TRANSCRIPT

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Slava (00:01)

In this episode of Smart Humans, we have a special edition with Anthony Scaramucci from SkyBridge Capital. We talk about the impact of the election on private markets and the public stock market. We go through each of the markets, whether it's private credit, real estate, crypto, pre-IPO venture, art and collectibles, and talk about how each candidate, Harris or Trump, can impact the economy and your investments.

Wait till the end to hear some amazing predictions.

Slava Rubin (01:00)

All right. Thank you everybody for joining.

So welcome to this special episode of Smart Humans. We're super excited about this, about this pod. We've had Anthony on the show before, but once again, this is a very special episode where we'll be talking about the elections impact on the markets.

So while Anthony requires no introduction, I'll say that he's an incredible entrepreneur having managed billions of dollars of AUM, connected to the best investors and one of the best investors himself, an author, a family man, and super, super innovative. I'm so excited, Anthony. I know you don't have any opinions, but I'm super excited to have you on the show. Thank you for joining.

Well, it's a very flattering introduction. I mean, I've been called a lot worse since this is a political show. Trust me, I've been called a lot worse. We're in a polarized environment. All right. I'm looking at this picture of you with the beard. What happened with you? Why did you shave the beard off? The wife likes the beard. I go back and forth through different looks. This is just an older look. But for the sake of the audience,

and our guests and all of our future listeners, I'm just set the table with a little bit of information. So again, the point here is to talk about elections and the impact on the market. So let's go to the next slide,

If you aggregate the last 50 years, you have a nice 10 % return plus minus, but on election years,

you actually do a little bit better. But in the years that there's no election and no midterms, you do even better. 14.8 on the right. And the years that are really struggling is actually the midterm elections. Now, obviously this is not a huge end. This is not a massive sample set. It's just interesting information to contextualize our situation. Let's dive into the next slide. We're going to talk about crypto. So let's just take a look at crypto across time here.

Crypto is a very young asset. There haven't been that many elections to look at, but you can see how each of the elections has played out and you've seen some jumps in crypto and also some drops. So again, not a ton of data here. I don't want anybody to get overly excited about one data point or not, but some interesting background. Next slide. For those of you that are investors into real estate or a homeowner, I find this fascinating. So this is about the last eight, nine election cycles.

And what you'll see is the blue year is the election year and the green is the year following the election year. Real estate has always gone up for single family homes, except for obviously the market crash of 2008, which is arguably one of the worst crashes we've had in a long time. And then on the next slide, I just want to contextualize a little bit what we're talking about in regards to these two candidates, because I'm sure we'll be talking about names like

Democrats, Republicans, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump. So again, this is not their entire political platform. This is not all the things that everybody cares about in America. This is a snapshot of just some of their economic points. And obviously all of this is open to argument and interpretation from both sides. On the Kamala Harris side, there's the increased income and capital gains tax on the wealthy, the potential unrealized capital gains tax on the very wealthy, a $6,000 child tax credit.

$25,000 in down payment support for first time buyers, expanding the startup expense tax deduction, and also positioning themselves as pro crypto, which here we have Anthony himself. And then you have Donald Trump on the other side, says he wants to cut regulations on American businesses, impose tariffs on companies doing business from the outside, and have major tariffs, seal the southern border, carry out mass deportations.

and expand drilling rights, which should be an emphasis more on domestic energy production. And Donald Trump has also positioned himself as pro crypto, I believe, buying people some beers or something at a recent Bitcoin bar. So this is all very basic setting the table for having Anthony join us. And he's our special guest for let's call it the next 40 plus minutes. With all that said, Anthony, does it even matter?

who the president is as it relates to our public and private markets.

Well, a lot of cynics would say, it doesn't matter, but I actually think it does. you probably don't want to go back to the other slides, but there's a lot of work. Yale, Hirsch, and the Stock Traders Almanac has done a lot of work on that election cycle numbers and that data. And one of the theories behind that data, which I'll share with you, is that lots of money gets pushed into the economy.

leading up to an election. So the incumbent is obviously trying to stay in power or the incumbent's party is trying to stay in power if they're leaving. Reagan is being replaced by George Herbert Walker Bush, pushing money into the economy. If Biden's being replaced by Harris, pushing money into the economy. So when you look at those numbers, the reason why you have those off years in the midterms, that sort of sugar high wears off. And then the economic data is reflected in

those earnings reports during those periods. So I think there is some science to that. It's not just a cyclical phenomenon or something that's coincidental. It does have to do with governmental spending during election cycles. So that's number one. I would say on the two agendas, while they look different, they're honestly really not that different. And I'm very happy to take you through both agendas. And so I don't think that's the worry.

But I think when you ask the question, do you want continuity? Do you want stability? Do you want things like that? You do, you do want things like that. And the result of which, if you don't have things like that, you can have a ruckus. So the most stable time was during Bill Clinton. And I will tell you right now, during Bill Clinton, you had an amazing situation. You had eight years of economic growth.

You had a surplus that he ran at the end of 2000. Were there problems? There was a problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina. No American troops were ever deployed. And when that stuff is happening, you get really good upside. So again, I'm not saying Democrat or Republican. Some say that the Democrats have better data that support their stock market performance.

I don't necessarily think that's fair to the Republicans. I think this stuff is cyclical. And I would point out that the inflation is cyclical. So if you induct $6 trillion into the global economy, and then you have a supply chain break, you're going to have global inflation, which we got. So you can't blame that on Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris. You can't blame that on anybody. That just happens. And we have this tendency to

personalize things on our politicians that are in fact situational or cyclical. But it does matter if you can get a politician in that seat that's helping to foment peace and global prosperity and try to bring down the internet and conflicts around the world, whether they're in the Middle East or the Eastern Europe with the Russians and the Ukrainians, it does help markets on the margin. So you have a ton of experience.

you've been in the markets for so many years, managing people's money for a very long time, very successfully. You know, both candidates, you were even in, in, you know, the white house with Trump, maybe for a short period of time and all of that knowledge and all that information and all that experience, what have you learned from your years of managing client money that you would use for today's market coming up to an election?

and how you teach others or how you implement investments around elections. Again, not so much the candidates right now, but just around elections. Well, I I guess there are three major things I think about as it relates to what you're saying. number one, I think the overarching thing is you have to invest like you're indifferent to whoever wins an election. So it's not just these two candidates. It would be any two candidates.

I have been on Wall Street for 36 years. Okay. So that's nine election cycles. And so, you know, well, that's obviously more than half of my life. And what I would tell you, if I started thinking about who the president was going to be and how it going to affect my investment decisions, I think that would have been probably the most terrible mistake I could have made for anybody. So don't care about that. What you should be focusing on

is are you buying something that has good long-term growth prospects at a fair and reasonable price? And it's really that simple. it's specific to what's going on. Now, if I would add one bell or whistle to that, since 2008, unfortunately, the Fed is really driving valuation and the Fed is really driving market momentum. So if they raise rates and they

They take rates from zero and they screech them up to 550, 575 basis points and they do it in an 18 month period of time. It's going to quake the markets. It's going to crush private equity. It's going to crush real estate. It'll crush late cycle potential future IPOs. And it did all of that. And now they're saying they've got to cut rates. So I'm expecting there to be at least a 200 basis point rate cut from here.

again, that'll be over a 12 to 18 month period of time. It's not going to happen immediately, but you could see another 50 basis point cut after the election because they have the slack now and the inflation is down and they're worried about the economy. So that stuff is what I'd be more focused on, Slava. I wouldn't be focused on which candidate is going to win. guess the only thing that there was one red herring that you put out there

that is on Vice President Harris's taxing unrealized gains. That was in Joe Biden's platform. It never got out of committee five years ago when it was first suggested. There are strident alt left people that believe in that. There's no sensible Democrat that I've come in contact with, including Schumer and Gillibrand, who think that that's logical. And I think it had a crib death.

about five years ago. Now, why is it still there? Well, that's what politics is. They try to put things in their presidential platforms that appeal to their bases. Both these candidates, again, I'm not trying to overly editorialize, but both these candidates made a decision that this is a get out the base election. Donald Trump picked JD Vance for that reason. Vice President Harris picked Tim Walz for that reason. Otherwise, Trump would have went with somebody like a Rubio or Nikki Haley.

and she would have gone with somebody like a Josh Shapiro. They didn't want to do that. They're looking at their bases and saying, my base is going to bring me to the finish line. And so what's embedded in there, that hard left thinking is that tax on unrealized gains, but that's not going to happen. And I don't know anybody that's in the center of the Democratic party. Let's say the Democrats win the House and Senate, which it's possible. Anything's going to be possible in this election.

That's still not going to happen. So I think that was the only red herring that you guys showed up there. But I will say this, and I've said this to her team, and I've said this to people, and Mark Cuban obviously agrees with me. If for some reason they promoted that, or if some reason they were trying to get that done, or let's say in a hypothetical world, it got done, it would be absolutely catastrophic to the capital markets. It would be catastrophic to the US economy.

It would be catastrophic to the stock market and it would also hurt legions of business owners and legions of large scale businesses. I would remind everybody on this call that wealthy people, most wealthy people, they don't have their money in hundred dollar bill stacks in their swimming pool in the backyard. That's not where it is. It's invested in Vinson, it's invested in SkyBridge, it's invested in the operations of SkyBridge, the balance sheet.

the employee payroll account, all the real estate, all of the different things that you have to have to own a business. And so it's not even liquid. And so the notion that we would be taxing that would be very concerning to me. And so I would take that off the table. But other than that, you have reasonable proposals from the business platform perspective from both of those candidates. I have other issues, but I know you don't want to get into politics, but-

just say that I have other issues. I appreciate you holding back on the politics because there's obviously there's CNN, there's Fox, and there's lots of places to politics. We don't need to do that here. I'm not suggesting that we do that here. I'm just saying to you that you have to be realistic. If you're an investor and someone's coming into the White House and they want to tax unrealized gains, then you have to say, got to move my money out of that capital market. I've got to seek

shelter in a more favorable capital market. US capital markets has been the deepest, most liquid, most beneficial capital market of the last 125 years. And that would end that 125 year run. So you have to explain that to people and you have to also assure those people that that's not going to happen. I'm not supposed to be showing sides here, but I would totally agree with you. So, Okay. Well, I mean, think that's other than some very hard left,

socialist slash communist, I think most people do agree with that. Right. So the unrealized tax would probably hit public markets, right? Because you have to have it be public, not focusing on that specifically, but we're trying to focus on private markets because there's obviously a lot of shows that talk about public stocks and we could talk about that here too. Is there anything significant with this election or the upcoming year or two that would impact private markets, be it-

Pre-IPO, venture, P.E., crypto, real estate, private credit are flexibles as opposed to the public markets. I think the two ridiculous proposals, which cancel each other out because I think neither of them would happen, but the two ridiculous proposals are the tax on the unrealized gains. It's coming from the Democrats. Mr. Trump's, President Trump's want to make the Fed dependent upon him. He wants to end-

way the Board of Governors works with the Federal Reserve and he wants to end the independence of the Fed. Now, saw what that happened when the Erdogan, when the President and Prime Minister of Turkey took over the Turkish Central Bank, we saw the ridiculous levels of inflation that ensued. So we certainly don't want either of those types of policies being promulgated. But when you just step back and you look at what do we need? We need clean,

direct lines on taxation. We need that. Clinton did that the best of any president in the last 40 years. He raised taxes. At that time, no Republican voted on that tax increase. He said he was raising the taxes because he was going to provide some more social benefits and he didn't want to unleash massive amounts of deficit spending. And so we're now in a deficit spiral. Neither candidate has come up with a way to

protect us from that. Neither candidate has come up with a long-term solution or plan to get the deficit spending on course and to correct it. It is correctable. Unfortunately, they don't like selling the long-term sacrifices that need to be made to do that. But I would tell you that at some point we have to do that. you're looking at four years here where we could be ending this term with $45 to $50 trillion.

of debt on our balance sheet. So guys, just remember that. Take a snapshot of that. If you have a 3 % rate of interest, and you have $50 billion, and some of it's going to be priced at 4%, and some of it's going to be priced at 1.5 or 2%, but let's say it blends out the 3%, it's a trillion and a half dollars of spending. So that's 1.5 times the defense spending.

it's got to come from somewhere. And so let's say, no, deficits don't matter. Let's just keep printing the money. Let's just keep printing the money. You brought up the word crypto. I think that's one of the reasons why the cryptocurrency markets and Bitcoin specifically are doing well, because people look at that irresponsibility and they say, okay, well, that's not long-term sustainable. The central banking community

US Fed are drunk driving with our money. They're drunk driving with fiat currency. We've got to get the keys away from them. They're not responsible actors with the money. And maybe a fully distributed ledger and a computer software that we can decentralize would be a better, tighter, harder way for us to account for each other's wealth. Because listen, you know this as well as I know this.

You got to make at least 7 % at this point to break even. Okay. And I'm talking about an after-tax 7 % slava because of where inflation is. And so if you don't do that and you just have your money in cash earning 2%, you're losing your purchasing power every year. So you're talking about elections. Do elections matter? They do matter. And again, you don't want to make this overly political, but I just want to make it economically observational.

Neither of these candidates are providing a guide or a solution to this.

Yeah, no, the deficit and a potential solution is a huge conversation. Probably not one that we can solve here in this call. You already dove into one of the assets, which is crypto. I think we're going to go play by play through the assets in just a minute with one more question just for you to set the table with your perspective. You already kind of hinted at the 12 to 18 months out and another 200 basis points drop. Can you give us your perspective on

Where is the market and the economy today? And where is it headed in your opinion? And this is the Anthony Scaramucci personal voiceover on what we're currently seeing in the independent of the election.

So, notwithstanding everything I just said, the economy I think is going to do well. And I think that the Fed is going to cut rates. And I think that the aftermath of COVID, which took longer to reconcile, the supply chain took longer to reconcile, is fully bolted in now. And if you're telling me we're going to have 20 to 200 % tariffs,

will hurt the economy because it'll slow down the growth in the economy and it'll also, unfortunately, tariffs just empirically and objectively is a form of regressive taxation because you have the goods coming in, everybody needs the good and you're charging 20 % more for the good, a greater percentage of the lower income and middle income disposable spending is going towards that and it crowds out other discretionary items.

the very wealthy are not going to care one way or the other, but it will hurt the middle and lower class, and that will have a de-consumptive, slower growing effect on the economy. Flip side is if you're going with a 21 % to a 28 % tax rate on corporations, corporations will adjust their capital spending and their capital allocations pursuant to that. There may be more offshore investments.

than onshore investments. That happened during the global financial crisis. Fed lowered rates, Walmart borrowed at 2 % and started putting stores in South Africa that were getting a much higher return. So they were getting the benefit of the US Fed and they were moving the capital off the shore of the United States. And again, good players, good CEOs will do that. So to me, I think looking at where we are and just being realistic,

A 200 basis point move downward is going to help real estate prices. It's going to help commercial real estate. It's going to help these cities retool themselves. The old Goldman Sachs base at 55 Broad Street, which I believe was theirs from the mid-60s to 1983 before they moved to 85 Broad, a building they built themselves, that's now being converted into condominiums down on Broad.

a few blocks, maybe a block and a half from Wall Street. so that whole FIDI area is being regentrified and being reclassified as more residential. It's blended now commercial and residential. When I was a kid, it was mostly commercial. And so that process at 200 less basis points of interest, Slava is way easier to do than where interest rates are now. And so that means that there'll be...

higher prices, people will be able to afford the stuff because they're paying lower interest rates if they're taking out mortgages. Commercial loans to develop things will be less. So all those things are positive that will fuel the economy. So I like where we are. I don't think either candidate, unless you're telling me one of these candidates is going to get us into a very big war or one of these candidates are going to do something very destructive.

but either candidate, I think, you're going to see reasonable to positive economic growth. So yeah, that was going to be my question, which are you in the camp that consumer spending is slowing down so much or we're getting into a recession soon? Are you in the camp of soft landing in 25 is going to be a nice landing with the rates coming down and we could see some nice momentum for a while.

So I'm probably not in either of those camps. I'm probably in the intermediate or the mama bear camp where we're having a mild recession right now. But the rate cuts are going to lubricate some growth and are going to soften the recession. So sometime in 25, you're going to hear from somebody saying, yes, we experienced a mild recession. It sort of started in the third quarter of 24.

and it went for a quarter to two, which is roughly the definition of what a recession is, but by the middle of next year, we'll be out of it. so I think the Fed will be perceived as having done a good job. We avoided a steep economic correction, a steep recession, and we were able to rebolt the supply chain to the global market system. And again, that's barring that we don't do super dramatic things.

As you will recall from your economic history, when we got very cautious in the 1930s, we had a big stock market crash and people were very worried about America. We put in these tariffs. They were called the Smoot-Hawley tariffs and they were put in place in the early 1930s. And so when we put our tariffs up, the countries around the world where our trading partners put their tariffs up and just sort of slowed down free trade.

around the world that it exacerbated the depression. And if you read John Kenneth Galbraith's book on the 1929 crisis and the aftermath of the great economic depression, one of the things he says in the book is try to avoid aggressive terrorists because it's almost like a trade war. And unfortunately, what do we know about war? We know one axiomatic fact about war. There may be a victor, but there's honestly no winners.

We know that because there's been too many deaths in Ukraine. There's been too many deaths in the Middle East on both sides. And yes, someone eventually will be declared a winner, but tell that to the widows and tell that to the orphans of the people that are no longer with us. wars, whether they're trade wars, economic wars, hot kinetic wars, these are things that good political leaders do everything that they can to avoid. I appreciate that.

Let's jump into the assets. already mentioned through your various points, but I just want to hit on one at a time real quick. So pre IPO and venture. So what do you think three years out for that market? What do you think of innovation, the IPO window, AI, et cetera? So the IPO window is still hard. Okay. Because there's so much regulation to become a publicly traded company that a lot of companies look at it, know, SpaceX as an example.

Uber for many years prior to going public. They could have gone public at a multiple billions of dollar valuation, but they waited. It's still going to be way slower than we'd like. You and I have been around long enough. There's a big backlog of private companies that could be public, but many of them have elected not to go public because of the regulation.

I don't know of any plans on either side of the political spectrum to lessen that. It seems like that those regulations are here to stay. So I think that there'll always be an IPO backup until we resolve that, if we're ever going to resolve that. You and I could be doing this podcast five years from now and say, wow, there's so many private companies that are great and great brands, but they're just never going public. They're never going to let the American public or the global public.

share in the economic benefits of owning a share in that company. so that's one. I think on the VC front, I think we've gone through a bad cycle. I would say the 2021 into the 2022 vintages were probably bad. Last half of 22, frankly, were probably good. You probably were able to buy things at steeper discounts. I always remind people

the world is coming to end, things like Facebook gets started. It was 2006, seven and eight, world looked like it was coming to an end. That's a several hundred billion dollars worth of net worth for the founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and a trillion plus valuation for everybody that's part of Facebook. Also Stripe, Uber, Airbnb, all down market. All of those companies are built on a down market. So to me, the

system.

frankly is a phenomenal system. But if you're looking for a perfect system where everything goes up and to the right and in perpetuity, we know that doesn't happen. I mean, there was one guy saying he was able to do that. And of course he died in jail. He got 150 year sentence. I don't know anybody that can do that. We certainly haven't been able to do that. But if you look at our returns and you take a step back, you're like, okay, wow, those guys got a lot of things right.

their clients and themselves, their personal capital invested in their funds are doing quite well. So, but here's the thing that I will say, and this is controversial to institutional investors. It may not be controversial to the people that we're speaking to. It certainly won't be constant, controversial to people that really study this. know, the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is going to do very well over the next five years. So if you, if you just covered the name,

That was my next asset. Thank you for joining me. But if you just cover the name, you said, so we have an asset that is a very short supplied asset. Our 21 million tokens were produced, probably four-ish million of them were lost during the early adoption and poor storage phase. Bitcoin wasn't worth that much. But now that Bitcoin is caught on and there's been wholesale adoption globally, so-

I'll define that as 6 % of the globe has adopted it. So we're in the 1999 2000 era for web one, which gives you a sense for how much room we have to grow for Bitcoin. And you told me that the government was approving an ETF and there were 11 or 12 major institutional players that are selling an ETF. And BlackRock, the largest asset managers out there with a piece that they put out last week, talking about Bitcoin being a great diversifier.

your investments and you have guys like Michael Saylor, don't go by me, this is his public business plan. He wants to purchase more than half of all the Bitcoins that are mined in a year. We're only down to 450 a day coming out of the network. so Bitcoin to me is this commodity in short supply that is a hard asset.

Some people would say that it's digital gold. I think it's even more powerful than that because it's more movable and it's more immutable. You can't make any more of it. An asteroid could land on our planet and we have way more gold or we can find gold somewhere in our resources, our natural resources. So to me, I've never seen a dynamic like this. I said, okay, here's something that's in short supply that is in high demand.

by the way, since I've been on Wall Street for 36 years, Wall Street is a selling avalanche. It's a selling machine. It's going to send thousands of people out into the marketplace to sell the concept to other people. So short supply, high demand. I don't know anything that has a better profile than Bitcoin over the next five years. I mean, have 55 % of my net worth in Bitcoin. I didn't start

I didn't start out like that. That was accidental. It's because it's done so well. You know, I'm not, I'm not selling it. And if it, if it doubles, it'll be an even greater percentage of my network. So, strong five years today, it's in the sixties. What does, what's the prediction for five years from now? Plus minus. Well, I mean, let's talk about the next 18 months. I think that's more realistic. So the next 18 months,

Supply is constraining, demand is still there, the grayscale selling has stopped, the Mt. Gox selling has stopped. The sovereigns that were selling recently, they're out of Bitcoin, so therefore they can't sell anymore. There's no reason why Bitcoin couldn't trade to 100 plus thousand by year end, and by the end of this halving cycle, be closer to 170 to 200,000.

But think long-term, if you're just looking at the following three questions, because I know you like computer programming, so just think of the following algorithm. Is Bitcoin in demand? Yes or no? The answer is yes. Is it in short supply? The answer is yes. Is Bitcoin an asset or should it be treated like a stock? No, it's an asset like an asset class.

opposed to an individual stock. Well, we have individual stocks that are worth one, two, or three trillion dollars. But if it's an asset, and has its own asset class, then it would probably trade to something comparative to gold. So you talk about five years, let's pick a 35-year-old right now. He'll be 40. A 40-year-old will be 45. These younger people, younger people than me at least, are very comfortable with Bitcoin.

Imagine a 25 year old 15 years from now being 40 and he's in a position of power on Wall Street. And guess what? He's very comfortable with Bitcoin. He may be more comfortable with Bitcoin than my grandfathers were with gold. Might be possible. And so how could it not trade to 16, 17 or 18 trillion? So that's a 10 X from here. So you said to me it's five, seven, 10 years from now. Could Bitcoin be five, six,

$100,000 a coin, why wouldn't it be? It's my answer. I think it will be. I don't think it's stoppable from a lot of different perspectives, but I know one thing I do know, and I don't know a lot, and I make a lot of mistakes in my life, Slava, but one thing I do know is how Wall Street works. Wall Street has decided that Bitcoin is an asset class and they're going to sell it to their clients like it's an asset class.

Nice. So just to say back to you for the audience, a few things that you mentioned quickly. So you think Bitcoin will hit a hundred K potentially by the end of this year. And you mentioned closer to 200 by the next halving, which is a little over three years plus. let's call it a little over the next three years. When you talk about it as an asset class, that's where you mentioned the 16 trillion, where you compared it to gold and potentially, you know, getting another 20 X from here. If it's an asset class that hits 16 trillion as an entire asset class.

And by that, potentially a 500K per coin could be legit is kind of the math that you did all that. And the whole idea is there's 21 million Bitcoin, 500K per, and then you start adding the math, you get towards the trillion dollar, multi-trillion dollar asset class. You know what the problem with that whole analysis is? My friend Michael Saylor, who's the CEO of MicroStrategy and has just written the foreword to my new book, which is coming out in December called The Little Book of Bitcoin.

He's yelling at me, telling me I'm not bullish enough. I'm too low key for him and my predictions are uninteresting. More appetizing predictions for him or his predictions, which are two, three, $4 million a coin by that time. I almost worry about that though, because I think that means that the dollar is under siege.

I would like the US to be doing better. Too many topics. Too many topics. So yes, Bitcoin, if you put in one or 2 % of your net worth, you only lose one or 2 % of your net worth if you lose it all, or you could 20X in the coming decade or two, and that would be phenomenal. So just something for you to think about as you diversify your portfolio out there in the audience. Next topic, you mentioned real estate. Give me your 90 seconds on real estate in the coming few years.

Real estate. Well, I mean, I like real estate in general. I own real estate in my portfolio. I think you know this about us. We built a hotel with Richard Branson in New Orleans, which is part of the Opportunity Zone stuff. The reason I'm here today, I want to just answer Pablo Delas question that, yes, getting out of wars,

would be a big impact, positive impact on the economy. And I don't think you have to worry about taxes on unrealized gains. So that is correct, Pablo. But yeah, I like real estate long-term. I think people that bet against real estate, particularly in areas like New York, Boston, downtown Chicago, our media is centered around bad news. And so we think that New York is crime-ridden. It's actually not that crime-ridden. It's-

It's generally safe. We have some uncleanliness and we have some homeless conditions in New York that we shouldn't have. mean, 10 years ago when Bloomberg was running the city, we didn't have that. And it is fixable if we can get the right administration in place. But in general, it's still a very safe city and it is gentrifying and re-transforming itself again. I think people that buy real estate in New York, particularly in Manhattan or-

Well, places in Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx are going to do well. And I would also say the commercial real estate, which has been hammered post COVID, is probably a contrary or an opportunistic buy because people will retool the stuff, whether they make some commercial residential or they take shopping malls and turn them more into civic squares where people can interact with each other. You know, what is happening?

I believe this bodes well for real estate is these dark mirrors that we stare into all day that could occupy four to six hours of our time. If you have a screen time monitor, think that people think, we're going to be forever addicted to that. think you may see a sea change. You may see more people wanting more activity. I think the reason why there's been such a proliferation of conference businesses, and I own a conference business-

we now have, I say, one conference a day everywhere in the world is because I think people are slaves to their phones and they want to interact with each other more than they're currently doing as a result of the phone. And so for me, Adam, I don't think this is an exaggeration to say that commercial real estate is being priced for a malignant future that's not going to happen. It's going to be a way more beneficial, way more optimistic future for

commercial real estate and the way it's being priced now is making the assumption that we're going to be anti-social and we're going to be recluse and stay in our houses and talk to each other the way we are right now. I don't think that's going to happen. And I know you've heard this cliche, the Zoom idea to create Zoom wasn't created on Zoom. People had to be in a room together and to make Zoom happen.

And so I think you're going to see more of that over the next five years than less. So with the rates coming down, the 200 basis points that you're predicting, you'd be kind of pro going into real estate with a three, five, 10 year outlook? No question. There's a lot of strategic and distress real estate out there. It's funny you saying that because we're talking to a well track record portfolio team that we may bring in to SkyBirds to discuss that very idea.

All right, you heard it here first. So you're wearing your Superman t-shirt. You love Superman. You have some great assets. I know you personally that you're a huge fan, which is amazing. What do you think of art and collectibles? So sports cards like baseball cards or the comic books or a Monet. I mean, it's all different, but they're all kind of categorized together as how investors look at it. What do you think of that for the next few years? You know, I'm very bullish. know, listen, I have a 32 year old son who you've met.

25 short years ago, he had a list of Pokemon cards that he insisted I buy for him and boxes of Pokemon cards. Now, I don't know what the hell happened to them. Nobody can blame it on me though. I didn't throw them out. Okay. But he's estimated that somebody threw $10 million worth of collectibles out on him. And as I point out to him, well,

That's the reason why they're collectibles, because every mom or every maid or whatever happened, they all got the stuff thrown out. That's why if everyone had their Pokemon cards today, then they wouldn't be worth what they're worth. And so what happens in society, we're a disposable society and we're nostalgic and we crave memorabilia and we crave touching something. One of the experiences, Buffett has a great line about investing. If you're investing in sugar, salt or fat,

How are we going to do okay? That's why he put money in Seize Candy. That's why he invested in things like McDonald's or Disney over the years. But one other thing that people crave is nostalgia and also people crave uniqueness. So if I have a 500 year old painting and it's one of a kind and there's 25 billionaires that are competing for that painting and each one of those billionaires

wants to own that painting and wants to be the unique person that owns that painting, it's going to push those prices up. so what I would say to you is the economy is going to do very well and there's going to be a proliferation of very rich people and very rich people, whether we like it not, have big egos. And one way you satiate your ego is through differentiation. It's not enough to have the Rolls Royce because every rich person can have a Rolls Royce.

But to have a Cezanne or a Picasso or a Monet, well, that's a totally different league and it represents a level of exclusivity. I love the word exclusive because it means I'm excluding you, Slava. If you say this is exclusive, that means people are being excluded and people like that. Whether we like it or not, people like that. What did Groucho Marx say? You don't want to be a member of any country club that would let them in, only the ones that didn't.

to let him in are the ones you want to be a member of. This stuff, ephemera, comic books, nostalgia, art, art from masters from years ago, it enables us to touch remnants of our past that we hold sacred. Now, the big irony of all this stuff is of course you're a renter of everything that you own, including those

those goofy headphones on your head right now, okay? You're renting those, okay? Because you and I will meet our demise. So far, God has batted 1,000. I don't think he's missed one person. I if you're a Christian like me, he let Jesus come back for three days or for a month after he was dead for three days, and that's it. Other than him, I don't know anyone else that made it back. And so the point that I'm making is that you're renting. And when you're renting,

You get anxiety for possession. And for some reason you think if you own this possession, it represents some level of permanence to your life or to your family's legacy. And so this stuff will exist with us forever. They're great investments. They're inelastic to use an old economic term from your first year of econ, which means there's always steady demand, which will push the price up.

Okay. know, something like Bitcoin is inelastic, short supply, steady demand will push the price up. Art in very short supply, lots of demand. All right. I'm going to jump in here. So anybody that is listening, has any questions, feel free to throw them into the Q and A. We'll try to get to them. So Anthony, we're going to try to go lightning round. So if you can keep your answer shorter and I'm going to ask you a bunch of stuff. So from now till the next election, not the one coming up, what's going to be better? Public markets?

or private markets.

Private markets. You want to pick a couple assets in that? You know, things related to blockchain infrastructure on the private market side, things related to biotechnology and bioengineering are going to be very important. AI, of course, in the private markets, there will be some public AI vehicles, but the private market AI will be very explosive in terms of what happens. Commercial space will also be a big

big private market activity. All right. So, what would you suggest out of a hundred percent? How much are you put into private markets versus public?

Okay. Well you shouldn't go by me because I'm a Bitcoin or right. no, no, no, not you personally. If you're just giving me the generic person advice saying, Hey, you know, I think private markets are going to do better in public. You should put X amount of a hundred percent into private markets. Remember I started out with a very modest net worth and I grew up in a very modest light, lightning round, lightning round. Yeah. So, but I just want to characterize that. I wouldn't put a lot of money in private markets for most investors. You know, if they have 15, 20 % in private markets.

That's great. You don't have to have more than that because you don't know what the hell could happen. Perfect. So in a very, very short synopsis, what would be the benefit of Trump winning for the economy? And then I'm going to ask you the same exact thing for Harris and just give me the very short version. What would be the benefit to the markets from Trump winning? I think he's demonstrably pro crypto and he will demonstrably deregulate

areas of different businesses, energy and banking, which will improve profitability of those sectors. Awesome. And then what's the pro argument for Harris for the markets and the economy? Well, I would make a constitutional argument. think people miss size the benefits that they're getting from living in a constitutional Republican representative democracy. And so,

she'll maintain the integrity of the system, which is why I'm supporting her. And you and I, the Rubin family and the Scaramucci's have benefited from this massive decentralized government because there's not a lot of control at the top, which allows you and I to exercise lots of entrepreneurial freedom. In autocracies, you don't get that luxury. So I'm trying not to be political here, but it seems as if many voters say that Trump is better for the economy.

But firms like Goldman and others have said that Kamala is better for the economy. Yeah, that's racial profiling. I'm not asking who is right. I'm asking more, why do you think that is? Is that the answer? It's racism, it's racial profiling, it's gender, it's sexism. It's all of those things. mean, we like to pretend that we don't do that anymore because we're so worried about how we characterize each other and we're so worried about

not getting ourselves canceled, but Trump, even though he's failed at a lot of businesses, he had a very successful reality show and he's a white male with a big red tie and so people think he would be better. But we know empirically from a lot of different observers and not trying to make it political, but I think you need to know where I stand. Her policies are going to lead to greater continuity, higher middle-class income, a fairer-

a tax policy, more consistency, and a more stable situation, which is way better for Wall Street and way better for business. And she'll eventually come around to where she needs to be on crypto, and you won't be in this bipartisan spat over crypto, which will also be good. All right. This has been an amazing conversation. Last big question, which is we always ask our guests three years out, what's the investment you put in today for three years out? So I would like to hear-

your two public stock suggestions. Obviously this is not investment advice. No one's going to say that, you know, you were the one reason it's more your opinion that I want to hear, which is what are two public stocks that you suggest for three years out and two private asset investments. I'm pretty sure I know the first one. But what would be your picks? Well, I mean, I'm a very, I'm very simplistic person. So I would say on the public side, I would say Berkshire Hathaway, which is a cash flowing machine.

something if you're patient and own it, you'll do incredibly well. And I would say Microsoft because Microsoft is a large enough company paying a dividend that has strategically pivoted into things like the cloud and AI, which you and your family will benefit from their touching so many parts of those ecosystems. On the private side, I think it's two very simple things. It's a collection of

cryptocurrency. So it wouldn't just be Bitcoin for me. It would be Bitcoin, Solana, Avalanche, Polkadot. You'd have to have some layer ones in there because they're going to be the rail system for the way we do transactions with each other over the next five or 10 years. And then of course, on the other side of that barbell would be SpaceX. I would say this to you, I would buy every opportunity that I've had

incrementally own more shares of SpaceX. I think it's probably the best run company in the world and it should have a two to $3 trillion market cap over the next three to 10 years. And I want to be a part of that. Just for the crypto basket, if you had a hundred dollars, how many dollars do you put into BTC of the a hundred dollars? Yeah. So I would put in 50, probably 20 in SOL

And the remainder would get equal allocations, Avalanche and Polkadot. Into layer ones. Into layer ones, Great. Which is kind of like Ethereum and other layer ones. But Solana would be number two with the 20 % episode. Understood. Just telling for the audience. This has been absolutely, positively amazing. Quick summary. You told us that the agendas are not so different. You've seen nine elections, 36 years of investing into it. And really the plan is you need to invest into the long-term.

One is presenting constitutional danger. So I'll let you decide which one that is. And I'm going agree with your wife. I think you need to grow the beard back though. I mean, it's a nice looking face, but you may need a little coverage on that face. So you predict 200 basis points of- And you can't even move you with the jokes. It's like unbelievable. All right, keep going, Slava. I'm trying to keep you for two o'clock here. 200 basis points dropped from 12 to 18 months out. The whole idea of unrealized hacks.

the unrealized gains being taxed not happening. It's just a lot of political talk. The deficit is really something that both candidates need to think about the 45 to $50 trillion of debt four years out, unsustainable at a 3 % rate, $1.5 trillion, 1.5 times the defense spending, which is crazy. You really want to find stability unless there's a very big war that could really mess things up. You're in the camp that we're, as you said, the mama bear, mild recession right now, and we're going to go softly into 25. You're a huge fan of BTC.

You see that potentially hitting 100K by the end of the year, 200K within the next few years, and who knows potentially even 500K. And that's without Michael Saylor's aggressiveness of getting into the millions. You're pro real estate in a contrarian bet, knowing where we're headed a few years out and lower interest rates. You're very supportive of art and collectibles, especially as it relates to scarcity. And really you do suggest people look at alts and alternative investments because in the private markets,

but not more than 15 or 20 % of your allocations. And you put your money where your mouth is and you said three years out, Berkshire Hathaway for cash flowing, Microsoft for dividends, and then moving into all the innovation as well as a basket of crypto and SpaceX. Thank you very much, Anthony. All right. That's everything Slava. God bless you. Bye. All right. Good to talk to you,

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