That is at a record high. Every photo I've seen of John Turnis, new Apple CEO, big smiles. And I get it. Look at this stock price. Record high. Crossed $345 for the first time ever yesterday. It is another Apple moment. You got the duo. You're selling charging higher prices for the iPhone, 1,800 bucks. Sales look to have been off to a good start. Why wouldn't you be smiling if you're John Turnis? There we go. My man John. Now, I'm going to stay on tech because it is also a very big tech moment. We have been transported into a magic moment for the stock market. I'm feeling the magic, friends. One where a new AI agent from Metacol Muse has powered the NASDAQ composite to fresh record highs. Think on this today. An AI agent, which isn't new tech at this point in the AI boom, is causing very smart investors to completely ignore their discipline and load up more on tech stocks hand over fist. The vibe. Buy now, ask questions later because that's what everybody else is doing. It's a moment where chip giant AMD this week has become the 13th US company to be valued over $1 trillion. Shout out AMD CEO, first member of my wall of titans yesterday. Nvidia, of course, is tops on this list with a $5.5 trillion market cap. These are massive numbers. It's a moment where numbers on next-gen tech companies such as OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic completely blow you away. Check this one out. And I couldn't even believe it when I got this chart sent to me in Slack. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are worth more than every US tech IPO in the past 45 years combined. Look at this chart. It's kind of nuts. Like all these companies are at record like valuations. Most of us have never even seen this before. Now the AI magic is being dusted all over the stock market. Again, you can either profit off it or you can run for the hills because some AI researcher warns about humans going extinct. My two cents, why not profit off the AI revolution before AI makes us all extinct. YOLO. I mean, I had to get in a little bit of negativity. I got to balance out the positive here. Now, like I just mentioned here in the opening, this is a magic moment for the stock market. It is a magic moment for investors in part because of Meta. Now, Meta Connect will kick off today. It's like Dreamforce for all things Meta. They're going to talk about their amazing new Muse. Very important that I hear from this company on what they're doing with Muse. What is the next step? What does evolution look like for the consumer? And I look at Meta. I mean, the stock has been through the roof. It is very much driving this magic moment across the board. Now, I want to hear from Mark Zuckerberg when he gives that speech later on today. What's next in consumer? What's next for the enterprise area of the business? And look, this is a good point I think from the team over at Key Bank. Oh, look at Zuck still crushing it. I mean all his taekwondo or whatever workouts he does. I mean the guy still got it. I mean not as fit as me but then again who is. Very important here for Meta because you want to think about one what's next in consumer business like I just mentioned but also how is this new technology, how is this technology going to appear in their smart glasses? What's the next generation of this? Because the market is pricing in very very big things for Meta on the Muse front. How much will the next generation of subscriptions cost Meta? Very important. Meta stock, like I mentioned yesterday, has been completely rerated. You're seeing the gains continue. And I think also, very good point. I want to point out something that my man Gene Monster made. He's been at this game for a while. I remember when Gene would be the first one in store in front of an Apple store when the iPhone was coming. Now, Gene is covering more things tech. Very important point that I think Gene brings up. Notes that Meta stock is up 20% over the past two weeks. Cup has shared only a little. Now, I also mentioned yesterday Alexander Wang, Meta's chief AI scientist. He's having a moment. I think this guy's not even getting any sleep. He's up around the clock posting on X. A lot of those furry alien Muse mascots. I mean, he's all over posting a lot of things. We have not heard. There he is. There's the mascot again. I need one of these for my unleashed shelf. Nonetheless, I need more stats from Meta tonight. What have downloads done in the past 24, 48 hours as Muse has taken really hold of the stock market and the consumer psyche. Very important we get those updates to keep the stock rally going, but also too to keep the rally going in the broader market. I need to hear more from this guy right here. I really don't want to hear any more from Dario. Definitely don't want to hear from Sam Altman at all because those two guys have been a lot of doomsayers. I'm kind of enjoying this positivity stemming from the Muse mascot. So there we go on all things Muse. Now I do want to lean into a little bit of negativity today because it is what it is. You can't just be all positive on markets. We're not looking at the other side. Now, a new video from billionaire Ray Dalio for the World Economic Forum. He warned again on the economy. And before I get to this video, my trusty team here, they're absolutely amazing. They brought up all the warnings from Ray Dalio over the past few years. Now, if there's one thing synonymous now, Ray's very smart, our Bridgewater founder, I mean, he's a billionaire for a reason. But he has warned consistently over many years, and we just went back to 2019. These are all the warnings that Ray Dalio has come up with dating back to 2019. Go pull up an S&P 500 chart, NASDAQ chart, Dow chart. All those three charts are up and to the right. Now, I get why Ray is warning. He's concerned about debt. He's always been talking about it. However, the bottom line is that the stock market still goes up. So, if you would have listened to those calls, you would have missed out on a lot of wealth for your portfolio. But here's that video I mentioned.
So simultaneously it is going to be one of the biggest productivity enhancing, changing the world forces and also a bubble that is going to have devastating effects on many people as it works itself through this.
Devastating effects, maybe. Maybe we've heard all the warnings from a lot of the doomsayers, a lot of the AI researchers, Dario and Sam, which I just mentioned before. The fact is the market is completely ignoring all this stuff. And like I mentioned at the open, you could either listen to warnings like this from Ray Dalio and all those other folks or you could stay invested in this stock market. The stock market is at a high for a reason. It's at a high because a lot of companies are going to drive a lot more productivity from news, various other AI agents. That's why it's trading at record highs. When they come back, a lot of these big corporate America companies, they come back in a couple weeks, report earnings, profits are going to be through the roof. I think Goldman Sachs estimated last night that earnings this year might rise about 40% this year. Earnings are going to be strong. So again, you can listen to this warning from Dalio. You appreciate where he's coming from. The country has a lot of debt. It is leading to I think a rise in Treasury yields. Nonetheless, the market's at highs and there are other things out there to talk about. Speaking of this one, now what you don't know is I used to be a B reporter for the cruise lines. I swear I've done it all. I don't even know how I used to do some of these things. So, I used to cover cruise lines, Royal Caribbean, Carnival Cruise Line, and Norwegian Cruise Line. Fun, fun. You would go on the ship, tour the ship, grab some food, estimate profit margins, cash flow, talk to the founders, talk to the seas. It is a great time. You talk to travelers. I mean, there are people out there, they're absolutely obsessed with cruising. Shout out my mom who loves to cruise. So, this deal with Royal Caribbean really came to my attention today. They are spending $3 billion, $3 billion for 50% stake in Sandals. Now, you know, Sandals, very loyal, very loyal customer base. The market doesn't like this deal. And I think this was a good report by the team over at Stifel. The headline this quote, 'What the heck are they thinking?' That's the number one question they fielded on this deal by Royal Caribbean. And it comes at a time where all these cruise line stocks have been absolutely obliterated. Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line. At the same time, fuel prices go up. Fuel is the largest line item on their financial statements. So, it makes sense. But this is a very very big deal for this company. It's transformational in many respects and in addition to the higher fuel prices and why I think you know the street doesn't want to see a Royal Caribbean make this type of very large bet at this time is operational, you know you see revenue grades slowing down you see margins under pressure a good bit and it also takes away and this is something that the team at Stifel mentioned it takes away the company from its core competency of making really large ships that everyone wants to go in, Icon of the Seas. Royal Caribbean has the largest ship in the world and I put that question to former longtime CEO Richard Fain over at Royal Caribbean last year on my podcast and I asked him, Richard, why have you been so obsessed with creating large large ships?
So, we overcame the old myths of cruising as being something that's sedentary. I mean, how do you think of it as sedentary when you could do skydiving, surf simulator, ice skating, any of these kinds of things? So the larger ship for example instead of having a restaurant might have 28 places that you can have dinner and instead of going to a show you might have a dozen different venues to go to. So it's that choice and that insatiable quest and the good thing was the culture kept building on that.
So there's a lot more to unpack in this Royal Caribbean deal. I spent $3 billion 50% stake. Royal Sandals owns a lot of islands obviously in the Caribbean. Jamaica, I believe it's 17 islands, but this takes away from the core competency of Royal Caribbean of getting human beings onto these large ships and charging them accordingly and getting a lot of fees and driving a lot of cash flow from the business. And I don't think the street necessarily likes to see this from a company. They think that perhaps they might have overpaid for this asset. And if I'm right, and this is coming from someone who really doesn't go on vacation because I have no life. They have an adult-only policy at Sandals, which is a little bit different than the policy at Royal Caribbean. All right, so now I'm going to go back to I want to focus a little bit more on tech. I want to get into tariffs. I want to get into the economy. I want to welcome in Gary Cohn. This is our first unleashed in-person guest. Gary, good to see you.
Good to see you seeing you.
So I'm hoping this all works. I mean, this is all good. This is good. We'll hope for the best. I appreciate it.
Well, congratulations on your new show.
Thanks, Gary. I appreciate it. You've been rolling with us since day one, so it's good to see you. Um, you using Muse yet?
Look, at this point, I'm not comfortable giving up my personal data, my personal information.
Well, what could go wrong?
By the way, I have enough trouble managing my life knowing my own personal data. I like giving it to someone else. That's not in my comfort zone right now.
Are you really, look, you've been at the markets for eons, Gary. Are you surprised on how bullish the market is? NASDAQ record highs because of an AI agent?
Yeah, look, I am a little bit surprised. You like we all knew this was coming at the beginning of the discussion about AI. Everyone talked about it being a productivity tool. You know, whether it's productivity in the HR department of a large corporation or it's productivity for you and I. So, the fact that we've gotten to the point where we're now seeing productivity tools, I don't think anyone should be surprised. The question will be is how well do they work and what's the risk for putting all of your personal data in one place.
Like right now, I don't know. I'm not bold enough to say there is no risk and I'm surely not bold enough to put my data in.
No, you and me both. I'm not using this like it's not going to happen at all. Um, what does it mean to the human workforce though if we have agents like this running amuck on our phones?
You know look at the end of the day I believe that AI will be a productivity boom for this country and if you want to grow the size of your economy you want to grow the population you want to grow wealth you need to grow GDP if we can grow our economy and we can become more productive it's good for all of us there's no real losers in productivity gains
I had uh you know Apollo uh chief economist uh Torsten on the show yesterday and he brought up a really good point that more AI will mean more labor displacement. So people are going to lose their gigs.
Well, I think everyone assumes that in the beginning. If the economy grows and GDP grows, which is what happens in productivity, you actually create more jobs or you don't lose jobs because you need more jobs for what's going on in the economy. I mean, right now, the employment data that everyone had been fearing a year ago, a year ago, if you roll back, you know, everyone was worried about huge unemployment in the United States because AI was going to displace all these workers. We haven't seen that happen right now. You know, even as the Fed chairman said, we're at full employment right now.
80,000 jobs a month this year.
Yeah, we're basically full employment right now. If you think of all these data centers and infrastructure that needs to be built if we continue down this path and they can get built, there's just going to be enormous demand for more and more workers in the system.
What role does government play and you've been in the room with all these folks in containing the spread of AI agents?
