The Electricity Revolution, The Election’s Market Impact, Cannabis, Etc
Here’s the edited transcript from this week’s Live Q&A Chat from Zoom. Lots of market commentary including a discussion about the election and its likely impact on the markets, some heavy politics, lots of investment strategy discussion and more.
Cody:
Before we even go to stocks, yesterday, I did a call, a conference, a panel, a Zoom panel with George Gilder and a couple other technology guys. One of the things that I mentioned on there was, someone said, “We are living at a time where technology that’s being invented today will allow more wealth creation than ever before.”
Number one thing I’d mention is that we might have already seen a lot of that part play out already obviously with the stocks now multitrillion dollar market caps like Google, Apple, Microsoft, etcetera have. But more to the point, the biggest platform ever is electricity. Just the sheer ability to plug something in is what then we were able to build all of this to the point where we can break voice and video signals down to ones and zeros and have a Zoom call with 70 participants in real time. It’s just amazing. It’s an amazing time and place that we live and electricity is the key to it all.
The electricity revolution is not over … I think that, along with The Space Revolution, The Electricity Revolution is about to heat up too. I’ve been studying with the rare earth minerals and that’s what got me started getting into electricity and trying to understand electromagnetism. I feel dumb trying to understand electromagnetism. What I’ve done, and like I usually do when I feel dumb about something, is immerse myself in it.
Cody:
Markets down. Big spill. Not as bad as they were an hour ago when we could have been doing this call. We all could have been, “Buy in QQQ calls, lottery tickets that expire this afternoon.” Just kidding, because day trading lottos is not the key 10,000 day wealth building. Not that you can’t ever do that.
I’ve been saying, valuations have been out of control and I am not terribly surprised that we’re having a major pullback. My feet to fire guest last week was, “We’re going to have a 5% or 10% pullback into the election and then we’ll have some 2% gyration days.”
Well, it’s crossing over each other, but that’s what’s happening. I wish I would have been net short walking in today. We’re not in that business of gaming short-term stock market moves though. At least we got cautious. That’s where I want to be. I want to be cautious at this moment. That’s fine. We aren’t going to make money every single day. We aren’t going to outperform every single day. We’d like to do that most of the time over time. That’s what we’ve done. That’s what I expect we’ll continue to do. Let the markets do what they do. Take advantage of the pitches like we like to do and things were crazy. You sell, you trim, you get some hedges on and things are crashing. Cover up some hedges. Eventually we’ll do some buying.
Since I’ve not golfed this week, it seems like every night I’m thinking about the elections and its impact on the markets and how should I be positioned in it. Look, here’s the problem trying to game the markets. You’ve got to do three things when you try to game the election’s impact on the markets. Who’s going to win the election? You guys know I’m anti-partisan. I’m going to vote like I always do. I will not vote for a Republican or Democrat like I had never had in decades. I don’t know what to do. I don’t feel good about any of it.
You probably are similar, even if you voted unless you’re a Trump lover or a hardcore Democrat. Is there such a thing as a Biden lover? Hardcore Democrat maybe. There’s Trump lovers. I’m not even sure Trump lovers are hardcore Republicans anymore. There’s just not enough charisma from Biden, right? Obama had charisma. Again, I did not vote for Obama. I don’t like Obama’s policies. I don’t like Trump’s policies. I don’t like any of it, but I’ll vote and feel good at least about being a part of the civic process.
My solution for what it’s worth, as best as I can think through right now, is just: No levers, no buttons, no card punching, no names on the ballots. You have to know who you want to vote for. You have to be able to spell the guy’s last name, the girl’s last name. Actually you have to spell their entire name. You have to spell their entire name and that’s it. It’s not as perfect solution. People could argue that that would be exclusionary itself, but I think it’d be better than the two-party monopoly system thing that we’re suffering through these days.
Cody:
Any rate, you want to talk elections and its impact on the markets, here’s what I would picture. If Trump wins in a big way and it’s clear, the stock markets would rally 5% just out of relief, if nothing else. If the election is close, it’s going to be really stressful to the markets and I think we’d have another 5% pullback perhaps. Maybe even 10% if it’s really tight and then there is no clear way to who’s going to win and both the Democrats and Republicans start fighting each other over power. Markets would not like that. If Biden were the clear winner, markets might even rally a little then. I don’t know they’d rally quite 5%, but it’d probably be a relief rally there too.
So to win the gaming of the election around the stock markets, — You’ve got to guess not only who’s going to win, you’ve got to guess what the market’s impact would be. Then thirdly, as always, you’ve got to figure out how to trade that. Are you going to buy call options or you’re going to short some puts? You’re going to short some calls. You’re going to buy some puts. You’re going to try just QQQs. You’re going to cover some shorts. You’re going to buy … So stop, stop. You can’t game it. Don’t.
Look at the markets, look at your stocks. Let the valuations and the revolutionary trends that we play in front of us dictate what we do. That’s what we’ve done, so you can breathe a little bit like I try to. It’s a stressful election though. No doubt about it. There’s some tension building in the markets, so you can get some relief if there is something clear. Maybe even if it is contested, you get a little relief rally after the election is over. That’s the other problem, right? If you guess what the reelection results are, it doesn’t mean you’re going to guess what the market’s reactions will be.
Participant:
Facebook reported good numbers, but it’s still on the decline because I guess they suggested that the number of new users is not growing. It’s diminishing. What do you say?
Cody:
I say that the fact is the stock is down pretty sharply today, giving a specific reason to it is often a reporter’s job. More than the reasoning behind being something they reported, which I think was actually a good quarter. It was strong. It was overvalued. It was too high. Markets are pulling back. The whole things are coming down. Markets react how they react sometimes. When you had four of the biggies report yesterday and three out of the four getting slammed like that, it just feeds upon itself and there’s a frenzy going on. None of this has to be rational necessarily. If you don’t own any Facebook and you’ve been wanting to buy it, you wait for a time for it to pull back for no good reason and sneak in and get a little bit. I’m not in that situation, so I’m sitting tight.
Participant:
Cody, I’ve got a similar question on Apple. Their earnings yesterday, they didn’t get guidance, but a couple of analysts have already upgraded it and yet the stock is down even though the new phone is coming out.
Cody:
Same thing. There’s a 950 million almost a billion installed iPhones at the base of iPhone out there. Dan Ives, for example, at Wedbush thinks that we’re going to have a super cycle replacement cycle where there’s 350 million, more than a third of those phones are four years or plus older and people have been waiting to refresh. If you believe that, if you believe over the next year Apple is going to sell 200 or 300 million iPhone 5G’s variants, you’d better be buying that stock at this moment. If like me, I think you might want to rein those expectations in. I don’t know that 5G is critical mass penetration yet around the world. I don’t think the apps and the necessity of having 5G is necessarily here yet.
I’ve owned Apple forever. I’m not going to try to gain the 5G cycle per se. If I did think there was a clear answer that, “No, they’re never going to get close to 200 million or something,” or if I was sure, “Yeah, man, they’re going to sell 300 million over the next year,” then yeah, I made Apple my biggest position here. Again, let it play out a little bit. It’ll work out. We own it. Own it forever.
Joe:
Cody, you sent out a list of where you buy stocks, I don’t know a month or maybe it was two months ago and only three of them really came even close. I know that Amazon got to your number and had done very well. Tesla almost got to the number and there was one other one and I’m too old, I guess, my-
Cody:
Bitcoin was another that got to the buying price. And technically, Tesla did too. Actually after hours one night, I sent out a note I thought that mentioned that Tesla at this moment has hit my target. Where are you going with the question? Sorry, Joe.
Joe:
Well, nothing else is even close to it, even with this drop to your numbers. Do you want to redo your numbers, you want to leave them the way they are?
Cody:
Yeah, I’ll redo them. Everything changes. A million things factor in every stock we need to look at. All of that stuff, you would do fresh each time to do that. Sure, I’d be happy to redo it again. That said, I don’t think the numbers would have changed significantly for 90% of our stocks.
Still like today’s pullback, I was just thinking about that a 7% pullback in Facebook, it doesn’t change its valuation. It doesn’t do anything for me. Zoom down 30% is still from its high as recently. Its valuation is still out of whack with reality for at least near-term possibilities for the company. You never know when the market will price in five-year or 10-year growth though. You can’t try to game it per se, but there’s not a lot of things out there that I’m excited about anywhere at this level still.
Participant:
That’s a great list by the way. It’s really for those of us looking to be able to get in initial trenches, it provides us with a guideline upon which would be a good price ideally to do so. Going forward, how often would you say that you’re planning to update that list?
Cody:
Like everything, it was almost ad hoc. I did it one time. I just off the cuff was like, “You know what? I wonder.” I just did it for myself. Usual at The Trading with Cody stuff, so much of everything I’m trading with Cody is just, “Hey, here’s what I’m doing.” I was curious to, number one, I think what started was I wanted to look at the annualized gains of my portfolio because to say that you’ve owned Apple since it was a split adjusted 40¢ or something or 20¢ or something it is now to today over now 17 years, you lose perspective on. What does that even mean? It’s clearly got to be better than 10% annualized growth, but how big a number is it?
I wanted to do that on the entire portfolio. I created a spreadsheet and started, filled it in, put in the name, where I bought it, date I bought it and then I had a Google spreadsheet, Google Sheets and I used a ittle program thing that pulls from Google Finance with the quote that moment is then I said, “Well, let’s throw in an annual quote equation.” I put that in there. Then I looked at that and I was like, “By the way, how far would each of those stocks for me to start buying more” and that’s how, and then one day, I sent out this list. If you notice, it had annualized returns next to where I buy more and the only reason it had that was because that’s how that list looked when it was created. That was maybe two years ago.
In the first eight years of Trading with Cody, we never had a list of where I’d buy more stuff. Like everything else with Trading with Cody and/or researching for the hedge funds and putting it into a spreadsheet, everything I do is a matter of allocating time and opportunity cost. Yes, I’ll try to do the “Where I’d probably buy more of each stock” list as often as I can in an efficient manner that lets me feel like I’m not using too much energy too often on that in an inefficient opportunity cost manner.
Participant:
Thank you for putting it together. I think it encourages patience and discipline. I appreciate it.
Del:
Yeah, Cody. I got a question for you. I remember years ago, like I said, I’m on Trading with Cody, I remember you told us that when the S&P downgrades were going on at the time years ago and you’re like, “You’re never going to see it below 10,000 again.” What is your longer term views on IWM, S&P 500?
Cody:
If you are going to put my feet to the fire right now, I’d rather own S&P 500 than IWM. I’d rather own big cap 500, the biggest 500 companies in the country than the 2,000 small caps that are in that IWM ETF that you own. Longer term, I always think the United States is the best place to bet and getting a little diversification from small and big caps is a good idea.
Participant:
Cody, you say you don’t time the markets, but you’re always getting short positions when they’re high. I see you timing the markets all the time. That’s disingenuous to me.
Cody:
It’s an interesting thing. I wrote an article maybe three months ago and the title was “Timing the Markets or Value Investing, What’s the Difference?” As I laid out is, in some sense, there is little difference, because if you’re allowing yourself to be driven by valuations, as I do, then when valuations get out of whack and you’re uncomfortable with valuations, then you’re going to reduce exposure and you’re going to be like, “Hey, this is reflective of a stock market not being a good risk reward scenario.” Maybe it’s semantics, and yes, I suppose I do sometimes try to time the market.
Participant:
Isn’t that also called rebalancing? Isn’t that the same thing?
Cody:
Yeah, again, I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers, right? Yeah, the markets scare me sometimes. Then you’re right. The other thing that I’ll say, I’ll call myself out on is sometimes you’ve seen me too where it’s not just valuations, but I can sense the panic almost. I’ll even call it like spider senses are kicking in and I don’t know anybody who’s not scared and selling and panicking right now. I’m buying. If you want to call that timing the market, yeah, that probably would be called timing the market too. Touche I guess is my answer.
Participant:
Well, keep letting us know when you get scared.
Cody:
Long term, I do think, looking back at the post I’ve talked about where I get bearish or try to have a sense of not necessarily timing every moving things, but where I get really scared or when I get really bullish or something, again knock on wood, it’s been pretty right over the years, but trying to game that or feel like I have the confidence to think that, “I can continue to do that and here’s how we’re going to do this in the long,” that’s where I’m like, “I don’t time markets.” That’s why I say that I guess.
Participant:
Cody, on October 12, you put out a list of four indexes that you were buying puts in. That was one day after the high or it may have been that same day. I marvel at your feel for some things.
Participant:
Cody, you mentioned a week or two ago, you’re getting frustrated with Slack. Where do we stand on that because personally I’m in the same boat as you?
Cody:
Look, I wear my stuff on the sleeve and I try to be as transparent with you guys all the time as I possibly can. It’s the only way to keep yourself consistent, right? Look, where I’m with Slack is kicking my own butt for not having acted for the last month when we could have before it pulled back like it did. At this moment, now it’s pulled back and the valuations now get all of them and I’m like, “Arrgh.” If you really have a bull case for Slack, it’s starting to get a little more compelling. It’s one of the few of our stocks that has not skyrocketed for us anyway.
Participant:
Your thoughts on Fortress Value (FVAC) after a big pullback?
Cody:
Yeah, I almost nibbled some today. Again, it’s a five-year play. That thing can go to zero if it doesn’t work out. It could be a 10 bagger or 100 bagger frankly if they become a major supplier of rare earth minerals to not only United States but Europe and even Australia or something. If they could become a main major player in that and have margins, it sounds like they might have the potential to have to be a really good stock.
Participant:
With either candidate, there’ll be a lot of money spent on infrastructure. Do you have any one or two stocks to benefit from the infrastructure?
Cody:
The government’s supposed to plan to spend trillions of dollars on infrastructure?
Participant:
Yes.
Cody:
Yeah, I think we’ve been having this conversation for 10 years and we’re still waiting. If you pay attention to policies and not promises, I think you would not have any faith that they’ll do anything of any significance on infrastructure spending. Beyond that, unless there is a way, unless there’s a company that provides the platform for all of infrastructure interactions to happen, that could become a revolutionary player in infrastructure, then I might be interested, but I don’t think there is one and so no. I’ll believe they’ll pass such a policy that actually did spend money in a relatively noncorrupt way to build the country’s infrastructure when the Republicans have bet Democrats ever bother even getting one to the floor.
Participant:
Hey, Cody. I have a question about a recent IPO company called Array Technologies, in Albuquerque, actually. I’m just wondering if you have any opinion or insight into them. They recently IPO’d. They’re a solar tracker manufacturer. With other revolution items you have like solar, I was wondering if you have any opinion about them.
Cody:
They’re not on my radar. At a glance here, they’re not a scam. It’s not a $3 stock. It didn’t do a reverse merger or something like that. Company’s been around since 1989. Do you know the executives or anything?
Participant:
I don’t. I’m in the industry and I know their product, but I don’t know anything about their business necessarily.
Cody:
Two things, number one is an answer and number two is a question. It looks interesting enough. I will definitely dig in. I’m always looking for another solar company to invest in. Number two, that you’re in the industry, I would love to get on the phone.
Participant:
Cody, what do you what do you think of Fisker?
Cody:
I would rather short it than buy it.
Participant:
Sir. I look a lot of our holdings that are going up and down every day. Then I look at my Republic Note and it’s just fixed dollar value. What’s the next thing that happens with these Republic Notes that signals whether we’re winning or losing or what’s going with it?
Cody:
Well, it’s not a trading vehicle. Don’t expect that you’re going to be able to go, “Hey, I’m going to flip this for a triple in a few months or something,” although I suppose it is possible that could happen. The Republic Note and why I did it and why you did it if you did it was because you’re buying a piece of every company that ever goes through their platform. I like that. I like that. I think those guys, they’re not perfect like anyone else, but they do a good job trying to vet. They certainly try not to let scammy companies get on the platform. Eventually, there’s going to be some out of the thousands I would expect that go through their platform over the next 10 years. There will be five or 10 that ended up being meaningful and something and you’re going to have a part, a tiny bit of each of those.
If Republic does their job and builds our ecosystem and there … I love the CEO. He’s one of the hardest working people I’ve ever seen, along with Neil Patrick Harris, frankly, as I usually say. But they’re working their butts off to build value for you. I don’t know about logistically speaking, I don’t have any idea. I trust that if that thing works out, we’re going to have some value there in five or 10 years, but I have no idea when you’ll like be able to see something printed or, I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. Neither have you. Nobody ever has. Yes.
Harvey:
Just back to the market timing and all that stuff, today is quite a washout. I A lot of stocks that I follow, a lot of our stocks are down, but there’s a lot of other pretty good stocks. Not these really bad stocks, not the crap, but good stocks that this morning, we’re down 8%, 10%, 12%. The number of stocks that I saw down 7%, 8%, 9% today is wild. We already had quite a big move down. I’m just surprised that you’re not a little more interested here. Is it partly the election that has you concerned?
Cody:
It’s not the election. It’s the coronavirus and the economy and corporate earnings and valuations and when I look and compile all of that together in my brain and then try to see out of that fog, all I do is see a big oak tree and I’m like, “Oh, wait. Better climb up there and try to see the forest,” then it’s still really foggy. Then I’m like, “Well, let’s go catch a rocket ship to 30,000 foot and try to look down on the earth.” I’m just looking at everything I look at and I’m not bullish. That’s it. I’m not. I don’t feel it. I don’t. My brain doesn’t process it to go, “Well, this looks exciting.” My long-term subscribers who have been around for 10 or 15, 20 years, you know I’m not afraid to get pounding the table, excited bullish. I was on Fox with Oprah Winfrey in 2008, the midst of the crisis. She wanted to talk stocks as part of the interview. I said, “Well, what do you like?” She goes, “I like Google right now.” Google had crashed. It was down 70% from its highs at the time. I literally jumped off my barstool and then jumped on it yelling, “I will jump up and down for buying Google right now. I love Google right here at this price today!” You guys know I’ll do it. You’ve seen my trade alerts at the worst possible moments when the markets are crashed and even when I feel stupid.
I remember after Amaris was born being at the rental house. We were devastated. We’re three months in and we just brought her to this rental house that we had rented in Albuquerque because it’s close enough to the hospital. The stress level is through the roof. Meanwhile, every day our stocks are just, “Poof, poof,” just slamming us harder. I felt stupid and one day at the very bottom — I’m not joking, it was the bottom at 2:30 in the afternoon, the market bottomed on a Tuesday 2016, ’15, whatever year that was — I turned to my my father-in-law standing over Amari’s crandle and said, “One thing I’ve learned in this life is that when I feel as dumb as I do at this moment, I should be buying stocks.” That moment is not this moment. That is not this moment. I don’t feel anything right now that is going, “Yeah, finally! Buy! Let’s get in there.” Maybe I’m wrong and this will turn out to be a great opportunity to buy. Again, there’s nothing wrong with nibbling today. I would much rather buy today than sell today.
Harvey:
I don’t think that this is the greatest buying opportunity in the history of mankind. It’s pretty hard down for a couple weeks here.
Cody:
It is, but it was really high. Even if the economy had been on fire and I thought the outlook was great for the next 12 months, two years, I still would have been, “Wow, valuations are high.” I don’t even have a bullish economic outlet in my head. Not that I think things are going to hell either. Things are going to get better, which is exciting, but I don’t feel it. I don’t see the risk-reward scenario being real exciting at this moment.
Joey:
Any thoughts on Virgin Galactic for next few months with Richard Branson being the first passenger on the test flight?
Cody:
I like SPCE here. I mentioned it on Fox Business when I was on there earlier this week. Hopefully, I didn’t lose you. Space and FVAC would be the two stocks that if anything that I would maybe step up to the plate and look at would be those two right now.
Joey:
If Biden and Kamala Harris win, are you going to get bullish on cannabis? Kamala is big time into cannabis.
Cody:
Maybe, maybe, maybe. What’s interesting about cannabis versus rare earth minerals for example — If you’re going to ask me about, “Hey, do you think the policies of XYZ administration are going to be good for rare earth minerals and therefore you should buy it or something?” I can make the argument that it has nothing to do with government needing to be involved. I think the demands of the marketplace needing to have locally sourced and non-China-supplied rare earth minerals into our ever bigger exponentially growing demand for them from batteries and computers and motors and everything else is there. Space, same thing. I don’t need government. I think government is going to be subsidizing both of those things a lot, but I don’t need that in my business model, in my trend perspective.
Cannabis, you can’t do that though. It’s either black market or it gets legalized… The industry and product already exist though. I guess that’s probably been one of the biggest reasons that I’ve not been a cannabis investor or the cannabis revolution guy is because it’s not a technology thing. There is technology that’s being applied to cannabis, but it’s a revolution that depends almost totally upon regulatory approval and that loses its revolutionary aspect then. It just needs to be legalized. I still think there’s got to be an Amazon of cannabis out there or something. There’s got to be at least three or four great cannabis stocks, but as a trend that I want to get my bucket in front of, it pales in comparison to the space revolution or the electric vehicle revolution or something like that.
Ron:
Yes, Cody. Dropbox? It’s platform agnostic which is a plus and it’s not really a bad valuation. It’s like 20 this year or 25 next year, I mean 25 next year. Sorry, whatever. 25 this year, 20 next year.
Cody:
Look, let’s just analyze the stock together for a moment. $7.3 billion market cap. Love the fact it’s still basically where it was. I think I shorted Dropbox if you recall 18 months ago or so around these levels. You’re right. This is another one like Slack that’s not moved. The valuations on this one, I can already guess are going to be somewhat reasonable in my mind. Is there a reason why it’s like Slack hasn’t moved would be the next question? Dude, it’s only 18, 19 times, 20 times next year’s numbers.
Ron:
It’s the same argument as against Slack and that they believe Google could come out and decide to destroy them, but realistically, some people want a platform agnostic company that specifies on things like Slack.
Cody:
Yeah. Here’s the biggest difference between Slack and Dropbox is the estimates for Dropbox topline growth are 15%, 10%. A friend of mine who runs a still private but very big television tracking company, data tracking thing, said to me once a few years ago that a VC told him, “If you don’t have 30%, topline growth, why don’t I just go by Facebook instead?” That statement stuck with me. Facebook at this point, Google at this point is growing twice as fast as Dropbox. Even as big as they are, they can go twice as fast as Dropbox. What is Dropbox doing that they can’t grow more than 30% per year? Slack actually at this moment, its estimates are still for 40%, 30% growth. Dropbox looks interesting I will say. If it’d had higher growth, I’d be interested in actually digging down it.
I would be curious. I’ll try to remember. I’ll mention it here. If you guys reading this have ever used and/or still use Dropbox, please write me an email when you get the transcript and be, “Yeah, I still use Dropbox.” “No, I used to use Dropbox. I don’t use it anymore.” I’d be curious out of everybody here, does anybody or do all of you, do none of you use Dropbox? It’d be an interesting poll. We’ll do that. Thanks, Ron.
Participant:
Who wins on Tuesday?
Cody:
I swing from thinking it’s going to be a complete Dems sweep and they’re even going to take some senate seats that nobody expects them to. No, Trump is staying in and still be about where it is. I don’t know. I honestly put one foot in both because I got no feel for it. I got no feel. I’m always shocked that people can have passion for someone they’ve never met. I know that Trumps and I don’t have any passion for … They’re not my family. I don’t know anyone can have that kind of passion for you, but boy, I’ve got family who has passion for Trump. I have family who has passion for Democrats. I also don’t know why you just cheer for, “Hey, he’s on my team. I cheer for the Rs. I don’t care what their policies are. I like the Rs.”
“I like the Ds. I’m on the D Team. I’m going to cheer for the Ds. Go Ds. They got the best uniform.” “I like that logo, that Elephant Man. Now I’m cheering for the GOP. That’s a good logo. Also GOP that sounds cool. GOP elephants. That’s my team. I’m cheering for them.” “No, I like that quarterback, Trump. I love Trump anywhere he goes. I’m cheering for that guy.” Meanwhile, look, ain’t none of them on your side. If any of you can point to a single policy, a single bill, a single law that has been passed in the last 30 years that was not done because someone would benefit and profit and seek rent from it, it was lobbied for, I can’t name anything that they do to help me. Everything’s behind closed doors. Everything’s on the margin. I wish we’d at least admit that. That’s all I want. I would just like for all of us to admit that the Democrats are terrible and the Republicans are terrible. Democrats are not liberal and Republicans/Trump are not conservative.
Barry:
What policies are important you, Cody? You talk about this stuff, but what’s important? What do you stand for?
Cody:
Some of the policies that I would enforce and that I care about would be such things as simplifying the tax code and eliminating all loopholes for corporations and rich people and owning boats and anything like that. I want a simplified, easy-to-understand tax code because I think justice is supposed to be blind and the tax laws are not being applied blindly. If you did that and if you eliminated the ability for the government to manipulate the tax code, it would eliminate a lot of the lobby initiatives.
I’d also argue that every law on the books should be enforced to the fullest extent or I want it removed immediately. I am sick of anarchy. I’m sick of having 88,000 pages of enforcement rules for health care or income taxes or bank regulations. Either enforce every one of those codes or get rid of them. Enforce everything on the books or get rid of it.
Barry:
Well, what social issues are important to you? What do you care about?
Cody:
Again, social issues are important to me, but I’m going to recognize that the ability for the government to fix things as evidenced in the last 200 years in this country is very limited. I would like to acknowledge that upfront instead of pretending that the government is going to be able to somehow solve all this stuff.
I think those two very simple things would eliminate a lot of the huge crises in our country. I think the solution of simplifying the tax code and not allowing people to lobby for tax breaks and loopholes would simplify and fix a lot of the social issues.
Cody:
I think that we have overly complicated almost everything and looking for the government to either send welfare checks to farmers or to bankers or to poor people or to somehow enforce certain things or to prioritize other things or to subsidize certain things, that’s the problem. My solution is stop doing that. My solution is enforce your laws, so we don’t have anarchy. That’s a big part of the solution. I want black people and Muslims and every individual to feel safe in our country. I don’t have a solution for that, and I certainly am not going to sit here and be like, “Here’s how you do it.” I’ll recognize there are a lot of issues I want to fix. I don’t know how, but I do know that lobbying and this corrupted system of taxation that we have in this country is making it worse, not better.
Participant:
Cody, do you think AMD is dead money for the next year until they finish this merger?
Cody:
No. I don’t think it matters. I wish they hadn’t done the merger to be frank. I get it, but I like NVIDIA’s buy of Arm Holdings a lot better than AMD’s buy. I don’t think it’ll be dead money based on that though.The two stocks will trade in tandem from now on because it’s probably pretty much fait accompli.
Barry:
Cody, what’s wrong with the Cowboys?
Cody:
The Jerry Jones Curse. I got some quick Jerry Jones story. I am joking that it’s a Jerry Jones Curse, but I do mean the problem with the Cowboys is Jerry Jones’ general management, Jerry Jones’ involvement, guys, he should just own the team. You remember, they won Super Bowls under Jerry Jones, but it was actually the team he inherited.
Participant:
Is the Google antitrust stuff just noise?
Cody:
Yes. Same answer for the last 10 years. Let me know when the Republicans and Democrats have ever one single time enforced an antitrust law on anyone. Microsoft, great. There’s your example. Good. That was really important. Now Microsoft is suing Google for bundling and both are worth more than a trillion bucks.
Participant:
Yes. I have a question. Out of the four semiconductors that you have on your list, TSM, AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm, which one is best priced right now?
Cody:
I would tie TSM and Qualcomm as my two favorites. Then AMD and Nvidia, maybe probably Nvidia at this price at this moment over AMD at this price at that moment. From a fundamental perspective, TSM would be my long-term favorite company of the four, and then from a two-year period, Qualcomm would be my favorite of the four. No, that would be good. All right, guys, that was long. I’m at 3% on the battery on this laptop.
