Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Meet Kevin report. We are on episode 26 of the Meet Kevin report and we've got a lot to cover. First, interesting notes coming out in the lawsuit of the Dominion voting machines versus a Fox News. Turns out that even individuals at Fox News like Laura Ingram Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson were apparently doubting the election fraud claims.

but we're worried that if they cast too much doubt on those election fraud claims from the Donald Trump the Trump Administration during the coverage of the election fraud claims post 2020 election, that they would be seen as essentially anti-republican So uh, this lawsuit alleges that documents have been shared uh, showing text messages between Executives and some of the hosts indicating they didn't believe in the election fraud claims but weren't publicly defending uh, let's say, the Dominion loading machines for feeders that they would be ridiculed from from essentially their base. Now, there are some particular quotes that came out in Uh, the lawsuit. For example, uh, Tucker Carlson saying things like Sydney Powell is lying Sydney is a complete nut. No one will work with her.

Ditto with Rudy referring of course to Rudy Giuliani. It's unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it, somewhat referring to the idea that hey, like, we want to take care of the viewers, they believe these election fraud claims, but these people are nuts and that's Tucker Carlson saying this. Uh, apparently with producers and exchanges of emails and text messages now reported to uh in this lawsuit also uh, really, you had uh, sort of.

It seems like sort of this this torn situation where on one hand, the claims uh, would you know have essentially come across as pretty dang Looney uh, some of them, especially that I Don't think any of us can really forget some of the Rudy Giuliani claims that went on at the time, especially Mr Giuliani's uh, boy, what was he? He was standing outside of the uh, uh, the Landscaping Company sweating giving this argument uh, that was pretty, uh, wild in Arcane that Donald Trump had had, indeed, absolutely won the election. and of course, those things ended up getting ridiculed pretty ridiculously. uh. and now it's interesting that in this lawsuit between Dominion and Fox News, you're starting to see uh, oh, wait a minute.

Even the people within the right-leaning media didn't believe some of these election fraud claims, which many of them ended up getting, uh debunked in many of the Donald Trump lawsuits ended up being thrown out. There were also murmurings that even within the Trump Administration people didn't believe uh in these election fraud claims, that this was really just sort of a way to potentially increase the donations for Donald Trump's political purposes and maybe fund his War chest for his next election. and that the more drama there was and the more unjust they made it seem uh, that Donald Trump was going through potentially this idea of a rigged election, the more donations they would end up being able to get. Almost kind of like a business advertising play.

So kind of interesting to see some of the latest on the uh, the lawsuits related to that apparently. Also, in other news, there was an airplane that was on its way to New York and this Probably sounds like the most annoying airplane trip ever. But apparently an airplane was on its way from Auckland New Zealand to New York And halfway through the trip, the airline decided Well power is out at the New York arrival. Terminal So let's just halfway through the trip, you turn back to New Zealand rather than diverting to a different airport.

because obviously if people are trying to get to New York we may as well just make them sit on a plane for 16 hours and go nowhere rather than going to an airport that's maybe I don't know, 30 minutes away and knock people over. From there. it seemed pretty wild, but uh, apparently that's exactly what happened yesterday, so that's pretty unfortunate for those folks. Apparently you also have Duke Juan the founder of Terra Luna 31 years old.

he, uh, obviously, uh, you know LED essentially the collapse of Terra Luna Apparently he was slowly siphoning Bitcoin Uh, at least according to an SEC allegation, the SEC is now alleging that he slowly transferred 10 000 Bitcoin into a cold storage wallet, then slowly took money from from that cold storage wallet and moved it over to uh Oh Audio's not great today. there we go. This should make the audio substantially better. sorry about that.

Uh, there we go anyway. Uh, then slowly moved money over from this cold storage wallet to uh, uh, a Swiss bank account where essentially he was able to transfer the Bitcoin to cash and now he's a fugitive. On The Run Uh, South Korean Officials who are hunting for him think he might be in Siberia but he's essentially vanished from uh from from public uh, appearance? Uh, entirely 31 years old and probably made off with somewhere between 250 to 500 million dollars of Bitcoin That's pretty crazy. Uh, okay, so then uh, so that gives us some some wild uh updates that, uh, that that start off the day I mean all of those are pretty pretty wild, uh, individually, they're all pretty wild, uh, and uh.

and and we've got quite a few other uh topics to cover as well in terms of what's going on. not just with uh Elon, but the FED markets. uh, some claims, uh, regarding uh, the vaccine as well, which are quite interesting facts. Uh, we'll save those for a little later, but boy, we've got a lot.

Uh, we've got a lot to hit, so uh, we'll get. we'll keep going on it. I Do want to mention that yesterday we were able to, uh, fly and visit. uh Reading California That was pretty neat.

After that, I was also able to uh visit uh with uh one of the chief researchers over at ARC invest uh Mr Brett Winton and I have to say absolutely brilliant mind I can't wait to share that interview with y'all It was really nice to also be able to do that in person. I uh I'm kind of tired of honestly the zoom interview I I think I think there's almost like nothing more painful uh like if you want and then Zoom quite frankly like if you had to sort of line up uh, the pain of communicating with someone I think you kind of go from like the easiest way of communicating with someone which is texting to making a phone call to responding to a voicemail to FaceTime to like large gap, scheduling a zoom or teams meeting and then sitting down with your lighting and your computer and being ready and all this nonsense and headphones and ready to get on some kind of Zoom call like I get it. This is part of remote working and it's part of sort of our culture and in many ways it's created many efficiencies. but from a personal point of view I have to rant about it a little bit because uh wow, it just uh.

it does seem like the most painful way of communicating and quite frankly, I'm finding some of these Zoom calls are uh and this is why I try to minimize them entirely because I think they're entirely inefficient. but it just seems like now we've almost gotten into this weird like culture where something that could literally be handled with the text message people are now trying to set up Zoom calls for I'm like this is ludicrous uh for example and and I love them I think they do fantastic work uh, you know but I talk to I talked to a anchor and uh oh my gosh, it went to hey, uh, can we set up a zoom call to uh to talk about uh, the accounts and I'm like oh, is is everything okay, like like what's wrong why do we have to talk about the accounts? uh and they're like oh, we just wanted to make sure you got the new accounts set up with your user ID I'm like yeah, like I got that a week ago for these new accounts we created and like it's fine. if there was a problem, I would have let you know I didn't need to schedule a potential Zoom call for that oh hey, how you doing? How's this? how's all this bull crap is so inefficient I I don't know I'm I'm a big fan of trying to uh and it's It's a constant revision process, right? Nobody's perfect. Uh, but uh, every every day one of the things that I like to do is I try to think okay, what can I do to optimize the way I'm Uh, creating value for my businesses every day and one of the things that I find is substantially more efficient: cutting out almost every form of communication except for in person and text.

Now it's not to say phone calls aren't important. Get on the phone with attorneys or or, uh, you know, our investor relations team or or you know CPAs whatever. Obviously, there are times for that I prefer in person, but the last thing I I want to do is sit on zooms I think out of all the zooms I've done this last year, they could have been replaced with like, stay quite Frank Uh so I'm a big fan of uh, of minimizing that sort of Madness I I don't know. maybe uh, maybe I'm alone on that.

but I'm so exhausted about like I I maybe maybe leave me a comment? Let me know what you think I mean like over the last year of the zooms that you've been on on the meetings, how many of them were just utter, like a waste of freaking time God Yeah, somebody here writes they just want to justify their jobs in the economy Yeah. Zoom Court Okay, I mean I think there's some practicality to that? uh, you know I think that probably makes judges' lives a little easier and this is something where you kind of have to get together with people I don't know. but then again, I'm kind of I'm still a fan of like in person Zoom meetings with no live video the best zoom there is I mean then you basically just have a conference call. 70 of them are a waste.

99 of them were waste I'm not just like I don't know I find it wild so thank you for your commentary on that. So uh, okay. anyway. oh look, they're talking about Tesla that's what I wanted to talk about next.

How convenient. Let's listen in for a moment. All right. These findings suggest that there were some certain scenarios where the car might act in a way where the driver couldn't take over fast enough to avoid a crash or potentially break the law.

So uh, you know, fixing this and the software a lot easier than say, uh, having to bring it into a car dealership like a Chevy would do and have to change mechanical things, have to put in new equipment or something like that, so you know. kind of. In short, a little kind of a win for Tesla because it doesn't have to turn the system off. It doesn't have to do any mechanical changes, but a black eye because of the systems.

Uh, defaults. What? What has Tesla said about the defaults? They agree with the government's assessment of it. Well, they would disagree. Uh, they pushed back on the government that with the government's findings, but went forward with the voluntary recall here which is often the case uh in these things, When the netsa is going to do this, it's either do voluntary or it can become much more messy down the road.

So you know, going back to Tesla traditionally says that these systems are safer than what the human can do. Uh, is that's you know, Maybe perhaps in debate. Sometimes we don't understand where their data is coming from, but it gets to kind of the core of these systems. Are they about safety or are they about convenience? The criticism continues to be about Tesla and other systems like it is that the driver uh, thinks the system can do more than it is.

It is not fully self-driving the robot is not in control, The driver needs to be in control, needs to take back that wheel, needs to to be engaged in the driving scenario. And oftentimes they get lulled into thinking the car is doing more than it actually is. Yeah, I mean he's not. He's not actually wrong about that.

You have that same kind of issue in aviation where you get lulled into the idea that, ah, Autonomy is taking everything over or you don't have to concentrate on anything. The good news is a lot of us using the Autonomy technology today realize in Tesla's uh oh, we're coming up on uh, you know, potentially a dicey intersection or an area where I want to pay attention a little bit more and sort of activate your your awareness and take over earlier. Uh, and and yeah, look, there's absolutely this argument to be made that if you rely too much on autonomy all of a sudden, your skills start waning and you're not actually able to respond appropriately in situations where it's necessary to take over from autonomy. But what's wild and why Tesla's actually getting all of this crazy coverage right now? I Mean they're still talking about it right here on CNBC What's wild about this is apparently there was this recall that was issued and it's literally just a software update, but people are freaking out over this.

There's so much press going on over this and I think it's remark workable. In fact, take a look at this. I Got this text message yesterday it says hey, you might have heard this already, but it's on Channel 7 World News that Tesla is recalling 360 000 Vehicles because of the self-driving feature potentially leading to accidents. just a heads up and I wrote terrible recall that requires a horribly intensive automatic software update.

At night, it's like it's true. It's like look, you don't have to take the darn thing in anymore when I had a Toyota Prius and I had to take the sucker in for service. Not a pain in the butt. Yeah, take the car in after you set an appointment because now they want you to have an appointment.

then you go drop it off and you have to wait in line to talk to the person. Of course, when you go want to just drop off the damn Keys You can't do that because then they want to try to sell you because that's how dealerships make money. They gotta sell you as much freaking service that you don't need as possible. Everything needs service.

Every time you go in, there's something they gotta sell you on. There's always something they have to sell you on. And and you're a loser is at least the impression if you don't at least do some of it because hey, you know we've got this whole list of things that are wrong with your car. but you know, why don't we just chip away at it and maybe do like a quarter of it now and we'll save another quarter for next time.

So that way you don't feel like a loser, you're still spending probably a quarter more than you should have spent. which should have been Zero, right? Like the old school dealership model is just trash. It's so annoying. it's so inconvenient.

Uh, and then you gotta pick the darn thing up and then how are you gonna get back? Sure you? Uber But then it's a pain in the bud because you got to wait 20 minutes for the Uber You're wasting so much time out of your day to bring a car to a dealership and then go back and get it. Or you're also wasting somebody else's time if they're driving you to drop you off. Which then it's even more ridiculous because now you're wasting two people's time. Terrible, terrible, economic, efficient, inefficiency.

and so you have all of these sort of like in my opinion. I'm just going to call I'm going to call it what it probably is uh, traditional Boomers Who don't know much about software or have any care to learn? uh about anything? Elon Musk touches. And so the thesis is oh man Oh the headlines say recall. there we go.

We always knew the new stuff was bad. You just can't innovate, can't can't have good things, no recalls. That's right. Yep.

Tesla getting screwed again. it's it's almost like people get happiness out. It's like I think it's like a a schadenfoid a a psychology of of Tesla It's like like the the old guards kind of like Elon losing again. Another recall for the Teslas Oh it's just like so stupid and annoying.

Uh, it just drives me nuts. But ironically what's happening now is you have this ironic Network effect where the Tesla people are like you're the idiot who has to take your car into service whereas we just press update on the car. Uh and in a weird way it actually has this like in my opinion positive marketing effect. So even though initially it's like it seems like all this negative press I Really think for Tesla the argument of no press is bad.

Press is great. I mean Tesla doesn't have an advertising Department because they don't need it. As soon as there's a software update, everybody freaks out calling it a recall and then what happens The Defenders of Tesla are like dude, it's a software update and then people that, okay, we're well I still hate Elon Just like, just so ridiculous. Uh, but but that's just what's out there.

Meanwhile, the model Y is sold out for Q1. It's the first time these suckers have been sold out uh, you know, and for about six months, which is fantastic. Now the Model Y sold out. They raised the price twice over just the last, uh, six weeks here after their initial price reductions and now you also have Tesla having to respond to allegations about them, uh, firing people who, uh, uh, you know wanted to form a union in Buffalo New York Now let's be real and this is.

this is just, uh, you know, sort of a thesis here. This is like the quiet part that probably shouldn't be spoken out loud. Let's be real. Tesla Doesn't want unions.

Okay, most most modern companies generally don't want unions because ultimately you're trying to automate away your labor anyway. Okay, like that's the long-term goal, right? I Mean, think about it during the pandemic. Did we really need 5? 000 Math teachers teaching calculus on Zoom Or did we really need one math teacher teaching calculus on zoom and then 499 sort of helpers to help grade papers or whatever right? like you put the best teacher on Zoom They teach it and everybody else you know sort of helps and and tutors as necessary rather than 5 000 different people trying to put together a Zoom lecture plan, right? So that is innovation that probably you should be seeing in education. But of course that means a lot of people lose their jobs and so that's bad because people don't want to lose their jobs because then they have to learn something new and that's very difficult to do.

especially when you're in a Groove and you're in a habit. And and I mean it's hard to to change with the times right? And and I mean nobody wants to see their job get replaced. That's the reality of it. So unions help protect labor from getting replaced.

I Kind of think about it. like the Industrial Revolution the Luddite It's like, oh, we've got uh. we've got machines coming in to sort our cotton. Hell no.

let's go in and destroy the machines at night. Uh. and and so you've got luddites destroying machines during the Industrial Revolution Because goodness gracious, what are we going to do if we don't have the manual necessity to to actually separate the seeds from the cotton? Why would? Why would we let machines do that? They're going to bankrupt us all and we'll be broke. and we'll have to learn to do something else.

Of course, the goal is with Innovation you now have the ability to get another job that potentially pays you more money with less time. So for example, if you're making thirty thousand dollars a year and then all of a sudden you turn around and you realize, wait a minute. I could do some quality assurance work in a tech job and make twice as much money with half as much time. Well, now I got more now I got more money and I got more time to do something else, right? So innovation in a necessary way kind of forces you for a moment to go through a little bit of hardship.

but then you end up better. You end up working less, You end up making more money. But unions of course, an instance into just straight a bag on unions. But let's be clear about the incentive of a union.

The incentive of a union is to survive, and if the goal of the Union is to survive, then it survives more. When it has more union members, the last thing a union wants is Less union members because then you have less union dues and you have less power. But if union members are getting replaced by robots at Tesla then the Union's obviously going to be pissed about the robots. It's just like the luddites during the Industrial Revolution.

But then what happens when the Tesla sort of sees that writing on the wall or corporations see that writing on the wall and they're like, well, let's automate as quickly as possible so that we can replace labor before we can't replace labor anymore because the unions have vesting and mandatory employment and and non-fire requirements. Uh, you know, pensions and all these liabilities that essentially make companies unable to innovate again in the future? I Mean think about like, how do you? How do you take a legacy company with massive pension liabilities like Ford or GM and turn them into an efficient new Innovative company? You generally can't. Those companies have to die out if they have unfunded pension liabilities, then the people end up getting screwed anyway out of their pensions. I Mean obviously their insurance programs and things like that in a place to sort of prevent the defaulting on pensions because those pension contracts are important.

But ultimately it comes down to the the company's guarantee because if the company goes bankrupt, you got big problems. But anyway, long and short of it is you have a society where the the newest breed of companies dare I say are relatively anti-union and one of the reasons they in my opinion are anti-union is because they realize in order to stay Innovative they have to be able to have Labor flexibility. In other words, they have to be able to kill the need for labor because labor is uh, I mean very expensive. Let's just put it that way.

So anyway, these uh labelers in New York uh were starting to work with a manager of a Starbucks who helped organize the Starbucks Union effort and that's Starbucks Union person essentially motivated somewhere around 25 people potentially more to put together a letter and send it to Elon Musk demanding that Tesla recognized their right to form a union. Now employers have a choice to recognize a union. Unless the majority of you members of that company uh, more than 50 percent basically vote for the union. then the company is forced to recognize the union.

So in the meantime, while a company is not forced to recognize the Union what happens is you end up getting this: uh, this this place where a lot of companies don't want to uh And so what ended up happening is after roughly about 25 people happened to file a ladder saying roses are red, violets are blue, unions start with you which was also where in the last time I pitched the fact that today is February 17 anything, there's a coupon code expiring at 11 59 PM Actually, it's a flash sale. It's not a Koopa expiring tonight at 11 59 PM for the programs of building your wealth or the shadowing experience that's linked down below. But anyway, uh, after they sent that within a day of sending that letter on Valentine's Day 25 of them got fired 25 26 of them got fired. Now a day after that, which is last night Tesla responded with in response to false allegations.

uh and then so Tesla now is arguing there's a false allegation that Tesla terminated employees in response to new a new Union campaign. These are the facts behind the event and let's just make it clear: Okay, Tesla is not going to come out and point blank say yeah, we don't want unions. but I think I've just made the case that pretty much companies don't want Unions that's that. That's obvious.

That should be very, very obvious. And so anyway Tesla as sort of a Cya because you kind of have to do this. What do they do? you know? And of course I don't know all the details. So this is my opinion.

I could be wrong. but let's just be clear. I mean Tesla is talking about how they conduct performance reviews and just conveniently uh, you know the the conveniently four percent. roughly four percent.

wait, four percent. that's a little bit more than I Thought there were about 650 labor. Oh no, that is about right. Yeah, that's 26 employees.

Okay, approximately four percent of the employees on the autopilot labeling team in Buffalo New York Which by the way, I guess the minimum wage for that is like 19 bucks an hour and you're literally just pushing a button like yes, no, yes, no. Like labeling with the Aics is is not. You know, it's not that difficult. Uh, and so I wish I made 19 an hour when I was you know, 18 years old or 16 years old making smoothies of Jamba Juice or folding clothes that Hollister that people would just walk in and steal uh at, you know, 16 and make it seven dollars an hour? but whatever.

Anyway, so approximately four percent of the employees on the autopilot labeling team in Buffalo were exited as a result of this performance review cycle. The employees let go as part of this process received prior feedback on their poor performance. so it's kind of interesting. If that's true, then it's really convenient that basically the people who are trying to unionize may have also been the poor performers.

Which then it kind of makes you wonder. are poor performers? people who want to unionize? or do people want to unionize? And Tesla's just saying they happen to be performers? It's kind of like a chicken or egg problem and and I'm curious to know what your opinion is, so leave me a comment on that. But uh, Tesla makes the argument. Despite feedback, they did not demonstrate sufficient Improvement And as a result, before we even knew about this Union uh, unionizing effort that was happening, we basically fired 26 people uh, uh, or or warned them that hey, their performance wasn't up to par.

And then after the union effort, the timing just happened to be very coincidental that we just happened to fire everyone involved in the effort right after the union effort uh, began. So it really, really convenient for Tesla You know, maybe maybe what a company should do is just tell everyone that their performance needs to step up. So that way, if at any point they decide to unionize, you could just say, well, yeah, you're fired and we're not. You're not fired because you're forming, you're fired because we told you to get better and you didn't get better.

Yeah, well, you tell everyone to get better I mean I don't know, right? I'm just look, whatever it is I don't think I think legal battles. Whatever legal battles take years before you see a union at Tesla it probably will be 2028 or or on and and by then you then start scratching your head like okay, are we getting to a top of a growth cycle? Do you potentially then spin off divisions within Tesla to protect it from unionization by spinning off like the robot division from I You know I don't know, Uh, the the robo taxi division. Whatever. Do you start spitting these segments off to sort of insulate them from unionization? Who knows.

there are plenty of corporate tricks that happen. but uh yeah, it's awfully convenient that uh, that these folks happen to be exited. which is such a like a fascinating word by the way, like oh yeah, we we don't fire employees, We exit them. Uh, anyway.

look. bottom line is generally uh yeah and this is you know opinion here, obviously. but there's plenty of research also supporting this. But generally the impression is that unionization hurts Innovation That doesn't mean unions are bad.

Obviously, it's important that employees are paid appropriately for the value they're providing. I Think where unionization becomes problematic is when you end up seeing uh, disruptive unionization like what you're seeing in the United Kingdom where you have either teachers unions or Pilot unions or whatever striking and creating more Supply and chain nightmares. Especially in Industries where there's always already already very nominal profit. The airlines are losing money, hand over fast.

They're highly indebted. They're basically on the brink of either mergers or collapse. Uh, because they they have a very hard time actually surviving thanks to all of what the labor costs. In fact, you have a lot of Institutions today saying stay away from high labor, highly labor-intensive businesses because, well, there's more risk, the more labor you have, the more risk there is.

And obviously then if you can have Executives who can who can get a lot done with minimal labor is is more ideal. Uh, but uh yeah, it doesn't sound like uh. unionization and Innovation tend to align very well and so I think for the purposes of unions I think they probably have to Rebrand their reputation a little bit to make sure that they can actually prove to businesses. Hey, look you know we actually are pro-innovation Like how do you innovate and and transform unions from not Innovative to Innovative right? That's probably something.

If I were you know leading a union I'd be thinking about it because I I don't think uh, uh. The the common theme today is yeah Unions I Think that's kind of Gone by the wayside, mostly, especially for people sort of outside the system. So, uh, quite, uh, quite interesting. So uh, let's see.

Garrett Garrett Hartel here says unionization didn't hurt the building of America a lot more of this country used to be unionized. Yeah, well. I I mean that that could be entirely causation without correlation, right? Just because Uh, in the mid 19th century, every automaker that existed was unionized. It doesn't necessarily mean that that unionization was good for America Especially given that basically every car company other than Ford every law Legacy automaker other than Ford ended up going bankrupt.

You know we could. We could just as easily make the argument that unionization led to the bankruptcy as as did not prevent the building of America right? So I I think uh, I Think that's uh, that's a difficult, uh, difficult argument to make uh with without uh, you know, clear, clear statistics I Think this is interesting Steve makes the argument 100 of poor performers want to Union unionize? Uh, to mooch the system. Poor performers want to unionize as Alex here. Uh, I I Mean there's there's always the possibility of that at midnight King Email us at Kevin Meet Kevin.com We can get you taken care of.

But anyway. yeah. I mean look, obviously there's there's no uh, there's no real way to I Think, make the blanket argument and and be correct that everyone who wants to be a union sucks or everyone who wants to unionize is great and Innovative right? It's obviously as with everything, it's a mix of both. I Think Probably The the argument that is often made is that look, if if you're an Innovative Technologies and ultimately you're trying to replace labor just by the nature of wanting to innovate and minimize labor, you already stand in the face of what unions stand for.

So unions stand for more labor and businesses. Stand For Less Labor. So no matter which way you slice it, Innovative Companies will always be looking for ways to reduce labor and unions will always be looking wait for ways to increase labor. So from a first principles approach of the purposes is of those two entities, one is diametrically opposed to the other.

They will always stand in conflict with each other because their mission is exactly the opposite. That makes for a very challenging environment and one that will continuously be, uh, litigated forever. So I Think Really? The that's probably the only binary conclusion that you can make where it's like yes, absolutely Unions want more labor. Absolutely businesses want less labor.

Now the rest of that, Well, that's to be debated. but either way, again, the more Tesla sits in the news, the more Tesla ends up ironically selling Vehicles So it's a fascinating just to see how Tesla has sort of mastered the world of uh of advertising without advertising. So congratulations Tesla sorry to Charlie Munger Now there are also now some rumors going around that uh Tesla is uh, potentially uh, leaking the Cyber Truck Body in uh in in this right here with Joey uh, 2000 potentially showing this this Frame over here uh of uh, the side frame of a vehicle I'm going to play that again right here. But these are some rumors circulating.

so if we move to this next clip right here, this is what some people say would be sort of wheelbase 1 Wheelbase 2 Cyber truck, side body, cyber truck frame Who knows. We know that they've uh, started the process of manufacturing the Cyber truck and we expect the Cyber truck to actually be available uh for its initial orders towards the end of 2023 and then more bulk orders in Uh in 2024. Uh, there are a lot of rumors as well as to what's to happen with Tesla regarding the Uh the March 1st Investor day. A lot of folks believe that investor day obviously is going to be about Elon Musk's Master Plan Three uh, Master Plan Three is highly rumored to potentially include the announcement of a new vehicle platform that could be Robo taxi it could be steering wheel list.

Maybe it's an optional steering wheel? Uh, you know it could be some grandiose Vision about what's to come years down the road. there are a lot of hopes for that I Don't think whatever we hear on Investor Day is going to be something that practically or meaningfully changes our ability to buy anything from Tesla anytime soon. Given that obviously we're still substantially in the ramping phase for the sexy Vehicles that's the S, the model 3, uh, the X, and the Y And then of course we've got to get Cyber truck up and going. Uh, so it's probably still going to be a while.

I'm personally a little bit bearish on the in the event, mostly because I I don't like to get my hopes up and that's not because of my pessimist. I think I'm a very optimistic person, but I suppose just in in history uh, you know, whether it's battery day or AI day, the information we end up learning tends to be very nuanced and not very applicable to a large investor base or just sort of a large audience and tends to be a little bit more. uh Arcane Difficult to be understood by many, right and hopeful for the long-term future which is fantastic and and those with the interest in that are probably going to love Investor Day. But I think broadly if if folks are betting on sort of some sort of big run after investor day in the stock because of what's announced on investor day, it's not a bet I would make.

I I Wouldn't necessarily say that I would go in short before because you just never know, but it's probably not a bet that I would make just given the history. Who knows. maybe this time we'll be surprised. Uh, my boss thinks I'm stupid that I invest in Tesla and then uh, real George here says mature people just don't want things to change.

Well, I I find that uh, remember, your your average customer for Tesla is between 25 and 45 years old and is statistically more likely to be a dude I Think that's because they they really haven't come out with sort of a mommy style vehicle yet. Sure, you could claim that the x or y would work, but um, but once? Yeah, once you have two kids and strollers, you need a lot of space. Uh, but anyway. uh yeah.

I Do find that at least anecdotally myself, it seems that anyone of the older Generations older than than the millennial generation. So we're talking, you know. Gen X Uh uh, you've got uh, Boomer generation and of course the Silent generation, which they don't say much, but anyway, the other two there, you generally seem to have a an aversion to what Elon Musk is doing. and I I Believe that a lot of that aversion to Elon Musk is actually shaped by I hate to say it because it sounds a little tinfoil had-esque but by the mainstream media because of the headlines that are so negative towards Tesla that people and and I I know this because I try to bridge the gap a little bit when I get my newspapers because I actually physically get newspapers Financial Times USA Today Wall Street Journal New York Times the post is in there.

You know. whatever. I Get all these. It's very.

um, let's just say it's it's It's easy to throw Elon Musk Tesla and negativity on the front page and frequently makes the front page. and and I Don't think there's much critical thought that often goes on beyond the media narrative, which is not an insult, it's just sort of the way things have been and it's unfortunate. Definitely is unfortunate. but uh, so it is all right.

So uh, let's do a little bit of commentary here. Let's just see: I want to see what everybody's here saying? Uh, they've already debunked the rumors on the truck. Oh, is that true Tesla Minibus Who knows? You know I think that might be other individuals uh, responding and analyzing I don't think when you say they it's Tesla has debunked rumors, but who knows. uh.

either way and I don't think it makes such a terrible difference, but that's uh, that is interesting. all right. So let's see, because your job is guaranteed you will. You will not succeed outside of it I Used to work at a union job.

The problem was your job is guaranteed which makes you stay at the job. I have had colleagues who left the job for good but ended up failing and coming back. Oh, that's unfortunate. Uh, someone writes here.

unions ad unnecessary inefficiency to our economy. Hmm, then you've got another one here in Colorado Many concrete companies can't hire people because they abuse their employees. Would a union help that? Oh, that's I mean I Don't think anybody should work for a company where they're getting abused. Uh, yeah, it's that's unfortunate.

Um, I've been getting really good lately at spilling coffee while I'm streaming. Anyway, someone else writes here. My theory, uh, is that'll downturn for the rest of the month until we hear for more of the of the voting members of the Federal Reserve Oh, you're talking about the markets talking about the markets. Yeah, we'll talk about the markets here shortly.

but um, uh, our next Fomc meeting isn't until uh March 22nd and we probably won't Won't get as much clarity as we're looking for until then, when we get a new summary of economic projections. Although personally, I'm super excited about the next data sets that we have for specifically. uh, January uh, or rather February inflationary numbers I I think January has this insane seasonal effect, but who knows who knows unions are legalized blackmail? Well there you go. Some pretty strong opinions here on both sides.

What do you think about all of the EV commercials during the Super Bowl I liked the TR I thought the premature electrification one was funny. uh I I don't think it was effective, but I thought it was funny. Uh, if anything I think uh, it probably uh, steers more people towards Tesla uh, just because you do have such a strong uh, supercharging Network which obviously is now opening to others uh, towards the end of the year it might be uh might be widely open to everyone which I think will be really interesting because I have a hard time finding a spot at the supercharger when I go somewhere and if now everyone with an EV can use it I have no idea how they're going to solve the congestion issues at the superchargers I have absolutely no idea it's already way too congested with Tesla's I mean I Remember back when I got my Model X there's like nobody at the supercharging stations because it was just x's and asses I mean hundred thousand dollar Vehicles right? Uh, 80 to 100 000. And now you know.

since the Model 3 went into a large scale production along with the model Y, it's always full. So I don't know how you go from already super long weights for superchargers to opening it up to everyone and not actually ruining the experience even more? I I'm not I'm not sure how they're going to pull that off. Uh, you know, potentially that means increasing the rates for charging because the demand is so high. but then are you potentially punishing Tesla owners I don't know I I get the idea and the billions of dollars of subsidies because of the politics of this.

But uh, and and I think it's the right choice for Elon and Tesla to open up the supercharger network, but dealing with the congestion is is going to be a very challenging issue. Very, very challenging. All right. So brief.

look at the markets and then let's go ahead and pop over to Uh. some more things that we've got to talk about. So brief: look at the markets. You've got 10-year treasury yields.

Sitting at 3.89 you've got most indices down. Yeah, it looks like actually everything's down. You've got Dow down about half s p two-thirds NASDAQ down almost one percent WTI oil down though about three percent as there's a talk about that as potential of a slow down. So uh, pre-market movers right now you've got DraftKings of eight percent carvana up four although it's back to 11, which means it's already lost fifty percent from some of its beam movements and uh Airbnb tattooed Chef Corsair gaming some of these rotating down about three percent along with Redfin and what else uh do we have here? So we're getting to the pre-market Tesla down one percent and upstart down two percent.

Although that's had quite a bit of a move there, Taiwan Semiconductor is holding on to 90 bucks sitting at Uh down 1.6 percent and end phase down at 202. Oh, all right. next stop. Oh yeah, oh, this is an interesting one.

All right. let's pop on over to this particular letter that just came out and I'll catch up first on the latest TL standby. Five seconds now we briefly have to revisit The Madness of yes, the Covid vaccines look. A few weeks ago I posted a video about this Wall Street Journal article talking about the deceptive campaign for Bivalent Covet boosters.

That video went on to get over 900 000 views in a matter of just two weeks knocking on the door. Now of a million views on a video and that's because this this particular piece by an editorial board member of the Wall Street Journal goes as far as calling the Bivalent Covet Booster advertising campaign as basically deceptive advertising, alleging that the CDC and the FDA basically pre-approved the Coven by Valentovit vaccines before actually having the appropriate studies. In fact, they suggest that the studies by Pfizer and other companies like Moderna were essentially timed and engineered to purposefully make the results seem more desirable and make the study seem more efficacious to convince or manipulate the CDC and the FDA to approve the Bivalent Covid vaccines before they were actually studied as both quote safe and effective. Now, we'll talk about safe in just a moment, but regarding efficacy, it's worth noting that only after the FDA and the CDC approved the bivalent covid boosters, the CDC posted a study in November which was already well into sort of flu season if you will, revealing that the bivalent boosters were basically only 22 to 43 percent effective against the Ba5 wave at their Peak efficiency.

However, that efficiency dropped to nearly zero within just a few weeks of taking these vaccines. These boosters and usually a vaccine is only deemed efficient if it is 55 to 70 percent efficacious, but unfortunately, it seems most of these boosters were actually found to be nominally effective. That is 23 to 43 in the Cdc's own studies, which is a slap in the face to the fact that they basically pre-approve these vaccines. and because of this sort of campaign of everybody needs to get boosters, they didn't sort of want to lose credibility in U-turn Despite the fact that the facts revealed these boosters were not effective and so this this particular coverage of this piece went pretty far.

Now, part of the reason uh, this this I think this video did quite well is because we were also able to find plenty of information and studies from the medical community suggesting that maybe one of the reasons boosters for covid just aren't that effective is because of this biological phenomenon known as immune imprinting where basically your body every time it sees a new booster, it just creates more antibodies to the original strain and not the boosted strain. And so this video did quite well. Uh, and it really shared. Sort of some light into this the the the way the Pharma industry is really perpetuating this idea that oh, everybody should just continue to get boosters and shots and boosters and shots and boosters shots despite the fact that biological science suggests.

no, that's probably not actually the best, especially when these new boosters aren't even necessarily effective. But now we have new uh, sort of this. This new letter out which is really interesting this is uh, actually from the Health Freedom Defense Uh fund. Now it's worth I Always like to start with any kind of bias from a company.

It's worth noting a noting that this Uh I believe is set up as a non-profit but anyway, it's an organization that fights for the freedom to choose a sort of biological autonomy they call it. They've actually won lawsuits against the CDC and the Biden Administration forcing the end to certain masks and vaccine mandates. Uh, and uh. You know, One of the things that's worth remembering is that there is this massive during the Covid era, a massive dare I say vilification campaign of you know, anti-vaxxers right? Like oh, you're basically the the the mainstream media narrative was always.

Oh, if you're anti-vaxx you're an idiot right? Uh, and now what you're finding more and more is that, Wait a minute. Why are we potentially seeing increases of of heart attacks in individuals who were of younger uh age, Especially younger males. You're especially seeing that uh, amongst uh, you know, 20, 21 year old uh males as a median age of individuals who generally don't have heart problems or or myocarditis or heart attacks or whatever And you're suddenly seeing an increase in that. And this is why one of the trending things we've been seeing has been the quote or Trend sudden death on Twitter Because why all of a sudden our younger people dying more.

Why are there more excess debts that will look at what CBS News has to say about that in a moment moment which you know gives you sort of the other side of the narrative which does make you raise your eyebrows a little bit in terms of wait a minute what is happening in mainstream media but at least a health Freedom defense fund They're suggesting that look, Hey, when we realized that people were getting concussions in the NFL and brain injuries, we acted to try to make sure we have more protective protocols. Well, now it's time for the NFL to potentially start looking into Covid-19 vaccines. especially after the increase in Cardiac Arrest heart attacks and strokes among NFL players. And of course, the Health of Freedom fund puts together a set of multiple different research suggesting that hey, we're starting to see more cardiac related car mortality following Covid-19 vaccines, seeing potentially uh, rare but fatal thrombosis, uh, higher frequencies of myocarditis and males with a median age of 21.

And they link to a lot of their research and information, which of course we could sort of independently go through. But basically, this Fund is now calling on the NFL to make sure that they no longer downplay the effects of myocarditis and actually potentially start pre screening NFL players and younger males for the potential evidence that maybe many more people have myocarditis than we actually are aware of. And an interesting thing is that myocarditis, at least according to this piece, has always been deemed dangerous and a serious health concern until the Covid-19 vaccines. Now all of a sudden, the narrative is to actually downplay how important myocarditis is.

and then it makes you wonder like, my goodness, how much money is being thrown at downplaying something that used to be deemed serious and is now being downplayed because it happens to potentially be a side effect of the Covid-19 vaccines, which is quite interesting, especially since heart attacks are substantially up in younger males. Now we'll see that actually corroborated by the mainstream media, but their counter argument is a little bit of an eyebrow razor which I'll play here in just a moment. But anyway, this particular Uh organization here is calling on the NFL to realize that look, initially they were part of increasing vaccine uptake, but now it's time to maybe realize maybe that wasn't the best of ideas. and maybe we need to start screening people who have been vaccinated for myocarditis even if they don't yet have symptoms to potentially prevent uh, more damage in the future or more accidents or deaths in the future.

But anyway, here's a piece from CBS News where take a listen to some of the statistics that they provide and and then uh yeah, we'll add some more commentary. So let's go on across all age groups Since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, but a recent study found that young people are actually most at risk in this case. According to Cedar Sinai Hospital the number of heart attack deaths among 25 to 44 year olds in the US over the first two years of the pandemic was 30 percent higher than predicted. Dr Celine Gander is here on set with us to talk more about it.

She's editor at large for Public Health at Kaiser Health News and she is also an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist and a CBS News medical uh contributor. Dr Gander Thank you for being here. Uh, what stood out to you in this study I Think the fact that you're seeing such a big increase specifically in the youngest age group. so the 25 to 44 year olds you saw this 30 increase in the risk of death from heart attack.

And that really is quite striking. That's not a group, an age group in which you normally see heart attacks, much less dying from a heart attack. So to do a study like this, you look at the years prior to the pandemic and the typical rate of heart attack death in that age group, and then you see it increase and you wonder what's the new variable. And so the pandemic is that new variable.

So just keep in mind really quickly what we're learning here, right? CBS News is saying: Look, hey, all of a sudden after the pandemic, a lot more young people are having heart attacks, And obviously there is a plethora of research suggesting. well, maybe it's because of myocarditis, that would probably still be years before we have official and and finalized data and evidence that, yeah, you know what? It's definitely the vaccines that are doing it, but right now it kind of looks like it's the vaccines that are leading to an increase in myocarditis. Especially since research that we're finding suggests wait a minute people who just get covered naturally and not the vaccine aren't seeing an increase in myocarditis Now, Mainstream media so far has taken the stance that yes, we are indeed seeing an increase in sudden death and heart attacks. but now listen to what they think the cause is.

It's just interesting because while I don't want to make any conclusions here, I want you to be aware of both sides of the narrative. One side says it's definitely the vaccines. Now you're going to hear the mainstream media response to what's actually leading to more heart attacks and sudden death. That's right.

So these uh researchers looked at 10 years of data across the U.S all the death certificates that get filed with the CDC Uh, that data and so what they saw is prior to the pandemic, heart attack deaths were actually dropping. and then that Trend reverses and you see those deaths go up, especially among that youngest age group during the pandemic. And do we know why the why? younger people might be more at risk Or we don't know for sure. And in fact, these death certificates are probably not even capturing the fact that they might have had covid.

Uh, they're really just saying did you die from a heart attack or not. What we do know, however, is that younger people were were less likely to protect themselves against covet than older people, less likely to mask less likely to take other mitigation measures. and they were also farther back in line to get vaccinated so they were not protected with vaccination until later in the Pandemic Those might have been a factor here. Wait a minute.

Let's listen to the argument that she just made. The argument she just made is maybe younger people are dropping dead of heart attacks more because they had to wait longer to get vaccines and were less likely to wear masks. So in other words, this person's narrative is: if you didn't wear a mask and you ended up getting coveted, now, you're more likely to die of a heart attack When the statistics that we're seeing so far in the research we're seeing so far is that wait a minute. The vaccines maybe aren't actually safe and effective When we actually think about the biological fact that the proteins that are injected into you from these vaccines that go directly to your heart could lead to inflammation in your heart.

So we know that the vaccines lead to an inflammation in your heart and potentially myocarditis. But no, if you didn't wear a mask now, you're at a higher likelihood of dropping debt from a heart attack. That's a really stretchy argument there. and I Don't buy it now.

I'm not trying to be tinfoil hat, but I think you can make your own conclusion here and there's more research to be done. We'll keep providing value on it. but just think for a moment about the two narratives. Okay, one narrative.

Well, first of all, both sides agree more young people are dying of heart attacks and are dropping dead after the pandemic. One side is saying it's the vaccines because biologically, we could see myocarditis can happen within days of getting a shot and the incidence of myocarditis spikes within about two weeks of getting a shot a vaccine and the other side is saying well, maybe more people are dying of heart attacks because they got coveted and they didn't wear masks and they're younger and they were. Further, they had to wait longer to get the vaccines, so maybe had they been able to get the vaccine sooner, they wouldn't have actually. which it just seems like the craziest anecdote and unfounded in research.

But whatever, those are the arguments, it seems wild. I Really want to know what you think about it all, so leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Uh, but uh. I Want to give a shout out here to an individual who left a comment: I was fired from my job for not getting the vaccine, forced to sell my house, wasn't able to eat out at restaurants for two years, wasn't able to take a train plane, or Ferry for two years.

Uh, I was called a misogynist and a racist by the Prime Minister for my choices. Wow, that's unfortunate. I'm sorry you had to go through that. That's crazy.

But anyway, I'm just gonna leave it there. I'm gonna let y'all make uh, your own decision because if I make too many conclusions, I'm gonna end up getting banned from YouTube All right. So anyway, now obviously we've got to do a little bit of uh talking about markets as well, because uh, we've got some madness here after PPI So we're going to do a little bit of diving into that and then we'll get into the course. Member live stream markets are selling down slightly more and right now I'm very curious to see how markets end up moving once the day progresses.

Uh, we obviously ended up quite red with some institutional selling towards the end of the day yesterday. I Want you to remember that if you see large buying at the end of the day or large selling at the end of the day, it's generally institutions. Uh, institutions do most of their buying at either or selling at open or close. That's when there's the most liquidity.

So when you tend to see those sudden downtrends towards the end of the day, it's usually because all the institutions, uh, reconciling their outflows, are dumping all at the same time. So that's my expectation of what happened here yesterday. And I think you could see that a line? Because look at that. as soon as you hit 12 o'clock on the five minute candle.

What happened in the last hour of trade volume? you see that right here at the bottom. Volume skyrockets stocks straight down the entire last hour of the day. That just shows you an example here. for example on Tesla but you see the same thing on QQQ You see the same thing on the spy and and I mean look at the volume on the Spy huge spikes going into that last hour of trade.

So very, very typical. uh to to see institutional selling which could be um, uh, which could be a sign of outflows from retail but is probably more institution hedge fund driven. Uh, but we'll see. We want to see how the day goes today.

All right now, we gotta talk about the Fed. The Fed. The FED fit fit Fed fad. All right.

One sec, we gotta talk about the Federal Reserve Because my gosh, there is a lot of news about the Federal Reserve suggesting. That's it. This is it. We're going back to 50 basis points and in this video, we got to talk about the reality about what's going on with the FED because the regular narrative that you're seeing at least in headlines, in my opinion, is blatantly false.

But we're going to review all of the information and data together first. It's worth noting that people are bearish, especially in the institutional world. I Think on one hand, that's because a lot of institutions were caught offsides. They were caught very cash heavy or very short heavy.

and as a result, when the January rally came around, they had to save face and argue no, this is just a bear Market rally. This isn't reality. In fact, we have seen the most amount of short covering in January that we have seen since April of 2020. it's insane.

So a massive amount of short covering a short covering. Again, the likes of which we haven't seen since April of 2020. I could show that to you statistically the higher the line goes on the chart you're seeing right now uh, is short covering? Uh and uh, you could. oh sorry I said April of 2020.

it's actually since the meme rally of January of 2021 forgive me the highest short covering since the meme rally of 21. which obviously that says something because the meme rally of 21 had some insane short covering. But look at this on a chart basis. Short covering shows you when the line goes up, you've got the highest short covering.

The short covering is insanely high right now and again. I Think that's because here in January of 2023, uh, we had most into institutions thinking okay, first half of the year is going to be hell, We're going to go into a recession. It's going to be very, very choppy. Let's keep our short positions when we actually ended up seeing the market do substantially well in January relating to a lot of short covering and then of course the safe phasing oh well or face saving attitude of oh well, it's just a bear Market rally and sure, maybe that might end up proving to be true, but I think a lot of Institutions are looking at everything right now to suggest oh yep, things are a lot worse than maybe they are.

but who knows, maybe things are worse. But one of the narratives that's spinning up right now is this idea that Loretta Master and Mr Bullard are calling for a 50 basis point hike and a lot of folks are saying that's it. This is going to be the moment where the Federal Reserve actually u-turns and goes from 25 basis points which they dropped at only raising rates 25 basis points and they go back to 50 basis point hikes. And the narrative is they are going to U-turn to 50 basis point hikes because the data is coming in stronger when the reality is actually different.

Both Loretta Mester and Mr Bullard have always been calling for front loading rates. In fact, Mr Bullard was calling for getting to four or five percent with increments of 100 basis point hikes for over a year. He's been calling for getting to five percent or four percent for over a year, potentially using 100 basis point hikes. So it's not like all of a sudden Loretta Mester and Bullard are like oh yeah, let's go for 50 basis point hikes because PPI and CPI came in hot.

That's not actually what happened. however, institutions are spinning that narrative and now you're seeing all of these mainstream headline articles suggesting oh my gosh, 50 basis points might be coming back. They literally haven't changed their opinion at all. They've been of this same mindset, every single meeting higher, higher, higher higher and they've been always calling for 50.

they were not fans of 25. even though everybody ultimately agreed at the Federal Reserve hey, we're going for 25. the individual screaming the loudest right now aren't even necessarily voting members of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee right now. But aside from going down through the Nuance of exactly who's voting and their biases or whatever I think it's important to remember that because institutions are caught offside, you have a lot of negativity towards this rally.

Now that's not me suggesting that. Absolutely, this rally is Justified. Some things, especially at certain companies that do not have a lot of profitability, in my opinion, shouldn't be rallying the way they are. That's okay.

What's important to pay attention to, though, is the actual trend of CPI and PPI and I Think the data is quite useful to look at here. So here's a piece from Barclays Barclays that actually nicely lays out for us: the deceleration that we're seeing on year-over-year CPI and PPI Inflation Yes, PPI came in hotter than expected. But look at the actual chart. Of course we're going to get volatility.

Of course, we're going to see charts that are not just straight down. They never are. Look at them historically going back to 2012: 2013 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 19. Look at how volatile these surveys are.

They do this Up and down and up and down and up and down. All of the time. They are not smooth curves. There is no survey data that is a smooth curve.

But what you're looking for is the longer run. Trend Look at the longer run trend of 2012 to 2015 stable even though you had a sync in 2015 and 16.. if you continue the 2012 to 2015, Trend Look at what you end up getting basically a continuation of inflation Trends into 17, 18, 19, 20.. Then of course we get the covet Pandemic and this is where the trend changes.

We have a clear Trend up of inflation, but what do we clearly have now in terms of an inflection point? Even though data is noisy in the short term, what is the very clear trend on inflation? It is straight down and again. there are going to be bumps along the way. We're going to get noisy data that shows indications that inflation is pushing up temporarily and it's not falling as fast as we like and every report isn't perfect and and you know, coming in lower than expectations. But this is headline year over year CPI and PPI Let's now jump on over to core measures: core okay, less the volatile components, less food and energy, and what do we actually have? Look at this.

All measures of PPI are showing a decline in inflation. All meas