupted in the bond market, now you see what's happening as it pertains to what's happening on that U.S.-backed debt side.

Who's investing into what? Well, it's the... One of the problems, though, Mark, with the U.S. debt is that it's not looking to it's not going to be slowing down.

No, we'll probably reach 50 trillion dollars if, you know, at the rate in which that we're doing, probably within the next 10 years, we'll probably have a 50 trillion dollar debt. Yeah, which is anyway, it's hard to conceptualize. That's that's a lot. That's a lot.

That's a lot. Like, it's it's kind of like it's. And that's why I was asking, like, is it real or is it like more like an arbitrary number?

I think that sooner or later we'll come to a point where it's like when things slow down, we'll have no other choice but to ultimately start to pay off large portions of that debt. But I think that we have to get to a place in which the United States economy is very much so booming. And that's really letting you know a sign of the times as it pertains to where we are economically.

George, not George. I'm sorry. Why am I saying George?

Jerome Powell does not think it's sustainable. No, it's not. I mean, nothing is ever sustainable. I mean, it's just like having a checking account. And then ultimately, like, you know, your checking account has a balance.

And then it also has a credit balance. And then once you exceed that credit balance, you know, it's like you start getting into no man's land. You can keep going. Like, for example, hey, you're going to take out loans. Okay.

So then your checking account balance is negative. Then your credit balance is negative. Then essentially your loan balance is negative.

And it's just. It's a snowball effect where, as you can see, it's not sustainable. So ultimately, sooner or later, things are going to have to get reeled in. And Uncle Charles said it best.

Like he said, monopoly money. Right. They're going to be printed like crazy. So, okay.

Now with the corporate debt, now if we take it from macro to micro, what is that setup looking like? um so remember those times when interest rates were low and everybody was ultimately out there borrowing and just like hey we're borrowing at these rates and they're not borrowing like a lot of them weren't borrowing at fixed rates they were borrowing at uh variable rates and so now a lot of those chickens are coming home to roost and so you're now starting to reach those moments in which that you reach those maturity points now of course they can go through like banks and ultimately if it's like relationship based which a lot of banks are they want to keep the relationship so like a lot of your major fortune 500s should be fine should okay all right um but if they're not and essentially it's like that can eat significantly into their profit margins and then essentially then you have to start looking at those companies very differently as it pertains to growth because their growth is being cannibalized by the debt that they have to pay so and then which can also stunt their growth significantly as it pertains to Well, if your growth is stunted based upon profit margins, which means that essentially you can't really make the investments, which means that you'll probably start like, here's an easy way to notice. You'll start seeing companies that start doing layoffs where they have to start cutting back on, say, for example, staff.

Because why? It always comes down to the bottom line and the cash flow always dominates the conversation. Here's the thing that I want everybody to like, if you can, if you've got children or if you got like, dude.

children teenagers whatever or even just you're just amongst friends i strongly urge for everybody to get the board game cash flow like if you can i know that we i know that a lot of us grew up on monopoly which is great and it's a very arbitrary board game but if you want something that's a little bit more realistic to help you understand not only just the the like how to mentally get out of the nine to five and getting into that next phase and also understanding like when to take risk and when not to take risk and everything else look the idea is ultimately to literally play that game because he'll give you some understanding d'angelo says that he's triggered because the last time that he was here you know i wiped the floor with him in the game but you know hopefully he learned we should um we should organize like a national cash flow day party and have everyone like you know play the game health they can host their own game and we all play at the same time and then and just tag us like just tag us like you Like for real, like we should get to the point where we actually start playing teams. Yeah, I'll ref because I don't want to be the cheat code. Let me make a note.

Yeah, so and what I want you to do is I want you to look at it from like it gives you different perspectives also. Like people always sit there and when they play the game, they wonder why it's tougher. to get out of the rat race when you're like the doctor or anything else and we always pride ourselves on these high paying jobs but not understanding that with high paying jobs you're also your expenses are just as high and everything else you know it's it's kind of like assumed and so essentially like you know your passive income has to supersede your expenses so again like all in all to say bringing it back because i know i was kind of going on a tangent but i hope that people kind of like grab the gym out of that one and here comes another one So when you see companies that are like having to pull back, like, let's say 10% of their workforce or 7% of their workforce, you know, okay, imagine if that's 7% of their workforce, what does that calculate as it pertains to dollars?

That's billions of dollars in which that that company has now just saved. So in those billions of dollars that is now saved, it's letting you know that it's trying to protect profit margins, and they're going to try to protect profit margins at all costs. If they don't, then essentially, like, again, it stunts growth. And so again, when growth. has done it then essentially then they can't go any further they can't make any other investments towards the future and you're starting to see companies like that that are ultimately like okay hey they joined the ai race but they were slow to join the ai race and then essentially it's like now that they're in it it's like okay they kind of like don't know exactly how to navigate and now they're like talking about laying off large portions of their of their workforce and even then you're like okay well now the conversation as it pertains to mergers and acquisitions acquisitions are starting to jump into the conversation.

Well, okay. Should I just go ahead and just cook? Cause I can just cook.

Like if we want to get your apron and your chef's hat. So, so when we start looking at mergers and acquisitions, it's going to be like the companies in which that are, that are just struggling. So you're going to have the companies that are just like struggling to like literally get into gear. And just because they're publicly traded companies and they sit on the stock market doesn't make them ironclad and they're not defensible.

I mean, look at what happened with Supermicro. Somebody had called me the other day asking me about Supermicro and saying, hey, are they safe? And I'm like, I don't know, because literally it's like if I'm not even looking at the stock and if I'm just looking at the company itself, I'd wait until the audit is complete.

But I mean, you're going to have companies like Intel. Like I said, Intel is definitely on watch for an acquisition. They need to pick up something. That'd be funny if it was AMD and it was government sponsored. Wow.

Your favorite and little boy blue. Interesting. Listen, you know, sooner or later, we have to come together and not be enemies anymore. We understand how much we need each other. But yeah, you're going to start seeing companies that are going through mergers and acquisitions because they say that it's the strategic move to do.

No, it's not just a strategic move to do. It's ultimately like giving you a way out. And ultimately, it's like when essentially like you've already cut your workforce and everything else.

Now you've prepared your financials to look beautiful for any potential suitor and any potential acquirer. Like that's the secret to the entire game. Anybody that you ask, if you ever go ask a lawyer or.

or if you go ask anybody that's in finance, they'll tell you your financials always must look beautiful. If your financials don't look beautiful, then nobody wants to buy it. So we got companies out here intentionally making themselves eligible for the MA.

Okay. So, I mean, listen, look, I feel for some of the companies that are like going through that. that are going through those struggles like their capex spending is starting to drop uh so which means that their capex spending drops which means either one they're ready for they're they're in growth phase but you can't be in growth phase if your capex is being spent so let's just retract that so then that means that essentially that oh well then that means that we're making investments for the future oh wait a minute but you cut back your workforce okay right you can't use that so let's retract that well so we're just trying to prepare ourselves and ultimately just hunker down No, you're not. Because again, it's like. okay well why are you selling off these assets or ultimately cutting out these departments and putting them on the shelf at your company see again it's like you know just just pay attention people like if like i said the people have been paying attention to all the things that are happening in music and if you're following look if you're so good at following drake versus kendrick lamar as it pertains to drake you know calling hr on kendrick lamar then you should be able to go and check and see what's going on in the markets and see what's happening within some of these companies and sitting back and asking the the questions with a side eye.

Hey, yo, are you getting ready to get acquired? Like, cause look, some names sound right. Right. Made in the mirror, like, okay, let me make sure I look good for, you know, Apple right quick.

Better find a mop is getting sticky. Because like I said, I try to warn everybody ahead of time saying, hey, the companies that you trust are the companies that have strong cash. Like the companies that have strong cash are the ones in which that you trust. If they don't have strong cash on their books and everything else.

I mean, think about it. We just went through X amount of time period. And.

companies like Apple and Microsoft were still making a hundred and, and even we'll throw even meta into that conversation. And even we'll throw an Amazon. These four companies were bringing in a hundred billion dollars in revenue over a three month span. A hundred billion with a B. Oh, okay.

So speaking of we're still on this topic of mergers and acquisitions. Do you want to talk about, actually, no, what? Maybe. Okay.

Let's talk about, well, okay. When I think about the mergers and acquisitions, like it naturally makes me think of, you know, competition and who's competing against who, because the more you can scoop up, you know, to make your bottom line that much, that much better. by acquiring another company that already the smaller venue already has the technology or whatever so that you can compete against another big dog um let's talk about two giants right now amazon and nvidia so there's competition between the two because you know uh amazon now is stepping into the ai uh chip maker market so that they can essentially compete against nvidia so My question mark is, okay, so it may be likely that we'll have more. Oh, yeah, there goes the article.

It may be likely that we have more cloud companies looking to compete in this arena to kind of get rid of the third-party chip maker reliance. It'd be funny if Meta is one customer to Amazon for that AI chip. Well, So, okay. So in the short term, I don't see when I think about Amazon versus NVIDIA in the short term, I don't see any immediate risk just given NVIDIA's market leadership.

But if we're looking at it in the long term, what are the potential risk and threats when it comes to NVIDIA going up against Amazon? Yeah. Other players?

Yeah. Your biggest risk is the other players. Like, you know.

you don't have to out swim you don't have to out swim the sharks you just have to out swim the guy you're scuba diving with right like and honestly listen if i'm nvidia i'm not afraid as it pertains to amazon stepping in to compete within this ai chip space you know i'd kind of expected it like google's already there i mean apple's got its own rendition Microsoft is still using its various providers through the cloud services. And you see many other players. And of course, AMD is also ramping up into that space as well. So I think that it's providing a lot of legitimacy.

I think the thing is that NVIDIA embraces the fact that, okay, there's going to be competitors. But at the same token, we've got folks in whom which are legitimizing the space in which that we're in that ultimately enriches it. My biggest... hope for nvidia is is that they don't become complacent like i think that they've had a blueprint of what it looks like when you have been the leader for a dominant period of time because let's put it into perspective nvidia has just become the dominant like chip company but once upon a time once upon a time it was actually you know somebody else which was intel now intel is why because intel got complacent Yeah, slow to adopt, slow to move.

Exactly. So with that being said, it's like, I think that as long as NVIDIA still stays on its course, as it pertains to, hey, let's keep innovating. Let's keep pushing the envelope. Let's keep being the leader that ultimately like, okay, we keep going to different arenas.

They're going to be just fine. But I did try to give people a forewarning and saying that, look. Be advised, you know, Amazon has dominated the cloud space for quite some time. They have remained number one for quite some time.

And the way that they do is they iterate, and then essentially get to a place of scale, scale it, continue to scale. As they're continuing to scale, they're continuing to make iterations, even within those scaling periods. So I think that is something that they've been talking about underneath the hood and is now just like hitting the foray.

But if we journey back a little while, I could have sworn we kind of had this conversation a while back earlier this year. when I think it was like around the summer that I was trying to let everybody else know that, Hey, look, don't be surprised if you see an, if you see Amazon step into the space to challenge companies like Nvidia within AI chips. And don't be surprised if they also look to bring on a massive customer, AKA like a meta into the conversation. I think that that's going to be, I think that that's going to be the interesting conversation.

As we move forward over the next nine to 12 months. Well, one of the things too, that we've talked about since 2020, when we first came on was how Amazon, like their whole philosophy really is a startup model. Yes.

All of their different branches, departments, whatever you want to call them, are separate companies are all ran like startups. So when you have that philosophy, you are able to pivot because it's a part of your culture. And that's probably one of the mistakes that Intel did not have.

And they became almost like a tech, I mean, I guess, dinosaur in that sense, because they weren't able to move quickly like a startup. So when you have, you know, a company like Amazon stepping into the foray, it's like, OK, you got to pay attention and see what they got going on. And pay attention to any potential mergers and acquisitions, like just because they have cash. So just look and.

be on your and look at those cash balances like stay stay stay tuned to those those cash balance sheets because you know and then on top of that when those 10 q's come out and 10k's come out um pay attention because you know acquisitions fall underneath those like you can you can see like what is it that they acquired even though that they don't publicly they don't they may not publicize it but they do have to mention those things legally and they have to be reported to the sec as it pertains to what was acquired so uh i would just you know i would just be very attuned to what's happening there and i think that we're we're coming to the end of phase one as it pertains to this ai craze now what does that mean you're going to probably start seeing a lot of companies dump off or you're going to probably start seeing a lot of companies hit that struggle period because now it's like okay hey investors are their expectations become even more stronger and essentially they're going to be looking to okay hey well what does it like you had a lot of hype that went behind it but now what does that turn into as it pertains to like how does that portray an actual dollars or an actual performance so that's going to be the big that's going to be some of the biggest questions and which that's going to be sitting at the feet for a lot of these companies as we move into phase two and if they can't if they can't meet that that's just like a startup that raises money out of some high ridiculous valuation and then when it comes to this point where it's like okay hey have you met this valuation and they haven't met it then essentially that's ultimately how CEOs get fired. I'm not saying that any publicly traded CEOs get fired at this point, but ultimately that could spell doom and gloom for some of the companies as it pertains to shareholders wanting to be involved. So again, just something to pay attention to for sure. Yeah. And I realized when I said, Oh, let's go from broke to rich.

As we were, you know, going over these topics, I forgot one of the topics that I wanted to cover. which was tariffs. Yes.

So we have this potential tariff coming up, or tariffs, I should say, on China and Canada and Mexico. So those are the top three. And with this new administration, they're basically saying, okay, we need to impose this 25% tariff on those three to combat... Okay. Well, they say it's for drugs and immigration reasons, like to stop the flow.

So then why did the autos go negative when that was announced? Well, we already know what happens when you start to cut back on immigration when it leads to jobs, which we'll talk about jobs next. But the whole piece about stopping the inflow of drugs. My question is, one, how are they how are they going to track this?

Like. How do they know when they're successful when it comes to that portion of it specifically? And then two. Let's talk about like the real implications of these tariffs, because you got major companies like Walmart already saying, look, we're raising the prices. If you if a boy says 25 percent, the prices are going to raise automatically.

Don't ask us no questions. Don't you know, don't call corporate customer service. You know, Karen, stand down, pipe down.

Like they're already saying they're already saying that we're going to increase prices. So if we're looking at this, like in the context of. investors.

And we're looking at this in the context of like, where, how is this going to impact our portfolios or where we should be looking to conduct like our analysis of this impact? Where do we go? What are we looking at here? What's really the impact for us? That's a lot of, that's a lot to unpack, but ultimately that you're looking at, you're looking at at least a 1% rise in inflation.

So now what's interesting about that, Mark, is Yeah. All of this talk during election season was like, you know, prices are too high. So that's why I'm going to vote, you know, red or whatever. And now we're looking at the increase of consumer goods.

But it's not going to be instantaneous, though. That's the beautiful part about it. It's not going to be instantaneous.

Remember how slow it took for inflation to rise, even with COVID? Yeah, so much to the point where they said that, oh, this is just, you know, temporary. You know, it's not going to stick.

And it got sticky. now i got you look i i knew it i knew it it was it was bound it was bound to get jolene it was bound to get you oh lord well my mom's gonna be more expensive too now okay you're gonna get your mop now so just okay so for everybody out there they're like yo what is the running joke here as it pertains to like this whole sticky conversation so the sticky part is like we were listening to tyler the creator's song and he has a song sticky so listen at you you know if you got kids you know it's such a great album it really is album of the year um all right so let's talk about it a little bit further though all jokes aside so the best way that i was ever explained to as it pertains to like when we think about politics and when we think about like when when when people run on specific campaigns um a wise man once taught a young man and he said you know he said a guy literally went to go visit uh before he had to make a choice he had the opportunity to go look at what hell was going to be like and what heaven was going to look like and when he went to go look at hell hell was like this amazing place and everything else it was lit it was popping and everything else and when he got to heaven when he showed him heaven heaven was just like so dull and everything else boring and everything else and then when he asked him he was like when you make your decision you have to stick with your decision and the guy was like yo he was like i want to go i want to go down under and the guy was like are you sure and he was like yeah and so he went he ended up going to hell and then when he got to hell it was nothing like how he pictured And he was like, wait a minute, you tricked me and everything else. And he's like, that's what it's like to actually be campaigned and marketed to.

So I'm not saying that essentially that like what Donald Trump is going to do as it pertains to within his campaign or within his presidency is ultimately going to literally, you know, drop the entire like economy and everything else. Though I have this. Here's here's my personal opinion. I think that in three years. you know it's gonna get very sticky and very muggy and very hot for a lot of people within this economy and within this country and they're gonna be like okay this is i'm not feeling good about where we are and it's not because of the fact of all the other like you know statements and comments and all this other stuff they're gonna look at it purely based upon what ultimately got him uh that what got him elected and that was like pretty much um the economy he ran on the economy now the question is can you fix the economy if you can fix it great but then at the question is is it going to be a temporary fix and then it ultimately starts to rear its head the question that the reason why i say three years is because i expect the economy to start to slow down the economy has been like literally running in high overdrive just trying to get inflation down and on top of that trying to do xyz Remember all these conversations that we kept talking about as it pertains to corporate debt and U.S. debt and all those things?

Well, when you have to reel those in, certain things start to also have to get cut. I mean, you're going to have to try to balance budgets and everything else and you're going to go through some pain. So the question is, like, what is that going to look like for the long run? And so will people feel better about where they are? four years from now that's the question but if you're bringing on the tariffs conversation which ultimately makes it rise by at least one percent this could be a challenging situation in which that like because when you think about it tariffs ultimately hit the companies and who much that they're trying to serve and i have to applaud like companies like apple that literally held it down for their customer base and didn't raise the prices But not every company is like that because not every company has like pricing control when they can control the supply chain and logistics side of the and on top of that, the manufacturing process.

So they have power over the entire process. Not every company is going to have that. And so when they don't have that type of power, then they're going to have to adjust their prices to ultimately meet.

the fact that okay hey it's either that or we're selling things closer to a loss like you have to look at some industries like 22 is a good profit margin for them but any any disruptions within that like you're literally going to say that it's like they're going to feel the effects especially like retail stores like walmart or target they're going to feel the effects you know when you think about like industrial companies or when you think about agriculture they're going to feel the effects and ultimately the consumer is going to that like who does it pass on to it passes on to the consumer the consumer is going to feel that pain so okay one of the things that besides being able to control like supply that um apple was able to do to keep those prices down um with some of their esg um policies so what other you I mean, especially with being able to recycle old phones and then make something new, which people were happy to turn in old phones just to get the discount and then buy a new phone, which is probably parts of their old phone. But anyway, what how can ESG or other ways that ESG can have a positive benefit on this potential? rise in prices for some of these other companies? It depends upon how it depends on like the control that they have within their supply chain and their process.

I mean, also when we think about ESG, it also depends upon how is that they're making decisions. Most ESG is you fix things today. So then that way you don't have to deal with it tomorrow.

You fix you fix today's lazy. So that way you can you can solve tomorrow's crazy. Like that's literally the concept of what we think about when we think about ESG.

You're solving environmental, social, and governance problems today. So then that way, when things get crazy later, it's less crazier for you because you're already prepared for it. So if companies are ultimately doing that, then they're going to be fine. I mean, to a certain degree, but again, it depends upon how much of the process do they own. If they have control of, okay, gotcha.

Yeah. If they don't own a massive part of the process or control of the entire cycle of things. that could spell a problem like for example the reason why we say apple can control the problem is because of the fact that every single iphone that they sell isn't like nine times out of ten we're at a place now jolin that every single phone that that people buy today is recycled material from somebody else's phone that they were using that now you're using that has been made from it's actually pretty ingenious because you're still selling it at the same price you're not even selling it at a discounted price You're selling it at the same price, but yet you're using the same materials that ultimately created, let's say, the iPhone 8, iPhone 10 or iPhone 12. Well, but that's the beautiful thing about it, though. Carbon, carbon positive now. So they went from or is it carbon positive or carbon neutral or negative?

Everybody wants to get to neutral. Look, I'm getting a little tongue tied here because I know that we got other subjects that we got to run to. But whatever it is, is the good side.

That's Apple where they are now. And every company wants to be in that process. Yeah.

All right. So now we got to go back to this U.S. job market. Yes.

Sorry, we've kind of been all over the place, but we have. Well, we already know how unemployment is looking right now. Right now, it's a little under 4% at 3.9%. This is. and it's going to increase to all they're saying is going to increase to well when i say well over that even a tenth of percentage point is too high when it comes to um unemployment rates in the u.s market so they're saying when i say they i mean like economists are projecting 4.2 percent so the question is um how is this going to impact impact the market? And what what sector should we be looking at?

It's kind of crazy, because when we look at it, like if you notice, like, if you ever see that a company lays off like a massive amount of folks, then you know, have you ever noticed that the stock typically jumps? Yeah, because they're, they're decreasing their profit margin. Well, either that or they're keeping their profit margins the same. also getting rid of expenses and of course investors look that as a knee-jerk reaction to say oh hey they're getting rid of expenses um or they're they're decreasing expenses um i think that some companies are better well positioned i think that there's a lot of companies like for example within the tech sector that like literally went through massive layoffs and i think that they overlay it off people yeah now they're trying to now they're trying to go back and hire quite a few people because they realize okay hey we're hitting this place and we're starting to hit like massive amounts of demand here and we don't have enough talent and staff to be able to supplant or to be able to supply for the demand so i think that like other arenas you're going to see that that opens up um my biggest thing is just that you know i'm looking at it from the standpoints as it pertains to cost like a lot of times people will sit back and say you know mark you're you keep saying cost you keep saying cost and i'm going to keep saying it because at the end of the day it still comes down to cash flow. If cash flow, if cash flow statements and balance sheets are strong, then you're good.

If cash flow is ultimately decreasing, then there may be some challenges ahead. And with that being said, you know, I think that some industries are going to see like, for example, like agriculture has definitely been needing talent but the thing is is that essentially the cost as it pertains to you know to acquire that talent especially here in the us is too high now we're talking about things like manufacturing um where you saw that like i think in as the fall in the early fall we saw a lot of unions go on strike we saw a lot of folks like literally asking for pay raises um which is which is fine um but at the same time it's like okay hey they don't understand like some people just don't understand you know for that that bump in 30 as as it pertains to salaries it's going to come from somewhere yeah and at the same time that boeing i think settled they also like turned around the next week and said hey look listen we got to do some layoffs yeah so look i mean somebody asked the question like i thought that they or us can't compete or with uh fiscal structure and then somebody said uh i thought they laid off to prepare for ai some companies did that but ultimately but what was the what was the overall objective there you lay off to prepare for ai to do what i mean you still need people to process that ai you still need people to you still need to hire people to be able to support that AI infrastructure that you have. You can't do like, and I think that a lot of folks thought that they could just like literally implement AI infrastructure and say, okay, hey, well, you know, we're going to be okay. We just implemented and we're good to go.

And that's not the case. You need a system that ultimately supports it. So do I believe that there's going to be new jobs created in 2025? Yes.

I think that we'll start seeing newer jobs come in in 2025. that support a lot of those new new age arenas and for the folks out there that are like literally looking to bring their kids into tech um wow this is what happens when you this is what happens when your room is smart your room is like all right hey now there's your marker right and and then it's motion censored um i think the thing is that people need to understand though is When we look at jobs, there's going to be a ton of jobs that are going to be created. There's going to be a lot of new jobs that are going to be created. And I think the thing is, like, if people are wanting to know how to win, you know, you're investors now.

You've been, like, if you've been watching the Come Up series since 2020, then every single breadcrumb, and honestly, truth be told, I stopped speaking in riddles back in 2022. Okay. Everything that I've been saying has been going straight up off. Like, look, I'm shooting straight from the hip. So, like, straight no chaser.

Literally, if you if you got kids that are interested in being content creators, look, I'm sorry, that's a hobby. If it's not paying you if it's not literally something that can sustain you over the next five years, and literally set you up with a strong retirement plan, then you need to have a backup. And if you if you need that backup, then you need to get an education. And if you need it, it can either be college, or it can be like programs in which that they have 18 week programs and everything else.

But I'm telling you right now. That essentially, if you're not embedded somewhere as it pertains to STEM, especially within the tech space, understanding exactly like, okay, hey, now that we've ended phase one of AI and understanding that the next phase is even going to be even more lucrative than phase one. Like, think about it like this.

Phase one is just the hype. Right. Phase two is the investment.

Like, that's the part that people don't understand. Like, you're starting to see phase two in certain places where it's like you have companies that are like raising money at astronomical valuations. Yeah, that happens in phase one when you see hype, but now it's like people want to see the result of that hype. And then after they've seen the results of that hype, the next thing that they want is like, okay, that they've seen when they see progress reports.

It's like, oh, wow, this is even bigger than I thought it was going to be. Okay, when's the next time that I can invest in this? So again, you're going to start seeing, you know, you're going to start seeing more investment. You're going to start seeing billions of dollars. What I saw at Afrotech was how big cybersecurity could be and is getting, as far as jobs go.

And I was shocked. I was sitting there listening to, and I cannot remember her name, but I was sitting there listening to a really good session on why, you know. black and other plc should go into cyber security and you know i don't want to work um like i was sitting there i was like oh my gosh like i was actually interested um so if i ever returned to um the the workforce it would probably be in cyber security because the way they made it sound it just it just blew me away listen okay so I can't take my headphones off because that's the only way I'm going to have to hear you. Listen, if you want to get into cybersecurity, go now and go study your CompTIA and get your Security Plus.

It's not that hard. It's just like getting an 8A certification or anything else. You can go study up on Coursera.

If you really want to start making investments in yourself, go on Coursera and spend the $600 for the year. It's more than what you like. If you really think about it, like if you add up every single drink that you add that you go spend at the bar in a year, you spent more at the bar than you did on, say, for example, your own improvement or coffee, go spend the $600 and then literally go get as many certifications as you can. So in which that you can learn, learn the space as it pertains to the new things that are coming through.

Oh yeah. I'm about to cook. And then essentially if you want to, I mean, if like.

there's tons of jobs in which that you can get that are either through the government or also within other companies where it's like there's a ton of ai companies out there or there's a ton of data center companies out there that are looking to hire people and they're getting paid six figures anywhere from 120 to roughly 180 000 a year and you didn't need a college degree you just needed a few certs underneath your belt and understand exactly how data centers work and also understand good customer service and essentially they'll hire you i mean the ultimate objective is just look Be curious and through your curiosity, ultimately let your curiosity run wild and learn something like when you when you're curious, you learn. And when you learn now, the next objective is is to literally take that learning and to apply it. And that's ultimately what we want for you guys. There's no secret play here.

There's no run the play and all this other stuff. If that's what you want to do as it pertains to stepping into cybersecurity. If you want to, if you even want to go further, go get your Cisco Networking Academy or your Cisco Networking Professional certification. I mean, I think that one's a little bit more pricier, but I think that it came down. They used to give it out in high school for high school students.

I think they still do. If you're if you want to be ahead, say, for example, in high school, go take classes in college for while you're still in high school and get the two years underneath your belt that can like literally spearhead you for college and also not only just take the basic courses, but take things that are within the STEM fields also. So that way you can round up your curiosity.

Go get involved with, say, for example, folks in whom which that like. A lot of corporations out there have a lot of programs in which that are mentored, uh, focus in which that they can literally give, like literally take your kids on field trips to their actual corporate offices. There's a lot of programs.

Like I know here in Seattle, they have the black or cheapest program, which was through the YMCA. I'm probably sure that that's national across the country. If not go start one and ultimately do it.

There's, there's so many things in which that you can do. Oh, should I keep cooking or should I stop? You know what?

I'm going to keep cooking. Cause it's getting hot in here. All right.

So another thing is like. If you want to learn AI, don't just spend all your time on chat GPT and everything else, because that's just a generative AI. It doesn't measure your creativity and everything else.

Go learn the infrastructures. If you're in software or if you want to learn about software, go take a few Python classes. That's the language for AI and machine learning within itself.

I mean, you don't have to be a guru at it, but at least you can be knowledgeable at it and understand the infrastructure as it pertains to where we are. Go look at the jobs in which that are altered. If you're in HR... I mean, I'm going to give you a little, I'm going to give you a little bit of tidbit.

A lot of HR is actually starting to be fragmented where they're starting to put HR across the different sectors of the business. So HR is no longer. generalized anymore. It's actually being infiltrated through the business and they need less people there.

So make the pivot, go towards operations, go towards DevOps, go towards business development, go towards accounts, those types of things. And also start learning the tools in which that ultimately make you even more competitive. I mean, even if you're not even looking for a job, even if you're not looking for a job, learn these things because then you get to learn the infrastructure and why it's valuable. And why is that other people find it viable and valuable and then essentially go look at the companies in which that are there.

Here's another tidbit. Now that we've done hardware, now it's time to talk about software. So now that we've been making all this massive investment dollars as it pertains to AI hardware, now it's time to have AI software.

It's time to have their moment in the sun. So companies like Adobe, C3 AI, and many others like Snowflake and many, many others. It's going to be their turn now where they get to partake in the sun and also have their valuations creep up just a little bit. So, again, there's so much opportunity out there. I mean, my thing is, it's just like, look, y'all.

Well, Mark, I just heard another challenge for 2025, which is everyone take $600. And use that as your investment in yourself and get as many certs as you can on Coursera. So and, you know, one thing is you can look at it like, OK, a bunch of us are going to get it on in this sector. Another bunch of us are going to get it in this other sector.

And then that way you all can share the information as far as not the cert, but you can share like what you've learned and you can apply that to your investing. Yeah. i mean that's ultimately the thing and here's the thing it's like sooner like everybody's jumping into like all these different things that's great like everybody's running towards the trend but look towards like we taught you guys well enough to well enough by now like look towards not only just what the trend is but be cognizant of what the market needs like that's the thing like what does the market need like when we think about why entrepreneurs do so well it's because they create something that the market needs they build something that's valuable that has a unique selling point to what the market needs you know don't get me wrong cyber security is huge it's very huge data centers are going to be even more huge energy is going to be huge also because of the fact of the amount of processing power and everything else that essentially we have to rethink exactly what energy looks like yes you know so again like what is it that the what is it that the world is leaning towards what is it that the world what is it that the world wants what is it that the world needs right now what is it that economies need right now what is it that industries need right now you know and if you don't even want to think about what they need right now look at what they need upcoming what's coming soon you know the writing is on the wall if you guys just literally just stop Listen to some of like you'll you'll start noticing a trend after you look at some of the verbiage and earnings reports when they tell you about their consumer base. Like a lot of these earnings reports will tell you about consumer behavior or their customer, what they've learned from their customers, because investors want to know what is it that you've learned from your customers? Whether what are your enterprise customers are telling you and what are your consumers telling you?

It paints of it paints an interesting picture. So, yeah, well, look, I'll say that. I'll say that. I'll say that for another day. I feel like I feel like I feel like I water the the garden way too much.

I don't want to I don't want to flood it. Well, you know, it's about that time. It's exactly six o'clock, a.k.a. the hard stop. This was a jam packed episode.

And this is definitely one to play back. and get all the notes get all the gems um do you have any closing remarks before we shut it on down better find them up it's getting sticky uh nah but real talk i mean we'll we'll talk about it more as we go through uh as we finish 2024 going into 2025 we got some interesting conversations and the conversation will continue to get interesting even well into 2025. I mean, I know that it's a holiday coming up for everybody. So have conversations with everybody, not just the stock, but you know, we're, we're more than just the stock market. Like, and that's just a place in which that ideas sometimes become validated. but start looking at other arenas as it pertains to like let's start asking each other the question where's the opportunity where's the when where will the next opportunities come from and what will they look like start having those conversations where you get to understand like from other folks like what makes dan ives is so what makes dan ives the best analyst on wall street is he literally goes and talks to people he literally asks them questions not not super duper high level but just basic questions how's inventory going here you know just start having those those simple based conversations it's simple based conversations you'll learn a lot if you're if you're really just listening but outside of that of course enjoy your time with your loved ones because the holiday is upon us so be safe uh also don't get too full of yourselves uh hug someone uh tell them that you care and also uh just you know i'm thankful i'm truly truly thankful I'm thankful for my wife.

I'm thankful for my friends. I'm thankful for my family. And I'm thankful that I have another opportunity to bless the stage as I was able to do today. Jalyn? I gotta go.

So I'm thankful and I gotta go. All right. On that note, be sure to like, comment, and subscribe.

We definitely want to hear what you guys think. Best comment gets pinned to this video. Let us know what you think. I'll talk to you guys later. Until next time, I'm Mark Monroe.

I'm Jalyn G.C. in the place to be. And this was...

Transcript for:Financial Insights and Future Predictions

Transcript for:
Financial Insights and Future Predictions