MARKETS

“Is this a real regime shift or just a relief rally?”

“It was such a great question because the kindest thing was also my very, very, very first childhood memory. I was probably two and a half or three. It was probably 1957, something like that. And I was with my mother at this place called the Curb Market. And uh I got separated from my mother. And boy, you can imagine being 2 and 1/2 years old and separated from your mother. You just it's it's you're terror stricken. And this elderly black gentleman came up and I was sitting there balling my eyes out cuz I thought my mother had left me and said, "What's the matter, little boy?" And I said, "I lost my mama." And he said, "Here, don't you worry. we're going to find her."”

“Attention is the most valuable currency.”

“My mother used to always say, uh, and I think this is what this country really needs right now. You've just got to kill them with kindness. So, you're going to wake up someday it's going to be terrible. You're going to be in a bad mood. There's going to be something on TV that's going to make you angry. And particularly in these times right now, my gosh, when everyone wants to demonize the opposition, I think we've got to realize it doesn't have to be that way. We can humbly uh devote ourselves to finding the kindness within ourselves and the goodness within ourselves and transmit that to somebody else during that day. I think that's I think that's the secret to happiness.”

“Bitcoin is unequivocally the best inflation hedge that there is more than gold because Bitcoin is finite. There's only so much Bitcoin that can be mined. The problem with it is inflation hedge is if you got into kinetic exchange, there's clearly going to be cyber warfare and anything that you have to deal with electronically is going down, including Bitcoin. So, strike one. And then secondly, quantum computing. Who knows if and when with AI advancing as fast as it is that we may actually have quantum computing. Now quantum computing, someone can come in and can hack any bank and hack anything they want to.”

“Bunker Hunt was squeezing silver at the time and he bought about 200 million ounces at an average price of about three 12 bucks. And between 1976 and 1980, we had crazy monetary policy. Inflation started ripping and silver went literally through the roof. So at 50 bucks now, he's worth about 11 billion and he's got a multiple of five or six on the next closest guy. So anyway, they made liquidation only. Silver collapsed. It went from 50 bucks to under 10 bucks in the space of about eight weeks. And that had a searing impact on me to see him go from the richest guy to virtually bankrupt in the short space of six or seven weeks.”

“And I used to just sit there and rail on Warren Buffett year after year after year. And I would self-congratulate myself for trashing because goes, you know, he just happened to be in the right place at the right time and caught this bull market. And I was just thinking, "Oh my god, why couldn't I be Warren Buffett? Just believe in America." What I realize now is what an idiot I was. That guy is a flipping genius cuz he understood the power of compound interest which I somehow managed brilliantly to avoid my entire career. He understood it at nine. But anyway, if Warren, if you happen to hear this, I'm deeply apologetic. You are the OG of compound interest and I wish I was onetenth as as smart as you are.”

“Is this a real regime shift or just a relief rally?”

“When you say are we in a bubble, I don't know if we're necessarily in a bubble. We're clearly so leveraged in equities in this country. We're so dependent upon firm equity prices at this point in time. And when I say leveraged, we're 252% of stock market cap to GDP. So 1929 we were I think at the top we were 65%. And then in 87 we got to about 85 or 90%. Then 2000 we got to 170% and now we're at 252. 35% on 250% of GDP is 80 90% of GDP the reverse wealth effect oh my gosh 10% of our tax revenues or capital gains they go to zero so you can see the budget deficit blowing up.”

“She gives me a GP. The GP, a general practitioner. So she makes me go in. I see the guy and uh this guy's 83 years old. And I say to him, "You're living here in the land of the walking dead. Everyone here is basically fossilized. Um, what is the secret to longevity?" And he goes, "It's real simple. You retire, you die." And that had a really profound impact on me because I realized as I get older, and maybe when you get older, you will too. Boy, you better. If you don't use it, you're going to lose it.”

“The biggest problem with AI is that if you think about the the way AI is being deployed, practiced and deployed right now is the it's the build break iterate model. Build it, break it, fix it and iterate. If you think about it, that's been the invention model since the beginning of man. Build, break, iterate. But we've never been in a situation where the tail event the break can do so much damage could could be hundreds of millions if not billions of lives. When I was able to ask them pointedly how do you think that AI safety gets resolved the pretty much the consensus answer is I think we'll finally do something about it when 50 or 100 million people die in an accident.”

“I have long maintained that better than a business school degree. Journalism 101 should be mandatory subject in every college which is newspaper writing in particular. What newspaper writing does is it teach teaches you you have to write where the conclusion comes first. So unlike writing something and then at the end we get the story here the end comes first and you have to write it with this incredibly rigid discipline so that every succeeding thing that you write the most important part is in the first sentence of the first paragraph. There's that old saying, if you can't tell your story in 15 seconds or less, no one's going to listen.”

“The popular narrative around Gen Z as financially reckless misses what we’re seeing on-platform; they are the most retirement-savvy generation ever.”

“I'm not going to be thinking about the 87 crash or or Bitcoin. I'm going to be thinking about who I loved and who loved me. That's what I'm going to be thinking about and what kind of relationships we had and what kind of times we had. I think the professional aspects are these great tools that allow you to do more meaningful things and the things that count which is what have you done with your family? What have you done with your friends? How have you served others? What have you done to leave a legacy of uh happiness and betterment and goodness to the people that you've been privileged enough to come in contact with?”

“Attention is the most valuable currency.”

“The popular narrative around Gen Z as financially reckless misses what we’re seeing on-platform; they are the most retirement-savvy generation ever.”

“The one thing that I think should be part of this next election the simplest most important thing that we can do is we can demand that all AI is watermarked. That's the single most transformative thing that we could possibly do for the country, for the world. Make it a felony if someone knowingly violates that three times and put them in jail. I want to know what's authentically human and what's not. And when that happens, talk about restoring trust in the country, which I think is one of the biggest problems.”

“Oh we were so long cotton one weekend and uh there was a great drought, spectacular drought and of course it rained all through the belt over the weekend. Walk in market was limit down. He'd gotten absolutely smashed. I thought, "Oh my god, it's over." That day for lunch, his wife brought in four of her friends. He had the most beautiful office I've ever seen in my life. And he came out and just, oh my god, he had a smile on his face. Oh, ladies and flirting with the wives. I mean, I was in sitting there going, "Are you kidding me? This guy's just broke and he's acting like uh he's Rock Hudson or something." When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”