What Exactly Is The Market Telling Tech To Do? — With Josh Brown

Josh Brown is the CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management and the host of the Compound and Friends podcast. Brown joins Big Technology Podcast to dig into why tech companies are still reeling from tighter financial markets even as their share prices return to something approximating normal after the 2022 bloodbath. In this episode, Brown shares what Wall Street demands from the tech industry and its employees and where it might be headed next. Stay tuned for the second half where we go company by company, looking at Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, NVIDIA, Tesla, and Bitcoin. --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 0:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis Chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then I sat down with Adam Mitchell, Head of Enterprise Business Solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside a large-scale agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get frontier compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay?

• 0:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 1:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Josh Brown is our guest today. He's CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management and the host of the Compound and Friends Podcast. And Josh is one of my favorite financial analysts. He is smart and funny, honest and incisive. He can speak about the market broadly and go into depth on individual companies. And he's the perfect guest for us this week, here to dig into why tech companies are still reeling from a tighter financial market, even as their share prices return, if not to normal, than to something approximating it after a bloodbath in 2022. Speaking with Josh is almost like speaking with the market itself. In his words, you can hear what Wall Street demands from the tech industry and its employees,

• 2:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  and hear where it might be headed next. And I think you're going to really enjoy hearing his perspective. My conversation with Josh Brown, coming up right after this. Hi Josh, welcome to the show.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Alex, so great to be back. How you doing, man?

• 2:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm doing well. Great to have you back. I think you're gonna have to help me figure out why I'm feeling so nauseous from the whiplash with all these big tech companies because I thought they had like gone through a decline and then into a correction and then now they're on their way back up. So let me just read some numbers before we jump in. Meta was at 378, went down to 90, so 76% decline. Now it's back up to 212. This has been like from the peaks in November 21, down to the trough in 22, and now it's coming up in 23 again. So down 76%, up 135. Netflix similar, right? Down from 680 to 180, and then up to 322. So almost doubled from its depths. Amazon, 183 to 84, and then back up to 107. I mean, every single one of

• 3:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  these stock charts look like a roller coaster. Why can't the market make up its mind when it comes to the way to value tech companies?

• 3:12Speaker 00

  Well, I think one of the enduring features of being an investor in tech stocks is that you tend to have much greater than typical volatility with respect to, let's say, the XLK sector ETF versus the MSCI world. Just like as an example, you're up 19% in the tech sector this year, and you know, year to date, the world stock index while it's rallied is really only up 9%, which is not bad, but you see just a more pronounced, because it's not just volatility in the stock prices, but it's volatility in sentiment, it's volatility in

• 3:55Speaker 00

  the earnings outlook. And what you get for that higher beta, what you get for that higher risk, is you get companies that have higher than normal profit margins. You get like obscenely profitable companies, and you get companies that scale faster than any other type of company, any other type of business. So that's kind of like the trade off. You have, on the one hand, you have stocks that could be a trillion dollars plus in market cap. And dominate the entire world and be 25 years old, in the case of Apple, 40 years old and still have 40, 50% profit margins. That's the good part. The bad part that comes

• 4:36Speaker 00

  along with that is people's emotions are so charged when it comes to these stories that stock prices can move much greater than the actual fundamentals are changing underneath.

• 4:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And so you look at it from like a market perspective, and I often look at this coming from like the tech company perspective. And it makes sense from a market perspective. In a company, it can feel completely turbulent, right? You're on top of the world one day, the next day the market hates you. And it can be difficult to actually like plan a business that way. So just from your perspective, like looking at it from from where you are, do you do you think that this volatility within tech companies, like the inside of the tech companies, is just is just something that people that are working there just need to be prepared for? And if you're running them, how do you make long-term planning decisions if you can end up in this cycle where one day you're on top and the next day you're on the bottom?

• 5:29Speaker 00

  Well, I think we go through eras. And if you look at the tech giants from 2016 through 2021, that five-year period, what you could call a renaissance for large-cap tech, volatility was actually very low. If you if you pull out the pandemic month of March 2020, and you look at the volatility of the the five largest tech giants, and I know some of them are classified as communications, but just bear with me. Like, if you look at that, you will see that they had this really placid period where the stocks went up and up, they became a larger share of the S and P 500. And they didn't really experience

• 6:12Speaker 00

  much volatility, like Facebook remained dominant in all its businesses, no questions asked. Nobody thought that Google was at any kind of risk. Apple was a one-way street. Microsoft, so like that, those periods.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Can't last forever. They come to an end. The big question was always like, if we let these tech giants become so dominant, it'll be like almost like a self reinforcing thing where nobody will ever be able to challenge them. And like the, the risk to the economy is having these monopolies that are unchecked. Well, it turns out we didn't need an external challenge because now they're all at war with each other. And maybe that's the way that they shrink in dominance ultimately is just from chipping off pieces of one another. So that's the period that we're in now. I would say the, the uh tech stock crash of 2022.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  Um, put that, it put that in really late 2021 uh and 22, put that in motion. And now we see these companies, basically the, the leadership resigning from each other's boards. And they are going at it and it's a different era and volatility is now higher. And some areas where these businesses were considered untouchable or invincible are now being called into question. And I think the best illustration of that in, in the recent few months is, is Microsoft versus Google on search. For example, but there, there are many others. Apple changing its uh iOS

• 7:47Speaker 00

  um to, to put Facebook in the hole. Like there's, there's just a lot more of that kind of like uh I guess what you'd call nation state fighting happening between these, these tech giants. And that's where you get the volatility in stock price.

• 8:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely. And I just want to tease for the second half, we're going to go through some of these battles and really get into the way that these companies are, are battling with each other, but continuing on just in terms of the bigger picture. I wonder if the bloodletting that has happened in Silicon Valley is enough for the market. And I'll tell you why it's sort of confusing here. So obviously interest rates go up, way that you do business previously, it's not going to really work the same way. So you end up having these companies for the first time sometime in their history, or at least the greatest magnitude in their history, doing very big layoffs. Look at like 10,000 people out at Meta, um, you know, basically in, in a moment. And my perspective of this was always, okay, you're going to do it once, you do it right and you don't have to do it again. And

• 8:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Even as their stock has gone up, right? Like I said, Meta is up, you know, double from, from the depths. Last week, they just did another big layoff of, or started a big layoff of another 10,000, somewhere in that neighborhood. So, one of the questions I have is, when is the bloodletting inside these companies going to be enough, if ever? And, you know, shouldn't they just kind of be done now that their stocks are on the way up again?

• 9:14Speaker 00

  Well, let me, let me ask, let me ask you a question back to answer that. If you are Mark Zuckerberg, and you laid off 7% of your workforce, and your stock price went up 70%, wouldn't you do it again? In other words, it's costing, it's costing you nothing in revenue. It's boosting your, your profits, and it's putting your share price back up where it was. Wouldn't you want to keep going? That's one. Second...

• 9:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, let me, let me answer that one, though. Like, I think that, like, you, you can continue to cut, but you, you eventually run the risk of, of handicapping your organization. Like, this second layoff is all engineers, or not all, but it includes engineers. Where before it was like recruiting. Okay, you can cut recruiting if you're not hiring anymore. But if you start cutting core competency, that's another thing. Maybe the response is that they're actually cutting middle management, and they think that without the middle management, they'll be able to operate better. But, you know, it is interesting. I never really thought about the fact that they're just like, okay, well, Wall Street really liked that. Let's do it again and see what happens.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, now Zuckerberg is not having letters written to him by Brad Gerson and other large investors complaining and, and, you know, making requests and demands. Now, he's got upgrades for his stock from the sell side. He's probably in back channels behind the scenes. He's got large investors saying, "Great job." And I want to phrase this to you a little bit differently, just because we should not think of these companies in the same way in which you would think of like a classic conglomerate from the 1970s or 80s that overhired, or like a manufacturing business or something like that, where it's just pure dollars and cents. Like, you know,

• 10:58Speaker 00

  revenue is down, we gotta cut, we gotta cut costs to preserve our profit margins. That is not necessarily the whole story here. Zuckerberg, after the first round of layoffs, talked about how employees were thanking him. It turns out that there was cultural rot coming as a result of the over hiring. There were engineers working at the at the company that were saying, why aren't we shipping? Why is there so much bureaucracy? Why, why are there so many layers of of management or redundancies in engineering? Like, we need to get back to actually making and shipping products, which in their case is is software, is service.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  So I think that the the entire mentality of we have to hire all these engineers to make sure the the tech giant down the street can't. That entire mentality is now gone and it's been replaced with who are the people within this firm that are holding us back? And that are introducing that cultural rot? And how quickly can we get rid of them? So that the people who are remaining afterward, A, get the message that this is a company that is now focused on execution and not empire building? And B, aren't a drag on the potential earnings so that I don't have to read any more Dear Mark letters from activist, you know, shareholders and hedge funds, etc.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  So it's it's a combination of things. It's not purely about profitability. I think it's about like, what is the heart and soul of this business? Are we here to, you know, play games with each other and have casual Fridays and have luos? Or are we here to deliver something? And I think obviously the they've gotten religion and it's the latter.

• 12:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm sure you saw the Wall Street Journal article about the employees inside companies like Meta who were just sitting around and doing nothing. Recruiters who had to wait a year before they could recruit because they were superfluous there. And maybe you're right, they were just trying to gobble up talent so the others couldn't.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you understand that impulse, you understand that impulse. You've got like. A million startups vying for talent. You've got, you know, 25 publicly traded gigantic companies vying for talent. And again, that placid period from 16 to 21, um, you know, that, that a shortage of, of talent was emblematic of that era. And now it's gone in reverse as these things often do. So you could understand why they're not done.

• 13:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Definitely. So let me ask you this. So the, the market is obviously driving this. I mean, it's obviously cultural in some ways, right? You want to be able to build again. Things are more competitive, but without these, you know, the increase in interest rates, you probably wouldn't get here. So the market is driving these layoffs. Do you think from a market standpoint, a company like Facebook, a company like Amazon is finished here? If I'm an employee in one of these companies, I'm sitting there. Should I be like, okay, like we've gone through these two rounds? I could take a deep breath. I'm probably going to get to keep my job or is?

• 14:01Speaker 00

  No, if you're an employee there, you should, you should stop focusing on that. Look at your screen and, and, and do your fucking work because

• 14:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  There, there's no penalty associated with these companies laying people off. Like Wall Street is cheering. They want more. And we were talking, I was talking about this with, uh, Michael Baden the other day on one of our shows, like the, the wave of tech layoffs that we're talking about, the numbers sound big and in Metta's case, percentage wise, they are big, but like Amazon firing 10,000 people, they have 1.5 million workers. It's really not that big a deal. They could do that every year for the next 10 years and not even make a dent in just the hiring that they, they've done, uh, post COVID. So there's probably still a lot of that.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Look, nobody's rooting for layoffs, but I also think we could agree, there are a lot of people that have been hired in the last five years that were probably unnecessary to begin with and maybe aren't there to actually work. Um, you know, we've read articles about people getting jobs in these companies so that they can walk around to be activists and and start agitating for social justice and and, you know, scheduling uh walkouts and and this kind of thing like there's just a there's still a lot, there's still a lot of room for these businesses to refresh what they were doing and get back to basics. And uh, you know, I it's it's not saying that you

• 15:33Speaker 00

  say is good or it's bad, it's just a business. That's that's really what it is.

• 15:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  But are you telling me you didn't love the day in the life TikToks?

• 15:41Speaker 00

  I I enjoyed them very much, but that was the top. Like, that was emblematic of the nonsense. Listen, I visited, I visited Google's uh campus in in Venice Beach and it was amazing. And they had like just the facilities. It was like in a movie. And like the dining hall alone was just, I couldn't, it was like Versailles. And and, you know, that's probably twenty seventeen. So it had a few more years to run. But I remember looking at the people I was with and saying, how on earth is this possible? Can you have a company this comfortable, you know, with with where it is business-wise, that it's

• 16:23Speaker 00

  willing to spend this way? And so a lot of that, a lot of that stuff is long overdue.

• 16:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, one of those stories, uh, when I was in Facebook's Menlo Park campus, um, now, look, I I'm not, I still can't believe I saw what I saw, but I mean, they had laundry there that they would do for employees that I know is for real. And I'm pretty sure they had like an onsite auto mechanic, that if your car was having trouble, they would.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. And these things are cool. These things are great. These things are great. When when uh you're hitting your targets and and, you know, the stock price is making all time highs and you have a market cap that's a trillion dollars, these things are great. But it's just, it's not permanent, like the you.

• 17:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  At a certain point, there's competition, there are threats, there's regulation, there are all these things that, you know, you have to refocus on to survive. Everybody, everybody has to stay a little bit paranoid.

• 17:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it takes, it takes your eye off. I, I don't know about paranoia, but it definitely takes your eye off the ball. And, you know, when I, I wrote this book about tech company culture always day one and it was, it was, it focused zero on the perks. Zero, because the cool thing about being at these companies is that you can build a product and the next day it's in the hands of a billion people or more. It's not about getting your car fixed in the, in the lot. And it, it did seem like a distraction. So. But, but let's talk a little bit about the, the broader economy right now. Because, you know, it's almost, it almost seems like tech has gone through its recession and now the rest of the economy is about to go through its own. Is that the right way of looking at it? Is it like tech just got it out of the way earlier?

• 17:56Speaker 00

  I don't think so, but I, I think, I think tech and just tech in general,

• 18:03Speaker 00

  was the first to feel the impact of higher rates because of the stock prices. And so you're like, who, who did these layoffs? The stock market fired these workers. Because these, these stocks went down 50 to 80% in value, which is incredible in a very compressed period of time. And that was the investor class telling these companies, we don't believe that you're prepared for the economic slowdown that the Federal Reserve is trying to produce. So I think the effect was felt first in tech, but, but now the rest of the economy is clearly decelerating. It's not a catastrophe. It's just a fact.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  All of the stimulus is going in reverse and, you know, this is just what happens when the Fed is removing liquidity. So it's, it's not a crash. It's not a recession or a depression, but it's a deceleration. And so to answer your question, it's hard for me to picture all, all of the slowdowns happening economy wide. And on a globally coordinated basis and saying like we we've we've seen the worst that we'll see from technology spending, technology earnings, like you you I think you're gonna have a tough year in let's say enterprise software. You're gonna have a tough time closing business. You're gonna have a tough time convincing companies to expand the amount of seat they're paying for. You're gonna have a tough time layering on new services and and penetrating deeper into,

• 19:29Speaker 00

  you know, Fortune 500 companies tech stacks and getting bigger commits. It's just it's harder. And that's what you're hearing from the CEOs now. I listened to the CEO of CrowdStrike, George Kurtz, and he's selling enterprise software, security software, and companies can't afford to not spend money on that. So what he's saying is, oh, we're doing the amount of deals we thought we would do, but they're taking longer to close. And, you know, if we thought something was Q1 business, it might be Q2 business. We still think we get the business, but it's not automatic. And I think that that's what you're going to hear and see for the remainder of this year, because you just listen to the commentary from corporate executives outside of tech, and they are not guns blazing. So like a lot of this is intuitive.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  You just you listen to conference calls, you get the vibe, you get the flavor of what they're saying, and then you listen to the the responses to the analyst's questions, and it's palpable. Everybody is chilling out and doing way less than they were doing a year or two ago.

• 20:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you recommended the quarter app to me last time you were on, and now it's a staple for me. It's a great little app.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  How great is that?

• 20:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Get it. It's amazing. Fast forward to the Q and A and just listen, put it on 1.2, 1.5 speed.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a great way to blow through all these earnings. So one of the things, speaking of earnings season, like one of the things people are talking about is that that earnings are going to be down this quarter. I'm curious, like what you what you think that means? Is it just that companies are making less money now than they were, or they're less profitable? Or maybe I'm hearing it completely wrong.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  Well, when you say down, the thing to keep in mind is that there's no absolute number. Everything is a comp. So think about, so, so if you think about it in terms of a comparison, it's comparison over this time last year. So the comps are still hard because the economy was still on fire last year, coming out of twenty one into twenty two. Um, consumers were still spending at, at peak levels for, for everything from PCs to gaming consoles to, you know, to non-tech things. That's obviously not the case anymore. If, you know, you bought something from Hewlett Packard so your kid could, uh, you know, go to college with it or whatever, like if you, if you bought equipment,

• 21:43Speaker 00

  you probably don't have to do that a year later also, right? So like that, that phenomenon of the services side of the economy outperforming the durable goods side, I think will be with us for at least the rest of this year. And again, it's because of comps. So that's one very big factor. We haven't really heard from any tech companies yet. Um, those earnings will come in, in, in the coming week. And, uh, I think you're gonna hear muted demand. But again, one thing to keep in mind about Wall Street, there's no such thing as good news or bad news. There is only better or worse than expected. Remember I said, everything's a comp. This is a really important concept. So oftentimes you'll see a company report what you think is quote, bad news and the stock will rise.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Oftentimes you'll see a company come out with blockbuster earnings and the stock will sell off. Why? Because all that matter, good and bad in absolute terms don't mean anything. The only thing that matters is did, did Wall Street expect more or less? So that's the, that's where we are now. I think there's a lot of glasses have uh, empty mentality about the coming earnings season. We're supposed to be down about seven percent on the S and P. Uh, like the S and P five hundred earnings total over this quarter last year. Also not catastrophic, coming off a very high level. And it might be slightly better or slightly worse than that, but you know, I think that's, that's kind of where Wall Street is expecting to see things shake out.

• 23:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you know, you talk about what you expect, right? And I think one of the big issues here has been, what do we expect from the Fed? Right? It's like, when are they going to stop raising rates? When are we going to get some certainty? Because eventually, we have to have some sort of pause before people can predict what's going to happen and then plan.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, nobody, nobody, nobody knows is the short answer. The longer answer is, if you, if you listen to what the Fed is saying about the last rate hike,

• 23:43Speaker 00

  the one that they carried out during the banking crisis, they said it was an 11th hour decision. So they did a quarter of a, they did a quarter of a point rate hike in the last meeting, but like, they really decided that, that day or the day before. So the idea that anybody knows what the Fed is going to do, I mean, they don't even know what they're going to do. So how do you know? So there's, there's, you know, there's always a debate, what should they do? I'm in the camp that says they've probably done enough. And a lot of the indicators that they think are too high or haven't come down enough or whatever, are really severely lagging indicators and they should give it some time for the cumulative impact of everything they've done so far to catch up.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  There were some people who were in the camp that say, nope, slam on the brakes until we really like, we really have confirmation that things are falling fast. And, you know, I, I think that's a mistake, but maybe that's the way they end up going.

• 24:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you were pretty strong. I mean, in, you know, in the camp, but you were also just like very adamant that Powell needs to pause.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  I think so. I, look, the market is pricing in rate cuts already. So, so when you, when you look at futures prices and you look at what the market is pricing in, in rates for, for the second half of this year, for next year, the market is saying they've already gone too far. And you don't even need to know like where to look and, and, and we've, you know, surveys, all you have to do is look at bond prices themselves. The Fed tends to follow what the two-year does and the two-year is not with the Fed, you know, going significantly higher than where it is right now. The 10-year fell off. So like I,

• 25:31Speaker 00

  I think the market is already saying some of these last weight hikes are going to have to be given back because it was already too much. So, you know, it's more than just like my feelings on the subject. This is the consensus is that it's already overdone.

• 25:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Josh Brown is here with us. He's the CEO of Riddle's Wealth Management, the host of one of my favorite podcasts, Compound and Friends. I listen to it every single week. Really fun. Ending the last week's episode about ice in Europe. I recommend you go check it out. Josh gave us the report. Europe, you need more ice. So there's also some great financial analysis right before that. So before we go to break, I just want to say if you're enjoying the show, a rating and review goes a really long way. A rating on Spotify, a rating interview on Apple Podcasts. If you can do that, that will help us get great guests like Josh to come back again and again and show folks.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  I'll always come back, Alex. I don't even read your ratings.

• 26:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  I appreciate it. Man.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  I'll just come.

• 26:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Well, thank you. And in which case, if you need a great way to let you off the hook, then just remember Josh will be back. But, uh, but hey, if you've got your app open and you're willing to hit that five star rating, that would go a long way and we'd appreciate it. All right. We'll be back right after this. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what App Point does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended

• 27:07Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 27:41Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 28:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  and how to lock it down before a threat reaches their front door. That's ironwall.com/bigtechnology. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 28:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, co-host of The Compound and Friends with Michael Batnick. Where else can people find your stuff, Josh?

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Well, I used to write a lot more than I do now, but the blog is thereformedbroker.com. And maybe I'll get back to writing at some point, but like, I'm kind of like, I'm kind of focused on building the business. And I can only do so much media. And I think I've just kind of defaulted to doing a lot more television and podcasts and such. But, you know, things, things could change. But that's the primary way to catch my stuff these days is audio and video.

• 29:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And like I said before the break, Compound and Friends staple for me. I'm in the gym, I'm cooking, I'm walking somewhere. I'm listening to Compound and Friends, I'm in the car.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Oh, we love it.

• 29:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Listening to Compound and Friends. I'm watching CNBC. There's a great chance that Josh is on also. And I always turn the volume on, so just, just putting it out there.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Joining me for the hour today, right here at Post 9, Josh Brown, Stephanie Link and Jim Labenthal. Let's check the markets. We've been in the red for

• 29:53Speaker 00

  I'm on less than people think, uh, just a couple of times a week, but it's a, it's a lot of fun.

• 29:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Awesome. So, um, I thought for the second half, we could like, I teased that we would go through some of these battles. Let's definitely do that. I wrote like a little bit of a, I would call maybe provocative thesis, um, about each one of the tech companies. Maybe I could just like read it to you and kind of get your, your take on it. So let's start with Facebook or Meta, if you prefer Meta. Um, I wrote, uh, doing everything right in the market's eyes, but pretty weak in its future business and vulnerable in its core.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  Do you think they'll change the name, uh, back to Facebook?

• 30:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  I keep saying they should just change it to AI at this point, like, or Meta AI. I don't know.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Is that what they're gonna do? They're gonna keep chasing the next buzzword and, and keep changing the name?

• 30:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I have, I have this later on for you, but I, I think that the, the AI stuff, at least in the near term, is definitely more real in the metaverse. But maybe, maybe, I mean, Metaverse, isn't Metaverse such like a zero interest rate name? Like, once you have a 5% interest rate.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  It's awful. I hated it when they did it and it made sense when they did it and I still hated it. And now it just looks, now it just looks goofy.

• 31:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. I, I don't know.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  You know, wait, do you know any Facebook people that say I work at Meta?

• 31:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, uh, actually, I know they do. They, they all have taken to it. I mean, they call themselves Meta mates.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  Oh, really? What if they rebranded as Instagram?

• 31:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a good, it's an interesting idea, but do you want to rebrand as a company that is sort of second in the market next to TikTok? I don't know. I would rebrand from a position of strength.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I don't, I really, I really don't know what they should do, but, uh, the, it might be one of the all time worst name changes in corporate history. I would have to think about that, but it's, it's pretty bad.

• 31:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  There may, who knows? Maybe with like what's happening, the, the reputation that TikTok is getting and what's happening with Twitter. Having some nostalgia for old social media, like you have to, I mean, I have to say that Mark Zuckerberg probably looks a lot better now than he did two years ago. And there might be some nostalgia for Facebook, even if not many people are using it in the same way that they did beforehand. Maybe go back to Facebook.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  If TikTok gets banned in the United States, the no brainer is to rebrand as Instagram.

• 32:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, but do you think TikTok is going to get banned?

• 32:12Speaker 00

  No.

• 32:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  No.

• 32:14Speaker 00

  I think it'll, I think it'll get subsidiaried.

• 32:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Uh, and hand it over to American ownership. And the Chinese will content themselves with a really, really big royalty revenue stream. And I think that's how it'll end up going.

• 32:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm with you on that. If it gets there, I mean, maybe it just, the US government, when it comes to tech, has a habit of just letting things continue as they are. But this is a little different, but.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't know if there, there's all this talk, but if this is a pressing threat, where's the action? And because there's no action yet, it just doesn't seem like what's going to be that compelling event, maybe.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Well, you know what? The American public is not clamoring for this to happen. And that's the missing ingredient. Politicians do things to get reelected. And so if, if their own internal operations are taking polls and seeing what their constituents think, and there's not a lot of energy behind, you know, there's not a lot of fervor to go after TikTok, then they'll just stop and they'll go chase whatever the next issue is. So I think you're right.

• 33:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, there was an article in the Washington Post last week talking about how the Democrats are worried that they're vulnerable because of their, this potential crackdown on TikTok.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Well, the others, the other side is cracking down on Mickey Mouse, so maybe it's a push.

• 33:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. All right. Well, we'll, we'll see also like, I don't know. It just, uh, well, this is again, gets to the government's role in the private sector. So, but when you could, you bring in national security and that's, it's one thing, but I, I've always felt that there needs to be an egregious foul on TikTok's end for something like this to get done.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Well, I guess, I guess we'll, we'll have to see then.

• 33:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  Well, some kind of, some kind of leak where we find out, you know, what they're actually doing with TikTok specifically. And if it, if it pisses enough people off, maybe, but for right now, it doesn't feel like putting a lot of time and energy into banning TikTok is going to be a winning strategy for either party for any particular reason.

• 34:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Correct, and definitely not for Facebook either, at least in my opinion. So yeah, so let's talk about Apple. So I wrote that Apple is somewhat somewhat vulnerable with inflation. There was a 40% decline in laptop purchases. They're about to push a risky mixed reality device with without a clear roadmap. Who knows if people are going to upgrade iPhones in the same degree as they were beforehand. Now, the company's been pretty invulnerable, but maybe there's some vulnerability there. What do you think?

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Well, the stock is off its all time high, but I think the important thing to remember is that Apple is one of the greatest cash machines ever built. And the ability to buy back stock, pay a dividend, engage in R and D, enter new market, like they do it all. Uh, it's it's it's one of these companies that has just been able to walk and chew gum. And look, there've been, there've been periods where they've looked very vulnerable. And they've figured it out, even just in the Tim Cook era. So like until they really miss, until they really launch something that falls flat, uh, I think it would be a mistake to bet that that's what's going to happen. Um, it hasn't been a successful bet so far.

• 35:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Apple has this, speaking of like doing everything right from a financial standpoint, they have this new Apple, I think it's a savings account or Apple card or something of that nature where you you put your money with Apple and you get like 4% back. Do you, what do you, what would you tell your your clients about that?

• 35:40Speaker 00

  I was gonna say the odds of that even showing up on, you know, in terms of like moving the needle for Apple are zero.

• 35:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  So it's part of their services business. That's where that gets bundled into. And, uh, the services business is just massive and, you know, I I don't think that's a big picture. I don't think that's terribly important. Uh, it is interesting and it could open the door to more financial services, but, uh, I think the the big picture is the installed user base and the overall growth in in services revenue. And, you know, what they can then do with all that cash flowing in. And it's, it doesn't feel like it's on the verge of changing. Um, probably the biggest risk there is TSMC

• 36:26Speaker 00

  and China, Taiwan, and some kind of, uh, event that limits their ability to access the chips they need. Like to, like, if you ask me, like, what's Apple's Achilles heel? It's something geopolitical where they're asked to bow down to China in some way. They refuse, they're kicked out of the country from selling iPhones there, or some kind of disruption to chip supply because of China, Taiwan, like that. And by the way, that China-Taiwan story and Taiwan Semi in particular, I would say that's the Achilles heel of the entire global economy right now. Like, that's the, that is, that is the one. That's because if you thought supply chain shortages were bad last year,

• 37:08Speaker 00

  you know, any kind of geopolitical event in that part of the world, you, you will see an economy literally like off a cliff if something goes wrong there. So, but I think that's Apple's probably biggest point of risk. And you see, and you see it, you see all the effort to build their own chips. You see all the effort for Taiwan Semi to start building in places like Mexico and Wisconsin. Like, everybody, everybody sees this. Uh, it's not, it's not exactly visionary for me to say this, but like, I'd worry way more about that than a lot of the other concerns about Apple.

• 37:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  We just had Congressman Rokana on the show last week, who was fresh off a visit to Taiwan. And again, this is also fairly known, but it was interesting to hear from him where, you know, he was behind this scenario. How long does it take to get these chips in the US? As opposed to being manufactured in Taiwan? And the answer's a decade. So it's sort of a, you know, 10 years of being sort of, you know, fingers crossed, hopefully nothing happens. It's a long time.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  Right, you have to start, you have to start somewhere, I guess. Um, you had to plant the tree at some point. But, yeah, I thought, look, I think a lot of interesting things can come from this economically. If we on a, in a cost-effective way can start producing the stuff here. Um, but we're nowhere near close to that. And all of these companies that make up our stock market, Apple, Nvidia, there's a huge amount of vulnerability to that one part of the world and all of the things that it supplies. And nothing we do in Congress or on the ground in the Western Hemisphere is going to change that right now.

• 38:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, let's do Google. I wrote, risking its core business by not being ahead of the chatbot wave. Sell.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  I don't, did you read the Bloomberg story uh yesterday?

• 38:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  About?

• 38:59Speaker 00

  They interviewed all the Google people?

• 39:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah, I did.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm a shareholder in Alphabet and that's terrifying. They really seem to not know what the hell they want to do. So in response to that article coming out, uh which I'm sure freaked them out. They came out and said that they're gonna merge their two AI entities. One of them being Google Brain, which is homegrown, and the other being, what is it called, DeepMind, which they acquired. So now they're gonna smash those two things together and make a more concerted effort to have a competitive product out there in the market. Right now, they don't. I was playing with Bard and it was giving me false information that I was very easily able to verify was false using Google Search.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  So it's, it's, it's extremely problematic that their AI product is a piece of shit, but it is. And ChatGPT is not so amazing. Like it's, you know, let, let's call it what it is. It's a, it's a, it's a prediction engine for language. You know, I mean, it's, it's amazing in that the, the usership of it has exploded overnight, like a hundred million users out of nowhere. That's the amazing part of it, not the tech. The tech is gonna be blowing our minds six months from now, a year from now. Now that we're all playing with it, now we're first gonna be amazed, right? Um, but Google, like, Google not even being able to compete with this rudimentary version of ChatGPT,

• 40:29Speaker 00

  which is a not-for-profit uh foundation that has a, you know, a profit-seeking department within it. And then you have the third most valuable company in the world, like trying to play catch-up with that. It's really astonishing what's going on here.

• 40:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's fascinating. There's a line from that Bloomberg article that I was looking for and I found it where in February they're testing it. And someone writes, Google employee writes Bard is worse than useless. Please do not launch. That was the line where I looked and I was like, oh, boy.

• 41:02Speaker 00

  But, but, but one thing I'll say, Google has never played defense before.

• 41:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  Google has spent the entirety of its life on offense since coming public. So they, they came public in like two thousand four. They were after the initial wave of dot coms came and went. So they had like all of those like, uh, all of those examples of what to do and what not to do to follow. And they immediately took like eighty-five percent market share. And then they had it the entire time without really any challenge whatsoever, even Bing. Uh, Yahoo committed suicide. Like they just, they, they never had to defend their turf. So it'll be interesting to watch them try to do it. Maybe they will.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  So like I, my personal opinion is that you're not going to see Bing be ten percent of search. Any, ev- maybe ever. Because Google will get their act together before something like that could happen. And they'll figure out how to incorporate some of the Bard stuff, uh, or some other AI stuff. Into what it is so that they keep their user base, but they're gonna have to fight for it because they don't have it all themselves anymore.

• 42:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely. And they have the capabilities, so they can definitely try to counterpunch. So that'll be really fun.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  And the money, they have the expertise. They just, you know, they have to strategically think this through. And what's, the irony is that a lot of the people working on AI for OpenAI could have been at Google. They kind of had an exodus from their AI, uh, initiatives because, um, the CEO was being too cautious. And he was spending too much time listening to all these in-house ethicists and all these people trying to throttle. The AI and then Microsoft just comes along, drops a check on, on Altman and says. Do what you want to do. Like we're, we're, we're on board. We'll say all the nice things in public about, uh, ethics, but like, let's go.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  And, you know, maybe that's where Google has to get to. It's terrifying for the rest of us. Because we don't know what the ramifications are for that, but that's kind of where it seems to be sitting right now.

• 43:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's, let's talk about Microsoft now that you brought it up. So for Microsoft, I have well positioned for every trend, cloud, AI, enterprise technology. Bye.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, it seems that way. This is the stock that I think fell the least out of the group from its, from its highs during the October lows for tech last year. And very quickly regained a lot of the market share that it lost. Fundamentally, it doesn't appear as though the business has lost a beat and definitely still has the confidence of Wall Street. So this is like one of those trades where while it's working, just, just enjoy it, you know, no, nobody seems to be, nobody seems to be looking at anything Microsoft is doing critically in terms of like, this ain't going to work, or they're behind the eight ball.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  I think right now, uh, Microsoft is probably, uh, the, the name out of this group that people are least concerned about.

• 44:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it's fascinating because the company for a decade had a lost decade, terrible leadership, was stuck in the mud. And then I think the energy to move them from the desktop operating system of Windows to cloud just showed them that sometimes it's okay to rip everything up and start again, which is what all these companies need to be able to do. And that's probably, I mean, the same person that did that Satya was the head of server and tools, which had all that money coming in.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Oh, it's, it's two, there's two things that people, it's two things that people should know about Microsoft's lost decade. One of those things is that earnings actually grew.

• 44:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  So, so Steve Ballmer, all time worst timing, Bill Gates gives him the reins, I think in the year 2000. So he, he inherits the, the reins at the all time high price for tech stocks. So almost no matter what he did, he was not going to be able to say the stock price grew by X percent over my tenure. So that's a little bit, it's a little bit unfair to him and his legacy, although he did some, you know, clumsy, stupid stuff that have become memes and we all, we all know, he left at the iPhone, he launched the Zoom, we know, but like earnings grew while he was there. And they grew, I think faster than they did for the overall stock market.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  So it's not like he was eating crayons. Um, but he had that unfortunate timing of where the stock was priced when he took over. Um, but then I think the, the, the best thing you could say is that he knew himself. When it was time to walk away and let somebody else have a turn. Because he's still the second or third largest shareholder and always will be. And so he correctly recognized, I'm, it turns out, I'm not the guy. So I think he, I think when we look back, we'll give him more credit. And he'll be less of a punchline than maybe he was at, at one point. Uh, but Microsoft, uh, Microsoft now, or, or the second thing I wanted to say.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Wall Street didn't really understand the degree to which there were employees at every government. And every Fortune 500 company and every large multinational company all over the world. Wall Street didn't fully understand the fact that these companies had employees who were Microsoft certified. And were never going to change things over to Linux or Apple or it. So when cloud came along as a business. It was, I mean, AWS, yeah, but it was really Microsoft's business to lose. Because you're going to these companies and you're asking them to move things from, from internally to, to the cloud.

• 46:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  If you have at least a Microsoft cloud environment. All of those Microsoft certified IT professionals working at these companies could get on board with that. They didn't look at it that, they didn't look at that like, oh shit, this is going to replace the need for me. They looked at it like job security. And that's one of the most unsung aspects of the cloud migration. And how, and, and why Microsoft was able to preserve its, its, uh, lead and then grow it. Um, and, and again, that's something that's also not going to change anytime soon. There is an entrenchment, uh, in, in, in cloud that I think continues to help companies like Microsoft.

• 47:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Which could be very interesting as they go and try to sell AI into companies as well, so.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think it's, I think it's an enduring advantage that they will enjoy for a long time to come. And it's behavioral. Cause again, who's making these decisions? It's people at companies that have a vested interest in staying with Microsoft.

• 47:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, let's let's talk about Amazon. Amazon's very interesting position and I have this is what I wrote. Cloud CEO in a moment where the retail business needs the most attention. Rough in the short term, good position in the long term.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know if this guy is going to be the CEO a year from now.

• 48:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really? Okay, so tell me why.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  I could see I could see Bezos coming back.

• 48:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 48:20Speaker 00

  They all do. Because he's too young to be done. Too much of his fortune is at risk based on the decisions of someone else. They all come back. Howard Schultz came back three times already.

• 48:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Like the it's it's to me. So this I'm a shareholder in Amazon. Here's why I like this situation. Either Jassy like gets the confidence of the street and the stock heads back to one fifty. Or Bezos comes in and it happens anyway. But like, look, just watch what watch what's going on with Bob Iger at Disney. And then ask yourself, do I think Jeff Bezos is paying attention to that? He definitely is.

• 49:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Okay, so they all come back. I think he's coming back. Or I'll be shocked to the upside because Jassy figures it out. But I feel like either way, this this company will get back on its horse. And we'll get its momentum back. It's just a matter of time.

• 49:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  So Nvidia is a very interesting one. For them, I just wrote get on the get on board and ride the AI train.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  The only way that you can really like buy it right now is if you just don't care about the valuation. Because it's the most expensive large cap stock in America, I would say.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's, you know, sixty times earnings. Do you know how much stuff I'm long the stock?

• 49:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  The thing is, I own it for so long and from such a low cost basis. And I've trimmed it on the way up. So I just don't feel as at risk as I probably am. But like a new position right now, because you're chasing AI, I would advise against that. There will be a disruption in the stock market at some point this year, there is every year, where they're going to hit these high beta names hard. And maybe that's the time to not be fearful and and take advantage of a big drawdown in Nvidia. I could be wrong. You had an analyst this week, uh, double downgrade, double upgrade the stock. Go from a sell to a buy. And his mayor culpa, guy from HSBC, he's basically saying, look, I uh,

• 50:27Speaker 00

  I was focused too much on the enterprise and data center slowdown. And I missed the the chase that would be on for AI chips. And that's really the most important part of the story, it turns out. So his target is like three fifty five. So, yeah. He went from a a target of one seventy five, which is substantially below where the stock is trading, to three fifty five, which is substantially above. So I think there's a lot of that. Um, you've got retail, uh, people obsessed with quote playing AI. And Nvidia is the most obvious way to do it. Their chips have eighty something percent of the AI chip market. And, you know, to quote the analyst again, they're getting ten thousand dollars for the A one hundred chip.

• 51:13Speaker 00

  Right. They're getting twenty thousand dollars for the H one hundred chip, which is the one that's so powerful. The government won't let them sell it to China. Yeah. So that that pricing power and the volume of these chips that are going to be needed for this AI revolution, that combination is insane. So who else makes AI, uh, GPUs that are suitable for AI? There are other players, but Nvidia is so far ahead, both in its ability to produce the chips and the chip's capability, that like it's just hard to see a scenario where Nvidia doesn't keep winning. And they and keep this market. So that's why it's trading. So people like, oh, it's so expensive. And I say, well, don't you think there's a reason?

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Like, do you think the market is that stupid that it's not aware how highly valued it or how how high of a multiple it's paying? The market is aware. There's a reason. It's not out of nowhere.

• 52:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  It's not, right? So that that that push and pull is difficult. There are some investors on Wall Street who just it's part of their process. They don't care how great the story is. They don't get off on the tech, the technical aspects of what a company is making. They just will not invest at this valuation, no matter what. We watched, we watched this happen with Tesla. You had, you know, traditional investors who had to like invent new metrics in order to justify buying the stock. And then the stock at its maximum valuation gets added to the S and P 500. And you know, they didn't want to do that.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  You know, the, the, the index committee at Standard and Poor's was like, uh, S and P Dow Jones indexes. You know, they were like, this is, this is a trillion dollar stock and it's not in the index and now they're profitable. I guess we have to add it.

• 53:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  So in every era, there is one stock that just defies the investor community. And I think Nvidia has become that stock for this era. It was probably Tesla last time. Right now, it's, this is, this is the stock that it's, it's almost like, um, it's almost like a religious dispute at this point.

• 53:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting. Okay. Two more before we have to jump. Um, we could do it quickly. Tesla, I say, uh, would double if Elon sold Twitter?

• 53:36Speaker 00

  Uh, I don't know, because that last quarter that they reported this week, they're starting to look more and more like a traditional automaker. And if that's how they're going to start to get valued, um, there's a lot more room to go lower. I do agree that Twitter thing is not doing them any favors. And I don't know how much longer he's going to continue, um, being as hands on as he is and as vocal as he is, but you know, listen, this, this is what happens when you buy into a, a cult of personality.

• 54:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  You, you gotta take the good with the bad. This is, this is the bad.

• 54:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Last one. Bitcoin will never reach $64,000 a coin again.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  No way. You said that?

• 54:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's

• 54:20Speaker 00

  You want to die on that hill?

• 54:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Provocative thesis I'm throwing at you. So you think it's going to go above?

• 54:25Speaker 00

  I I I think there's nothing that I think there's nothing intellectual to be said about the future price of Bitcoin. My personal opinion. It's all it's all feelings and ideas and concepts. There's that. I had a guy on my podcast, Rick Edelman, say he thinks it's 150,000 by 2025. And I said, why? And he said, they have it in. It's just math. And I said, oh, all right.

• 54:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  I I guess I understand. I still don't, but I guess I get it.

• 54:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  I love hearing you talk about Bitcoin, Josh. It's always funny hearing your perspective.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  I don't. I I I don't have a very. If you told me, you told me next month, it'll be 20,000 or 40,000, I would, I could believe either. I could believe either case.

• 55:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Which is why I think just your agnosticism about it. And, you know, I think that you're approaching it in the right way, which is that there's no fundamentals here. So who knows?

• 55:18Speaker 00

  It's I got it. I got it. Right. I got a wallet full of lottery tickets.

• 55:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Josh Brown, thanks so much for joining.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  Oh, so great to be with you, Alex. Thank you.

• 55:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that'll do it for us here on Big Technology Podcast. Thank you so much, Josh Brown, for coming on. It's always great to speak with you. And I love listening to your Compound and Friends show. So I hope we can do it again soon. Thanks to Nate Kowatney for handling the audio. Thanks to LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. Thanks to all of you, the listeners, for coming back week after week. If you're liking the show, as I mentioned, please give it a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Those go a long way. Really appreciate some people who've done it recently. I want to shout out in particular, we've got some good ones recently. Thank you, WS77. Weekly deep dive into all things tech, an absolute must if you need to listen to deep,

• 56:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  insightful discussions on tech, especially in the era we're in. Can't pass by a week without it. Thank you, WS77. Thank you to CalCT. Big Tech Made Conversational, the podcast features the most high profile guests from the tech community. They and Alex with his few love that a host that lets experts talk and take the lead. Simple yet strategic questions, break down what few truly understand.

• 56:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  I read the likely tech news outlets as my primer then come here to learn more about specific topics that I want to better understand, like the latest AI fueled news feeds, listen to completely different points of views among engineers who create products. This podcast is pretty special. Thank you very much to the two of you and thanks to everybody who's rated among, you know, the many who have, and I can't thank you enough. You really do help the podcast and we've been on a roll lately getting great guests and you are a large part of the reason why. So thank you for that. All right. That'll do it for us here on this week's edition of Big Technology Podcast. We will be back on Friday. That is going to be live on LinkedIn and then we'll have it on the feed shortly afterwards, breaking

• 57:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  down the week's news and we'll see who comes on next week. We are going to have a special guest next week. So stay tuned for that on the flagship interview. All right. That will do it for us here. We will see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  In this life, you can't win.

• 58:10Speaker 05

  When the world gets you down.

• 58:12Speaker 04

  No!

• 58:12Speaker 05

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 58:14Speaker 04

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 58:16Speaker 05

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free.

• 58:20Speaker 04

  Shwing!

• 58:20Speaker 05

  Even our news is uplifting.

• 58:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 58:23Speaker 05

  Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World and so much more.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  We're not worthy!

• 58:31Speaker 05

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.