So you gonna do it?

I mean, we're all gonna do it.

All right, ready?

1, 2, 3.

Welcome back to the number one financial literacy podcast in the world.

This is the higher standard.

Sitting in front of me is my partner in Time, Christopher Nahibi.

To be clear, when you said we were all gonna do it, did you mean you were gonna take it from us?

I was gonna take it.

And go.

And go.

Okay.

And sitting across from me is my lovely, well lit partner in time, the one and only, the sexy man who also happens to do Indian voices part time as comedian Saitomar.

Thank you, my man.

And sitting behind the desk, we have none other than the Fijian himself, Rajeel.

Say hi, Regil.

Hi, Fijian.

Rajeel.

It's giving too many vowels.

A lot of vowels.

Too many vows.

Hey, Vanna, can I please buy a vowel?

Which, by the way, my kids are super into Wheel of Fortune right now.

Really?

Yeah, it's kind of like a spelling game.

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah, they like it, especially the celebrity ones because they make it significantly easier.

Well, first of all, I don't think I've watched Wheel of Fortune enough to know there are celebrity ones.

Oh, they're great.

Yeah.

Past sage ass comes back for those.

With beverage over there.

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

Last three episodes, you've had it literally in front of me on the camera, and I'm looking at.

It looks like I'm looking at your Red Bull every time.

Are you thinking, like, C4 looks good, but that Diet Coke.

You know what?

I'm actually.

I'm actually going to have to transition off of C4 because they've ignored multiple messages from me in the DMs about sponsorship now.

And now I literally just been sending them screenshots saying, how about now?

How about now?

I don't want to be persistent here.

Right.

But how about now?

Yeah, but how about now?

Exactly.

So we got a great show for everybody today.

I think a lot of people have been in our DMS talking about all the mixed signals that they're seeing in the market.

Whether that's the job report, whether that's the stock market, whether it's housing.

They don't know what to make of everything.

Yeah.

So I think that that's probably a fair assessment.

Not only that, but the problem is there's pundits.

Right.

Like, everybody's got like their go to position on this stuff.

So you'll turn to the news and let's be honest with everybody in the room and those outside the room, and there are certain Slants that certain media outlets take.

And it's easy to point the finger at the big ones.

So let's start there.

CNN has a spin, whether it's conservative or aligned to the political party or not, and Fox certainly has theirs, and they're perceived to be aligned with the political party.

But it doesn't stop there.

Mm.

This permeates into every type of media, including social media.

So I like to use Logan from Housing Wire.

He's a big housing pundit.

Everything he pushes is taking the best possible look at the market to support his position, which is the housing market is stable.

So I don't bring all this up to say that there's a right or wrong per se.

I take this as an opportunity to say there are a lot of mixed signals.

So this episode, the US Economy is giving off these mixed signals.

We know it.

There's been a lot that's happened.

There's geopolitical unrest, there's lots of wars going on.

Not just what we've been entering into, but there's still the Russian Ukraine war, there's still Israel and Palestine, and now we find ourselves in this Iran conflict.

But despite all that, there was Liberation Day.

Right.

There was tariffs, and we've seen even some de.

Escalation in some things that have been going on in the Middle East.

So we, we saw, like, record highs again today in the stock market.

And people are thinking, wow, so I should be feeling great about what's going on, right?

Well, there, there's an entire cohort of people who listen to the show and they're like, Chris, I, I, I, I don't.

How am I, I'm confused.

How am I supposed to feel?

This episode is going to make you feel like not knowing the answer is the right answer.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So when you usually when you see times like this in the market.

Right.

I am, from what I've read, is the mixed signals basically are signaling that we're in a transitional phase.

Maybe.

Yeah, maybe it could.

But here's a caveat here.

We may be in a transitional phase, but if we're going to transition, it could be better or it could be worse.

Right.

No one knows which direction it's going.

Right?

Exactly.

And I think the key thing that I personally would want people to walk away from this thinking is you shouldn't be making any big financial decisions right now by just reading the headlines.

Oh, no, absolutely not.

I mean, never.

Never in time.

But during times like this, where markets can literally swing based off of what comes in, comes in on the headline you need to be well informed.

Yeah.

And I would say a couple shows ago we said there's a big disconnect in the stock market and in the bond market.

And it's certainly weird when you see all time highs in the stock market, all time highs in the housing market.

But underneath all this stuff, we hear all these data points which say there's cracks kind of showing underneath the hood.

And.

And we're going to unpack a little bit of the optics here.

I'm going to give you some conflicting stories that are all on the same day.

By the way, almost all of this came out today and we're recording this Wednesday, June 25th.

Yeah.

So all this effectively came out around the same time.

And you're like, how can these stories with two different conclusions be coming out?

So let's start with cnn.

Rajeel, you ready?

So good.

So much better.

So much better.

He doesn't listen.

It doesn't matter, bro.

It doesn't matter.

Rune's feelings can't be heard.

It can't be heard if he doesn't hear it.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it, did it happen?

I don't know.

But Rune didn't hear it.

So this article, stunning turnaround.

The stock market is on the precipice of an all time high.

And it shows a little girl statue out in front of the New York Stock Exchange.

The s and P500 is on the cusp of a record high.

I saw that headline today and I thought, what in the hell?

How?

What?

Why does nobody watch the news?

Like why?

What is causing it to go higher right now?

What?

Well, there's a whole sense of information here that you're going to get, but certainly the answer is we don't really know for sure.

I'll give you the data points, but we'll figure it out.

That's a remarkable change of events since the index was on the brink of a bear market just two months ago.

Post Liberation Day for those you recall.

The US Stock market has been on a wild ride this year.

After tumbling into correction in March and flirting with the bear market in April, the index recouped its losses in May and June and is up more than 3.5% year to date.

And I don't care how good of a trader you may have been or you are, you didn't know that was going to happen, right?

You didn't know.

And anybody's like new, you're a liar or you're Nancy Pelosi.

You can pick one.

Yeah.

One of my favorite Instagram pages literally posted this earlier today.

S&P 500 is now 50% is up 50% since Michael Burry told us to sell.

Yeah.

Which was January 31, 2023.

And for those of you who don't know who Michael Burry is, he made a whole hell of a lot of money.

I mean, they made a whole movie on him.

Right.

But he was betting the market to fail.

The big short.

He shorted the market.

He made a lot of money during the great financial crisis.

Right.

Which that point in and of itself, it leads us into what we always say on the show.

Your best bet is to always dollar cost average, because you never know what's going to happen.

Yeah.

If you dollar costed average dollar cost averaged into this, you'd be fine.

Exactly.

Yeah.

You wouldn't be hurting.

So The S&P 500 entered the year hitting a record high after.

Record high.

The index hit its last record high on February 19th as Wall street rallied at the start of Trump's second term.

The index began to tumble in March and April as the President unveiled his tariff policy on Liberation Day.

And it's been trying to claw its way back toward a new record high since.

After Trump's Liberation day tariffs on April 2, the S&P 500 closed at its lowest level this year on April 8, down 18.9% from its February record high.

Many people at that point in time could have easily said, well, you know what, it's going down 18.9%.

It's probably going to go down more.

Right.

And just to be clear, that is dangerously close to a market crash territory.

Right?

20% or more.

20% or more.

The S&P 500 rallied sharply after Trump walked back his massive reciprocal tariffs.

The index then gained 6.15% across May as the rebound rally accelerated, posting its best monthly gain since November of 2023 and its best performance in May since 1990.

Wow.

Yeah.

Since Prince was wearing assless chaps, the benchmark index is up 3.3% so far in June.

So, yeah, that's a, that's a lot of swinging.

You know, it does.

Yeah, it is.

And I think what a lot of people are thinking like, well, I feel like I'm being squeezed every month and with my finances.

Right.

People are having to go and use credit cards more.

But somehow the stock market is hitting all time highs.

Oh, I didn't put it in the show notes.

What really important note here.

You look really handsome.

Thank you.

That's not What?

That's not the note, though.

Yeah, that's good.

I.

I know your tactics.

You like to compliment me before you do something rude.

Like before I put the glove on.

Yeah, yeah.

Buy Now, Pay later going into your credit score.

That's huge.

I saw you post that.

Yeah.

Buy Now, Pay later services will now be incorporated into your credit score in the months to come.

That is such.

Buy Now, Pay later these, these glorified layaway plans.

Please stay away.

These are the new credit cards.

These are the new modern day credit cards people are using.

So here you go.

Buy Now, Pay later plans will soon impact your credit score.

What you need to know.

And of course, they always show some, like, younger person in front of a computer at a desk looking like they're kind of working remotely but not working remotely.

And you're like, oh, I want that life.

But it's stock footage.

It's not a real person.

It's not real.

Where's everybody else?

There's nobody else there.

Yeah.

Like, hey, guys, we don't want this look like a real, like, you know, scene.

So just everybody, everybody just go away while we shoot this young lady in front of this scene looking weird.

So anyway, yeah, that's going to be a huge thing.

Wall Street Journal originally reported it, but FICO scores will be impacted by Buy Now, Pay Later.

The fact that they've gone this long and not reported is stunning.

Yeah.

The.

They didn't think that people would actually abuse the service.

And because I am.

If you have to finance a burrito.

Bro.

I'm just saying just to be clear, we're not.

That's not a euphemism.

You're talking about a burrito.

Actual burrito.

So not.

Not like financing a $50 hot dog from Costco.

Also that.

Yeah.

Also that.

The shape of these objects are also very similar.

Very.

Why are we choosing these objects?

I don't know.

Have you ever financed a cucumber?

Rigil, Perhaps an eggplant?

And we're back, baby.

You can now finance a $50 hot dog at Costco.

Actually a real thing.

Receipts have made the rounds on social.

I want to do this just to say that I did it.

Yeah.

I want to put it on my Amex to see if the black card calls me like, sir.

We're pretty sure there's fraud here.

Yeah.

But the reason why I bring this up is I hate social media gurus.

I really do.

I hate them with a passion.

I don't like them at all.

Anti guru guru club.

That's what we are rejeel yeah, he's got, that's right.

Yeah, he's posing the background.

Yeah, I got the shirt on.

Yeah.

He actually has the only anti guru shirt that we've made so far.

The other ones haven't come yet.

I don't know why.

I probably should follow up on that.

Yeah.

You look like a schmedium.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, all these gurus for the long time were pimping Buy Now, Pay later services to the younger generation as a way to hack your cash flow.

Why would you take that thousand dollars that you have, Saeed, and, and just go buy something you can use Buy Now Pay later services and make money on your money.

And guess what?

Even in the worst case event scenario that you can't pay it back, it doesn't affect your credit, bro.

Boom.

Magical.

Yeah.

Well, now all those shenanigans stop and we're back into reality.

Okay.

Those loopholes where you have these credit like functions and you don't report to your credit score, that goes away.

Right.

Sorry, I didn't mean to detract from the conversation.

Please continue.

Yeah, no, I, I just want to say I think a lot of people, a lot of times people will look at the stock market and think that's the economy.

Yeah.

It's not as narrative economics.

Robert Schiller, go read the book.

Narrative drives the stock market.

Exactly right.

So that, that's, that's the fear.

Because you have that going on at the same time as, let's just say wages haven't been keeping up with inflation.

I know wages are up currently at the moment, slightly.

Slightly.

But that does not mean that it's kept up with the pace of inflation over the past four years.

So although people are, are earning slightly more, they still aren't making enough to pay for the things that, that they need.

Like their essentials.

Yeah, 100%.

And if you want to, if you're driving right now or you're in the gym, go ahead and reach into your bag or into the passenger seat, pull off the tinfoil hat.

I'll do it.

It's conspiracy theory time, kids.

Let's go.

So they walk among us, the lies.

I'm not afraid of making a few tinfoil hats and just keeping them here.

I actually wanted to get like a roll of tinfoil and put it underneath the chair and we just literally tear it, make that sound on the mic whenever we put them on.

You know, you just like.

So we don't got to just say it's tinfoil hat time.

They just hear it like I don't want to get.

I know you want like this visual.

Like, I just want to, like, cram it on my head.

So.

So it looks like I got like a metal tip up here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I believe that the stock market and a lot of the traders that are in it are suffering from an illogical, illogical fallacy.

That seems real.

Okay.

We had 14 years of artificial interest rate deflation, one of the best economies ever, particularly for those in the rate environment.

And certainly saw an upward scale run in the stock market.

One in which social media companies, media companies in general, Fang, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Nvidia and Google.

Right, yeah, yeah.

Anyway, I mean, Nvidia wasn't part of that originally, but you could lump them in Google's Alphabet.

But anyway, anyway.

Have escalated up, right.

And they.

The trajectory has been insane.

And then you add in revolutionary technology like AI, and the market has seen a rise like we've never seen before.

Yet there are other signs in the market that normally people like, oh my God, like, oh, our national debt is insane.

That's scary.

Right.

But you have this.

Think about this.

If you got into trading, let's just say you graduated college, most of graduate college at what, 23, 22, 23, 22.

23, 22, 23.

You worked for, call it 14 years.

Right.

So now you're 36, 37.

Okay, 36, 37.

You made a lot of money in the stock markets.

You've been trading.

You live through a recessionary economy.

You feel.

You feel pretty good.

I was in the recession.

I was in the economy whenever I was a kid.

Like, I know what it's like.

And then you see this run up on the chart that Rigil just posted here.

What is.

This is the S and P.

That's.

The Fang portfolio for the 10 years, comparing it to the performance of the S and P.

Yeah.

Which we're going to get to.

Good.

Great chart, Rajille.

That's actually going to be very, very poignant later on.

The Mag 7 has outperformed the S and P, which is essentially flat.

And this chart is a good exhibit of that.

It basically shows like a flat line of the S&P 500, but the Fang is seriously way, way above it, which is really dragging up the overall returns of the S&P 500.

Right.

I believe there is this denial of reality in the markets that we have lived through a very unusual time.

And because of that, bad news doesn't impact people the same way because they have an ego now.

So explain, maybe explain to people why that's such a big issue because it's kind of the reason why you would even.

Why it's always been such a staple for people to talk about when investing, invest in the s and P500, the 500 best companies, you know, in the market.

And that's what you're investing into because companies will ultimately do better.

But when you have such a high concentration in just say seven companies, why is that?

Why is that a bad thing or potentially a bad thing?

Well, first of all, there are all tech related companies, right?

So that's exactly.

I mean, I guess you can carve out Apple a little bit to make some hardware, stuff like that.

And a lot, and a lot of what their value is based off of is based off of the futures, right?

Well, I mean these guys, all, these guys are all established companies.

They're not really future driven as much.

But certainly everybody's got to push limits quarter after quarter.

But what I would say is anything in your investment life as simple as I can make this, anything in your investment life should not be too concentrated.

Concentrations give you greater risk.

If you have all of your risk in one thing and that one thing goes south, you have all of your failure.

Yeah.

Think of it no different than if you were a business and you were going to a bank to get, let's just say a working capital line of credit.

And they look at, you know, certain accounts that you have that help you run your business.

If the bulk of your revenue, your receivables are coming in from one company or, or let's just say a handful of companies and you have over 100 clients or 500 clients, that's a huge risk.

Huge risk.

And there's different types of concentration risk too.

Like let's say, for example, your company, you have receivables, they're from a bunch of different companies, but you only put up Christmas lights once a year.

You have single event risk.

If that year nobody's putting up Christmas lights.

Right.

You have no business.

There you go.

Yeah.

So you have to find ways to diversify your risk.

And you do this in your portfolio, you do this in your personal life.

That's why when Parcel was on the show, he was talking about having some money in gold, having some money in silver, having some money in crypto, and then knowing what your horizon is.

Because what type of risk are you willing to take on near term versus long term?

And it all sounds complicated, but it all comes down to one simple concept.

You got to have diversified risk.

If you have the S&P 500.

Right now, almost all of your growth exposure is concentrated in this technology sector.

In these companies that are largely driven by tech, pushed up by tech, and they're tech related adjacent businesses like your iPhone.

Right.

So now you've got social media and technology and the hardware that pimps that technology all together and that is driving most the overwhelming majority of the returns in the market.

Otherwise it would be like flatlined.

It's not companies like Pepsi, like Coca Cola, Staples.

Right.

It's not companies like Disney.

Right.

That are manufacturing entertainment.

These companies do well, but they certainly have not performed anywhere near as well as these.

So that the top 500 companies, which used to be this growing cohort of assets over time and typically return better than average returns.

If you remove those seven companies have stayed essentially flat.

That is scary.

We all feel like the market's great, it's amazing.

But when you look at the other 493 companies in the S&P 500 and you see their performance is essentially flat, that means the market is not growing, which means your money is not spending more, they're not selling more.

I mean, you go through this whole thing and it's a problem.

Yeah.

So these are, these are the list of 500 original.

Pulling up the S&P 500.

I should point out these change.

So companies go in and out of the S P 500 of the top 500 companies in the country.

So can't remember a big company recently just fell out.

Can't remember who it was, but it was kind of a big deal.

Yeah, it happens a lot.

There's, there's also like the, the Russell 2000, there's like the 1000, the top 100 and this and that.

There's all sorts of different.

But The S&P 500 is by far and away the most watched index of.

Funds because, you know, so many people invest in it.

And it's not just like individuals too.

We're talking hedge funds, everybody.

Yeah.

So let's talk about another negative that's out there.

The Kobe Letter, one of our favorite pages on X.

The US treasury has posted a $316 billion budget deficit in May.

That's a lot of money and well, far be it for me to not read an article with that sexy of a headline.

The US treasury posted this massive $316 billion budget deficit in May, the third largest on record.

This comes as total government outlays rose 3% year over year to $687 billion per zero hedge.

One of my preferred conspiracy theory based websites because, you know, I love that.

Well, and the tariff revenue surged 270% year over year to a record 23 billion.

It barely made a dent in the deficit.

So all of this tariff talk, $23 billion more compared to last year.

Yeah, it was, it was never going to make that much money enough to fix our spending problem.

So to be clear, we, we were supposed to fix this problem.

Remember the Department of Government Efficiency?

Yeah.

Been kind of quiet, kind of cricket, crickety out there.

Yeah, yeah.

Is that even still a thing anymore?

I mean, did they make up?

I don't think Elon Ramaswamy got out.

Yeah, and Elon's out.

And Elon's out.

But then like they made up again.

Said, I, I feel sorry about what I said.

My bad.

And yeah, there was, there was threats there, right?

Like they exchanged threats.

Like there, there was, there was like an offline chat.

No.

And there was definitely some, some stuff that left out in the public.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, in the first eight months of the fiscal year 2025, the budget gap now stands at $1.37 trillion, the third largest in history.

The 12 month federal deficit now stands at 2.0 trillion, or 6.7% of GDP, up from 6.1% a year ago.

The deficit spending crisis is not improving.

It's actually getting worse.

And just to be clear here, when you send billions of dollars of bombs to the Middle east, even for a couple days of faux war, if you want to call it that, well, that's spending government dollars.

That was not in the budget.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Yep.

It's true.

And I mean, this prop.

Why this problem is only going to continue to get worse because as I mean, these Treasuries that were being sold over the last three, five years that are coming due, right, they have to get new debt for are coming out of Treasuries at all time lows now hitting at all time highs again.

Right.

Not all time highs, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, yeah.

So I don't know how this all plays out for the economy, but certainly this is a very bad signal coming on the heels of a very good signal, the stock market being up because all these traders, like, I got this, I'm the best trader alive.

I've never had a loss.

Well, yeah, last 14 years if you had a loss, you made a dumbass decision.

Okay.

Yeah, it was really hard to lose money in the markets last 14 years.

You would have had to really try someone out.

There's like, Chris, I lost money.

And this one stock you know what you're talking about.

I'm a smart person.

I don't feel like that person's coming out and openly admitting that.

That.

Yeah, they're probably not in my DMs going like, yeah, you call me stupid, bro.

So now let's go to the Real Deal via Instagram, which is great.

Obviously, I like to get my social media from the Real Deal.

Social media?

Yeah, you know, from little tiny clips.

TR data.

Yeah, the Real Deal data.

I like the new slogan.

It's very fancy.

Yeah.

All right, well, this one is interesting because.

Wait a minute.

I thought everything I read on social media recently has been the other way.

Yet.

The Real Deal comes out and says home prices continue to climb across the country, reaching a record high in April.

Growth, however, shows signs of slowing.

Yeah.

According to the s & P CoreLogic case Shiller National Home Price Index released Tuesday, home prices rose 2.7% compared to the same time last year.

April's figure, not adjusted for seasonality, is the index's highest since it began in 1987.

But the April increase reveals some tempering in the markets with a growth rate lower than the preceding months of 2025.

Now, that sounds like a really strong market.

Sounds like a strong market.

But I got data points here for you in regards to this.

It seems as though that the housing market is shifting more towards a buyer's market.

You would think that.

I believe that it is.

I had been led to believe that it is by the data that I've been reading.

But there are conflicting arguments.

There is.

And this.

So this issue is.

It will forever be a regional issue, right?

Yes.

Real estate is a very regional product.

Right.

So right now, based on redfin data, there's 500,000 more buyers out or sellers out there than there are actual buyers.

Which means that it is a buyer's market.

You would think so.

Yes.

You would think so, Right.

More sellers and buyers, more inventory than people who can take it off of the shelves.

So right now in Miami, okay, which.

Is a market that is struggling.

That is struggling, there are three times as many sellers as there are buyers.

What would you think is going on?

What would those numbers signal to you?

Oh, don't ask me.

Rejeel.

Yeah, Rejeel.

What would it signal to you if there's three times as many sellers as there are buyers?

You didn't know you'd be giving homework on the show, did you?

No, I did not know it would.

You would think that.

Okay, home values or home prices are going to be coming down why are.

You giving the answer, bro?

All right, well, well, because you got more people selling, right?

So.

Which by the way, I got.

Hold on.

I got a These kids sidebar.

These kids.

Okay, so my son is coming up with new lingo all the time.

I can't keep up.

I'm giving up.

I don't even care.

This thing that he's saying now, Dake, if I make a mistake on something or if I like.

Let's say he makes me a great pass and I miss the shot seller.

You sold, bro.

What?

I like that one.

That's the thing.

That's a.

He says it all the time.

He goes, you're selling.

Stop selling.

Are they still using Sigma and Beta?

Oh, he's.

He hasn't used Beta, but yeah, Sigma all the time.

I say, adam, how you doing?

I'm great.

I'm Sigma.

I'm like, stop.

Will you just.

What does that mean to him?

Translate that to him.

It means Jill Urban Dictionary.

My.

My aura is.

Is great.

I am so cool.

Where did that come from?

I have no idea.

What.

What's wrong with Alpha and beta?

We got to use all this Greek terminology now.

Yeah, there's like this Russian song that says Sigma, Sigma boy Sigma.

It's actually ca.

Actually catchy.

They make.

It's a good song.

Yeah, well, it's a catchy song.

So.

So is that song.

It means Alpha Baby Shark.

Baby Shark was also catchy.

That doesn't make it cool.

You know.

So what is this?

According to Urban Dictionary, we used to.

This used to be a segment on the show.

I know, it was a staple.

We got to be careful.

We got to pre read this.

A popular, successful, but highly independent and self reliant person.

Typically a male.

One step above an alpha male.

One step above.

So I'm the.

I'm the Sigma and you're the Alpha.

Okay, just to be clear here, historically when we used to read these in the show Rejeel.

Yeah.

The example that would get us in trouble.

We didn't pre read it.

But some of the examples were very racially charged.

We're like, wait, what a minute.

Wait, what are you doing that for?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So just.

Just in case you ever reading Urban Dictionary for fun, just know it's racist adjacent.

Yeah, it.

It's.

Yeah, you can't exactly.

You'll get cancelled real quick.

Yeah, we did that.

It's a call of duty lobby.

Okay.

Yeah, right.

There you go.

But.

Okay, so back to Miami.

So three times as many sellers as there are buyers.

You would think that home prices should be coming down.

They're actually up 5.6% year over year.

That's crazy.

Lagging indicator.

Possibly.

Could be.

Could be.

Right.

Also, then you got cities like Austin, Texas.

They're down, okay.

Two times as many sellers as there are buyers.

Prices are down 3% year over year.

Yeah.

So sad right now.

Yeah.

How many hipsters out there cold plunging right now going, my real estate values are gone.

Yeah.

Oh, it's so cold.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All the comedians that Rogan brought over from la, they're like, bro, they gotta be salty, right?

Hey, Joe, you could have covered this loss.

Stop being alpha.

I'm Sigma Dog.

Yeah.

That's how you use it, Right?

If I'm Joe Brogan's family, you're gonna cover this.

Yeah.

Comedy mothership.

Right.

Go beat my ass up some extra equity.

Right.

But then.

But then you.

And also in.

During the same exact time.

Thank you.

This is exactly the chart that I was looking up.

How did you pull this up so fast?

I typed it in.

Here's this guy's legendary, right?

Arun, I want you to know that.

So look, right here in Phoenix, Arizona, you literally have two times as many sellers as you do buyers, and prices are down 2%.

But in West Palm beach, you have three times as many sellers as there are buyers, and prices are up 2.7%.

So I like to look at data like that and think to myself, let's make this very simple for the audience, okay?

In a perfect world, data like this should tell you the trends, but there is an inflection point where data settles out.

And if you're going, what the hell, Chris?

That doesn't make any sense.

Allow me to explain.

If you're going to the top of a curve and then down the other side of the curve, when you're going up, the curve, data is getting better.

When you're going down, the curve, data is getting worse.

But there is the inflection point, that top of the curve, where data is getting good in some areas and worse in other areas, but you're still averaging a flat number.

That is what you're seeing now.

You're at the top of the curve.

Some areas are heading down in data, some areas are heading up, and the average is still showing a net positive, which means your cadence, your trajectory, your velocity, if you want all sorts of physics terms, is slowing down.

And after you slow down to a certain point, data all starts to turn negative, and you start going down the opposite side of the curve.

So that is where we're at Right.

Now, if I were to look at this objectively and remove housing from the equation and just say, hey, Chris, here's a data set, Analyze these numbers, tell me what it means.

That would be my objective perspective here.

Right, exactly.

And I think housing data in particular, you can't look at it from a national level.

Right.

Well, you also can't look at it with the current opus too, because you have to look backward.

This is six month lagging data.

Yeah.

And so, and to that, to that point.

Exactly.

Right.

So the median sale price for a home right now is, let's see here, 474,000.

Okay, that's up almost 6% year over year.

That's insane.

Sorry.

That's the number, that's the number of homes sold.

I'm sorry, the, the, the price, the median sale price was actually 441 and up only 1% year over year.

Can I do the same thing?

That's insane.

Yeah, but if you look at it from a national level, right, just 1% year, you're like, okay, but then you have some places that are up 12%.

But if you look at the number of homes sold in May of this year and you compare it to May of 2024 and May of 2023, exactly the same, the number of homes sold.

God, if you don't watch us on YouTube and you don't get to see Saeed's face when he did that.

What?

No, you made the mouth open like there was a, there was an expression.

I can't, honestly.

And if you do appreciate the YouTube videos, you do appreciate this beautiful lighting on me.

Chris regil.

We're working on it.

Working on it.

Yeah, there's some hot spots.

Subscribe, Hit that like button, Ring that notification bell, Leave us a comment, let us know how much you like it.

Well, you're not the only person who has an interesting perspective on the housing market.

My boy, Nick gurley, via x.

He is concerned about the housing downturn broadening.

Mr.

Gurley himself, girly.

The manliest girly man, you know.

Well, according to him, the housing downturn is broadening with over 60% of U.

S.

Counties experiencing monthly home value declines in May of 2025.

That's a very different narrative than the real deal data we just got.

He goes on to say that is one of the highest percentages going back almost three decades where Jill was in pampers.

The only other two times in the last three decades when this many counties reported a monthly drop, according to Zillow, were 2022 little thing like to call a pandemic.

And 2008 to 2012, which was the height of the real estate impact of the great financial crisis.

Right.

So this is where we go, huh?

Right.

And the only difference, and I guess the big key difference right now from.

Look at that chart.

Work with Jill.

The big difference from what we.

What we're going through now and what we went through during the great recession.

Right.

Is people aren't rushing to sell their homes right now.

If they're listing their homes to sell and they're not selling, they're.

They can continue to sit on it.

They don't have to budge on prices.

Right.

It's not.

It's not a fire sale.

So until we hit that inflection point, I don't know how much change you're really gonna see.

You're still doing the choking thing.

I'm trying to control it.

It's not the studio now.

You gotta admit that.

No, no, don't point it.

Don't point at the air filter.

Boy, you got that specifically for you even put it on my side.

I did put it on your side for that reason.

This.

It can't be the studio now.

Yeah, yeah.

You have a.

It's a.

It's some.

It's mental.

Right?

Really?

I mean, it's got to be.

Right?

It's got to be.

You got it.

You got a whole throat clearing issue now.

When the mic is live.

You're really good.

Yeah, I choked that snot down.

Rajeel, cut the commercial.

So I should point out that this chart is an interesting chart.

If you can't see it, I'll describe it to you because it's really important.

It's from Revenger.

60% of the US of US counties had declining home values in May of 2025.

It's really interesting to see the spike in home values leading up to the great financial crisis.

It was.

It was literally almost a straight vertical.

There was a slight dip in 2007, but it actually kept going up leading into 2009, which is why I said that 2008, 2012 is where you saw values dip.

We saw an.

Actually, this is stunning.

In 2022ish, you saw a vertical increase of 77.1%.

That is the most straight line up ever in history since this data's data has been tracked.

So that was a huge home value increase.

You saw a huge dramatic drop off for the pandemic period in the post, kind of 2022ish, which is really the only thing that slowed down.

It took A pandemic to slow down the housing market.

And then it picked right back up because people were sitting at home going, God, I need more space.

And it's just been wildly volatile ever since.

And look at these swings.

If you look back, it looks like somebody was drawing a line and started scribbling a little bit.

And then there was a magnitude 10 earthquake.

And the thing starts shaking all over the place.

And it's like the real estate market.

Schizophrenic.

It doesn't know what's going on.

Is it up?

Is it down?

I don't know, but it's up 61.8%.

There's only two or three times in history it's ever been up that much before.

I mean, this is scary stuff, but not if you look at the real deal data.

So I was having an interesting conversation with some cousins over the weekend, and I wanted to get your take on it.

Actually, now that you bring this up.

Too, thanks for the invite.

Yeah.

What?

Okay, well, it's over FaceTime.

You want me to invite you in on the FaceTime call?

Yeah, you just add somebody you want to.

Just.

You want to be included in that.

Regila and I FaceTime all the time.

I don't like.

I don't like how.

I don't like.

I don't like how the kids surprise you with FaceTime calls.

So there is.

Why are you guys.

Are you guys down with that?

Like a random.

I don't like the random FaceTime call.

Yeah, that feels kind of invasive.

So I've got a number of logistical questions as it relates to how we communicate today as a generation.

Okay.

Number one, don't leave me a voicemail and expect me to listen to it.

You are lucky that they get transcribed now.

Right, Exactly.

I have not listened to your voice on a voicemail in a very long time.

I mean, I personally, I don't even like the voice memos that come through texts.

It kind of bothers me.

But can I be awesome honest about something?

Yeah.

Don't call me.

What?

99 of what you want to say to me can be said via a text or in person?

No, but.

Okay, so what about the type of people that, like, if I want something done, I'm walking down to that person's office and I want to say it to them.

Right.

Versus you want me to just text you and not.

I don't know.

I'm talking.

I'm talking friends in the work Zeitgeist.

Oh, let me.

Let me.

Let me be clear.

Okay.

And this is going to offend some fragile people here.

Okay.

All right.

There are so many damn phone calls and meetings.

That should be an email.

Yeah, 100%.

What you're really saying to me is I don't trust you to respond to my message, so I'm going to follow up with an extra ting.

Ting.

I.

Yeah, you know what I mean.

A little alert that pops up on your.

I hate the vernacular used in corporate America.

And you know what else I don't like?

Yeah, I don't like it when you send me an email and then follow it up with like a teams message or an additional instant message if you have slack in your office.

You got it, right?

You got my message, right?

You saw that, right?

I need you to confirm.

I wanted to hit you with this confirm receipt, bro.

Okay, Can I be the.

Can I be the guy you don't.

Want to be the guy that sends the email asking for you to confirm receipts?

That's always kind of.

Here's the blows.

I haven't used instant messaging features in an office setting in probably a decade.

I.

I will not do that.

You can.

You want to email me, Email me.

I will not respond to instant messenger in the office.

And yet to this day, people still try to ping me on instant messenger.

What part of me not responding to you for 10 years was confusing?

Right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Did I not send the message home enough?

I know.

Do I have to send you back a message saying no?

Okay, so you don't like that.

You don't like people phone.

What about the tap backs on the text messages?

Okay, first of all, if you send me a thumbs up, tap back on a message.

That's respectful.

Bro, let me be honest with you.

Okay?

What would you rather have an emoji thumbs up?

No, the most dismissive thing you can do is.

That's not dismissive, bro.

If you send me a tap back or emoji thumbs up.

Here's what I'm thinking.

What the.

What did you just say to me?

Oh, you're that busy, huh?

Yeah, I'm not down, but yeah, it's a little invasive.

Rajille, what about you?

You have.

Do you get any phone random facetime phone calls like this?

I got one from my sister earlier today.

Yeah, I don't like that.

Yeah, you gotta announce the FaceTime via message and then get my comments.

Yeah, you're gonna FaceTime me while you're.

You're properly set up and I'm on the move.

You want me to just answer?

You get all positioned and angled up and everything and I'M pooping like, come on now.

Yeah, exactly.

I should.

Subject to this.

Why don't those go to voicemail like every other phone call?

It's got to ring 6,000 times.

Yeah, they.

I don't need to hear that.

Just two.

Two of those.

That's all I need.

Right.

I should be able to turn that feature off.

Yeah.

Or here's an idea.

How about I can answer it on audio only and then choose to turn on the video Like a zoom call.

Yeah.

There you go.

Right.

It should always default off.

You know how many people in America have shown parts of their body they don't want to show to people?

At times they don't want to show it to people because they answer the FaceTime call.

Yeah.

Reflections.

You don't need to know that.

Yeah.

Mirrors in the background.

It should show you yourself on the screen privately.

And then you say share, so you know what you're looking at.

Have you ever got caught up.

It sounds like somebody's been caught up in some mess.

No, my wife doesn't listen to the show.

Right.

Okay.

So I was on a call with some cousins over the weekend, and they were saying they subscribe to the camp.

Why should I buy a home?

I'm not going to get the appreciation that everybody got over the last five years, probably in my lifetime.

It's reoccurring rhetoric.

I've heard a lot of it.

Right.

So.

And I know we say all the time, don't look at your home as an investment.

Right.

So really, all they're missing out on is the equity that they'd be building in their home.

But we've talked about on the show before, a lot of hidden costs with homes.

It's really expensive to maintain a home.

You're not able to call the repair man and be like, hey, fix this.

You're not gonna.

Yeah, but you're not gonna buy a home and not fix things up down the road.

But if you're getting.

If you get an apartment or something, you're not gonna fix up the kitchen.

Right.

You're not gonna.

You're not gonna.

That's not yours to worry about.

So all the extra money that they would have, they subscribe to the camp of, I just invested.

Yeah.

And unfortunately for a lot of people, like, they're in the.

For them, they're lucky enough to where if they wanted to pull the trigger, they could and buy a home.

Right.

But for some people, that's their only option.

I would say 90% of the people that I have this conversation with who are in that camp.

Maybe even more are saying that that's their philosophy, but they're not actually investing.

Oh, what are they?

So what are you.

They're spending what they make on what they live, how they live.

Oh yeah, most.

Most people are.

Yeah.

Living paycheck to paycheck.

If you're legitimately doing it in a disciplined way and investing and you feel like this is a better use of your money, I am not going to judge you.

Good for you.

Yeah.

And it's also because rents are just ridiculous.

Especially, you know, in this area where we live.

Well, I think rents are ridiculous everywhere at this point in time.

We.

We haven't seen.

God, you remember how like a year.

What's more likely, home prices to come down or rents to go down?

Typically happens around the same time.

Yeah.

As home get.

Homes get more affordable and easier to mortgage, you bring rents down in and around the same.

Because the last thing you want to do is have rent higher than a mortgage and force your people out.

But we're in, we're in a really weird time.

And the weirdness here is that normally you would have a catalyst that would cause change, but the market is so irrational that things that should have been catalysts to cause change.

People are like, nah, I would have bet everything I had that on Monday of this week we would have seen the market open up with really big concerns about oil prices, about where the market was going.

And we saw growth in the market.

The market was positive.

Later in the day, sure, there was announcements of things, but walking into Monday.

Yeah.

You had a ceasefire announced in the Middle east in Iran, Israel and Iran.

And then Iran lobbed over some extra missiles and everyone was like, ah, the ceasefire hasn't come in.

I mean it's not time yet.

Like, isn't that they didn't.

I mean it was early, you know, they had some time left on the clock.

They threw them over.

It's not a video game, people.

I know, like, shouldn't everybody be like, oh no, ceasefire.

Yeah.

But instead the market opened up and then.

And then the worst part about it was is like all the people on social media were like, ah, they can't afford to shut down the straight of remote.

90 of their GDP is driven off oil sales.

Plus they're really tough tight with China and Russia and they get all their oil from there.

It's really only like, you're up to maximum 20% of the U.S.

oil supply.

We'll be fine.

And I'm like, it's a war.

Missiles have been exchanged Things have been bombed.

Be whatever the hell are.

Flying stealth missions in the middle of the night.

We're paying billions of dollars for this.

And everyone's like, nah, we're fine.

Yeah.

And I'm like, where does this ego come from?

Where did we get to the point where, like, you know what?

Geopolitical unrest.

Normally that stuff would have been headline news.

Everybody been freaking out.

Tensions have been ran high, and now everyone's.

I don't know if it's just so desensitized to it.

Maybe there's too much caffeine, I don't know.

But everyone's like, hey, man, cool.

I think the market's gonna go up Monday.

Market opens up, market goes up.

And I'm sitting at my desk going, what in the hell is going on?

Am I in the Twilight zone?

Yeah.

Like.

Or is this something I don't realize?

I.

Like, I feel like I should care about this.

It's.

I think social media is the blame for this too.

I think social media has gotten so oddly desensitized to extremism that this extreme stuff that normally would captivate the country, People have like, a short attention span.

They're like, oh, my God, we're at war.

Oh, damn, it's Monday.

I want to launch a Del Taco.

It's weird.

It's like there's no.

Like, there's no long.

It's like we all have short term memory issues.

Yeah.

We're all fearful of stagflation, recession, what's going on?

No way.

We're not, though.

People don't understand what that even means.

No.

And then they.

They see.

They see the headline that, you know, The S&P 500 is near all time highs again.

Okay, cool.

Oh, man.

We're about to go to war, right?

And it's like, wait a minute, look at this other fancy shiny object over here.

And speaking of fancy shiny objects, your favorite fancy shiny object is going up in value now too.

Dude.

So about that.

Yeah, I might.

According to barons, the price of bitcoin was rising on Wednesday as the truce in the Middle east as well as the dollar debasement, continued to lift cryptocurrency.

So the tr.

The truce in the Middle east and the dollar being devalued now pushes cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin.

Not.

Not just bitcoin up in value.

This is crazy.

The world's largest token was up 2.7% to $107,920 over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinDesk.

So I'm making the shift.

Right.

I'm thinking that.

Oh, my God.

To the point now where it's becoming.

So many companies are legitimizing.

It's become institutional.

Yeah, exactly.

And that.

And that wasn't around before.

When we first started the podcast.

It was.

It was not like.

No, no, no, you're still.

You're still a crypto hater.

No, I am.

I'm a crypto lover.

Everybody listening.

It's Saeed at higher standard podcast.

No, it should.

If it's gonna.

Okay, look, now I'm.

This is the camp.

You're a crypto hater.

This is the camp that I'm switching over to.

If that's.

You're not allowed to switch camps.

No, if that's what you're gonna do, it's got to fall into your speculative investment.

Right?

That's it.

Yeah.

It can't be your main.

Your main hustle.

I agree with that.

Right.

Like, okay, it should be a speculative investment and that's fine.

Right.

But you saw the news that came out about Fannie and Freddie with Bitcoin.

They're ordered to consider crypto as an asset when buying mortgages.

Now this from the Associated Press.

The head of the federal government agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wants mortgage giants to consider accepting a home buyer's cryptocurrency holdings in their criteria for buying mortgages from banks.

When I saw that, that's when I was like, that's it, bro.

The ETF wasn't enough, but that was it.

I was like, wow.

Okay, so I'm gonna unpack that a little bit.

Wow, I did not know that.

Okay, so whenever you go to buy a home, almost all lenders you try to buy a home from are going to use what's called conforming underwriting guidance.

Guidance that conform to the agencies.

Freddie and Fannie, the government sponsored enterprises that were originally built and established by the government to fund the market for home buying, to provide a source of liquidity in the markets.

Banks sell their loans to them, but they are the single largest buyer of the product, creating liquidity for this product.

So people make you home loans.

They're incentivized to make home loans because they can sell them off to somebody else and make more money on them.

This whole ecosystem is driven off of their underwriting guidelines.

There's rules for what they want to see from buyers and sellers who are trying to finance property, right?

Yes.

So if you go to buy a property, they underwrite you and they make sure that you have A certain de minimis net worth.

Do you have a net worth equal to or greater than the loan amount?

Do you have liquidity for six months?

Piti, principal, interest, taxes and insurance post close.

Those criteria which can vary a great deal.

Why would they need that?

They need that in order to ensure that you are capable of buying the property and you are not a big risk for defaulting on the underlying loan.

If you were to lose your job, you have six months worth of liquidity to float you until you find your next job.

Yeah, it all sounds complicated because there's a lot of rules, but it's not that complicated.

The rules are very simple.

You just have to know that there's a lot of them.

But traditionally speaking, random or speculative investments were not something they considered in establishing your net worth.

Because they go, eh, I don't really know how much this 1968, you know, Corvette really is valued at.

I'm not going to include that in his net worth calculation.

Right.

And mortgage brokers would always put oh, this person has rugs and art and jewelry worth $100,000.

Yeah, the personal property.

Exactly.

So what happened is that they established tighter and tighter rules to prevent stuff like that being just randomly added to your net worth and up until this.

Because it's kind of, it's no different than the stated income issue.

Yeah, you could have been a holder of a million dollars in crypto but had no other net worth outside of crypto because you didn't invest in trillion traditional stocks and they wouldn't have included in your net worth calculation.

Well now they will.

Which means that more crypto, crypto centric investors are going to be able to qualify for things like home purchases.

Just scary.

It's not scary.

Good for them.

Shame on you crypto hater.

Shame, shame you bring to the house.

You too bro.

You sold, you seller.

I sold, Seller.

I sold.

Yeah, I did sell, but only because I didn't have time to keep up with it.

But the message was the same for them.

Buy and hold, bro.

Yeah, it was the same for them.

And maybe, maybe I matriculated down a little bit but my bad.

Maybe that's why Warren Buffett retired.

Yeah, it's now trading off the 4% from its height.

By the way, we're 4% under the height of Bitcoin's value.

Meanwhile.

Well, the cease fire between Iran and Israel has put investors back in a risk on mood.

It happened like a day ago.

One day.

I know.

With stocks close to record highs.

Okay, that's good news for Bitcoin the crypto.

But the crypto was also getting a boost from the dollar slump.

The US Dollar index, which tracks the green back against the basket of other currencies, dropped Tuesday and is now trading close to its one year low.

Okay, we're going to unpack that in a minute here.

Having plunged amid worries of the tariffs in President Donald Trump's former flagship tax bill will hurt the US economy, any flows out of the dollar tend to benefit Bitcoin, which crypto bulls see as a hedge as well as an alternative form of payment.

Other cryptos were also climbing Wednesday.

Ethereum, Solana, XRP were all up above and over the past 24 hours per data from Kraken.

So this is an interesting thought and it's something that's really weird and confusion in the episode.

If you already got some, this is going to make it worse for you.

And I got some for you too after.

Yeah, just little thundersteel.

There you go.

You still my thunder.

Yeah, I do that.

You do that.

Well, you got problem number one.

US Value of the dollar is being devalued.

Okay.

A dollar buys you less than it once did before, and now the dollar is being devalued is not only a problem for things that are going up in value, that is inflation, but it's furthering inflation up.

Yeah, right.

Which means it puts pressure on the Fed not to cut rates.

Right, exactly.

Then you have the stock market at an all time high, which again puts pressure on the Fed to not cut rates.

Yeah.

Because they don't need to.

They don't need to.

Market seems like it's going pretty well.

Yeah, Right.

And then you see people funneling money into cryptocurrency because they say the dollar isn't worth as much, but cryptocurrency is going up in value.

So to make this very simple, if I can buy one Diet Coke for $1, right.

But I can buy two Diet Cokes for one crypto coin, right.

Then you go, wait a minute, I get more for my crypto than I do for my dollar.

So the crypto is worth more to me than the dollar.

Right.

And I'm taking something worth $100,000, comparing it to $1.

But here's the problem.

As this shifts and people go, well, the US dollar is losing value and crypto is going up in value.

If I put my money into dollars, I'm losing money.

Put my money into cryptocurrency, I'm gaining money.

Right.

That's a problem for confidence in what is conceived as the world's backstop currency, the U.S.

dollar.

Yeah.

And how long does that go on before other countries go, you know what, I'm gonna put my money over there in that thing and.

But it doesn't mean it's game over if the US does lose its.

Its position as the.

As the world currency.

I mean, we haven't always been the world's number one currency, but I mean, it does will impact a lot of things.

Right?

Yeah.

Good.

What's the thing you got to share here?

What's going on?

So earlier we talked on the show how stock markets near all time highs.

S P500.

You know, Nvidia is hitting all time highs.

You know, it signals we're in a good place.

Right?

It's a Sigma market.

It is a Sigma market.

Look at you, full circle.

This from the Wall Street Journal.

Little resource I use every once in a while.

Just sometimes they're kind of credible.

Nearly 2 million student loan borrowers are at risk of having their wages garnished this summer.

Bro, did you just steal my article?

No, that's my article, bro.

That was one of my articles.

Oh, was it?

I didn't know, bro.

I had it.

Damn, bro.

This exact article.

Oh, this exact.

Tell him, please.

Great mind sneak alike, brother.

No, don't do that.

Don't marginalize my greatness.

So let's get into it.

Are you serious?

I'm being serious, bro.

So what, we can't.

We can't think of like now?

We've been together long enough, bro.

The same outlet too.

What do you mean?

Everyone reads the Wall Street Journal.

You don't pay for a subscription like I do.

I.

I used to.

I stopped.

Yeah, but this one, this was one of those free articles.

That was literally the next article.

Yeah, that was the next article.

Did you really?

You come look, it's.

It's literally in my photos.

Why don't you read the show notes?

That's what they're there for.

Rajiv.

The show notes.

He didn't know what year over year meant.

No, no, he knew what year over year mean.

He didn't know the acronym.

I got you, Regil.

Don't let him do this.

He called me.

He's like, what's yoy?

He did not call you.

I FaceTimed you on the toy.

Like you haven't heard of Oman yoy before.

What's yoy?

And mom, it's Fijian for almond.

Yoy.

But this is scary, man.

So look, we got 6 million federal student loan borrowers are 90 days or more past due after the pandemic era reprieve ended.

Right.

It's, it's getting crazy for these, for, for everybody.

Because now spend, their spending is going to have to shrink.

Right.

Because when they start garnishing their wages, they don't have a choice, they're just going to take it from them.

Yeah, yeah.

And this could be the very thing that, I don't know, could bring some houses online.

So, yeah, When Americans are having a cash flow deficit because they live a lifestyle that they either can't or won't change, and they have something like this, a significant increase in their monthly debt payments coming up, they have very limited options.

And the easiest for most Americans to try to reconcile this will be to pull out equity of their homes, which have, has increased at an unbelievable cadence.

But if you don't have the cash flow to pay for that increased debt that you have to take on your home, or for example, let's say you have a loan with a 2 or 3% rate, but in order to pull out more equity, you need to get either a home equity line of credit, which is typically an index plus margin, and a higher rate closer to 7%, 7 or 8%.

Right now call it 10% for a home equity line of credit.

Yeah, I think, I think there's some, there's some out there.

I have no idea what the current rates are for those.

I should probably check.

Yeah, we do host a financial literacy podcast.

Yeah, my bad.

Yeah, but yeah, it's going to be.

Higher than somewhere between 7 to 10%.

Yeah.

Or you can get a traditional first trustee, wrap all that debt into it and then get a six and a half, six three quarter rate on your, on your first trustee, your first mortgage.

And if you don't have the cash flow to pay for that increased mortgage payment at that increased rate, you got very little options left.

What do you do?

You sell your rent and you use the equity to pay down debt and to improve your lifestyle.

So they're, when they do start garnishing wages, it's usually for borrowers that have defaulted and they're not considered default borrowers until they're 270 days past due.

So these are, mind you, these are people that have already been stretched and squeezed to the point where they can't make any payments at all.

There's no problem, there's no options for them.

Yeah.

So this is the fear, right?

This, these are the mixed signals that we were talking about.

Well, and if things couldn't get any more confusing, I was, I was doing some research for the show and I ran across something that made me very uncomfortable.

And I thought this would be a good venue to share it because it's important to me.

Made you uncomfortable?

Yeah.

I was scrolling through photos and there's a news article that I look at the photos first, where I read the headlines and Jeff Bezos and his soon to be wife are having a foam party on their yacht.

And I thought, well, my life sucks.

Do they have a prenup?

Logical question.

I think a lot of people want to know that.

Yeah.

And I remember Lauren Sanchez.

I'm in the LA market.

She was.

She was a weather girl, right?

Weather girl.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And ktla.

Yeah.

That's oddly specific.

Saeed, you.

I remember her.

I remember from when she was doing that, like since I was a teenager.

Does your wife know about this obsession?

Stop.

She doesn't.

The crazy part is she doesn't even look the same.

No, no.

She's got a very different face.

She's purchased.

Yeah.

So in the prenup game, well, stakes are high.

And prenup that is enforceable in New York might be tossed out in London.

Right.

Okay.

And if you're an international man, a mystery like your man Jeff Bezos, and you have residences all over the world.

He looks like such a good villain.

Great villain.

Yeah.

He's basically the real life Lex Luthor.

Yeah.

And well, you want to make sure that prenup works everywhere you are.

How do they do it?

You may.

You might ask.

Well, ask a lawyer.

Hey, I know one.

Hey.

Yeah.

What's up, guy?

So that is why top tier prenups often include a choice of law clause.

And don't worry, Chris will explain this to you.

Locking in which jurisdiction rules apply regardless of where a divorce unfolds.

So this happens a lot in the business world?

This is such a sensitive topic.

I would imagine.

Can you imagine?

So I'll just be honest.

Like my wife and I, we don't have prenups.

I don't have a prenup.

Right.

So I can't imagine even like starting this conversation if you are someone like Jeff Bezos.

I'm a nobody.

Jeff Bezos, worth a couple billions.

Right.

Well.

And he also divorced McKenzie, was it?

Yes, Bezos, and gave her like 36.

Billion and she's just blowing it.

And he's still worth 100 billion.

Yeah, she's.

She's the game.

A lot to charity.

Not fair.

Yeah, it's.

Yeah, it's just weird.

But you don't want to give up another 36 billion.

Look, you're beautiful, baby, I'll give you a billion.

You know what I mean?

Like at some point you say, you know what?

I'm not going to do that again.

Right.

So, yeah, he's had something.

So the choice of law provisions are really interesting.

Mackenzie Scott received approximately 38 billion in Amazon stock, representing 4% of the company shares.

Shouts for t voting rights to these shares.

Jeff Bezos retained 75% of Amazon shares and control over the voting rights of her shares.

Wow.

Yeah, Tough life for her.

She's really upset about it.

You know, not a bad looking chick.

Yeah.

I mean, she's probably more natural looking.

Yeah.

How do you have this conversation?

Look, I'm not saying we're gonna get divorced.

I'm saying if we do get divorced, you shouldn't get all this.

I think it's probably like negotiating sex the first time.

Negotiating?

Yeah.

I think you got like, look, we should be protected here.

I know you, you know me, I trust you.

But we should get tested.

You should get tested.

I should get tested.

Right.

You know what's really I found interesting fascinating?

What?

You know, in Iraq, if you want to get married, they test the blood of the husband and wife as part of the official marriage document from the government.

I did not know this.

To make sure that you're, you're compatible and compatible.

There's not like issues having children.

Oh, childbirth is such a huge problem.

And there's a lot of familial ties in a lot of Middle Eastern countries to what, a cousin's?

Yeah.

But they actually as part of your marriage certificate from the government because you have to get a license to get married like you do in the United States, they actually test your blood as part of that.

All right.

Premarital screening includes blood test is required for couples seeking to marry.

Are you whispering this to the audience?

That's incredible.

I did a microphone.

How do we, how do we.

How did I not know this?

I know, it's fascinating, right?

Yeah, that is pretty fascinating.

And so our primary goal is to.

Identify potential health risks.

Yeah.

Why don't we do that in the US with all the technology that we have here.

We're not, we're not screening people to make sure that they don't have any blood related issues that could impact their families.

And if you're in Japan, where you need to have people have kids and they're dealing with an issue of whole, like generational, like, you know, whole not having legacy children.

Yeah.

Like this, this should be priority one, man, 100%.

Yeah.

I'm just saying, like, fascinating.

You wouldn't think of all places that country would be doing that.

Right, right.

It's fascinating.

Anyway, so, yeah, you can choose your law.

This happens a lot.

And you actually probably sign up to this without even.

Not a prenup.

But the choice of law provisions and a lot of things you do.

A lot of companies will have headquarters in, for example, Texas or Florida or Delaware.

And the reason why they do that there is there might be legal protections in that state, there might be tax protections in that state, but they have a corporate reason to have an entity there, and they don't want to fight cases in New York, in Florida, in Texas, if they're located in a different state or California, which, by the way, the.

The mayor of New York.

You hear what this guy wants to come out and do.

No.

Wants to raise corporate taxes.

And he doesn't care if you're not headquartered in New York.

But if you do any kind of business in New York, you are going to get an increase in corporate tax.

It's a shell game.

You could run off a lot of people who otherwise be paying taxes by doing that.

So, you know, be careful, choose wisely.

Yeah, but, yeah, it's.

It's a real problem, and it's something to think about.

But choice of law provisions are very common in a lot of contracts.

Most people don't realize that.

Basically, they try to force you into saying, hey, if you're going to sue me, you have to sue me here in our home state.

And there could be advantages or disadvantages to you, but certainly it's more convenient for a company in most cases.

That being said, the prenup conversation continues.

Okay, let's go.

So prenups can lay out who in a divorce supervises the packing of personal belongings or can require a spouse to move out within 30 days.

There's some granularity here, which is interesting.

Some clients demand that their prenups stipulate that a spouse maintain a specific weight, say, within 20 pounds of what it was on the wedding day.

That's wild.

Yeah, I know.

I'd be out.

I guess we're getting divorced, baby.

Yeah.

Or exercise four times a week during the marriage.

And who's going to hold you?

Hold them accountable.

How do you hold someone like that accountable?

Rajeel, I didn't see you exercise this week.

I just want to let you know if it happens again.

Yeah, I'm taking everything.

I didn't see you log the workout, bro.

It's been posting two times this week so far.

Yep, yep.

Treadmill in the morning.

Yeah.

Others want financial penalties for cheating.

Okay, I get that.

One attorney described a client seeking a 1 million dollar payment for each affair with bro.

How many affairs you gonna let go by, dog?

Yeah, I feel like at some point that's on you.

You missed the first one.

Okay.

$1 million.

There's so many things I want to say that would have to get censored out.

How good does it have to be, bro, to be like, this one's worth a million?

Well, I'm doing this one.

I include the next paragraph for you, my NBA fans.

Randall Kessler, an Atlanta based divorce attorney, recounts a professional basketball player client who insisted his prenup acknowledged that.

You ready for it?

It's a quote.

NBA players are known to have affairs, end quote.

So cheating couldn't trigger costly penalties.

Can you imagine not reading that provision?

No.

Yeah, you gotta.

If you're.

If you're signing this, you have to have your own separate attorney to go over it.

Generally speaking, a person who prepares a prenup will tell you, I need you to get your own attorney to read this with you before you execute for us.

Yes.

So it's usually you versus them when it comes to the prenup.

And if you don't do that and you.

You have that same attorney represent you both and inform you both, which is generally ill advised, there's usually a disclaimer which goes along with that that you would have to sign, acknowledging that this person prepared it for his client and also told you of your rights.

See, this is the part around this that I'm like, at that point, the marriage just seems so transactional.

Yeah, but that works for some people.

I know, but that's like Lauren Sanchez.

Yeah.

She's.

Ouch.

She's living.

All right.

Yeah.

Judges may view behavioral clauses like weight requirements as overly invasive or punitive.

They also can create endless disputes.

So that's why they say the jurisdiction behind this will be.

You would pick a state that favors weight loss provisions in your.

In your agreement.

When you do this.

Courts also typically won't honor prenuptial terms that dictate child custody or support because you could be a terrible parent, and that isn't considered when you make the agreement.

The leverage often goes to whoever cares less about the marriage.

If you are willing to walk away, you hold all the cards.

Kessler says.

So if Jeff Bezos gets a prenup that is outsized, it is inferred that he cares less about the marriage.

Yeah.

Damn.

I mean.

Yeah.

Got dark at the end didn't we, boys?

He does.

He does strike me as the kind of guy that probably cares more about his business at this point.

He's lost 38 million or billion dollars, bro.

Once he's.

I'm not doing this again.

I don't think he cares.

You don't think he cares about losing another 38 billion?

What are you talking about, Regil?

Is he the third wealthiest man in the world?

He's up there, yeah.

I mean, yeah.

He's in top three.

Yeah.

What are you talking about, man?

38 billion is.

38 billion.

He lost 38 billion is still in the top three.

That's crazy.

22.7.

God, I can't say the number.

It's a big $27.4 billion.

Yes.

According to Forbes, as of May 25, 2020, 25, Bezos estimated net worth stood at 2200 20.9 billion, making him the third richest person in the world.

He was the wealthiest person from 2017 to 2021, according to Forbes and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Oh, by the.

I read it.

I read a crazy stat as.

Let's take a short little pivot here.

We're over that one hour.

Mark, can you please do me a favor and do the Googles on this?

How many shares does Mark Zuckerberg own?

And because they pay out a dividend quarterly.

Yeah, yeah, he gets that, right.

Yeah.

Well, he gets a dividend per share yield.

Yeah.

Pull that up.

Let's do some maths.

Yeah.

It's a lot.

In addition to whatever his salary is.

Yeah.

Dividends are.

You own stock, you get paid that on your sock.

Yeah.

Your salary is irrelevant.

Really, that.

Generally speaking, if you are a founder, CEO.

Yeah.

And you own stock in the company, your salary will never pay you as much as the dividends you should receive from your ownership of stock in the company.

Is that always the game plan?

That is why equity in a company you start is important.

Equity means ownership.

Yes, that is.

That is why.

But I'm saying is the ultimate goal.

Mark Zuckerberg owns approximately 13.6% around.

Zuckerberg owns the same number of shares.

347 million.

Now you just got to figure out how much they pay out.

So Google what the last dividend for Meta was.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

You know, you get.

When you go to the calculator, you're going to have to go long, sideways.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

This is.

I'm waiting on beta.

Oh, my God.

Ooh, 52.

Oh, my God.

What?

52 point or five.

I'm so like Torn by the numbers.

It's crazy.

That's $182 million per quarter on dividends.

$0.52, $0.53 ish per share as of June 26, 2025.

Let that sink in, people.

So when you heard what's your.

What's your name?

Sam Altman, going around saying that they were offering 100 million dollar bonuses to top people at OpenAI to come over to Meta.

Yeah, that's why he makes that a quarter.

A quarter, bro.

Yeah.

He's doing almost a billion a year between salary and dividends while learning Jiu.

Jitsu with his chain out.

That's why we have a podcast so we can make 1/10 of 1%.

I'm sorry I brought the mood down, but when I read that, I couldn't believe it.

I was like, this can't be real.

All right, show's over.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good job.

Zug.

Zuck.

You won.

Rajeel, do you feel like a failure too, or is it just me?

Yes.

Jesus, I feel like a failure.

What?

Never.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, it's good.

He's got.

He's got a beautiful wife, amazing kid at home waiting for him.

You ever met his wife?

He won.

Yeah, she came here.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I was going to say that seems little cavalier view, Katrina.

Yep.

He didn't want his wife's name on the show, bro.

Oh, my bad, bro.

I'm kidding.

You already called it out on.

He's holding it against you.

All right, you guys got anything else?

No, I think I'm good.

Rail.

You good?

I'm good.

Yeah.

Zuck one.

All right.

Yeah.

Zuck one.

Yeah.

Good night, everybody.

Okay, bye.