Big Tech Breaks Away From the Pack as Markets Stumble on Tariff Blitz

Scott and Ed break down earnings from Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Amazon, with Scott identifying a shift in the cloud space. Ed explains how the market is reacting to capex spending and what that tells us about investor sentiment. Then they turn to the latest tariff blitz. Ed unpacks why many of the so-called “trade deals” aren’t really deals, and Scott explains why tech seems shielded from the fallout while traditional American companies are feeling the pain. Finally, they dive into the robotaxi wars, debating whether companies should go vertical and which player is best positioned to dominate. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets 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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• 0:59Scott Galloway?

  Today's number, 1 billion. That's how many birds skyscrapers kill every year. And just, as you know, I'm very much into pets. And just a little pro tip for parents thinking about getting their kids their first pet. Absolutely, the best beginner pet is a hamster. They live just for five days and don't need any food or water.

• 1:21Speaker 04

  1977. No me diga no, me lo crecían. Todo lo que cambió lo era diferente. En el año que nace la sepia.

• 1:30Scott Galloway?

  How are you, Ed? How are you?

• 1:33Ed Elson?

  I'm just relieved that it wasn't an animal sex joke. That's what I was waiting for.

• 1:38Scott Galloway?

  I don't criticize your hobbies. Don't criticize mine. So the guy next to me in Florida, my neighbor, he's, he's pretty much an awful person. And, but he has a zoo over there. The guy, I think he's the largest contributor to PETA. And so I have to be, I think, well, he's not all bad, right? And he has tons of like these stray dogs over there. And he loves animals. I'm convinced, like vegetarians aren't, aren't meat. You know, they're not animal lovers. They're plant haters. I'm convinced if someone is way too into their pets, it means because they just haven't figured out a way to get along with people. It's not, it's a red flag. If you're, if you're, if you meet someone who's really

• 2:22Scott Galloway?

  into their pet, it's just kind of like, okay, that's a red flag.

• 2:26Ed Elson?

  I think I agree with that. Aren't you quite into your pets?

• 2:28Scott Galloway?

  See above, red flag.

• 2:32Scott Galloway?

  I'm super into my dogs.

• 2:33Ed Elson?

  I think what we learned recently is, um, yeah, that you don't love people that much, right?

• 2:39Scott Galloway?

  I'm an introvert. No, I, if, Ed, if I were reasonably good with people, I would have already announced my presidential campaign and be putting some of this money. I'm hopefully going to make off of Figma into a series of well, precisely calibrated and targeted TikTok ads pretending to care about the country and then announce my candidacy in a year. But here's the thing, you actually, I've heard AI still can't make you not meet people if you're running for president. And I just don't see myself like eating fried Snickers at some.

• 3:07Ed Elson?

  Yeah, you can't outsource that.

• 3:09Scott Galloway?

  Some Iowa fair and pretending to care about, you know, the family farm, which has been industrialized and is monetizing our health with corn syrup subsidies that should be eliminated. Yeah, I'd go over real big there.

• 3:21Scott Galloway?

  Go Hawkeyes.

• 3:22Ed Elson?

  This is, this is what I think you need to emphasize. When everyone says that you need to run for president, I feel like you've been saying, oh, I'm not sure I want to. I think, I think the point being you couldn't win because you wouldn't be down to hang out with all these random people, right? I think it's just, uh, it wouldn't be possible.

• 3:39Scott Galloway?

  Well, so first off, I'd be outstanding. I can see the matrix. I have a feel for geopolitics and the intersection between our military, our economy, healthcare and shareholder value. And I don't, I'm getting to the point now where I don't really give a fuck what anyone thinks of me, which I think is going to be required in the next president. The next president needs to be somebody who gets no headlines and is deeply unpopular for about 20 years. And then people can look back and go, oh yeah, that whole deficit thing you did and socializing medicine. But no, I'm, um, I mean, think about how much fun we're going to have the next few years interviewing candidates. Everyone's nice to us. Everyone wants to be on our podcast. My prediction, Mark Cuban's going to just decide he loves that Ed Elson. He's going to be like, I love that Ed Elson. I'll come on his pod anytime.

• 4:22Ed Elson?

  I'm waiting for that to happen. I haven't met any famous politicians. I've maybe had, I think I've had maybe two interactions with politicians so far. I'm still waiting for that to happen to me. The trouble is you've got another political podcast, so they're all busy kissing Jesse's ass. As for me, they don't know who I am. I get to meet the CEO of, of Vertical Aerospace.

• 4:45Scott Galloway?

  That guy was cool. And just so you know, it's not that Jess is the co-host of my political podcast. It's that she's strikingly more attractive and much more, and much more intelligent than you. So.

• 4:56Ed Elson?

  It's all unfair. It's all stacked against me.

• 4:58Scott Galloway?

  You're leaning into your rich white aggrievance culture. You know who I think you're going to end up interviewing and he'll, that's my prediction. And I actually don't believe he just wants to be Treasury Secretary. I think he's going to run for president. Jamie Dimon.

• 5:12Ed Elson?

  I would love to land that interview.

• 5:14Scott Galloway?

  If Jamie Dimon comes on Prop she markets, let's just sit down and hope he's not listening. That means he's running for president. And by the way, I think, I think he'd be really good.

• 5:22Ed Elson?

  How do we do that?

• 5:23Scott Galloway?

  We call some comms person to JP Morgan and convince him we're going to do nothing but give him softballs.

• 5:28Ed Elson?

  I'm down. I'm very happy to do that. I will give him softballs all day long.

• 5:32Scott Galloway?

  I'm usually, I'm not a fan of business people being president. And, you know, we're kind of zero for one right now. But I think he could be, I think he's an outstanding leader.

• 5:41Ed Elson?

  I agree. He's great. I don't know why we need to make the jump to he needs to run for president. But I guess the point being.

• 5:46Scott Galloway?

  There's nothing in between that?

• 5:47Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I feel like there's, there's a.

• 5:48Scott Galloway?

  Kind of being head of JP Morgan is sort of being like president. Do you realize JP Morgan is worth more than I think the 10 biggest banks in Europe right now?

• 5:55Ed Elson?

  Unbelievable.

• 5:57Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, but it's not too big to fail. Don't worry. Don't worry. Some rogue trader in Singapore loses a trillion dollars. And Jamie calls the president and says, okay, either bail me out or I'm taking the economy with me. Yeah, that's, that's going to be a real call. Anyways.

• 6:10Ed Elson?

  Well, should we get into this episode?

• 6:11Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, let's do the headlines.

• 6:22Ed Elson?

  Most of the magnificent seven reported earnings last week, giving investors a closer look at how tariffs are hitting big tech and what to expect for the rest of the year. So Scott, we'll just go through them one by one. We'll start here with Microsoft. Microsoft beat expectations on the top and bottom lines fueled by strong cloud growth. For the first time, it revealed the size of its Azure public cloud business now pulling in over $75 billion in annual revenue. Shares in Microsoft jumped more than 7%. And it briefly became the second company after Nvidia to hit a $4 trillion market cap. Scott, initial reactions to Microsoft, and then we'll get to Meta and Amazon and Apple.

• 7:02Scott Galloway?

  Just these companies are.

• 7:04Speaker 06

  I feel like there's two economies right now. I feel like there's the Magnificent Seven and everything else. If the Magnificent Seven were a country, it'd have the third largest GDP. And I was especially blown away by Microsoft's CapEx. So the market is the tail that wags the dog, right? And we talked about how Oracle shifted from cash generative, buying back stock, to going all in to become an infrastructure AI company, massively increasing CapEx. And essentially, the market is saying, every time you announce you're increasing your CapEx in AI by a billion dollars, we'll take the value of your company up two or three billion. So everyone is just, I mean, this really does feel, it's extraordinary.

• 7:46Speaker 06

  So this quarter, Microsoft announced they spent $30 billion on CapEx, and they annualized that $120 billion. Microsoft, one company headquartered in Seattle that makes PowerPoint and Azure and Cloud, et cetera, is spending more money on AI infrastructure than Germany and Israel spend on their military combined. It's approaching what Russia spent. Russia is considered this fierce war machine that is literally invading Europe right now. And Microsoft's allocation of resources to AI and technology is approaching what Russia spends on the military. I mean, people just don't get a sense for how much capital that

• 8:30Speaker 06

  is. Anyways, Microsoft arguably had the most impressive one. And the thing that, as goes the cloud, so goes these companies. And if you went from top to bottom, kind of best to worst, I would argue it was Microsoft at the top with 33% growth in their cloud unit. And I believe that Amazon disappointed because they only grew 18%. Basically, as diverse as these companies are, the analysts and the market kind of zero in on their cloud units.

• 9:03Ed Elson?

  Well, it's interesting, the point you say there about CapEx, where You're right. Microsoft did ramp up CapEx. And by the way, we think back to last quarter, where they started to sort of decelerate and pull it back a little bit. And Meta was the one that was accelerating. And now we're seeing a little bit of a shift. Microsoft is accelerating again. Meta, it's not decelerating, but it's not accelerating at the rate that we saw. And, you know, you made the comment that if you add a billion dollars to in CapEx spend, then you see the valuation rise two or three billion dollars. Actually, the market's sort of torn on this.

• 9:46Ed Elson?

  And this is what is so interesting is sometimes, and it certainly was the case last quarter, where if you see a massive increase in CapEx spend, the market gets anxious about that and they say, why are you spending all this money? That's hurting your cash balance. And, you know, so I've always been a little bit confused by that.

• 10:10Ed Elson?

  How the market genuinely feels about the idea of spending all of this freaking money on capital expenditures on AI, where it seemed that the prevailing narrative was these companies are overspending and it's dangerous and they need to just focus on growing their revenues. But to your point, it might be now switching.

• 10:33Ed Elson?

  And it might be as we had a Wedbush Securities Analyst on the other week, where he made the point, which I think I agree with, which is that you have to spend money to make money. And it's interesting how the narrative is kind of teetering. It's sort of flip flopping and no one can really figure out or decide whether we think it's a good thing, they are investing in the future, or does it mean they've gotten way out of control? They're too excited about this AI thing and they're way over investing. And I don't know, actually. I'm not sure where I stand on that. And I'm not sure the market knows where it stands on that either.

• 11:16Speaker 06

  Well, the other thing that's probably a chaser here is I think the big beautiful bill, one of the provisions is that you can you can expense 100% of the investment in the year you make it. So that right there, if you will, makes these investments less expensive. So that probably, I mean, everything, as I think about the Trump administration and the things they're passing here. It feels as if the market, I mean, obviously, there's amazing companies, but legislatively or from our tax policy, our economic policy, tariff policy, everything is okay. Shove as much money as possible towards our winners.

• 11:55Ed Elson?

  To that point, nearly half of the earnings growth in the S and P 500 this year has come from tech. And more than 50% of equity market returns since 2023 have been generated by AI or AI related stocks. So, yeah, that is, that is what the stock market is telling us. Just to keep going through these individual earnings, let's look at Meta really quickly. Huge beat, shares surged more than 10%. He, Mark Zuckerberg, explained how AI tools were driving this efficiency.

• 12:33Ed Elson?

  And then, as I noted, they're sort of moderating or they're at least not accelerating their capex spend, which, you know, who knows how the market feels about that, but the shares popped. I think probably most remarkably, you look at their active users, which increased 6%. Which doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but then you also have to realize and remember the fact that half of the world uses a Meta product. So the idea that you are increasing a base of three and a half billion.

• 13:08Ed Elson?

  To by six percent. It's just unbelievable. The fact that they are able to continue to increase that. And I don't have the the exact date in front of me, but I believe Mark Zuckerberg is up to number three in in richest men in the world. Just an incredible quarter for Meta.

• 13:28Speaker 06

  I like I couldn't happen to a more dangerous motherfucker. I it's staggering. One of the best business minds in history. Their capex was doubled this year to seventeen billion. So far, they've spent thirty billion this year. Again, they're only spending, you know, they're only spending on capex what France spends on their military. Their super intelligence team has made a ton of headlines for basically Zuckerberg does have probably some of the biggest balls in the history of business. He's not afraid to pay someone three hundred million dollars to come one AI research for a group. Its average pay package for its top fifty percent hires in AI exceeds the average salary of NBA, MLB and Premier League players. I actually think that makes kind of sense, right?

• 14:10Speaker 06

  And I would argue in many ways, someone who's gonna, you know, develop the next AI application for mothers with kids with childhood diabetes probably deserves more money than the forward for the Miami Heat. But anyways, I deserve is a dangerous word. And that Meta said compensation related to hiring will be the second largest driver of growth in capex. He has been unafraid to make what felt like irrational prices and acquisition. I mean, it's it's actually kind of interesting because one of the, when you think about compensation, just the psychology of it, the his ability or one of his strengths as a business person has been what I'll call his immaturity. And that is, he's he's he's, I don't think a businessman over the age of sixty would

• 14:54Speaker 06

  have purchased a company with nineteen billion nineteen people for a billion dollars. That was Instagram. That had never been done before. A board would have gone in the way and they would have said, oh, no way, crazy young kids, no, no way. He's calling outside the lines. He doesn't care what average compensation norms are, average acquisition norms are. If he sees strategy and advantage in something, he sees the matrix and is willing to pay up. And the lesson here, we was trying to draw or deduct a lesson for our young, our young listeners, is that the biggest advantage of starting your own company is the following, beyond sort of the paternal reward when it works. But there is a norm. There's always a band in compensation. And that is when David Solomon has a star trader or star banker,

• 15:38Speaker 06

  even if that banker just absolutely blows away everything and does the biggest deals in the world. He thinks, okay, really good heads of M and H have traditionally made 15 million a year or 10 million a year. I'm going to pay this guy 12 million. When it's your company, there's no arbiter. There's no guardrails. You can, you know, Mark Zuckerberg was never going to work for anybody else and aggregate 80 billion dollars in compensation. Because if there was any kind of sentient decision making above that person, they would think Mark's amazing. He's absolutely amazing. This is why Tim Cook is worth 2 billion and not 200.

• 16:15Ed Elson?

  Sundar Pichai only just became a billionaire. Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 06

  I mean, think about, think about how much value that guy has added. Because he's not the entrepreneur, he's the employee. When you own the car wash, the marketplace doesn't care that your, your in-laws have lent you money and that you're going out of business and you're really stressed and about to have a heart attack. The market doesn't care. At the same time, if you have five car washes and you're someone with a high school, you know, you dropped out of high school in 11th grade, but you're making 7 million dollars a year in cash flow from your car washes. Again, the market doesn't care. It's yours. So this is, he to a certain extent has decided, whatever the norms are around compensation, around acquisition prices, I don't care. I see the matrix. I see the value.

• 17:00Speaker 06

  And I am unbound by these guardrails of traditional norms around compensation or acquisition prices.

• 17:06Ed Elson?

  So good. Amazon quickly also beat expectations. AWS revenue up 18%, which beat expectations, but it's behind Microsoft and it's behind Google pretty significantly in terms of growth. Operating income for the current quarter fell short of expectations. Shares fell more than 7% in after hours. So it's an interesting story here with Amazon. Again, the market's still just trying to figure out how it feels about AI. I mean, it beat on, on. Expectations, the AWS revenue, but you look at the growth and you compare it to Azure, which is growing around forty percent compared to Google Cloud, growing more than thirty percent.

• 17:52Ed Elson?

  That's not really a reason to be all that excited. And, you know, the CEO, Andy Jassy, didn't give much of a real explanation as for the gap. We also heard a little bit about tariffs, but not really from Amazon, like very vague and imprecise language. But Jassy said that tariffs haven't meaningfully affected customer behavior. So that's Amazon earnings. But then you look at Apple earnings, and Apple's a little bit of a different story because they're not in this CapEx AI game. They're not renting out data centers in the same way that Meta, Microsoft,

• 18:31Ed Elson?

  and Amazon are. But there are some things that we can, we can compare Apple to, and one of them is tariffs. So just go through the headline numbers here. Strong than expected iPhone sales, not its best quarterly revenue growth since 2021. China sales up four percent. But this tariff stuff, Tim Cook was pretty specific, and he told us what was going on. They racked up $800 million in tariff costs last quarter, expected to be more than $1 billion in tariff costs next quarter. And then, of course, we did see this massive jump in iPhone sales. iPhone sales up

• 19:13Ed Elson?

  thirteen percent, overall sales up ten percent, which was a great quarter, and the market liked it. But I think really interesting, and I really appreciate Tim Cook saying this, I don't know if he had to, but he said that one point of that ten-point revenue growth was pull forward. And what is pull forward, this is customers knowing that tariffs are taking place, knowing that that probably means that prices are going to go up. They heard what was going on with Trump saying that Tim Cook needs to move his supply chains and all of the drama around supply chains moving China to India, back to America, et cetera, et cetera. Bottom line, customers are worried prices are going to go up, so they upgraded early.

• 19:58Ed Elson?

  And Tim Cook specifically said that. He said, that's why we saw this big growth. So we got a lot more detail from Tim Cook, specifically on tariffs in this report. We learned how it's affecting the business in a negative way. And then we also learned how it's affecting the business in a positive way. Specifically, higher growth because customers are getting ready for price increases.

• 20:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, although I would argue that's not really a benefit. It's just almost like prepaying. And for him to acknowledge that, I think is, you got to respect that. Most CEOs would be tempted to say, oh, no, it's the quality of our products. Just to go back to Amazon for a second, you know, Amazon's cloud group only grew 18% versus Azure and Google Cloud, which were in the 30s. But, but what you also have to acknowledge is that AWS has a bigger business. So it's growing off of a bigger base. I would imagine, though, that Jassy is kind of looking, that people are saying that the cloud unit is probably feeling some pain from not having Jassy's leadership.

• 21:04Speaker 06

  Because it feels as if this might be the quarter where leadership in cloud, which was squarely with Amazon, may have been passed in Microsoft's Azure, that it's no longer Amazon. AWS is kind of the default leader in cloud. That's how I read this quarter, that there are now kind of several leaders, if you will. And the stock responded to that and the stock went down. But some of these other businesses, people, again, just the scale here, you don't think about Amazon as an advertiser. The business they're in, Amazon Media Group, where P and G pays money to get Pampers to come up every time Love is typed into the golden box. They're able to extract, that is now a $60 billion business.

• 21:49Speaker 06

  So. They're doing more money than almost every in advertising than any media company. And people don't even think of them as a media company. And so that's bigger than Omnicom's total revenue for the past four years. They've had their biggest day ever and for on the retail group. And they're using robots to enhance warehouse and delivery efficiency. Their operating margins are now 11% up from just 6% two years ago and 2% in 2022. So they're starting to kick in with efficiency. I wonder how much that is automation or AI. And to your point about Apple, I would argue, so I've been selling down my Apple shares, which I've held for 16 years, 17 years.

• 22:32Speaker 06

  And the reason why is the company trades at a P of 31 or 33 and it's it's really not growing much. And so when I look at Alphabet trading at 21 and growing and a stronger cloud offering and Waymo, and I look at Apple, which has an amazing brand, but isn't growing and it's more expensive. I feel like one thing is undervalued and one thing is overvalued. And poor Tim Cook has shifted iPhone production for the US market from China to India. And then Trump immediately pops up and says, oh, I'm putting these onerous tariffs on India. But again, the most profitable product in the history of our modern economy is the iPhone.

• 23:13Speaker 06

  60% gross margins, which is greater than Ferrari or engagement rings. And yet, I mean, if you had a car company that could sell Ferraris, price point of a Ferrari, margins of Ferrari, but have the production volume of Toyota, that's what Apple is. So just for some context, Crocs sells 116 million pairs annually. Ben and Jerry sells 200 million pints in the US and Apple sells 230 million iPhones. I'm not sure what's more damaging to a kid's self-esteem, an iPhone or Crocs, but.

• 23:49Speaker 06

  That's child abuse. When you look back and see pictures of you wearing Crocs, you're gonna, you're gonna need therapy for that. Anyways, I lost my, I lost my train of thought. They have $133 billion in cash. They could fund the Russian army this year. Putin could go, Tim, this is Vlad. Remember when we met in Malta? Can you fund the army for a year? Well, yeah, I got it on hand. I got it on. Sure. Why not?

• 24:13Ed Elson?

  Well, to that point, and then we'll, we'll move on, but they do have $133 billion in cash. And everyone wants to know what is Apple's AI strategy? And the analyst asked Tim Cook on the call, what's going on with AI? What's the deal? Because of course, Apple's been trying to get into AI. They had Apple Intelligence, which everyone was super excited about. I thought it was kind of a gimmick and it appears that it kind of is. They are way behind on AI, but he said that the company is, quote, "very open to M and A that accelerates our roadmap." So that definitely blasts open the door to the possibility that we could see an AI acquisition from Apple. There have been talks around partnerships with other companies.

• 24:58Ed Elson?

  There have been rumors about buying perplexity, but certainly an AI acquisition from Apple. All these other companies have been, I mean, they've basically just been stealing other AI startup teams. That's what Mark Zuckerberg's been doing. But it's certainly going to be possible that Apple will buy an AI company perhaps over the next year or so. So it was interesting to see that.

• 25:21Speaker 06

  Tim, you come to, Tim, you come to my dacha on Vladivostok. We do cold plunge.

• 25:27Speaker 06

  I like the idea of those two being friends. I think it'd be hilarious.

• 25:30Ed Elson?

  I can see that. You're still, you're still on that. You're still on that subject.

• 25:33Speaker 06

  I want to see them both shirtless on a horse. I think that's the friendship we've been waiting for.

• 25:38Ed Elson?

  I gave you the AI insight. You're still on Russian cold plunges with Tim Cook.

• 25:44Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break with an update on the tariffs. If you're enjoying the show so far and you haven't subscribed, be sure to give Profit Your Market a follow wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 27:33Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. Over the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration has unveiled a wave of trade deals, though, as we've discussed, many of them are really frameworks rather than finalized deals. First came Japan. The US set tariffs at 15%, down from the previously threatened 25%. Trump also said Japan would invest $550 billion in the US and open its markets to American autos and rice. Next was the European Union. The deal mirrored Japan's with a 15% tariff on most EU goods and a claim from Trump that the bloc would invest 10%. Six hundred billion dollars and a similar framework with South Korea followed. Then on Thursday, Trump announced tariffs as high as fifty percent on more than sixty countries

• 28:16Ed Elson?

  that are set to begin on August seventh, a delay from the original August first deadline. Two standouts are Canada and Mexico. As we record, Canada actively faces a baseline tariff rate of thirty five percent outside of previous car valves, while Mexico's tariff rate of twenty five percent got a ninety day extension. The major indices all declined on Friday following the tariff blitz. Okay, it's been a big week of tariffs and a big week of quote unquote deals. We are seeing the art of the deal in effect, or as I would prefer to put it, the art of the framework of the deal or the art of the concept of the deal.

• 28:57Ed Elson?

  Because all of the deals that we've seen, as I have said, are not really deals. None of them have been legally binding. None of them have been signed with any signatures. We're not seeing any actual contracts. We're not seeing any treaties. All we're seeing are these claims that we have a deal, followed up by some signs from the other side, that actually there is no deal because they start backing out of it. And we can go through what those are. For example, with Japan last week, where it was supposed to be a five hundred fifty billion dollar investment, and then it turns out that only one percent of that is investment. The other ninety nine percent of it is a loan, i.e. I guess they just buy US treasuries

• 29:40Ed Elson?

  like every foreign nation does. We've seen some developments with the EU, which again would make it look like not really a deal. I guess I'm droning on here, but your reactions to a week of quote unquote deals, you know where I stand.

• 29:57Scott Galloway?

  The most hilarious thing about these announcements is they all include some like crazy number of indicated investment where, you know, Japan's gonna, Japan pledged five hundred billion in investments in US industries and, and just, you know, you're getting a million dollar bonus this year. It's, well, I'm, I'm talking about a compensation framework for the team.

• 30:16Ed Elson?

  You're gonna extend me a million dollar line of credit.

• 30:20Scott Galloway?

  Let me know the rate. I pledged to invest $550 billion in your overall well being and compensation over the next 30 years. These, I don't even know how you would measure this shit. They're totally unenforceable, but again, it goes to the notion that the world has figured out what he wants is a press release. He doesn't want, he doesn't want a trade agreement that benefits Americans. He wants a press release, so throw in a big number and agree to it, nod your head and he'll, he'll, he'll think it's great. There was this great article in the Wall Street Journal talking about GDP. And even GDP is becoming a strange number because GDP pops was really strong because they add in or they subtract out imports because imports are manufactured domestically. You subtract out imports.

• 31:03Scott Galloway?

  Import volume quarter on quarter was down 30 plus percent. So I'm for just getting some sort of, some sort of agreement or an agreement to move on and get back to business because so many companies, I have a friend who owns especially products companies, like it's just so hard to figure out how to plan our business. And then the other observation I would make is that we have a global economy where it's becoming such that if you pull on a string, the whole thing can come undone. And what is that string? That string is seven companies with a large association on AI that are now responsible for 40% of the market cap of the S and P, which is 50% of the global market cap of all stocks. And these companies are, I don't want to say doing too well.

• 31:48Scott Galloway?

  You never want to let your, you never want to slow down your thoroughbreds, but look at their earnings. Look at, if you were to sort of bifurcate the economy into two buckets, that is the economy that is somewhat impacted by a slowdown or actual tariffs directly. That's everyone from P and G to Ford Motor, you know, Caterpillar, great American companies, right? The kind of industrial, bigger employers, not as profitable, but great American companies. And then there's the tech guys. What has happened here? This has been a giant distraction, tax, clusterfuck inability to plan their business of the of the kind of 493 companies that aren't the magnificent seven. And if you thought, what would be good for the economy?

• 32:29Scott Galloway?

  Some sort of legislative or executive action that gives even more power and more money and more market cap to the magnificent seven at the cost of the 493 or the other way around? So this is the two big announcements from the Trump administration are an AI policy that will transfer wealth from the creative communities to tech communities, basically saying there is no IP protection, AI can do whatever the fuck it wants. And also transferring money and capital from traditional companies to the tech companies. These guys, Meta and Alphabet, have not slowed down at all. They're not worried. These tariffs don't affect them at all. So what do we have? If you're a money manager and you're trying to predict, okay, what companies look good

• 33:11Scott Galloway?

  or not, at this point, you even have another reason to go, oh, fuck it. I'm not even going to waste my time looking at traditional companies. I'm just pouring it all into Meta and Alphabet and Broadcom and Nvidia because these guys don't appear to be, they appear to be immune from all this distraction and bullshit, this tax that every traditional company in the US has to pay indirectly or directly. So what have we done? Again, and this is my investment strategy. My investment strategy is basically slowly been moving to 0.1%. I think income inequality is going to get even worse, even worse. Anyways, your thoughts, Ed?

• 33:45Ed Elson?

  I think it's such an important point. And I think actually a better distinction, you make a distinction between sort of the traditional P and G type companies versus the digital tech companies. I think the distinction is literally just the distinction between physical goods and digital goods. And if you're Mark Zuckerberg or Sundar Pichai, you're probably sitting there thinking, why on earth have we decided that we're going to tax items that live in the physical world versus the digital world? What is the reasoning for that? What is the? What is the point? But they're not going to say anything, of course, because why would you want to say anything?

• 34:28Ed Elson?

  We're going to just tax all of these companies that make actual stuff that you can hold in your hand, and then we're not going to do it for the tech companies. Why are we doing that? We don't really know. But to your point, that is what we're seeing in the markets, where we're seeing this explosion in the tech stocks, where for whatever reason, they just don't have to deal with this with this tax that's coming in the form of tariffs. Meanwhile, the manufacturers, the people who make stuff, they are having to deal with it. And so it is, as you say, widening the gap, increasing the bifurcation, especially when you look at the performance between, say, the S and P 500, or we could just look at like the top 10, 10 stocks in the S and P versus the Russell 2000 versus the small caps,

• 35:11Ed Elson?

  which have been way underperforming this year for exactly the reasons that you described. And so, yeah, if you're a tech company that ships software, you don't get a tariff. That's not something you have to deal with. Why? I don't know. That's just what we've decided. Maybe because it's easier to track physical goods. I don't really know. But that's what's happening.

• 35:33Scott Galloway?

  That's because he's got the tech bros are up his ass. Peter Thiel owns the vice president. He's got tech whispering in his ear. We love you. We're smarter than you. We'll, we'll figure out a way to make sure the algorithms like you. We have a ton of money. He respects money.

• 35:50Ed Elson?

  Maybe it is just that. It's if a rich person shows up and asks me for something, I'm more interested in what they have to say.

• 35:56Scott Galloway?

  In my opinion, the most outrageous one, and some of this is affection. I absolutely love Brazil. I'm going there in two or three weeks, is Brazil has been threatened with 50% tariff rates, which would match the highest tariff applied to any country in the liberation day program. And that's despite the fact that last year, the United States had a $7.5 billion trade surplus with Brazil. So, okay, we're, we're on the right side of this, according to you, Mr. President. Instead of economic reality, what is driving this ridiculously punitive tariff rate? The fact that Brazil now has a stronger democracy than America and wants to hold Bolsonaro accountable for an insurrection? And he's decided, well, I don't like that. So that would be like me.

• 36:39Scott Galloway?

  Putting on a tariff, threatening a tariff with American Eagle unless they can convince Sydney Sweeney to go on a date with me, which could happen, which could happen. I can see going there. I think he's creating cloud cover for me. Anyway, this is, this is not what you're supposed to do in a democracy. It's not a way to run a, you don't, if you're the CEO of a company, you try to, you try to reward, you know, you try to reward outcomes, not personalities or behaviors or who kisses your ass the most. And the president absolutely has to be in the business of going to Congress and passing laws that correctly or incorrectly, systemically affect or don't affect everyone.

• 37:20Scott Galloway?

  Otherwise, this really is, king is the right term. He's decided, oh, here's, he's King Joffrey. I mean, it's just like, whatever my sugars or sugar level is that day, but this is not the way to run a government. I think, I think the rest of the world has basically said, give him a press release with some big number. And meanwhile, you know, meanwhile, we continue to have, I don't know, the most anxious, obese and depressed generation coming up in history. And, oh, yeah. Anyway, here we are.

• 37:50Ed Elson?

  We're saying that these deals aren't deals, right? That's, that's our view. And what I have heard from other people, both online and by more MAGA leaning acquaintances.

• 38:06Scott Galloway?

  All your friends, your young male, aren't all young men, Trumpers?

• 38:10Ed Elson?

  They're all swung right. Yeah. The, the claim is that that's TDS. That's Trump Derangement Syndrome. And the idea is that it's like, well, why are you so obsessed with this, this idea of getting a signature? Like, why does, you're just nitpicking, you're finding reasons to say that it's not a deal. And you're just saying, because you don't have something signed, that's your reason why it's not a deal? That's a pathetic reason to call it not a deal. And I just want to point out that, no, this is not the TDS talking. This is the facts talking. The reason that the signature is important, the reason why it matters, is because as we have seen over and over again with Trump

• 38:55Ed Elson?

  and his deal making, is that when you don't have a signature, the deal doesn't happen. That's what we keep seeing. And it's what we saw with Japan. I mean, we've seen it before. We saw, we saw with, with China in the first administration. And we've been over this in the daily episodes. $200 billion in investment that never happened because nothing was signed. We saw, we saw it with Stargate. We saw it with Saudi Arabia. And we're seeing it again this week. We saw it with Japan. We saw it with the European Union. And by the way, this is some information we later learned after the quote unquote, "deal" came out. We later learned from the EU Commission that the investment, that $600 billion investment, that investment is dependent on, quote, "the intentions of private companies",

• 39:39Ed Elson?

  which the EU and Brussels has no control over. By the way, we also thought the EU was going to lower tariffs on all American goods to zero. We later learned a clarification that the change only applies to certain products, not all of them. So the point being, if you don't sign anything, we have evidence it's not a deal. And you have to ask the question, why aren't they signing anything? Why wouldn't Brussels put pen to paper? Because they, oh, they didn't have time? No, it's because they don't want to do that deal. Because the deal doesn't make sense for them and they're not going to uphold their end of the bargain. And this is why signatures are important.

• 40:22Ed Elson?

  This isn't TDS, oh, I'm nitpicking the signature. No, that's what makes a deal a deal, because that's what shows you that it's real and that it's not just talk.

• 40:31Scott Galloway?

  That's their way of saying, I do not have a fucking cogent argument to refute the argument you have just put forward. So I'm going to accuse you of being deranged. I'm, I'm sorry. I, I think we have a president that is convicted felon, who now is being very credibly associated with pedophilia. I, I don't see that as derangement. I see that as pattern recognition. And it's very effective because it merely says to somebody, it merely accuses someone of being mentally ill and emotional.

• 41:02Ed Elson?

  Right.

• 41:03Scott Galloway?

  And that's hard to say, no, I'm not mentally ill nor emotional. But this is, this is their way of surrendering. Whenever anyone uses the D word, they're saying, I don't have an argument to refute what you've just said.

• 41:16Ed Elson?

  Yes, exactly. And it's become such a crutch. And it is so funny how anytime you put a coach in argument forward, yeah, it's, oh my God, he's losing it. He's, he's having, he's throwing a fit on live TV.

• 41:29Scott Galloway?

  We've been radicalized by Mother Jones.

• 41:32Ed Elson?

  Yeah, exactly. And the more, I mean, it's just, it doesn't hold water anymore. One thing that I think we should also bring up, this copper tariff, we got another, some more news last week. As you'll remember, Trump imposed the copper tariff at the beginning of July, on July 9th. We learned last week that actually there is an exemption for refined copper, which is kind of a big deal because it turns out refined copper makes up 90% of all copper imports into the US. And so after that happened, well, the copper market crashed. Copper futures fell 22%. And I just want to give you your credit here.

• 42:13Ed Elson?

  A few weeks ago, when this copper tariff came out, you said that it was taco and you recommended on this podcast that it might be a good idea to short copper.

• 42:24Scott Galloway?

  Every market is slowly but surely learning. This is all jazz hands. The copper market freaked out and spiked, so the trade is to go short copper right now.

• 42:37Ed Elson?

  So for anyone who listened to Scott's advice, congrats, because the copper market just completely plummeted on one announcement where he literally reversed the entire decision. 90% of copper is now not subject to tariffs.

• 42:52Scott Galloway?

  But most importantly, do you think Sydney Sweeney listens to the podcast?

• 42:57Scott Galloway?

  I'm sorry.

• 42:58Ed Elson?

  She's already up. She's already up on her AEO stock. Yeah.

• 43:01Scott Galloway?

  She deserves every dollar.

• 43:03Ed Elson?

  She's taken up a lot of mental real estate for you. I've noticed popping up a lot in these podcasts.

• 43:09Scott Galloway?

  I'm just interested in the intersection between especially apparel and the influencer market. I find it fascinating. I find it fascinating.

• 43:18Ed Elson?

  One thing before we move on from this tariff story that I'd like to get your reactions to.

• 43:25Ed Elson?

  There's some new data that we saw, which shows that after the Trump tariff announcement in April, we saw this explosion in revenue from consulting firms, consulting firms like KPMG and McKinsey and BCG and and PWC, they all reported double digit growth in revenue. We also saw a massive explosion in job postings for management consulting positions, which were at 60% in the first half of this year. And basically, what we're kind of beginning to see here is that in the same way that when there's a lot of volatility, it's a great thing to be a trader. And that's what we've seen in these bank earnings, that the trading desks are making a ton of money

• 44:10Ed Elson?

  because of all of the volatility that's happening because of the tariffs. In that same vein, when tariff and global markets and economic policy is so uncertain, is as uncertain as it is right now, it is a great time to be a consultant because consultants' jobs ought to tell business leaders things they don't understand. So, you know, you you've built multiple consulting businesses. I just wanted to get your reaction to that data.

• 44:41Scott Galloway?

  I've spent my whole life basically renting my brain to old white guys. That's how I've made a living. And in the eighties and nineties and nods, they were all old. They were all old white guys. Things have gotten a lot better. But anyways, the, just as investment banks like volatility, because there's more trading and they get more commissions, consulting firms love insecurity. And when all of a sudden CEOs have a ton of questions they can't answer and you go away and you try and answer them thoughtfully, and even if you get it wrong, they can blame it on you. That's primary, that's the, I think that's the primary benefit of consultants is it gives a third party that they can blame the, the decision on if it's wrong. Anyways, this is a consulting firm stream. The nuance here is the following, is it's about

• 45:25Scott Galloway?

  to be a grade one, three, five years for consulting firms, specifically their shareholders, and a terrible time for consultants. Because when I look back, my first job out of college, was it Morgan Stanley? I was an analyst. It was a class of eighty-five of us. I look back on all the work I did. I still have some of the decks I put together and the proofing of perspect, I used to spend, once a week, I would spend all night at the printer, proofing a prospectus on a bond offering. Okay, I would be there for eight hours. Now AI can do that in an eighth of a second. I think the two years of work I did putting together decks, analyzing data, spreadsheets, all that shit, I think it could be done in eight weeks now.

• 46:08Scott Galloway?

  And I gotta think it's the same at consultants. If I were back at L2, I'd, I think we could do double or triple the work with the same number of people, or quite frankly, if you hit a bump, you can lay off one-third to two-thirds of your staff. So this is where you're going to see a consulting firms, and it's a larger metaphor for the broader economy. You're going to see more profitability, you're going to see shareholder value go up because these companies are about to expand their operating margins, but employment and what I'll call more loosely speaking, purpose are going to come under attack.

• 46:39Ed Elson?

  On that vein, there was a study that was just published by Microsoft where they showed that the top jobs in the world that are most at risk from AI, or most at risk is at being replaced by AI, and the least at risk. And I will just note that one of the top jobs, one of the most at-risk jobs in our economy is news analyst.

• 47:02Scott Galloway?

  Well, what would we call you?

• 47:05Ed Elson?

  I think I might fit in that bucket, but I'm not so worried because-

• 47:08Scott Galloway?

  Because of your accent?

• 47:09Ed Elson?

  No, not the accent. One of the least-

• 47:10Scott Galloway?

  Your boyish good looks?

• 47:11Ed Elson?

  At-risk jobs according to Microsoft. Is dishwasher. So there's still hope for me.

• 47:16Scott Galloway?

  So in my mind, a decent tax would be the following. If you're in an AI related company, of which there are a lot, by the way, those companies have recognized, registered the most extraordinary profits in history, and by the way, are paying some of the lowest taxes, tax burden since 1939. I think a populist James Talarico, Pete Buttigieg is going to come up with a creative idea and say, look, we don't want to get in the way. You can't, you can't bottle technology. It, you gotta let it run. But at the same time, what we're, we can learn from the past is what we've been really bad at is protecting people and figuring out a way to retrain them, give them extended employment benefits, give them free education credits to try and figure out a more transition, easier career move,

• 48:01Scott Galloway?

  use it as sort of an opportunity, maybe to rethink their career. But why not put a levy, quite frankly, of a half a percent, 1%, 2% and just call it a retraining tax? It's like, look, we're not going to pass legislation. I've been watching that show, The Studio, which is hilarious. And AI is now the new demonic monster. It's the new kind of, remember the Luddites used to break into factories and destroy machines? That's what's going on now. They're trying to, all the precious creative community is angry at anyone who talks about AI. Sorry, folks. You can hold the wolves at the door for a while. There's no way you can keep technology in a bottle. Shareholders and, and money wins. At the

• 48:42Scott Galloway?

  same time, I think it would be fair for someone to say, look, these companies that are registering the most extraordinary windfall in profits in history, we're going to tax them an incremental 1% and we're going to create a fund for retraining vocational program, extended employment benefits for the people who are gonna be disrupted by this technological shift in our economy. Because we can solve this problem, but we should solve it by helping people get to the future, whether that's installing energy efficient HVAC, or getting a degree in something else, or just having more time to try and find a different business or a different pivot. But that's where we should be investing, not this ridiculous like indignance

• 49:24Scott Galloway?

  that, oh, we're going to shame an executive who tries to use AI for a film or a TV show or commercial. Folks, it is coming. There is no stopping it.

• 49:34Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break with a look at the autonomous wars. If you're enjoying the show so far, hit follow and leave us a review on Profi Markets.

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• 51:26Ed Elson?

  We're back with Profi Markets. The autonomous driving wars are heating up. Uber just unveiled plans to roll out more than 20,000 robot taxis across the US over the next six years. As part of that move, it is investing hundreds of millions into EV maker Lucid and autonomous tech startup Neuro. RoboTaxis will be Lucid's new gravity SUV fitted with Neuro's technology and only available on the Uber app. Meanwhile, Waymo just revealed plans to launch a robotaxi service in Dallas next year through a new multi-year deal with Avis. Uber and Waymo are still partners in Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta, but they are not partnering with Uber for this Dallas project and it is clear that they might be becoming rivals at this point.

• 52:09Ed Elson?

  So a few things going on here, Scott. I mean, this is all in the context of the autonomous wars or the robotaxi race. The first is this collaboration between Uber and this lesser-known autonomous company called Neuro. And that's important because, you know, as we know, Uber has been forming this partnership with Waymo and it's pretty notable that they're now switching to another company. The second thing that's going on here is Waymo launching in Dallas without Uber and it caused Uber stock to fall 5% on that news. So the autonomous race is happening and it's, it's, there are a lot of different players and moving parts

• 52:51Ed Elson?

  here to keep track of. We've got Waymo, we've got Uber, we've got Tesla, we've got Lucid is kind of becoming a player here. We've got this new autonomous company, Neuro, which was founded by the former engineers of Waymo. A lot of stuff is happening and it's worth just checking in. So any initial reactions to what's going on in the robotaxi race?

• 53:15Scott Galloway?

  Autonomous was, I just spoke at this quantum convention in Chicago and I would say that optimistically, what you would say about quantum is that it's where autonomous was three or five years ago and that is the performance has not matched the, matched the promise yet, but at some point it's going to be big. And it feels as if that day is upon us. It was like mañana, mañana around autonomous and people got kind of jaded and forgot about it. And now it feels like, wow, it's happening. Waymo has logged 100 million miles. And it's a really interesting case study because who has the power here? Is it the one with the customer interface that has gotten people used to their UI Uber? Which does an amazing job. I was just thinking the other day, I used to rent cars all the time.

• 54:00Scott Galloway?

  I would roll into an airport and I didn't want to pay 80 bucks to get a Crown Victoria that felt like it was re-entering the atmosphere. Cabs were so shitty and I'd rent a car and I'd go to that Hertz Gold thing and it would say Galloway and I'd go and I'd immediately hate my car and I'd go back and I'm like, I'm not driving a white car. I'd be like, do I got a free pack of cigarettes with that car? Because clearly it's for smokers only. I'd always, I'd never like the car I got. I haven't had, I don't think I've rented a car in five years. I mean, Uber's just been such an incredible innovation. Waymo, as far as I can tell, by going into Dallas solo and not partnering with a front end company like a Lyft or an Uber, is basically going vertical.

• 54:42Scott Galloway?

  And this says to me, Dara is no fool. He is, you know, he's a smart guy. I think he is gonna now, and that's why he's partnering with the number three or four player, who I'd never heard of before, because he has to make sure that he has, you know, I think the term is monopsony, he has to make sure that he has multiple providers such that if, if Waymo starts fucking with him too much, he can say, sorry, Waymo, I'm not gonna sharpen the sword that cuts my head off. I'm gonna kick you off the app and I'm gonna find a technology that guarantees not to compete with me that doesn't go vertical. But if I were to pick a winner, hands down, the one that's gonna get the most market cap here, I think it's gonna be Waymo.

• 55:22Scott Galloway?

  Because what they'll be able to do is, Waymo is gonna do for, for Alphabet, what Musk is hoping AI will do for his, for Tesla. And that is, he's hoping if he can create an AI veneer over Tesla, that'll justify the market cap. But what Waymo is gonna do is it's gonna give this like Alphabet this growth feel. They're in this hot new area, they're the leader, it's growing. They'll announce small numbers, but those numbers will grow and it'll give Alphabet, on top of that unbelievable cash flow rate, it'll give it that all-important innovator's perception, which will take the multiple up. And because

• 56:04Scott Galloway?

  As soon as there is such a smart guy, he's going to go, okay, the market capitalization increases we get off a $200 billion company. If we get another turn on EBITDA or whatever, it gives us another 100 or 200 billion dollars in market cap. So it's worth it to us to put another 10, 20, 30 billion into autonomous. So, and I don't think anyone's going to be able to keep up with them. So they have the most, they have the best technology and they're going to be able to justify a level of investment that I don't think anyone else is going to be able to match. So the advantage of Tesla, and we talked about this, is that they supposedly can produce an autonomous vehicle for about 40 grand, whereas Waymo now it's about a quarter of a million to fully outfit these things.

• 56:47Scott Galloway?

  But I just think that the quote unquote AI veneer or juju that takes the market cap of Alphabet up several hundred billion dollars is going to afford them with the ability to just overwhelm that market with capital and go vertical. So I would bet on Waymo. What about you, Ed?

• 57:05Ed Elson?

  I'm really not sure, but it is so interesting how this is all hinging on this question of the verticalization strategy. And it's, it's, on the one hand, it's, it's whether you should go vertical. And that is a big question. It's a question that Uber was grappling with when they were beginning to build their own robotaxis. And then they decided, no, this is too difficult and it's too expensive. We're not going to do it. We're just going to operate the networks. It seemed when Waymo started partnering with Uber that Waymo was going to just focus on building the cars. Now it's looking like maybe they actually want to operate their own network without Uber. Tesla was always interested in going vertical, but this has been a debate on what is the

• 57:50Ed Elson?

  right strategy, whether to go vertical or not. And it relates to our conversation with David Risha, the CEO of Lyft, where he basically told us, and he's probably talking his book, but he told us that going vertical in autonomous is too hard. Probably talking his book because, you know, he has every incentive to, to partner up with a Waymo or a Neuro and operate those fleets. So there's, there's one, there's the question of whether to go vertical. And I'm not sure I know the answer on what's right there. And then the second question is, If you are to go vertical, how? How do you do it? And that's another question I'd like to get your reaction to. And our research lead Mia Silverio had a really great point about this.

• 58:33Ed Elson?

  And she pointed out that if you're trying to go vertical, there are basically two ways to do it. The first is the Netflix strategy. And that is you start with the distribution, i.e. delivering DVDs or later building a streaming platform where you just license and distribute content that other people made. And then you slowly work your way up the supply chain to get into the manufacturing or the content creation. And then you own the full, the full strategy. The other way to do it is what we call the Apple strategy, which is the other way around. You start with building the product, you build the hardware.

• 59:14Ed Elson?

  You start with wholesale partnerships and then eventually you gradually start to own the distribution networks, i.e. the Apple stores, and then you're fully vertical. And it's interesting because we're seeing that dichotomy in the robotaxi race right now. You've got Uber, which is in the Netflix position. They own the distribution. Do they go up the supply chain and start creating the cars? And then you've got Waymo, which firmly owns the, the top of the supply chain, building the cars. And the question is, do they go down, down the supply chain and start owning the distribution?

• 59:48Scott Galloway?

  So one of the seminal business professors in the history of academia, I think his name is C.K. Prahala, I believe it was University of Michigan, and he came up with this concept of core competence. And that is find out what you're really good at, focus on that, and then outsource everything else, or just aim to be industry average and everything. And what that led to was, okay, we're a great manufacturer, we're catalogs, we're in the business of manufacturing cereal, and then we distribute it to Krogers or Vons or, you know, Gelson's and their competence is retailing.

• 1:00:22Scott Galloway?

  The whole notion of core competence has been destroyed. And if you look at companies that want to be over a hundred billion in market cap, eventually they go vertical. They either reverse engineer where they say, okay, we're going to backward integrate. So Costco has a great private label brand. Walmart went into Sam's. JCPenney's launched their own denim. They got sick of selling Levi 501s, you know, buying them for 40 bucks and selling them for 41. And then to your point, Apple and the luxury industry. Chanel and Dior used to sell through Barneys and Neiman Marcus because, oh, they were better at retailing. We're good at artisanship and manufacturing. And then everyone from Richemont to LVMH, really their biggest kind of business strategy of the last 30 years is they've gone vertical.

• 1:01:06Scott Galloway?

  They said, no, we want to control the environment. And distribution plays a huge role in branding. And then the ultimate gangster move was when Apple forward integrated into retail. But effectively, once you get above a certain point, it's not if you go vertical, it's when. My first, my biggest consulting client initially at Profit was Levi Strauss and Company. And our big kind of recommendation was if you want to control the brand, you got to go vertical. Look what's happening at Sears. They're putting your shit in the back and they're putting Canyon River, whatever it was called, their denim, their private label in front. You have to control your distribution. And they started opening original Levi stores. The luxury market has basically gone into the real estate market and they've gone vertical.

• 1:01:48Scott Galloway?

  But I would argue eventually, everybody goes vertical or almost everybody. And that is they try and find a distribution partner and they try and control the experience. And almost every great retailer backward integrates into producing their own product because they all get hungry for margin. In the case of, I would argue, most, the advantage, the advantage, I would say the advantage is in custody of the consumer because Uber has an enormous advantage in that I'm used to their interface now. They have my credit card. I'm not sure I want to sign up for Waymo. I will at some point, but if Uber offers very, you know, $3 off or free rides, click here for autonomous.

• 1:02:32Scott Galloway?

  You know, that is really powerful. So the it's essentially the the pole position is you want to be the brand that controls that has custody of the consumer, so to speak.

• 1:02:43Ed Elson?

  Kind of a good bull case for Uber. Well, this is not over yet, so we'll be continuing to track this, but it is interesting how this is all ramping up right now. Okay, let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see earnings from Palantir, AMD, Disney, Uber, Shopify, and Eli Lilly. Before we get a new prediction, let's check in on the big prediction we both made last week about Figma. Figma went public on Thursday, and it did indeed see a huge pop. So we were correct about that. The only thing we were wrong about is we way underestimated how big the pop would be. The company priced at $33 and it ripped up more than 200%. So the good news is if, I mean, no one could really get into

• 1:03:28Ed Elson?

  this IPO, if you bought on Thursday, you probably were allocated maybe one share. You weren't getting in at 33. But, you know, we were right. Probably should have been a bit more bold with our stock jump prediction, 30% versus 200%. But either way, your reaction, Scott?

• 1:03:50Scott Galloway?

  It's easy to be right on something like this. Dirth of IPO is incredible company. You pointed out that there haven't been many clinical just traditionally great companies that aren't fashionable. They're just great companies. And I was calling everywhere trying to get shares, and people told me the book you try and build is eight to 12x, because people always put in a bigger request than they know they're going to allocate because they know they'll get clipped back. And a strong book is 12x. And this was, the last I checked yesterday, it was at 40x. And you pointed this out, like, how many really like, just great companies have gone public recently? So I'm now seeing that it's, as of this reading, up 240%.

• 1:04:32Scott Galloway?

  Our prediction was this would be the IPO of 2025, and it's looking like it might be. And this spring was ready to pop, so. Good for them. And again, the thing I love about this is investors now have another great company to invest in a pure play. Investors get this company at a lower multiple, well, actually, that's not true, priced at a lower multiple than what Adobe offered it for. This company is going to take that capital and try and maintain that growth rate by hiring more people. There's more corporations and customers are going to have more options to beat each other up with and keep prices low and competitive. It'll inspire innovation. Adobe Express, which we love, is, you know, the big term they always use

• 1:05:16Scott Galloway?

  in their new Adobe Express is collaborative. And Adobe is a great company, but I got to think that they, they got on that collaboration theme because Figma is known as being very collaborative. So is Adobe a better product now because they don't own Figma? I would argue yes. So who wins? Corporations, the employment market, the tax base, investors. And this again goes to just the notion that good regulation is, is not an inhibitor of the economy. It enhances the economy. It creates economic growth. Anyways, congratulations, Figma.

• 1:05:50Ed Elson?

  Is it true that you got in?

• 1:05:52Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, but not for as much as I'd like. Yeah, I did get in.

• 1:05:56Ed Elson?

  How did you get in?

• 1:05:58Scott Galloway?

  I have relationships with every underwriter and I still got dick, quite frankly.

• 1:06:02Ed Elson?

  Well, good for you for getting in. Any predictions for this week?

• 1:06:07Scott Galloway?

  No, I don't really have any. Do you have anything interesting in? Why are you laughing? Bitch, you're the co-host.

• 1:06:12Ed Elson?

  I'm just laughing because I don't.

• 1:06:14Scott Galloway?

  Co, co, start co-ing.

• 1:06:16Ed Elson?

  Oh, I have my prediction, which I made last week. We're not going to see a September rate cut.

• 1:06:20Scott Galloway?

  And you know why?

• 1:06:21Ed Elson?

  I'm wondering if this is a rhetorical. Why?

• 1:06:23Scott Galloway?

  Ego.

• 1:06:24Ed Elson?

  Ego of, of Jerome Powell?

• 1:06:26Scott Galloway?

  People forget, people have egos and feelings. And if this is a coin flip, what do you think Jerome Chairman Powell's going to do?

• 1:06:35Scott Galloway?

  He's going to do the following. He's going to look straight into the eyes of Donald Trump and go, fuck you, boss.

• 1:06:40Ed Elson?

  I disagree. I think, I think a weaker man would submit to the ego, but I think we've got a guy who's dialed into the data. And I think the data that we've seen, we've got the GDP, which told us no story of the tariff. We've got the PCE data, which came in hot. So I think we, we, we are not seeing the story that he would like to see in the data, that the tariffs are not impacting inflation as much as an economic textbook would tell you it will. And therefore, he's not going to cut rates in September.

• 1:07:13Scott Galloway?

  To be clear, he will do, quote unquote, the right thing. When the right thing is a coin flip, I think he probably gets a little bit of pleasure out of standing up to a president. There is never a reason, there's never a reason to be rude to somebody. The president has been rude and disrespectful to this guy. And I don't care how powerful you are. If it's a coin flip and he could go either way, which way would you go? What would you do? Say it was like, okay, we could make a very solid argument to wait, but also it does look like inflation isn't as bad as we thought. It might make sense to start the right cutting cycle. It is a literally a 50 50, which I think it is right now. What would you do if you were Chairman Powell?

• 1:07:54Ed Elson?

  You're not going to like my answer, and you're going to call it too mature and lame, but I would do my very best to focus on the facts and not my ego.

• 1:08:02Scott Galloway?

  Which is impossible. That's what makes us human, Ed.

• 1:08:05Ed Elson?

  He's built different. He is, he's a different breed.

• 1:08:08Scott Galloway?

  You just think he's a machine.

• 1:08:09Ed Elson?

  He's a machine. He doesn't care.

• 1:08:12Scott Galloway?

  I find at the end of the day, everyone, especially people who have testicles, have pretty big egos.

• 1:08:20Ed Elson?

  That's fair. Okay. Well, we'll see.

• 1:08:25Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Allison Weiss. Mia Severio is our research lead. Our research associates are Isabella Kinsel and Dan Shalandrew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Profty Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Tune in tomorrow for a fresh take. On the markets.

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