Welcome Back to Meet Kevin Report Episode number 16 already. This is incredible And all of those of you who wonder how can you make sure you get all notifications because I keep getting comments from many of you. Download the Meet Kevin App and you can go into the Apple or Android app store. download meet Kevin app just type in Meet Kevin you'll see it there and that way you can customize your notifications to make sure you don't miss anything on the channel.

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Even though you said all, they will still only give you some welcome to the life of a Creator on YouTube. The Super Bowl for the first time in 30 years will actually be allowing other alcohol Brands to advertise outside of Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser. This is because they gave up their exclusive rights or after which they've had for over 30 years. Right At about the same time, the Super Bowl lost a ton of advertising contracts via companies like FTX.

That's right, maybe the Super Bowl should get canceled as well because they had sponsored been sponsored by FTX. But in the meantime now, those crypto ads might be getting filled in with beer ads. which nobody knows beer much like I do. Oh, this is coffee Anyway, Molson Heineken Say they've been waiting decades for the opportunity to invest at the Super Bowl and uh, at the same time as you've got crypto companies leaving sort of that amount of advertising on the table for other companies to take you now apparently have Finance suspending deposits and withdrawals temporarily of US Dollars Now they say only about 0.01 percent of their monthly active users actually use those on and off ramps for USD This is a partnership Finance had with Signature Bank and even though Signature Bank hasn't provided any kind of commentary on this, it's entirely possible that the reason you're seeing these sort of limits to USD transactions rather than people bringing in stable coins, which they usually do to finance, might be because the the United States government's investigations are leading to some kind of requirements that U.S transactions be paused.

Uh, for uh, via USD. That's that's just speculation at this point in terms of why Binance hasn't exactly told us why they said it should be back soon. We'll see at the same time, you've got Apple and this was actually quite interesting. It was just two nights ago.

Uh, two nights ago I was at Uh, the Cheesecake Factory with with my team and we had talked about how you know one of the beautiful things about Apple's uh, PP Apple's pricing power is this idea that you could essentially give iPhones away at cost? No, they don't, right? they've got like over a 40 50 gross margin. It's incredible. But you could in theory give away iPhones at cost and just try to get people into your network of devices and buying things like you know Apple Workout Apple Music Apple life whatever, right? the Apple Services uh, Cloud whatever and uh. and and probably be substantially profitable, you just get the cost of your devices covered and then sell Services basically.

uh, and so I I Thought of this as uh, this idea that it wouldn't surprise me to see larger discounting or cheaper prices on iPhones in the future as an example. Uh, unless of course it's true that what Tim Cook said was accurate that well, the reason we couldn't sell as many iPhones was solely because of Supply chains. Now I Don't really believe that I think Tim Cook In the past has been a little evasive on earnings calls. so I I Think sure.

While it's nice to be able to say that Supply chains sand back iPhone sales I Think there's probably some limit to how much people actually want to stretch for a new phone. And so sure enough, yesterday we hear that Apple is now providing hundreds of dollars of discounts on iPhones in China after the Lunar New Year Like it's totally normal, somewhat expected, and still good for the company. You want to get the inventory off the shelf, especially before you get new models out. but uh, yeah, I I Don't think it's solely a supply issue at Apple although that's an easy thing to blame.

Ron DeSantis in Florida Apparently just had a bill filed in the state senate that would give him full control over the special board for Reedy Creek and the Reedy Creek Improvement discount. Uh District This is the district that sort of governs Disney and Disney World uh, and the various different theme parks there. Uh and uh. The individuals who would then be appointed to that board would be approved by the Senate.

This is just a bill and a proposal that would give the governor of Florida a lot of power over that Disney's Disney District Who knows if it'll ever actually get passed, but it's kind of incredible seeing the amount of tension between Disney and uh, well. Florida politicians. After the Uh, the massive backlash of Disney first staying silent on the Uh quote unquote: don't say gay bill. that's not actually what it's called, but that's thesis.

And it's basically this idea that uh, in elementary schools and under a certain age, children shouldn't be talked to about sexual preference or gender identity and that became nicknamed the don't Say Gay Bill in any way Ron DeSantis Uh, First Disney was silent on it. then Disney came out and said hey, we don't support the bill and that led to a lot of political backlash from the existing administration of Florida and uh and and a lot of ideas about potentially removing Disney special tax privileges. Though that's also led to sort of countervailing arguments that, well, if you remove Disney special tax District where they're paying for their own police and fire department, you might make all the property owners around Disney start having to chip in Via higher property taxes and is that fair to those owners so welcome to politics. It's always a give and take.

Joe Biden has his State of the Union Tonight we're expecting for him to talk about a Uh Or or call for a quadrupling of a taxes on corporate stock BuyBacks and some form of minimum tax on billionaires wealth. Most of this is likely just to be talking and yapping. And quite frankly, it's relatively unlikely that any of these things that Joe Biden talks about tonight are actually going to become a reality. mostly because now we have Kevin McCarthy in control of the house and even when Democrats were in full control, it was very difficult for them to get anything done.

given the 50 50 balance of power that they had in the Senate uh, that was uh, that was really hamstrung by uh Kristen Cinema and Joe Manchin, who were pretty solid anchors for the Democratic agenda. Of course, a lot of folks saw that as the perfect way to moderate the Democrats control. But anyway, so keep in mind that whatever Joe Biden calls for in a state State of the Union tonight was probably just going to be talk and we don't actually expect any of it to become a reality. Though do consider that his state of the Union today could be sort of an introduction for what platform he will run on in 2024.

and I think it'll also be a moment where the United States tries to evaluate is Joe Biden even capable of running in 2024.. it seems like at least at this point, uh, by Uh. Based on at least some polling conducted by Bloomberg, a lot of Democrats might not actually support Joe Biden running again. They kind of think of Joe Biden as a one and done so.

we'll see if the State of the Union actually changes anything over 5 000 now. Fear dead in Turkey and Syria following the devastating earthquakes there. AI uh in the AI World you've got uh now Google announcing the release of the chat GPT competitor named Bard that'll apparently be ready in coming weeks. Keep in mind, Uh Google has been working on language learning for a substantial amount of time and one of the easiest ways you could see that is if you ever use Gmail and you're typing in Gmail, you can actually see the AI try to pre-fill in your email for you.

in terms of hey, just press Tab and it'll pre-fill what we think you're going to say next. There were reports that this Google email generator could basically write the whole email for you, but they were worried that if they showed how powerful the Google AI chat was, that people would get freaked out. This also comes after an individual developer who worked on uh Lambda which is the internal uh project name for Google's artificial intelligence Lambda standing for language model Google developed Uh yeah. AI basically Lambda uh anyway.

uh, this. uh, there was a particular developer who was working on the project who leaked that he worried the AI was so powerful that it had actually become sentient. Now that is kind of like your worst case scenario if you've ever watched the movie iRobot or if you've got any kind of fears about robots taking over the world, you don't want to hear that robots or any kind of artificial intelligence is becoming sentient because it sends the signal that they can think on their own is what Sentin means. so that's that's it's uh, that'll be quite interesting to see how Chachi PT compares to Google's Bard I Did think the name Bard was kind of lame.

They could have come up with something a lot cooler. I Kind of think of a Bard as like going back into like Oblivion Elder Scroll or something like really like I Don't know, maybe even like a uh oh gosh, what was? um, what's the game called ever EverQuest You know it'll run around. so I I don't know. It just seems like an old school kind of name.

so I'm not a big fan of Bard Uh, but it's probably still better than Baidu's announcement. their bot is called Ernie and their their stock was up like 13 on the idea that they're also coming out with some kind of AI chat bot. Baidu's the Chinese one of the largest internet companies in the world. It's basically the Chinese search engines kind of like think of it like Chinese Google.

But anyway, so you got Google coming out with a competitor named Bard you've got Baidu coming out with Ernie and you still got chat GPT which is very annoying to pronounce and I always want to call it chat Gbd. but but anyway, I don't know. It all seems crazy. Uh, the good news is the beneficiary out of all of this is the consumer because it should make search a whole lot more functional.

especially if we can incorporate like Microsoft is trying to do chat GPT into Bing Now that would be pretty neat Now if you can incorporate chat GPT into Bing Oh boy, you can actually make Bing a functional search engine because right now it just doesn't seem that great at all. Just my take: I mean maybe I'm being a little aggressive here, but just my take. Now a lot of folks are are uh, you know, rightfully so wondering hey, you know what's a way to get exposure to uh companies uh, that invest in this sort of AI technology How can I get myself some some stock in this AI uh and I frequently looked at Microsoft as a potential opportunity for that. But one of the concerns that I have is you have a relatively small exposure uh to chat GPT and Microsoft mostly because of the size of Microsoft So it's really going to be dependent on what Microsoft can do with this.

Think about it: a 10 billion dollar investment into Chat GPT by Microsoft really represents uh, somewhere around. Let's see, it's a 1.9 billion dollar company. You're talking about less than half of of one percent basically going into uh, this, uh, this this particular company and it's it's about one half of one percent. So for example, every 100 you put into Microsoft stock, about 50 cents would go into chat GPT And this has really led me to the idea that I probably don't want to be the person who's investing directly into Google for the sake of getting exposure to their AI or Baidu for the sake of getting exposure to their AI or Microsoft for the sake of getting exposure to chat GPT and almost rather invest in sort of the backbone architecture I've talked about this before so I don't want to seem redundant, but I'm a big fan of investing in chips and I Really believe like the Wall Street Journal says that chips are probably the next gold and that over the next decade we'll see chips essentially be uh, sort of like the next gold rush in America and in countries throughout the world.

Whether it's Europe fighting for more chip manufacturing which new factories are being built in Europe you've got like an example. for example, the Taiwan Semiconductors is building a factory I believe it's in Germany it's somewhere in Europe they believe it's in Germany to manufacture Automotive chips like 20 to 28 nanometer chips, you've got uh, multiple plants being built in Arizona and massive expansions coming to Taiwan Semiconductors plants in Arizona You've got Intel potentially spending up to 100 billion dollars investing in chips just in the Ohio region and and various areas throughout. America I mean you've got the amount of money that you have flowing into. This is absolutely insane.

This is a piece by The Wall Street Journal and uh, this is their current estimate. I Mean there could be more announcements all already, but just based on projects announced, the Wall Street Journal sees U.S Semiconductor investments in the next 10 years sitting at 186 billion dollars. That's just the United States that's not even Global. Uh, that represents about the cost of around 29 billion dollar gigafactories from Tesla.

So putting that uh, that sort of into perspective, it's it's pretty massive and so that's where it when I'm generally thinking about AI exposure stocks I Think to myself, boy, uh, you're the more powerful AI gets, the more powerful compute processes you're going to require, and the companies that provide that are your sort of picks and shovel style companies which are all the way. At the beginning, you can think about glass manufacturers. Uh, you could think about uh, chip manufacturing equipment companies. So uh, for example, you could think of uh, uh, Carl Carl's ice for lenses.

These folks stick a lot a lot of money into glass and mirror production that goes into the actual chip equipment manufacturing with companies like Asml which has over a 90 market share for advanced chip manufacturing. Then you look at companies like uh, Taiwan semiconductors that buys a ton of these chips Apple in their earnings call bragging about how happy they expect to be the major customer for Taiwan semiconductors in, uh for their Arizona plant. this is Apple bragging about Taiwan semiconductors in their earnings call. That's actually pretty impressive.

Usually, you don't actually see that. Take a look at this right here at the bottom of the earnings call. what do you have? Uh, here it is Uh, I We don't know exactly at this point what that'll be. This happens to be a production and ships Act and the impact of that.

but we're all in in terms of being the largest customer for Taiwan semiconductors in Arizona And very, we're very proud to take part in that. And Apple's bragging about Taiwan semiconductors, right? So uh, and then, of course, after you look at chip manufacturers or chip manufacturing equipment, you want to look at chip designers who are your big chip designers. Well, obviously, uh, Nvidia AMD massive chip designers. Qualcomm's got a little bit more exposure to sort of 5G and mobile as opposed to maybe server and data center like you might see at AMD or Nvidia.

Then you could look at a company uh, like, like Intel who's gotten completely rid of their memory Division and they're essentially trying to deprecate their PC Division and get into really uh, Enterprise and and servers uh, and and Intel potentially looking at uh, looking like a company that's just, uh, potentially as, uh, as inexpensive as AMD both of those selling for a relatively low valuation whereas Taiwan semiconductors in Nvidia selling a little bit more expensively. But the amount of money that Intel expects to invest in in Ohio is is insane and they're either going to spend that money and they're going to win or they'll go bankrupt because they're a company that has failed to adapt. A lot of people get frustrated when I mention AMD because or when I mentioned Intel because they think of Intel as sort of this Legacy company that won't be able to adapt yet. What I think is so smart about what uh Intel is doing is they're actually building their manufacturing Fabs uh fabrication plants to be agnostic of what kind of chip architecture you're using.

Now if you're unfamiliar with that, there are basically Three core chip architectures. Uh, they're uh, and one is sort of Under the Umbrella of the other. But for the sake of argument, we'll just separate it out here. So you have X86, which is really the uh Intel based chip architecture.

Then you have Arm which is a a risk machine. that's actually what the RM stands for and risk is a type of Chip architecture. And then there's Risk Five, which is more of your open source version of risk which these are very similar to each other. Arm is deemed to be very good for mobile, this deemed to be better for Enterprise maybe and and a PC at the moment.

But then again, you've got each side trying to interview to be the best chip architecture. But what Intel is saying is, look, we don't care what architecture you use, We just want you to hire us to make your chips. And this is why they're getting contracts with the Department of Defense. This is why they're investing 100 billion dollars into new Fabs in America because they don't care if you want X86 chips.

Risk Five chips or Arm chips. They don't care what kind of architecture you want, they just want to make your chips. And so I I see Intel as potentially a decent play over the next decade as long as they can actually Garner Uh, that uh, that that manufacturing progress now Interestingly, Intel right now manufacture some of their trips with Taiwan semiconductors. and so they are really calling up Asml to trying to get to try to get as many of the new ultraviolet uh machines that they can get uh, their lithography machines.

So they too can manufacture Advanced chips, Three nanometers, four nanometers. You know, by the end of the decade we'll probably be down to one or two nanometers by the middle of the next decade, maybe at half a nanometer. And at some point it's just going to come down to uh, not this transistor size which is what nanometer measures uh, nanometers measure, but rather, uh, just who makes the most efficient chip. And that's where to Me Maybe Rather than investing in solely the designers, you also invest in the factories.

So again, that's where I think Intel Tsmc. But then I also think Nvidia Apple Uh, and AMD is your designers. So so that's sort of my take I'd rather be investing in that segment than solely be dumping my money into Microsoft and Google who are substantially more exposed to the ad business. So those are some of my thoughts.

Although you're seeing substantial Investments go into machine learning and and potential uh, future uses. Uh at Facebook as well. Uh, obviously at divisions within Apple as well. So a lot of great opportunities to invest in artificial intelligence.

But I'm afraid to just run into certain companies solely because they say, oh, hey, we we have Ai, We don't want to stay away from that. So uh, that's uh, yeah, Asml? Absolutely. I See you in the comments here. Yeah, we've been talking about Asml.

Asml has a an over 90 market share of the advanced lithography uh device for manufacturing these. Uh, now they are actually banned from selling their newest model of advanced chip making equipment to China China is obviously very pissed about this. Asml is able to sell their older generation lithography devices to China which, which they do, and they sell a lot of them to China. But China's like, well, we want the new stuff too.

And now part of this is obviously because uh China and the United States have a lot of geopolitical tensions. Not only do they have those tensions now, but they've had those tensions in the past before. China for example, stole the plans for our F-35 fighter jet and then a few years later, ended up announcing and releasing a jet that was pretty damn similar to our F-35 which is really frustrating and annoying because it's like, hey, you really are hacking our stuff They've hacked into travel logs at Marriott they've hacked into uh, our Health Care Systems Uh, China's really good at basically trying to steal our stuff now In Fairness to try to catch up and some might make the economic argument that hey, you know what? maybe uh, maybe that's a good thing because it forces both sides to innovate more. but I I I Don't think anyone getting hacked by China is necessarily something that we want to even remotely suggest is a good thing.

But these are definitely some of the plays that I'm curious about now. I'm less curious about companies like uh, like for example, Pinterest Pinterest was absolutely like I look Pinterest is a style search engine so some people say hey, what about Pinterest for AI right? Could Could there potentially be an opportunity in In Search within Pinterest to basically lead people to spend money and I hate to say it. but Pinterest scares me Uh, the reason Pinterest scares me is I Took a very brief look at their earnings presentation and look at this. They grew Revenue by about 3.6 year over year.

but they grew sales and marketing by 66. In my opinion, this is a way that you're basically showing that the company has no way of, uh, any kind of operating leverage. They have no operated leverage. Operating Leverage is where your Opex can stay stable, but you can actually grow your Revenue That's what operating Leverage is.

Well, this company has the opposite of operating leverage. Basically, to maintain their revenue at near flat, they had to increase their sales and marketing 66. That's scary that doesn't send a good signal to me. now.

The company initially dropped pretty decently after earnings, but it's since recovered. Uh, it's actually almost completely recovered to about flatten the pre-market maybe down as much as one percent. but that's not a big deal. It initially fell over 10 ten percent.

and I think what's happening in the market is you're getting a lot of earnings that are happening and then the earnings come out and companies or investors rather institutions, whatever. Like oh, that's not as bad as we thought it was, but it's still bad when you actually look at the numbers relative to other companies. So I don't know for me I stay away from things like Pinterest I want chips? That's what I want. That's where I think the big Peepee is in chips and Chip manufacturing.

And the beauty is, we're actually going through sort of this chip trough right now where everybody's ranting about how uh, chips are an oversupply and PC uh, sales year over year down 32 percent and everyone's missing. This is true Revenue has been missing Taiwan semiconductors Samsung uh AMD The numbers have been coming down. The stocks have actually been going up though because the numbers aren't that bad and these are amazing companies for the next decade. we just sort of have to get through that sort of covid uh trough if you will.

The postcova trough Uh, and and for me, I I Can't see pricing power anywhere else. like I Don't care what software company you are, you need chips, You need compute power, and that compute power is going to get more and more powerful over time. Not only is that compute power going to get more and more powerful over time, but the demand for that computing power is going to get more and more powerful. Uh, you know.

I I Always run into this idea and this challenge that at some point things will just be good enough. Uh, and maybe we don't need a new iPhone every single year, right? Which we could make that argument. but boy oh boy, you look back a few. Generations you look, you go back maybe three years on Apple laptops or even computer regular PCS or iPhones you're like it just can't run the stuff as well as it used to.

or at least it sort of feels like and often this is because we're getting more and more intensive. uh uh. applications that demand more and more compute power. Uh, in terms of what we're able to do, the way we're able to collaborate with other individuals, it's phenomenal.

There's so much potential and so so excited about what's to come. Especially I Mean, think about the transition even to augmented reality. Now a lot of people are like having augmented reality is BS Virtual reality is like what you the headset you buy for Christmas and you use it. You know one or two days in a row and then you never use it again.

Yes, fact true. But eventually augmented reality and virtual reality actually won't give you a headache and it actually won't suck. And boy, I can't even imagine the kind of compute power that we'll need for 360. Degree Uh.

Actually, quality, uh, virtual reality relative to what what we deal with today. Uh, it's uh. it's going to be pretty dang impressive and it's going to require a lot of compute power. And of course, that's where you could also invest in batteries because batteries will become even more important as well.

So uh, and that's that's exactly why you know. Almost as if On Cue you have uh, Mr Steve over here suggesting Lithium explorers have been running like crazy. 50 moves in one day and shouts out multiple different nickel plays here like SPC Fni and ICU and copper plays like F D T and ATX. You know, the interesting thing about the Explorers is you're kind of.

to me, it's almost like you're you're betting on gold explorers like oh I I hope the person I bet on finds gold and then when they don't they go bankrupt. You know it's like oh dear uh. okay, is there is there a particular pickaxe for Lithium? Uh, that's that's whom I want to invest in? Or just invest in the battery? Uh, assemblers whether that's Panasonic or even battery storage companies like Tesla and Phase Generac Solar Edge Uh, you know that that might be a way to uh, invest uh in that. but then again, you know, look, even.

uh, even Energizer I Don't think anybody's ever considered looking at the Energizer earnings report, but I did. uh and uh. even energizers complaining about higher costs for nickel and Lithium and how it's impacting their margins. So you know all these battery manufacturers.

Even though they can put batteries together, it doesn't necessarily mean uh, they're going to be profitable putting their batteries together. So uh, you know something to keep in mind. All right, let's hop on over here. What do we got? Bloomberg Which means monetary policy ultimately is too tight or will the cuts be there because we're going to get this real real roll off in economic growth.

and I think those two things are different because if I'm long risk assets on this side here, that I get Cuts in the future. but I think Cuts in the future on growth collapsing isn't actually bullish I think Cuts in the future because inflation is coming down quicker than anticipated. That's pretty good news. They're not the same thing and this is what Christina and Company was also talking about in terms of can you price in rate Cuts in a soft landing at the same time I mean I I Look at it and again I Think the thing we haven't talked enough about.

We'll get to this through the hour and frankly through the week as Lisa's observation and we're treasury bills are are trading John to get the data checks starting here: I'm just going to look at an equity Market that's not in sync with the bond market equities. flat. Bonds moving equities up a tenth of one percent yields down a bit of basis point, but a big move over the last couple of days on a two-year yield on a two-year now through 440 on a 10-year back through 360. Yeah, I mean they're not wrong here.

The uh, the moves in the bond market have been nutty. I mean absolutely nuts. The fact that the 10-year shot back up to 3.63 not good for Real Estate also creates tighter Financial conditions, but you know what? I'd rather bond yields go up and the stock market go up that way. it's like Hey Listen, Jay Pal, it's still tight.

The goal of the time. Financial Conditions are still tight. You don't need to hike more, just let the stock market rise. It's been painful enough.

Uh Goldman Financial Conditions index By the way, right now sitting, let's see here: five-year break evens are sitting at 2.37 still Rising a little bit and financial conditions did tighten yesterday as those treasure yields shot up. So we are off the lows over the last. Uh oh boy. we haven't been this low in financial condition since about September of 2022, which is right around where we sat around June or July and they did fall a little lower, but uh, they've They've re-tightened here, so we'll see now.

Another thing that I'd like to at least comment on is a little bit of what's going on with the Andrew Tate situation. So let's take a moment here. Now, we got to talk about Andrew Tate And uh, there's this guy Mario Nafal on Twitter who seems to provide a lot of insights into what's going on with the latest on the Andrew Tate situation. Uh, look, you know what? Whether you're fighting for the Matrix or against the Matrix I think it's very clear that uh, everybody in the world deserves to know what is the Romanian government holding Andrew Tate for specifically what kind of evidence is there and this is leading to a lot of aggression on both sides.

On one side, you have individuals saying hey, there's plenty of evidence suggesting that, uh, you know or that that reiterate allegations of whether it's rape or money laundering. uh, whatever it may be Uh, and and folks on the other side say Hey you know that's just a social media Persona you can't arrest somebody off stuff they say on social media. It's kind of interesting because at the same time, there's this guy Steve even McCullough who apparently was was live streaming while he ended up murdering a a girl who was pregnant. but it ends up turning out that that live stream he was playing was just a recording of himself and he left a bunch of hints like a total idiot in that live stream that he was uh yeah, you know basically that this was no Time to die and I should do a separate video on it, but it's it's crazy like it's terrible to think that that uh, you know people post stupid stuff on the internet and uh, they're almost sort of like hints that look I I I'm Brazen about the way I commit crimes.

uh, that's what some people are suggesting Andrew Tate is kind of like kind of like that to some degree that that murderer guy who who murdered somebody but while pretending to be live streaming while it's just a recording and at the same time is leaving hints about his criminal activity to sort of like in a macho and Brazen way. All that off. and so some people are connecting that to Andrew Tate saying hey, his what he says online should be taken seriously because you know he actually is, uh, doing these things and he's trying to get away with it basically. So here's an interesting sort of important update they say here on the case against Andrew Tate uh and uh, Mario provides a quick recap.

here he says before getting into the developments after an initial 30-day detention period in January a Bucharest Court extended the Tates Brothers detention until February 27th. Keep in mind that you can only be detained for about 180 days uh in in Romania while and then these have to be extended on 30-day periods. Generally, you, you can't be arrested without being charged for a crime. The thesis though is that hey, we are going to charge you with a crime.

We have not yet charged you with a crime, but we are going to do so. In the meantime, we're going to detain you because we feel if you are out of jail, you might manipulate or destroy evidence by either talking to people and making and threatening them and making them not cooperate with authorities or destroying evidence or or whatever. That's sort of the thesis. But it's leading a lot of Uh people online to get very upset about this idea that oh now Andrew Tate has been taken by the Matrix and uh, he's innocent.

Well, uh, I I Think this is a situation where at some point and the demands become louder louder every day, everybody just needs to see what the evidence is and then people can make up their mind. There are a lot of people uh, you know, drawing conclusions right now on the internet. There's this one lady who keeps ranting about Andrew Tate and one of the things that she says is it's not fair that the government is listening to one person's testimony versus the other and I think to myself, how how do you know what the government is actually listening to You know it makes for sort of like a a viral clip. uh for for this podcast host uh, arguing that uh, uh, the the Romanian government is, uh, wrong for listening to one person's testimony over the other.

We have no idea what what they're looking at or what kind of evidence they have. So that's where one of the things that I look at is I don't think and I'm not sure, right? we'll find out. But if the Romanian government were to release Andrew Tate and uh, there was no evidence or there were no charges, it would be a massive embarrassment to the Romanian government. Whereas if the Romanian government comes out with a substantial case against entertain people, look at the evidence and say wow, this guy really is a bad person then uh, then then all of a sudden people will actually look at the Romanian government with respect, right? and I don't think the Iranian government wants to be embarrassed.

so I I don't think you know just by considering that solely I don't think it looks very good for Andrew Tate especially since the judge explained his decision here. The capacity of the defendants to exercise permanent psychological control over their victims, including by resorting to a constant acts of violence, is one of basically explanations for why they're being held. Their attorney Athena Glandin, who's previously represented boxer Mike Tyson and singers Chris Brown and Kesha have argued or has argued that the Detention of the Tates for more than 30 days violates their international human rights. She's actually been on multiple interviews she was just on with Piers Morgan as well and she talks about how basically these, uh, these, these detentions or violations of international human rights and uh, I mean to some degree without evidence.

It is a little frustrating in her talks though. she suggests that well, it's frustrating not for us publicly not to see what the evidence is. Uh, and it's it is. She also apparently is not getting that evidence either.

But one of the things she talks about is this how this investigation has been going on since April and she someone implies that they've been uh based, basically held against their will since April when the reality is, they were arrested December 29th. Don't get me wrong, that's still a long time to be arrested without uh evidence. but uh, let's keep going here. She said a lack of evidence was shown for the fact that or by the fact that there's still no charges despite the brothers being in custody for a month and police investigating since April exactly Glennon Also said that Tristan Tate which she implied that a little differently on on her video.

Uh, Glendid also said that Trista Tate has been unable to meet his new three-week-old child. She has also denied the brothers could flee Romania even though the judge is suggesting maybe their passports uh, you know, could be removed or they could go under house arrest or whatever. This is basically her way saying, hey, just let him out of jail just you know, keep him walked up at home or whatever. Despite the brothers facing no trial, some providers are already starting to red label them in effect sanctioning them from using the banking system.

So this is sort of like restricting their ability to transact uh at banks, for example, comply.advantage. already displays a bunch of red flags on Andrew Tate's name under various categories. This is sort of when the finance uh, when Finance institutions operate with customers, they decide whether or not to restrict certain activities based on red flags that come up in international reports. In a video released in January the brother's lawyer, their old lawyer complains that the Tate brothers are being prosecuted on the basis of extrajudicial evidence.

This basically means reports that were not requested by the courts. In other words, there's this. Then this has been. What's circulating.

is this idea that you know some psychologist has made the conclusion that these individuals are unsafe to others? Uh, and that a judge shouldn't be holding them against their will solely because of the report of an individual or or multiple other individuals. Again, this is where I think I don't believe the Romanian Court wants to be embarrassed here and I would hope that if they're actually holding folks, uh, against their their will clearly and in violation of potential international human rights laws, that they actually have substantial evidence that maybe the world just doesn't know about. Because really, what we have right now or or what people believe about the Tates are just sort of random uh, clips of of him suggesting uh, things that just don't sound very good. Now, a lot of people say these suggestions or these clips online that don't sound very good are really just him being uh, Andrew Tate that's his social media personality, right? And you and you can't charge him for crimes for things that he's talking about online.

Whether that's uh, recordings like this. Let's take a listen here for a moment here. you didn't like the I was thinking I can do whatever I want to. That's what it is.

I'm the smartest person on this planet. that's a voice. We'll fast forward here a little bit. I Just want to get to the clips here.

Uh, shout out to the Law on Crime Network for this. Uh, I'm kind of just skipping past your commentary and adding my own. But thank you for the audio here. Shout out to you guys.

Go subscribe to the Long Crime Network because the more you didn't like it, the more I enjoyed it I loved how much you hated it. Turned me on. Seriously, so offended I strangled you a little bit you didn't pass out. chill the ow Jesus Christ I thought you were cool.

What's wrong with you? Yeah, so some of that kind of audio that sort of implies uh or or I mean basically it's it's cut up audio but it pretty clearly says hey, oh you didn't like that I r a p You know you uh that that it just those things don't sound very good. Now is that evidence enough to hold somebody without charges? Probably not because you know there are two sides to every story and uh, and of course we've seen plenty of of of people come out and actually defend the tape brother saying no, no like this is just play. This is all just you know for the show, we do this for social media. Tate's a good person.

You know he's done nothing wrong. Uh, that's that's the primary argument we generally get from from Defenders of Tate Here's uh, what the attorney argues with: Piers Morgan Let's listen in for a moment. How long can that process continue before a charging decisions pension ordered 180 Deadly, uh, bellowing his innocence as he's been LED in and out of of these uh Court hearings and so on. Do you believe them? Do you believe that he and his brother in a at this point? Pierce They've had this investigation going since April We're now February and there are not even charges filed against them.

So this is a huge Injustice The way we see it, they should not be detained At this point we did. Did you notice she dodged the question Pierce Morgan says do you believe them and she goes right into talking about how it's an injustice that they're arrested Now Don't get me wrong, if I were her attorney like if I were the Tates attorneys kind of probably be doing what she's doing. You do the media circuit right. What you're trying to do is you're trying to build pressure on the Romanian government right? So you play the media game.

You know you try to go to jail, you get kicked out because you can't visit your client. You go on Piers Morgan and all the shows going. This is an international Injustice It's basically a way for her to pressure the International Community to pressure the Romanian government to finally actually release some evidence and some charges or release the individuals. Right now, one of the things that has been kind of interesting and we'll play a little bit more of this in just a moment.

But one of the things that has been kind of interesting is there's been talk that these individuals, uh, the Tate Brothers Well We we've known this. We've seen plenty of clips of the Tate Brothers come out of a sort of chord or or between court and jail and and they'll Shout at the cameras they'll talk to the cameras and uh, they'll they'll say things uh, you know to to sort of, uh, bolster their case. like for example this clip right here. take a listen to this.

this is this has been pretty tip foreign all right. So in America if you're rich, uh, you're an actor and uh Britain if you're rich, you're a businessman and in uh, Romania if you're rich, you're a criminal. uh, that's uh, that's uh, you know he Then he's made statements like this regularly, right? regularly has he made statements suggesting uh, that, uh, hey, you know there's no evidence. But what's interesting is one of the more recent videos of his Transportation have actually been completely silent.

Look at this, this, we'll just play this here and turn the audio up on this too so you can. Actually, when they come out, you'll see they're completely silent now. I Also want to know how they have like so many different compartments in this van. Like this van is like really impressive.

like I kind of want one of these. You are okay. Now now that's pretty unusual, right? It's pretty unusual because usually they say something. Now some some folks are saying that maybe, uh, the the judge in the case is very upset that they've now been classified as dangerous prisoners because they try to talk to the media when they travel.

Uh, the Tate Brothers handed a particular note for example to one of the reporters and shouted like here, take this, take this uh and and that's led to the judge being a little bit upset uh, uh over essentially their communication with the media which is not supposed to do, but uh, it's possible. Maybe that's why they were silent. Uh, during that moment, we could keep looking through some of these items here. Uh, here you've got Per the court documents, women were convinced to come from abroad and were misled about the intention of Tate to establish a relationship with those women and either marry them or live with them.

At the time when this one particular victim according to a court document arrived in Romania the defendant was not in the country and she was told the injured person uh, that she would not be able to live in the apartment. Okay, A little confusingly written here. Instead, the person would have to live with the person who brought who bought the plane ticket, picked her up from the airport and drove her to the buildings where she was going to live. blah blah.

you get a lot of sort of this. This these anecdotes from both sides: I Think ultimately, uh, the the the. The goal here of if there is a preventative arrest, there should be, uh, at some point here, hopefully soon. a very clear list of charges that the Tate Brothers could actually defend right? Uh, now again, they've hired a new attorney over here and uh, she's argued the one that you just saw in the Piers Morgan show that she's been refused entry to the jail where the Tate brothers are being held.

Again, this is part of sort of the media Circuit of like you gotta put pressure on the government so what do you do? you get kicked out of jail? Uh, then you've got uh, some you know seizures that happened over the last few days such as 14 watches being seized, 294 thousand dollars of Bitcoin being seized Bucharest court of Appeals. That it's interesting. This is actually important to know is it's not just one judge who's holding uh Andrew Tate against his will. it's now a court of appeals rejecting their appeal.

Uh, on the uh opportunity for the Romanian government to hold them for an additional uh, 30 days. We'll come back to this here in a moment. Uh and uh and uh. there's a BBC uh uh.

journalist this guy Paul Kenyon and he's planning on releasing a detailed documentary or in or interview or something tomorrow. On February 8th he talks about how he visited the Tate's house in Bucharest Aside from this, uh, metal Sentinel by the front door, he says it's pretty underwhelming. An old converted Factory near a cemetery surrounded by Wasteland doesn't sound, uh, doesn't feel like the home of a multi-millionaire he says now, obviously this is going to get a lot of backlash this this particular individual here because you know, hey, like, who are you to sort of pass a judgment right? But then again, you know he's just making sort of the observation, hey, here's here's what the home looks like in Bucharest Apparently it's uh, uh, it says here a Norman Bates inspired meat factory Uh, and he this this BBC author argues that Andrew Tate has a fictitious chain of casinos. his webcam Empire is just two girls in an apartment basically and his home is basically like a meat factory.

The person sounds a little biased. No, the only reason I hit the like on this was so I could eat I could quickly go back to it for the purpose of of uh reviewing this because I just look at the like history see tweets by meet Kevin Uh, just follow me on Twitter at realme Kevin you can see all these things yourself I put them there as sort of just the documentation of what we're seeing. So uh, and and this BBC author or a journalist argues that the irony for Andrew Tate is in order to prove his claims about being fabulously Rich he will need to show us his money, but if he does, then the Romanian prosecutors are going just going to, uh, seize it which they have. They've been seizing almost all of his assets.

uh and uh. So right here this is where uh Paul Kenyon says uh, this is what I couldn't tell you until today. We have the first British complaintant against Andrew Tate a former girlfriend who alleges violence and coercion. She is helping Romanian prosecutors with inquiries.

Uh, and so apparently this is, uh, the the kind of individual who uh uh is is potentially contributing. uh to why Andrew Tate is staying arrested again? That's led to a lot of anger. Uh, like this person here, pretty dang angry. We'll go ahead and play her clip here.

and this is where I had mentioned that. One of the reasons. Well I mean you'll listen to it yourself here. So let's let's listen to what.

Why? Why Is she angry? Let's listen it. This is some sickness that you have two women, two women coming out and saying and I've heard many, many I've probably heard five or six or seven now, even interviews conversations with Jasmina She is coherent. She is intelligent. She says her piece.

She has said repeatedly I'm not a victim. They even asked her in one interview They said if evidence came out that you couldn't you couldn't refuse. It was there. it was actual evidence.

Would you accept it? She said yes. It's just not. That's just not what happened I was living there. That is not my experience.

My story. How dare a society. How dare a society accept one woman's statement as fact and ignore another woman's statement because you don't like one message and you want the other message on a pedestal. That is Not how a legal system should operate.

that is corrupt. Yeah, so I mean that's uh, that's obviously a statement there that's designed to evoke emotion, right? Because if what she is saying is true, then of course that's not how a legal system is supposed to operate. But we don't know if what she is saying is true. We don't know if that's why the Romanian Court uh is is extending the Detention of Andrew Tate right? So at this point it seems like there are a lot of people on social media who will say anything in the world to defend Andrew Tate Because the army of uh Tate supporters love that I tried my best to take a neutral stance.

That means I'm probably gonna. you know, some people aren't going to like that, but I'm just curious. Like for me I just want to see the evidence. Just show me the evidence Then then I can make my opinion.

Uh, it. now. Obviously here, we're not expecting the attorney to opine about whether or not her clients are are, uh, uh, you know, actually, uh, in trouble or have committed any kind of wrong. Obviously, we're not expecting that.

So I want to be clear when I said she avoided that question. uh, it's just you know it was an interest. Interesting question by Piers Morgan is maybe the way to look at it, but obviously that's that's something that an attorney probably should. Dodge But then again, a lot of attorneys will come out and say I absolutely believe my clients are innocent, right? She didn't take that opportunity.

But anyway, let's listen to just a little bit more here and then we'll keep going. You think it's now crossed over to the point where it's violating international human rights law because the deprivation of of your Liberty pre-trial is the most severe form of punishment a state can impose. And that's what they've done in this case and they've had a very lengthy investigation. With the government's resources, they've been analyzing and looked looking at all of their devices since April When They seized everything and here we are February and charges aren't filed.

So I think there's absolutely no evidence that's been presented and that's our position. Yeah, and again, you know this kind of goes on and it goes in circles about this idea of hey, there's no evidence that's been filed yet obviously and again I Want to just be very, very clear about this? Obviously, if tomorrow the tape Brothers get released and the remaining Court's like yep, nope, never mind, we don't have anything that'd be terrible that would be so wrong. It would prove essentially his innocence and the family's innocent. It would, uh, hopefully restore Uh Humanity's faith in in, uh, you know, essentially the social media influencers because you know they've got a pretty, uh, you know, pretty uh uh dare I say a volatile reputation in that you've got some folks believing every single word that they say absolutely loving them.

And on the other side, you've got people hating absolutely everything. and generally when you have that kind of divisiveness you you kind of have almost like a trumpian style environment where people will do anything for the person and people will do everything against the person. And then it's always a tough position to be in because ultimately I think, uh, a more balanced View and more nuanced view is necessary. but that's very difficult to convey on the internet.

uh, the balance, support or criticism of someone. But anyway, uh, if uh, you know this detention continues as it's a rumored that it will that this trial may not actually complete until or really get going until May Brothers could be gone for quite a while. that's another three months away and then you get into trial and then we're going to be covering the evidence on that. The evidence is going to be quite interesting, so I'm very curious to see what that looks like and we'll definitely be covering it.

but at least at this point. All we know is we've got a court that's holding someone no evidence yet and we got a lot of people that are very pissed off and a whole lot of other people who are like, finally some justice for Women. We'll see. We'll see.

Let's see here: I Do Not trust anything anymore In the absence of Truth those with the most power Define The truth? Yeah, I mean that's the other thing too. There's a lot of reasons to be skeptical of things that have, uh, happened. Okay next. so we've gotta talk.

huh? Give me a second here. Let's listen to Bloomberg for a moment to look at is why is it because uh, we're exporting more? Or is it because we're exporting less? Um, that's the real question and a lot of this has to do with the strength of the dollar as well. It's been a long time since, uh, the dollar started weakening and we should start seeing some of the effects of that. uh by U.S Uh.

Exports Rising A little bit more, but it is a component of GDP and it was a component of GDP in the fourth quarter because these are December numbers. So a stronger number. Uh, a strong fourth quarter. Maybe a little bit weaker because the trade ballot trade deficit is a little bit wider.

This number doesn't necessarily move the needle like the one that we got on Friday which definitely changed the narrative in a meaningful well way. particularly for uh, Fed. Watchers What are you expecting to hear from Fed Share? J Powell Today starting at 12 30 P.m Eastern when he addresses the reaction in markets and then the subsequent labor market report that was to quote Tom better than good Yeah, Uh well. Jay Powell is a dignified, um public servant and I don't think he'll stand up and say yeah, yeah, I was right.

But basically that's going to be the message. Um, the FED is going to raise interest rates. the FED is going to keep interest rates High The FED sees a much rockier path to two percent inflation and a soft Landing than the markets have. and now the market seem to be coming around to that view.

So I think Powell will have is a an hour-long question session about the Fed and what they do. But I think the message he will walk in with already prepared is we're going to stay the course and that's the thing he will want people to take away from today. Help me with Michigan on I believe it's Friday on February 10th as well. Will there be value? Michael McKee To the Michigan confidence series plural.

Well, there's a little bit of value in the Michigan numbers on inflation. If people think inflation is still coming down, then that helps the Fed's case for uh, getting to two percent. Uh, it is. uh.

opinion based in large measure on gasoline prices. So if gas prices hang in there, they've gone up a little bit of it. If they hang in there at lower levels, it should continue to improve. Then the question is, what do people think of the economy? There isn't a direct link between the confidence numbers and spending, but there's an implied link.

It's more, uh, coincident than anything else. And so if we see people getting more confident in the economy, then that suggested maybe a recession's a little bit farther away. Michael McKee Thank you so much! Yeah, that's actually a really good point about this confidence in the economy. We're actually getting a lot of talk about that confidence in the economy, especially as how it relates to the housing market.

So you've got to provide a little bit of a housing market update Specifically because this morning on CNBC Neil Kashgari touched on the housing market and he talks specifically about an article in the Wall Street Journal about signs that maybe the housing market was slightly starting to recover and how that could actually lead the FED to have to keep Financial conditions tighter Again, because they see that can consumer spending is heavily correlated to household wealth and so is the jobs. Market In fact, Neil Kashgari bantered back and forth with CNBC anchors this morning suggesting that hey, maybe maybe it's entirely possible the reason we saw a better employment report than we expected is because Ma and we saw the labor force participation rate rise is maybe some people who had retired which usually retirement is relatively sticky, are now coming out of retirement and working a part-time job or whatever and participating with the labor market because they're starting to see their household net worth decline. Whether that's through retirement accounts exposed to the stock or bond market, or the real estate market softening. Who knows.

But this idea that maybe the real estate market hit some kind of bottom is very interesting. Now it's worth noting what's happened with interest rates. Interest rates were about three. Four months ago.

we're sitting at about seven to seven and a quarter percent. Right now, we're sitting closer to 6.1 to 6.4 percent. So you've really come down on mortgage rates. and as we know, when rates come down, buyer purchasing power increases.

And this is why the Wall Street Journal in part is suggesting hey, we're starting to see some potential thawing in the housing market. And now this is really interesting because the Federal Reserve pointed out this article. This is not me finding this article. The Fad Talked about this article Neil Kashgari as we hear or at CNBC or during his interview on CNBC this morning.

He'd mentioned this and so the article talks about this decline in mortgage rates. Having more people contacting real estate agents, applying for mortgages and signing purchases tracks following mortgage rates have beginning to stir demand or have been beginning to stir demand in the housing market. The average home loan has is come down by just about a full percentage point from its high Above seven, this would be about seven and a quarter to about six and a quarter now, right? And it's bringing some new buyers into the market. now.

This, on one hand, could potentially be aligning with the seasonal move that most people who are interested in buying real estate don't actually get serious about potentially buying real estate until January And then they actually don't really start making offers until March. This is sort of your spring buying season, right? Most people buy in March most people sell in July It's kind of weird. You'd think maybe sellers would move that up a little bit, but that's statistically what we tend to see now. Mortgage applications are up by a little bit.

This also makes sense again because Uh rates are starting to fall. The housing market is a barometer for how the economy is responding to looser Financial conditions. Look at the FED specifically really pointing out this article that talks about oh Financial conditions are loosening and the Fed's like, no, we don't want Financial conditions to loosen Now keep in mind that did lead and and the the Federal Reserves concerns about tighter Financial conditions have actually LED Financial conditions to tighten slightly again, especially following that jobs report that we had just look at the 10-year treasury yield over the last uh, six months here. If you jump to the last six months, you'll actually see that we were sitting at a high on the 10-year treasury around four and a quarter to 4.3 in November which is really about three months ago and we fall into these lows for most of January.

But if we zoom in a little bit here just to the last month and I'll remove myself for a moment, you can actually see we've really spiked up to the highest level in the last month on 10-year treasure yields. Not quite yet, though the highest levels that we've seen in the last three months, we'd have to get to about 3.8 to see that. But now we're sitting at about 3.66 so you are seeing at least some tightening again in those financial conditions. As the 10-year treasury is really correlated to a housing interest rates mortgage rates the FED has indicated they're committed to keeping rates High until inflation is lower, Willing to risk a recession to do so.

Uh, they no matter what happens, it's likely to be a slow year for the housing market. Suggest the Wall Street Journal Housing activity remains down sharply from a year ago, and when the FED began to lift, its better. That's when they started raising rates, pushing up uh, mortgage rates. Uh, and even though the S P core logic uh case, Schiller National home price index is up 40 from three years ago, the housing market has been in its fifth straight month of declines and it's hitting specific areas particularly heartbeat Austin or Idaho and you're starting to see more.

Builders Try to rush inventory out to Market to actually catch up to make sure they don't end up with even lower prices. Now here's something that's fascinating if you go over to the Redfin Data Center and you look at median home sales. this is for the entire nation and we can go City by city in a moment here. But if you look at median home sales, you know that right now, medium median home sales are sitting at around 347.

they've actually declined a little bit already in January Now that's not true for every Market, but in just January, you've declined from about 350 to around 347. So about a one percent decline, but 347 if we hold at 347 until about oh, call it uh, what do we have here? April Yeah, if we hold until April or May, we'll eventually be comparing 347 to about 387 from year over year numbers. And if we look at 347, say prices stay stable divided by 387, that's going to represent a national decline of real estate prices about 10 and a half percent. And that could lead to some potential Panic Where all of a sudden now home buyers are hearing that home prices aren't actually Rising anymore, but instead they're falling.

And if that, Panic comes at the same time as more home builders list properties for sale. Because we know existing homeowners are locked into low rates, they're not super interested in bailing out of the housing market. Well then. uh, but we do have the largest backlog of homes under construction that we've had since 2006, and if those homes start hitting The market? there's a potential you could see something real softness in the real estate market come spring and the summer.

Unless for some reason, the lowering of interest rates of one percent from seven and a quarter to six and a quarter percent leads to some kind of real rise in prices again. and then those year-over-year numbers don't look as dramatic I Don't know we'll see what ends up happening, but we can look at individual areas. For example, if we go to Austin Texas we can actually see you get this slight sort of take up in home prices here in January sorry, followed by a slight decline. So you do have a lot of volatility in these sort of four week measures.

but even right now, if we look at 460 right