Prof G Markets: Nvidia Earnings are the Super Bowl of Business + Trump’s $5 Million Gold Card

Follow Prof G Markets: Apple Podcasts Spotify Scott and Ed open the show by discussing Tesla’s shrinking market cap, Berkshire Hathaway’s record-breaking tax bill, and BP’s pivot back to fossil fuels. Then they break down Nvidia’s earnings, explaining why investors weren’t impressed even though the company surpassed expectations. Ed shares why he still sees it as a win, despite Nvidia’s stock dipping slightly. They also discuss Trump’s new gold card visa program and explain why demand is more limited than the president thinks. Scott warns that the program could attract shady characters trying to buy their way into America. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Join us for a live recording at SXSW Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 1:29Scott Galloway?

  Today's number: $49 million. That's how much New York City's congestion pricing toll was brought in during the program's first month. This is an actual true story, Ed. When I first moved to New York, my first date was with a woman named Martha, who took me to, no joke, a sex club. And one of us had sex, and it wasn't me, Ed.

• 1:58Scott Galloway?

  That's a true story.

• 1:59Ed Elson?

  That's not a true story.

• 2:01Scott Galloway?

  No, it's a true story. The club was called Trapeze.

• 2:04Ed Elson?

  You're gonna have to elaborate. It's the final part that I'm really intrigued in.

• 2:08Scott Galloway?

  Met this woman, a really interesting woman, nice. I was very attracted to her. And I had this big deck. I lived at one Greenwich, and I had basically this like 700-foot apartment with a 3,000-square-foot deck, see above, single and desperate. And I used to have parties and people. And I met this woman, super hot, seemed super cool. Yeah. Asked her out, kept asking her out and finally like, I'm getting nothing back here. And she's like, I have something I think you're gonna like. And she showed up and said, I'm gonna handle everything. And we went to this place in, I think it was a Westfield or so, go underground. It's like 300 bucks for the dude and nothing for the woman. I'm like, well, that's gonna be interesting. And they give you a towel and she changed into a towel. And anyway, she ended up making out and flirting around with a woman.

• 2:52Ed Elson?

  It's crazy.

• 2:54Scott Galloway?

  That was my pick. New York story. NYU professor, would you let your kid take class with me?

• 3:01Ed Elson?

  Yeah, you didn't do anything wrong. I mean, you shouldn't have pursued this woman specifically, clearly.

• 3:06Scott Galloway?

  Oh, I was so excited. I would, I think I still probably text her saying, saying she'll give me another shot at trapeze.

• 3:17Ed Elson?

  What happened in the basement, water under the bridge, let's start over.

• 3:20Scott Galloway?

  Actually, also, my other New York joke, you know, New York is just full of rats. I made actually friends with this rat and this ridiculously hot woman walked by and I'm like, you see the ass on that woman? He said, well, actually I'm a tit rat myself.

• 3:37Ed Elson?

  I prefer the real stories.

• 3:39Scott Galloway?

  Ah, that's why you come here. This isn't CNBC.

• 3:43Ed Elson?

  Agreed. Let's start with our weekly review of market vitals.

• 3:53Ed Elson?

  The S and P 500 declined, the dollar rose, Bitcoin fell and the yield on 10 year treasuries hit its lowest level since December. Shifting to the headlines, Tessa's market cap has fallen below $1 trillion, erasing nearly all of the stock's post-election gains. Shares are down more than 25% so far this year as investor concerns mount over growing competition and Elon Musk controversies. Warren Buffett announced that Berkshire Hathaway paid nearly $27 billion in taxes in 2024. That is the largest tax bill ever paid by a US company, accounting for roughly 5% of all corporate income taxes collected in the country that year. And finally, BP announced it is shifting back to fossil fuels and scaling down investments

• 4:38Ed Elson?

  in green energy. The company plans to spend around $10 billion a year on oil and gas to win back investors after its fourth quarter profit hit a four-year low. Despite that move, BP shares closed down about one and a half percent. Scott? We'll start with Tesla and I'm bracing myself for your victory lap here. You predicted on February 13.

• 5:02Scott Galloway?

  I can't help it. I'm a broken clock here. Tesla is imploding. I think the stock is below 200 in the next six months.

• 5:10Ed Elson?

  It was trading at $356 a share then. We're not below 200, but we're now at $286. So it's down 20% since your prediction. Take it away.

• 5:22Scott Galloway?

  I hate this motherfucker. I really, I don't know if you've sensed that.

• 5:25Ed Elson?

  Really?

• 5:26Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I have no emotional distance here. I'm changing my prediction. I think this thing goes below 150.

• 5:33Ed Elson?

  Oh, keep it. Keep the original.

• 5:35Scott Galloway?

  I can't help it. It's at a P of 180 and its sales are off 75% in Germany. And across Europe, they're off dramatically. I think the car line is really stale. To be fair, the stock is still up 50% over the last 12 months, right? It had a huge run up. And the market, you could say, you could also make this, you could also steel man and be a weak steel man and be more like an iron man or a hay man. It's clear his activities have really hurt him in Europe and in California, but probably the market was looking for an excuse to take this stock down. I think what will be the real interesting test here in terms of the association or affiliation of an individual's brand and their company

• 6:19Scott Galloway?

  is if Starlink starts to have contracts canceled. What do you make of this, Ed?

• 6:25Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the question that we've been trying to ask is like, what started this slide with Tesla stock? I mean, it's pretty dramatic what happened. It's down around 20% in five straight days, falling below a trillion dollars. It's now down 34% since its peak in December. I think the thing that really triggered this is this data that came out from Europe. Tesla's vehicle sales are down almost 50% across Europe. Meanwhile, overall EV sales across Europe are up almost 40%. So clearly people just hate Teslas and it's, it's not very surprising why. I mean, you just. Look at the UK, for example, where, you know, Elon is talking about how he wants to put

• 7:09Ed Elson?

  the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in jail. Like, it's not very surprising that the British public is now saying, hey, we're down with electric vehicles, but we're not going to buy Teslas anymore. And so it's finally being reflected in Tesla's financials. I think the thing that I've been thinking about a lot when it comes to Elon and when it comes to Tesla, I've been waiting for what I would call his Wellington moment. And I'll explain what I mean by that. As I've said to you before, I think the similarities between Elon Musk and Napoleon Bonaparte, and you're going to call me a history nerd, but I don't care.

• 7:44Scott Galloway?

  Just a nerd.

• 7:44Ed Elson?

  I think the similarities are very striking in that you have Napoleon, who was this like miraculously successful guy who took over all of Europe and tried to take over the world, and at the same time was also pretty universally disliked. But people never really did anything about it because they thought, you know, this guy is so talented. He's so powerful. He conquered the Russians and the Prussians and the Spanish. He installed himself into office. He crowned himself emperor. Like, how could we ever bet against Napoleon? You never bet against Napoleon. And that's basically why people went along with this guy who was acting honestly very irrationally and kind of insane.

• 8:25Ed Elson?

  But it was only when he suffered this crushing defeat at Waterloo against the Duke of Wellington that people realized, actually, maybe this guy isn't untouchable. Actually, maybe he isn't a god. And the whole world turned on him at the exact same time, including the French, by the way. And he was banished to this remote island where he died sad and alone. And I believe that that moment is coming for Elon. I believe it's going to take some big loss. And suddenly, all of this mystique and this intrigue and all of our glorification of his his leadership abilities and his character and his genius, it's all just going to disintegrate in a second.

• 9:09Ed Elson?

  And at that moment, I think the citizens start to turn on him. We've seen that happening already. But more importantly, I think the markets will turn on him, too.

• 9:19Scott Galloway?

  I think that moment happened 48 hours ago. I think it was Bill Burr. He's probably my favorite comedian. I think the guy's just a genius and he's fearless. And he's been known for being just incredibly politically incorrect. And he's a favorite of what I'll call sort of the intelligent manosphere. And that is, he just mocks the shit out of Democrats and political correctness. And, you know, basically every viewer of MSNBC was grabbing their pearls every time they watch a Bill Burr clip. And he was just totally unafraid to be totally politically incorrect. And he went on a rant and we should play that. We'll find the clip now.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  I'll tell you what's funny. I made fun of the fucking Twitter guy for fucking Sieg Hiling, not once but twice. And I never look at my emails. I was scrolling through my emails and it said my Twitter account had been flagged for inappropriate. I don't even tweet anymore. It had been flagged for whatever. What a fucking baby. Just like Hitler. A fucking baby. Because that's another thing. All of these people that are into fucking Hitler, you know what I mean? And like, like, like, look at this guy like he was some sort of fucking hero. The guy's one of the biggest fucking cowards ever. All the pain and all the suffering that that guy's caused and the war crimes the Allies had to commit, firebombing fucking cities to get that motherfucker.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  When it came time for him to pay the price for all the suffering he caused millions and millions and millions of people.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  Did he face the music? No. He gave himself a nice, quick, painless fucking death.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  That's your fucking hero?

• 10:53Scott Galloway?

  I think the worm has turned against this guy. I think that moment you're describing happened 48 hours ago.

• 11:00Ed Elson?

  I still think people think he's invincible.

• 11:02Scott Galloway?

  There's no such thing.

• 11:03Ed Elson?

  Agreed. But this is what people believe and this is what the markets believe. And so this is what I mean. I think you need a moment. You need to see that the God fall from grace. You realize he's mortal. You realize that actually he's not all he was chalked up to be. And suddenly that's when the world collapses on itself. But we've been talking about Elon for way longer than we should have. So let's just move on to our second headline here, which is Berkshire Hathaway paying $27 billion in taxes last year. I think the thing that's Interesting is what Warren Buffett said about this tax bill. Specifically, he was talking in his shareholder letter, in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

• 11:44Ed Elson?

  He was explaining how proud he was of paying this tax bill and contributing this revenue to the US government. And I'll just quote one part of this because I'm supportive of what he said, but I also take some issue with it. So in the letter, he's describing the beginnings of Berkshire Hathaway and how they were struggling at the beginning. And then he says, quote, "Fast forward 60 years and imagine the surprise at the Treasury when that same company, still operating under the name of Berkshire Hathaway, paid far more in corporate income tax than the US government had ever received from any company, even the American tech titans that commanded market values in the trillions."

• 12:27Ed Elson?

  So he's basically saying, "Look how far we've come. Look what we're contributing to the government." But at the same time, he's kind of taking a shot at big tech and accusing them of not paying taxes, which is true and fair, and I agree with it. But I do find it a little bit rich coming from Warren Buffett, who has done a very good job of avoiding taxes himself. I mean, if you look at the history of Berkshire Hathaway, they have a long list of tax avoidance strategies and they've had no problem taking full advantage of them. We could go through some of those examples, but what I would summarize this as,

• 13:07Ed Elson?

  I respect the point, but I don't love this holier-than-thou attitude from Warren Buffett, who's kind of presenting himself as like the Jesus of taxes, which isn't necessarily true. But let's hear what you think of this. I assume you're a supporter of this.

• 13:24Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, but you got it right. Like, they paid a lot of taxes. If he wants to take a victory lap for it and make a point, good for him. And he has said for a long time, "There's no reason I should pay a lower tax rate than my assistant."

• 13:36Scott Galloway?

  But his obligation was to his shareholders, no one's going to disarm unilaterally. I believe tax rates should go up, but I engage in tax avoidance. So I'm constantly thinking about strategies to minimize my tax bill. And there's, there's a ton of ways you can do it legally when you're rich. And what we've seen is the tax code go from something like 400 pages to 7,000. And those incremental 6,600 pages are there basically to fuck people of your generation and transfer more wealth to my generation and to corporations. And cruise lines have weaponized various loopholes. They pay less than 2% for all the tax rates. General Motors in 2023 paid a tax rate of 5%. T-Mobile, which I would think was a very profitable company, pays an effective tax rate of 0.4%.

• 14:20Scott Galloway?

  Every company is going to do the best they can to pay as little as they can. That's their job. We're not doing our job. And that is, there have been so many loopholes stuffed into the tax code. And what the misdirect is, people think it's about tax rates. It's not. It's about the tax code. And I believe that as a percentage of GDP, taxes or corporations are paying the lowest taxes since like 1938. And at some point, you got to fund the government. And there's two things to do. There's either deficits, right? Or you got to charge more in different types of consumption taxes. And I've said this for a long time, there's some mythology in the tax code. The bottom half pays almost no federal income tax. They pay a lot of consumption and sales tax, but almost no federal income tax.

• 15:02Scott Galloway?

  The people who get most screwed in our tax system are actually most of the people who work at Prop G Media. And that is, you guys make very good livings, but it's all current income and you live in a high tax domain, New York City. So even as young as you are, you make exceptionally good livings for people your age, even though you may not feel that way. You're probably paying 30 to 40% tax rates at this point. That's a lot of money for a young person. And, but once you make the jump to light speed and get really rich, you can leverage all these different loopholes, whether it's 1031 exchanges, where you can take real estate and roll it into a new investment, a new real estate investment without incurring a capital gain, triggering a capital gain.

• 15:44Scott Galloway?

  Even thinking of yourself as a stock, you produce, I have stocks that produce, say a hundred grand a year in dividends or growth. That gets to grow, not the dividends, but the growth grows tax deferred. Whereas if you're an individual making a hundred thousand dollars, you lose 20% of it every year at least. So the tax code has basically said, all right, the bottom 99, we're going to basically fund the government with the kind of 50 to 99th percentile. And then, once you get above the 99th, your tax rates plummet. And the reason why America puts up with it is that we're so optimistic that people believe at some point, they're going to be in the 0.1%. But corporations, I mean, we just have two choices here.

• 16:27Scott Galloway?

  We either need to cut spending and raise taxes, or have massive deficits, which are, and it's important that we communicate this to people, nothing but taxes on you and Claire and the rest of the young people of this organization, just kind of laying in wait. So I find the whole, I think taxes are a really important conversation. I would like to see the best solution would be an AMT, an alternative minimum tax on corporations and the rich. And that is if you make over, say, $10 million, we want you to pay a 50% AMT. We put whatever loopholes you can come up with, great, but you're paying at least 50%. And they're, well, that's a lot, Scott. It's not, because every psychiatrist and psychologist, and Daniel Kahneman specifically,

• 17:09Scott Galloway?

  has shown that above a certain amount of money, you lose no happiness. Any more money doesn't make you any happier, so having a higher tax rate doesn't make you any less happy. And also, these tax rates are lower than they were in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and even in the 80s at those income levels. So I think tax rates could actually come down if you forced everyone to pay those tax rates. And that is, you could lower the top tax rates on people if everyone paid them. You could lower corporate tax rates if everyone paid that rate.

• 17:42Ed Elson?

  I also think that there is something to be learned from Warren Buffett, just being happy to pay his taxes. Like, that's just on a personal, emotional level. I think if we can, you know, we clearly need to raise more tax revenue. If there is any way for... Americans, or people anywhere really, to feel a little bit less resentful when they, when they make their tax payments and to feel that feeling of actually having pride and it being a bragging point, how much you contributed to the US government, which it seems like that, you know, everyone who pays their taxes is like, fuck this, I don't want to pay my taxes. But I do like that Warren Buffett is kind of changing the sentiment there. And I will also shout out Andrew Yang, who, one of his great policy proposals when

• 18:26Ed Elson?

  he was running for president, was that we should basically have the government send out videos, including local governments, to taxpayers, telling them, here's what, here's everything we did with your money this week, or this month, or this year. And I think if you could sort of just change the mentality when it comes to paying taxes, and it's a little bit of a soft point, but I do appreciate that Warren Buffett is leading that, leading that movement of, okay, paying a lot in taxes, it's not necessarily a bad thing, you're doing a service to your country. I guess you have to start off believing in your country and liking your country to begin with, which is becoming rarer and rarer in America. Let's

• 19:08Ed Elson?

  talk about BP. They're deciding to shift away from renewables, investing more in oil and gas. I guess the first question I had, reading this headline, is how much did Elliott Management, the activist investment firm, how much did Elliott have to do with this? Because two weeks ago, they, it was leaked that they had this stake in BP, roughly 5%. You know, they wanted to clearly address BP's underperformance. It's down 8% in the past year. Meanwhile, Shell is up 7%, and all the other energy companies are doing a lot better. And then suddenly, two weeks later, we see this turnaround in strategy. So I guess my first question for you, Scott, to what extent do you think this was Elliott's doing?

• 19:50Scott Galloway?

  Oh, Elliott, they're smart people. And Jessica, who runs our activist group, is a really smart guy. And marketing's important, but be clear, this is all marketing. I'm not sure, I think BP was actually, so I ran a brand strategy firm called Profit. And I think BP was a client and that's just the running joke around the office was beyond petroleum and they'd like, you know, the ad team would hire an Asian dude, put him in a jacket and run a commercial talking about how algae is going to fuel the future automobile.

• 20:18Speaker 08

  Can 100,000 people in 100 countries come together to build a new brand of progress for the world? We think so. And now BP, Amaco, Arco and Castrol have come together to try beyond petroleum.

• 20:32Scott Galloway?

  They never spent a lot of money. I think right now, what is the research you guys did that basically BP is allocating somewhere between 3 and 5% of their total capex to renewables. That's just not a lot. They were never not in oil and gas. And this is basically saying, okay, get rid of all of it. Stop pretending. Stop running the ads beyond petroleum. Just say petroleum, it's here.

• 20:56Ed Elson?

  So, sorry, you think that, you basically think that they believe that the world wanted them to be a renewable company. So they said, oh, we're a renewable company. And now the world wants them to be an oil and gas company. So they're saying, we're an oil and gas company.

• 21:08Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, there's no substance here. This is, this is them pretending for two decades, deciding that the big sunflower beyond petroleum would make them seem warm and cuddly as they were belching more carbon into the air than anyone, but maybe Exxon and Chevron. Because there is nothing, there is nothing like the arbitrage you get from fossil fuels in terms of the ability to do work, move earth, create different substances, based on this incredibly cheap supply where you get a barrel, an absolute barrel of this shit that can be made into almost anything or provide energy to make almost anything and the barrel costs 70 bucks. I mean, it's just so cheap.

• 21:52Scott Galloway?

  And these guys, these, these companies are just cash juggernauts. And basically Elliot said, stop the bullshit, stop the virtue signaling, stop the posturing. You're a petroleum company, you always have been.

• 22:05Ed Elson?

  They are putting $10 billion a year additionally into oil and gas. So I think, I mean, I think I'm sort of half with you in that this is probably what they thought the market wanted because the way the pendulum is sort of swinging back away from ESG. But I would also put forward the possibility that a lot of this has to do with AI and just the fact that they couldn't really predict what was going to happen in terms of how AI was going to explode over the next few years. And you've got billions of dollars being plowed into these data centers, which are already one of the biggest strains on power in our economy, and it's expected to double in just a couple of years, quintuple in maybe the next 10.

• 22:47Ed Elson?

  So I do think at the same time, I'm sure there's probably a marketing element to it. I think at the same time, these energy companies are realizing like, shit, we've been investing in these renewables, which are, you know, probably pretty exciting over the long term, but the short term demands of AI are way higher than we thought. And the reality is these renewables that we've been investing in, they just, they won't cut it. And if we want to meet demand, we do need more oil and we do need more gas, especially gas. You know, liquid natural gas is like ideal for data centers. So I think I'm like sort of half with you there, but I do think there is some substance here in the fact that power demand is just going up and we're not going to power these data centers with windmills and solar panels. We're going to do it with oil and gas.

• 23:32Ed Elson?

  And so if you're not investing in that, or at least maybe to your point, showing Wall Street that you're trying to invest in that and that you're being realistic about the demands of AI in the next few years, then you're going to get punished. And that's why we've seen BP down, or at least flat over the past year or so. It's up 37% in the past five years. Chevron's up 109%. Exxon is up 183%. So they have been getting crushed. And I, I don't like to be the, the big energy guy, but I do support this move.

• 24:06Scott Galloway?

  We saw a lot of those energy stocks crash with Deep Seek when all of a sudden people thought, oh, we might not need as much energy. And what you're saying is that was a bit of a headache. We're still going to need a massive amount of energy. And I met with A guy who's an energy guy and he said, you got nuclear wrong. He said, and Mia kind of confirmed this in her notes that the lag to bring energy capacity, nuclear online is five, 10 years out at a minimum. And that the real play is liquid natural gas, LNG. And that you want to be looking at that space. And it'll be very interesting to see the other, there's the side note that really fascinated me. I don't know if you saw, but the number one producer of wind power now is Texas.

• 24:51Scott Galloway?

  And we should do a deeper dive at some point on the economics of wind power, because it's politically, quote unquote, incorrect or politically sober, whatever the term you want to use is Texas is. The economics of wind have made it such that it is now in many ways a better bet than these dirty fossil fuels.

• 25:11Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break with a look at Nvidia. If you're enjoying the show so far and you haven't subscribed, be sure to give Prop G Markets a follow wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:28Scott Galloway?

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• 26:29Scott Galloway?

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• 28:52Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. Nvidia reported fourth quarter earnings that beat expectations with revenue up 78% from a year earlier. The company also forecasted higher than expected first quarter revenue with the CFO confident in a "significant ramp" in sales of Blackwell, which is its next generation AI chip. However, Nvidia also warned that profit margins would be tighter than expected as it accelerates the rollout of the Blackwell chip. After fluctuating between gains and losses, the stock actually fell slightly in extended trading. Scott, just your headline initial reactions to Nvidia's fourth quarter earnings and perhaps the market's reaction to those earnings.

• 29:32Scott Galloway?

  You had it, you summarized it perfectly, Ed, and that is the market is so used to these companies blowing away expectations that when they don't beat expectations, they don't meet expectations. And Nvidia beat expectations on the top and bottom line, and I think the stock's off today. I mean, it's not off hugely, but you summarized it perfect. Expectations have become such that you're expected to massively blow away expectations. But I don't, I didn't take a ton away from this. Do you have any thoughts?

• 30:03Ed Elson?

  I think what the market wants from Nvidia now is they need a home run to be fine. They need to consistently hit a home run. And only if they knock the ball literally out of the park will, will they get a bump in the stock. But, you know, we can just look at the numbers here. So, sales up 80% to 39.3 billion, net income up 80% to 22.1 billion, beat on revenue by 3%, beat on guidance by 5%. I think the most important stat here is their data center revenue beat. They beat data center revenue expectations by 6.3%. And that's, as we know, the most important thing for Wall Street right now.

• 30:44Ed Elson?

  I think they did $115 billion in data center revenue in 2024. It's just unbelievable. So it was a great quarter, but as you say, great isn't good enough. And so they, they kind of flatlined. But, you know, in my book, that's kind of a win for Nvidia. You know, I think a lot of people are expecting at this point that Nvidia... You know, they're looking for anything to bring the stock down. And so the fact that they were able to to maintain themselves is kind of impressive. We should probably talk about DeepSeek and and what Jensen Huang said about DeepSeek. He mentioned it pretty much first thing on the call. He said, I'll just quote what he said. He said, quote, "Models like OpenAI Grok 3 and DeepSeek R1 are reasoning models that

• 31:29Ed Elson?

  apply inference time scaling, and reasoning models can consume 100 times more compute." So he kind of sounded bullish on DeepSeek in a way. He then went on to say that DeepSeek is, quote, "an excellent innovation, but even more importantly, it has open sourced a world-class reasoning model. Nearly every AI developer is applying R1 or techniques like R1 to scale their model's performance." So if I were to translate what he's saying about DeepSeek, it's that DeepSeek can only be good for Nvidia. He says, you know, "it can consume more computing power," and I'm not totally sure about that. And I don't really believe him, given what we saw in the research paper where DeepSeek said, "No, we we consume less compute."

• 32:13Ed Elson?

  But he also said that it's "democratizing AI, which will ultimately lead to even more demand for computing power." And on that point, I do agree with him. I think that, you know, if DeepSeek can make this stuff more accessible, then we're going to see more people accessing it and more people using this stuff, which is only going to lead to more demand for compute, which can only benefit Nvidia. This is, we've talked about this before. I think this is Jevon's paradox. A lot of tech bros talk about this. This paradox that the cheaper and more efficient a product gets, the more it is consumed in the real economy. And so Jensen's comments at the start of the call were, "This is what's going to happen. It's more accessible. It can only benefit us."

• 32:57Ed Elson?

  I'm sort of with him. I think the 100 times more compute power comment was probably a little bit misleading. But, you know, I look at this and I think, okay, Nvidia is crushing it. Keep going.

• 33:08Scott Galloway?

  It's great IR. It's great investor relations to turn. A bug into a feature, right? That, that A confronting it head on. Let's talk about DeepSeek and this is why DeepSeek is, is good for us. It's a very well-run company. He's an outstanding CEO. I think Josh Brown said that it's up 100x and Josh, I guess Josh has owned it for 10 years.

• 33:30Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I couldn't believe when he said that. By the way, we were wondering, how much do you think he put in?

• 33:35Scott Galloway?

  I have no idea, but I know I met Josh through his partner Barry Ritholtz, who's also a very smart guy and they're trying to be sort of a, a hybrid between a hedge fund and their business model and Vanguard. And that is every time their AUM goes up, they charge less money, but they're very, they're not stock pickers. Well, I guess they're stock pickers to a certain extent, but they're very much.

• 33:56Ed Elson?

  They're sober about it.

• 33:57Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, they're, they're one of the few funds I've ever thought investing in and even paying fees because they're just very sober kind of level-headed guys and they give it kind of, give it too straight. Cause and oh yeah, those guys are like fun to go out and eat beef and drink bourbon with. They're such like Long Island guys. Like I don't even like basketball.

• 34:14Ed Elson?

  Which is the most important thing in the wealth management business. You need to be.

• 34:18Scott Galloway?

  A hundred percent. Yeah. If I was going to go to a Knicks game with anybody and then go have a big steak, it'd be those guys.

• 34:24Ed Elson?

  Hundred percent.

• 34:25Scott Galloway?

  Look, it's an incredible company. I'm pissed off. I never owned it. I have a difficult time seeing where it goes from here based on, based on how just expensive it has become, but.

• 34:36Ed Elson?

  It was interesting. I mean, I was watching CNBC the night before the earnings and CNBC had probably every single analyst on their roster come on to talk about this topic and specifically to make a big, bold prediction about it. And it was really interesting seeing all of these analysts getting so fired up.

• 34:58Speaker 09

  Investors are awaiting the most anticipated report of the whole earnings season just a couple of hours from now.

• 35:03Speaker 10

  The bottom line is if they can beat $38 billion in sales for the quarter, it's going to be a great quarter.

• 35:07Speaker 11

  What they're going to report this quarter is going to be fantastic.

• 35:10Speaker 12

  You know, this does remind me of the bubble, but it's on steroids. I mean, there's a, there is a data point, a podcast, a rumor every five minutes.

• 35:17Ed Elson?

  By the way, they had Aswath Damodaran on and his prediction was Nvidia is going to beat, but the stock's going to come down a little bit. Aswath absolutely nailed it as he often does. But I, I guess the big takeaway for me from watching that and from seeing all of the memes online, on Twitter, on Instagram, on threads, this is basically like. The Super Bowl for nerds now, for business nerds.

• 35:41Scott Galloway?

  Oh, it's a new sport, 100%.

• 35:43Ed Elson?

  And there was this great data from the team. Google Search, Volume Four, Nvidia beat out at 4:00 PM the day of the earnings. It beat out searches for The New York Times, for Wikipedia, for Instagram, and for ChatGPT. So this really is like, yeah, it's the Business Super Bowl. It's one of those moments where the entire business community is coming together and they're making predictions. And it's a ton of fun. It's a ton of fun for CNBC, too. And I, as someone who's trying to make business news more interesting, I kind of love it.

• 36:15Scott Galloway?

  You know, it'd be a total gangster move is if Elliot convinced Nvidia to become a petroleum company. That'd be a test.

• 36:24Ed Elson?

  I think you should become an activist and maybe you can, you can pitch that next time.

• 36:27Scott Galloway?

  There you go.

• 36:29Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break with a look at the new American Gold Card. If you're enjoying the show so far, hit follow and leave us a review on Profty Markets.

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• 39:00Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. Trump is launching a new gold card program, offering residency and a path to citizenship for wealthy investors, but it comes with a steep price. Participants will need to pay $5 million directly to the US government, with the funds going toward paying down the federal deficit. The program, set to launch in just two weeks, will replace the existing EB5 visa program, which grants visas to foreign investors who finance US projects. However, immigration experts argue that Congress must approve this change first. Scott, I'd like to just quickly start off by clearing something up on this EB5 thing. The Trump administration is saying that this is no different from the EB5 program,

• 39:44Ed Elson?

  which was set up in around 1990, I believe. And this is a program where you pay a million dollars to get a green card. They're saying, well, this is the same. It's just five million. Not quite. The EB5 visa is actually quite different because it's a conditional visa that is dependent on your ability to prove after two years that you have created and invested in a legitimate American business. And you have to prove that you have created at least 10 full time jobs for Americans. So it's different in the fact that it requires actual real investment, not just your money, but your time and your effort and real commitment. And I think to me, that is the crucial difference here. This gold card is very simply pay to play.

• 40:29Ed Elson?

  You hand over the cash, you get the visa. One and done. And I think when it comes to citizenship, that is an important thing to to recognize is you're actually investing your time and your effort and your commitment versus just your money.

• 40:42Scott Galloway?

  Well, this isn't anything new. Europe has a bunch of these programs. They get, I think they garner or different countries in Europe garner about three billion in euros each year from selling different visas. I'm on a tech talent visa here in the UK, where I convinced them that I would bring unique skills and they gave me a five year visa. But there was a similar program, I think, in the first Trump administration, where if you purchased a certain amount of real estate, maybe it was for people out of China, and Canada has these programs. I mean, this isn't anything new. What's what's different about this is the price point. And at $5 million, that's just exceptional.

• 41:21Scott Galloway?

  And someone did some analysis and said that if you if you're going to pay $5 million for a visa, it means you're worth at least $25 million. There are just not that many people that could afford this thing. So this bullshit that we might raise five to 50 trillion dollars, I don't have a problem with it. The only the only thing is, at this price point, if you can't figure out a way to get into America or another Western country for a lot less than this. It means you're on the run from the tax authorities or you're pretty shady. I mean, there's some analogies here. So one of my, when people ask me, by the way, I spoke at the Royal Academy of Arts last night. Ed, I don't know if you heard, if you read about it in the press.

• 42:06Scott Galloway?

  I did hear this, a friend of mine said he met you, this guy. Oh, the, the former Goldman guy came up to me and he's like, I know Ed Elson. I'm like, well, I'm good for you.

• 42:16Scott Galloway?

  You're a nice man. Very cool. The Royal Academy is very cool. Yeah, it was like a London high life for me. Anyways, but people always ask in Q and A, how would you distinguish the US from America? And I say, look, my sense is unfortunately in the UK, most of the people I know, including the people in this room was were very successful people. They're servicing wealth built or made somewhere else. And effectively some form of this was a huge, a hugely successful program for Britain. And that is, I think it was in the nineties. Tony Blair or the aughts put in place really strict private property laws. And that is, he said, I don't care if you're an African warlord or a Russian oligarch.

• 42:57Scott Galloway?

  If you bring a hundred million dollars into the UK and you buy a $30 million house in Mayfair,

• 43:04Scott Galloway?

  they can't come for it. I mean, they, meaning any other government can't come and take your shit away. We, once you have private property here in the UK, or you have money in our banks, no one can come for it. And people would argue it attracted some unsavory characters. At the same time, the majority of the capital and the majority of people attracted were just very successful people. And over the last 30 or 40 years, and I know this firsthand, having come to the UK once or twice a year for the last 40 years, London just got a dramatic facelift because it attracted so much capital. The US attracts people who want to make money. The UK and a lot of these places attract people who want to spend their money or shelter it.

• 43:45Scott Galloway?

  And I wonder what kind of person are we going to attract if they have to spend $5 million to get into the US? One, it's going to be someone very rich. Who, quite frankly, is a little bit in a hurry. And why are they in, okay, they're rich and they're in a hurry and willing to give $5 million to get into the US. That says to me like, okay, the local tax authorities or the local law enforcement is circling, right? And they're closing in on me and I need to get out and get to America. And so I, it'll be, what'll be really interesting. First off, this just isn't going to raise that much money because I just don't think there's that many people.

• 44:29Scott Galloway?

  The market, the total addressable market here is not that big. The most interesting thing about this will be some great investigative journalist will get a source on the inside and he or she will get the names of the 100 people that do this, the first 100, and it's going to be really interesting to profile those people. And in one way or another, what this is, is people on the run would be my guess. People who want to get out of the reach of tax authorities or law enforcement in their host nation because there are cheaper ways to get to America than a $5 million. This is sort of like giving the Trump administration or, and Clinton, Clinton did this too, a huge

• 45:13Scott Galloway?

  donation, hoping for a pardon. To me, this is like effectively a $5 million, you're buying a pardon, if you will, from another nation. Because I wonder if, especially with the Trump administration, if part of the wink wink around this is you can't be extradited by another country.

• 45:30Ed Elson?

  I just want to emphasize the numbers here. I mean, you mentioned how the total addressable market is not that big. I just want to get concrete here. So Trump said, he had this press conference and with the cabinet, he said, if a million people buy the golden visa, that's $5 trillion to pay down our debts. Then he said, if 10 million people buy, quote, which is possible, that's $50 trillion. Let's just be very clear here. Credit Suisse did this analysis of ultra high net worth individuals across the world. So that's people worth $50 million or more. There are only 200 Hundred and sixty four thousand ultra wealthy people in the world. And by the way, a hundred and fifty thousand of those people are American.

• 46:13Ed Elson?

  So that only leaves you with a hundred and fourteen thousand people left over. And only those people would even consider getting this golden visa. I think at most this generates maybe a couple hundred billion dollars. More likely, I think, would be just a few billion dollars. So I just want to be clear about the the numbers here. As you said, your your instinct was it doesn't make sense. I'm looking at the numbers. It does not make sense. Now, the price we pay for that tiny little bit of additional revenue to me is very high. And I'm I hate this. And I'm surprised you don't hate it as much as I do. Because what this is basically saying is that citizenship in America is now for sale.

• 46:56Scott Galloway?

  Well, it has been for a while. Just to be clear, if you have money, you've been able to get into the US for a while.

• 47:01Ed Elson?

  Not with this level of swiftness. I mean, I I don't like this. And I look at you. I think London is the great comparison. I look at what's happened to London. When you go to Knightsbridge, yeah, it's wealthy, but it's also a ghost town. Because you've got hundreds of these ultra luxury apartments with no one in them. Because it's just a vehicle for these Russian billionaires who want to park their money somewhere safe. Usually that money was made in very ugly ways. And so they buy these giant apartments at One Hyde Park. And so America's decided, oh, yeah, we like that. Let's do that. But I need to get your official, your official where you land on this gold visa thing. What I'm hearing from you is this is stupid, but it's not that problematic.

• 47:46Ed Elson?

  Because America has always been for sale.

• 47:48Scott Galloway?

  Every Western nation at one point or another has been selling visas. Has been basically, we live in a capitalist economy. If you have money, you can figure out a way to become a citizen of almost any nation with enough money. And a lot of people would argue the Trump administration is is doing what the government's always done. And Democrats have always done. They're just more transparent and more brazen about it. I've engaged in this arbitrage, and that is Claude DiJocas, arguably one of the two or three most talented people I've ever worked with, Canadian. Went to Yale, a gymnast, just so impressive, great presence, hardworking, working at LT, brings me, says, can I speak to you? Brings me in the comments room and says, I'm really sorry, but I just got a message or a letter from the INS saying I have to return

• 48:32Scott Galloway?

  to Canada. And I'm like, fuck that. I'm like, don't worry about it. I'm like, I can figure this out. I've got money. And, you know, stay put, don't worry about it. And we'll figure this out. I lawyered up with immigration attorneys and Claude has never left the US.

• 48:48Ed Elson?

  Oh, really? Because I have all my, I have a lot of talented friends who are having issues with this. I have a Canadian friend.

• 48:54Scott Galloway?

  It's gotten much worse the last couple of years.

• 48:57Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 48:57Scott Galloway?

  The last two or three years, basically since the first Trump administration, and this is just shooting ourselves in the foot, that we're heavy handed with the wrong people. We need to have borders. We need to be, I'm, I'm all for deporting criminals. I'm all for, the whole immigration debate, and we're going way past here, but going to the low end. If you wanted to solve this illegal immigration problem, all you would do is find employers. But no one wants to do that. But at the high end, this is just, it's again, another distraction. It's not going to raise that much money. The most interesting thing is the cast of characters it's going to draw, who actually are willing to pay $5 million bucks so they can camp out. It almost feels like the most expensive witness protection program in history.

• 49:44Ed Elson?

  That's good. All right, let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see the unemployment rate for February, as well as earnings from Costco, Broadcom, and CrowdStrike. Scott, do you have any predictions for us?

• 49:55Scott Galloway?

  I was reading that essentially, if you look at the history of different sectors or categories of stocks, and 100 being the most expensive they've ever been, and zero being, or one being, the least expensive they've ever been, US growth stocks are at 98 right now, meaning that only 2% of the time in history have been trading at higher multiples on earnings. At the same time, European value stocks?

• 50:21Scott Galloway?

  Are trading at 2%, meaning 98% of the time, they have traded at higher multiples throughout economic history or modern economic history. And so this isn't a prediction, but this is what I'm doing. I am starting to sell down some of my US tech stocks, Apple, Amazon, and some others, and rotating into these very boring European value ETFs.

• 50:45Ed Elson?

  Good luck.

• 50:46Scott Galloway?

  But that's, that's what I love about this strategy because about the time everybody throws in the towel, I remember probably the best investment, I would say in terms of a lack of volatility is in 2010, I started buying homes, actually my partner, I can't take credit, buying homes out of foreclosure in Florida. And nobody, nobody wanted Florida real estate. And it didn't seem like it was ever going to get fixed. That's when you invest. And I feel like just your reaction, that means it's time to invest in European value companies. And there's still some great companies, Nestle, L'Oréal, you know, British Petroleum, Shell, Mercedes. Anyway, so I

• 51:30Scott Galloway?

  am, I think this rotation is about to happen, or it might be three months, it might be three years. I think if over, if you have a 10 year time horizon, I think you trim out of US growth and you trim into Florida real estate, which right now is European value.

• 51:51Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Allison Weiss. Mia Salvario is our research lead. Isabella Kinsel is our research associate. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Join us on Thursday for our conversation with Jonathan Cantor, only on Prof G Markets.