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Scott Galloway
Founder; Host of The Prof G Pod; Co-host of Pivot and Prof G Markets, Prof G Media

How Leverage Turned An AI Boom Into A Crash

📅 Aug 03, 2026 Prof G Markets 81 MIN 218955 VIEWS 125 SEGMENTS · 3 SPEAKERS
Today on Prof G Markets, Scott Galloway and Ed Elson break down how single-stock leveraged ETFs caused volatility in the South Korean stock market and discuss how leverage can be damaging for investors. Then, they unpack earnings from Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and Amazon, explaining why investors rewarded Microsoft and Amazon while punishing Meta and Apple. They discuss how the AI boom is making it increasingly difficult to value Big Tech. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter: https://links.profgmedia.com/markets-... Order Notes On Being A Man now! https://amzn.to/4nl4VKo Timestamps: 0...

What Scott Galloway said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Scott Galloway discussed the South Korean stock market crash, attributing it to single-stock leveraged ETFs tracking Samsung and SK Hynix, which amplified losses for retail investors. He noted that 92% of investors in these products were retail, and Goldman estimates 3.4% of South Korea's adult population received margin calls. Galloway argued leverage removes margin for error and cited the collapse of the Situational Awareness hedge fund, which was 5x levered and forced to liquidate. He connected the crisis to broader loneliness and financial nihilism among young men, suggesting relationships act as guardrails. Turning to big tech earnings, Galloway praised Microsoft and Amazon for showing AI revenue, while criticizing Meta's lack of monetization. He highlighted that Amazon's net income was inflated by its Anthropic stake, and Apple's iPhone sales rose 22% despite supply issues. He predicted several forced selling events in August due to leverage.

Key takeaways

  1. Galloway predicts half a dozen forced selling events in August from leveraged AI stock positions.
  2. 92% of investors in South Korean single-stock leveraged ETFs were retail, with 3.4% of adults receiving margin calls.
  3. Amazon's $53 billion of $63 billion net income came from its Anthropic stake, masking operating performance.
  4. Apple's iPhone sales rose 22% to a June quarter record, but memory pricing is a new cost pressure.
  5. Galloway argues Apple's moat is unmatched, with no viable substitute for the iPhone.

Numbers and commitments

FigureWhat it refers toTypeAt
92% Retail investors in South Korean leveraged ETFs metric 8:25
3.4% South Korea's adult population receiving margin calls metric 8:25
$53 billion Amazon net income from Anthropic stake metric 41:59
22% iPhone sales growth in June quarter metric 42:44
30 million Paid seats on Microsoft Copilot metric 40:57
5x Leverage used by Situational Awareness hedge fund metric 12:25
70% South Korean investors in the red on Samsung and SK Hynix metric 19:11
16% Microsoft stock gain after earnings metric 40:57
14% Amazon stock gain after earnings metric 40:57
20% Apple's global smartphone market share metric 1:12:21

Chapters

  1. 0:00Marijuana use and personal habits
  2. 5:31South Korean stock market crash
  3. 8:25Leverage and forced selling
  4. 12:25Situational Awareness hedge fund collapse
  5. 19:11Regulation and retail investor protection
  6. 28:02Loneliness crisis and financial nihilism
  7. 39:10Big tech earnings review
  8. 43:32AI capex and valuation concerns
  9. 1:07:16Apple's moat and growth debate
  10. 1:18:45August predictions and market outlook

Questions asked in this interview

1
  1. 1:02:52And now, Vanta is helping companies like yours watch for the risks that show up between audits across your vendors, your AI tools, and your entire environment. How?
Ed Elson 0:00 ↗
Those retail investors in South Korea have lost $39 billion so far. But I think probably most astounding is some of the imagery that we're seeing coming out of South Korea. If you go to the National Assembly building in Seoul, South Korea right now, and you go on the sidewalk, you will find a pile of funeral wreaths on the street.
Scott Galloway 0:21 ↗
Yeah, I saw that. With a sign that says abolish the single stock leveraged ETF because suddenly everyone is realizing that this stuff is extremely dangerous.
Today's number: 21.4 million. That's how many Americans use marijuana daily in 2025, making it the most frequently used substance, above alcohol at 17.2 million. Ed, I do believe if the entire world got high together for a couple hours, it would be a better place, and then we'd have a global food shortage.
Ed Elson 1:01 ↗
That number blew me away. I mean, granted, it's a great number. I'm 90% of that, but still, what are these young people doing? It's kind of interesting to me. I feel like none of my friends are smoking weed or eating weed or however they're consuming weed. None of them are really doing it in my friend group. I'm not doing it either. I'm kind of surprised to see it, but I guess it's just the decline of alcohol.
Scott Galloway 1:26 ↗
Are they drinking? Are they doing mushroom chocolates? Are they just trying to pay off their student loans from Princeton?
Ed Elson 1:32 ↗
A lot less substance use at this age. I would say like a few years ago there was a kind of uptick in the mushroom chocolates and the psychedelics and all of that stuff, but it does seem like everyone's trying to kind of get to that stage where they're getting their act together and it's like, okay, do I really want to piss away not just tonight but the several days after with a hangover. Certainly ketamine was a thing back in the day.
Scott Galloway 1:59 ↗
Ketamine back in the day. Wow. God, I feel old. I never, I missed that.
Ed Elson 2:04 ↗
Yeah. Well, I'm saying back in the day means 18 months ago. Last summer at a party in Mykonos.
Scott Galloway 2:11 ↗
Yeah. From the age of when I got out of UCLA, we smoked a lot of pot in college. But from like 22 to 30, I don't think I did much of anything. I was just, you know, working all the time and I don't know, just didn't really drink or smoke or... That is my criticism of myself right now. I think I need to be having more fun than I'm currently having.
Ed Elson 2:35 ↗
I've got much better criticisms than that. I can help out there. I can make that seem like one of your better qualities.
Scott Galloway 2:44 ↗
Yeah, I had that kid Jack Reigns on the Prof G office hours talking about, and his whole thing is, you know, make sure you have some fun in your 20s. You don't want to give up your 20s. But my sense is young people will always find time and a way to have fun. I'm not worried about that.
Ed Elson 3:05 ↗
Are you still a marijuana user?
Scott Galloway 3:07 ↗
I do edibles probably once or twice a week when I'm having trouble sleeping, but I don't smoke. I don't really do... I'm taking down my drinking substantially because I do realize a 51-year-old liver cannot process the way it did at 21.
Ed Elson 3:22 ↗
Is the edible, when you take the edible, is it just to go to sleep or are you having fun watching TV, messing around, like, or is it literally just I'm going to take the edible and then I'm going to go to bed and fall asleep?
Scott Galloway 3:34 ↗
For me, quite frankly, it just quiets the mind. My mind kind of starts firing at about 11:00 p.m. And so if I feel especially, not anxious, but just awake, I'll take a small, like 5 milligrams of an edible, and this brand I like called Wild Time that I get at this dispensary in Aspen, pear flavored, and it just kind of quiets my mind and makes it easier for me to sleep. But I don't ever do... I don't think I ever do drugs outside of the house. I just abuse drugs home alone as I'm playing video games.
Ed Elson 4:08 ↗
It's a good way to do it.
Scott Galloway 4:09 ↗
No, but I mean occasionally I'll, you know, I'll watch some stuff on, you know, I'll stream something or watch something on TV, but mostly I just hang out with the dogs and wait till I feel tired enough to get into bed because I find if you get into bed and you're not tired, I just sit there and stare at the ceiling for two or three hours. But I don't, you know, when we were younger, we would do things like, I'm going to see The Odyssey today. When I was a younger man, I'd do it on a Sunday and take an edible and go with a bunch of friends and then watch The Odyssey and whoa, dude, that scene was amazing. And then we'd all go to In-N-Out Burger. But now it's mostly just a sleep aid for me.
Ed Elson 4:44 ↗
It's interesting you say that. I actually have the opposite experience with marijuana where my mind starts racing and I feel like I'm having all of these thoughts, all of these ideas. I'm having a lot of fun, but it's not a sedated state. Maybe it's just a type. I guess there's different variations. But yeah, it would not work as a sleeping aid for me, I don't think. But on a side note, I'm very excited for you to see The Odyssey, as I think I've mentioned to you, one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. It is number two on my Nolan list behind Interstellar, but it beats a lot of his films and it's the best adaptation of that story I've ever seen. So, I'm very excited for you.
Scott Galloway 5:31 ↗
Yeah, I'm excited to see it. But more importantly, let's talk about the South Korean stock market.
Ed Elson 5:36 ↗
Let's do it. Lots to get into in the markets this week. There's been an enormous amount of volatility in the South Korean stock market. Just last week, the KOSPI index fell 22%. And then days later, it rose 15%. One of the biggest culprits appears to be a new wave of leveraged ETFs. In late May, the country launched single stock leveraged ETFs tracking two of its biggest chip makers, SK Hynix and Samsung. These funds use borrowed money to multiply the daily return of their target by two, three, or even five times. That means that the gains are amplified when the stocks rise. But so are the losses when they fall. The products quickly became popular with retail investors looking to capitalize on the AI boom. But last week, when AI sentiment briefly soured, the pressure quickly spread to South Korea's chip makers. SK Hynix reported weaker than expected earnings, adding even more pressure. All told, Samsung plummeted 32% and SK Hynix crashed 40%, and the KOSPI index fell into a bear market.
So Scott, this is really just a fascinating story here. What happened? The South Korean stock market's down 44%. $2 trillion in market value has been wiped out practically overnight. And the two main reasons for that are, as I said, Samsung and SK Hynix. These two chip companies, which now make up roughly half of the entire South Korean stock market. And those two have tanked in the past month. This stock market crash in South Korea right now, this is the worst they've ever seen since the financial crisis in 2008. So, you know, why is it down so much? The AI trade, as we've been talking about throughout the week, appears to be unwinding. It's not just Samsung and SK Hynix. As a lot of the other semiconductor names like Micron and AMD and TSMC, chip stocks lost about $1 trillion in value in the past week. Not because of anything that happened with their earnings reports, which were generally pretty good, but the euphoria is beginning to lose steam because there are these concerns that we have discussed at length, like the extreme debt issuance, like the circular financing, like the SPV mania, and everyone's asking where's the ROI. But in South Korea specifically, there is this other killer ingredient that is crushing their market, and that is the leveraged ETF, specifically the single stock leveraged ETF, which has become the most popular financial instrument in South Korea by a mile. So that was great when things were good, now things are bad and it is total chaos. Scott, your reactions.
Scott Galloway 8:25 ↗
It reminds me of that Charlie Munger statement where he said the way smart people go broke is ladies, liquor, and leverage, which by the way are awesome. I had dinner with a podcaster and he was saying that he's been shorting the market or thinking about shorting the market. I said, 'Well, you're under the impression then that you can time the market.' And as a hedge, I get it. And if you're worried about the markets going down, unfortunately, I think hedging or buying puts, it's very expensive because other people have the same ideas. The more boring way, if you think the markets are volatile or you want to lock in gains, is one, diversification, but also lowering your leverage. And to a certain extent, lowering leverage costs something on the upside, but you don't... I don't know if you saw this hedge fund that was all the rage, Situational Awareness, is basically shutting down because of leverage and just buying AI stocks at 5 to 1 leverage. That's not a strategy, or that's just a strategy until it isn't. I think of leverage like divorce in the sense that if you get divorced, the only thing you know about it is it'll happen at exactly the wrong time to sell assets that you're going to have to typically... you have to sell a home, you have to sell some stocks, you know, you start dividing things up and inevitably it happens at the worst time. The way you go broke and just have huge hits to your financial well-being is if you put yourself in a position... what you need to ask yourself is the following: at what point do I or the investments, what is the likelihood at some point we might become forced sellers? Because the market senses you're a forced seller and gives you a shitty price. And I mean, the worst call in history was when Jim Cramer, probably thinking he was doing his viewers a favor, said in the teeth of the crisis, 'If you can't stand the volatility, you should think about selling your stocks.' That was the worst piece of financial advice given in this millennium because basically the NASDAQ recovered within I think something like 14 or 17 months. But if you were levered, you had to sell. If you weren't levered, you just didn't look at your phone and, you know, sooner rather than later, the stocks recovered. Leverage on the way up is a ton of fun. It's ugly on the way down. And my understanding is, talk about a gambling economy, 92% of investors in these products were retail. And so there were two brokerage accounts for every citizen in South Korea. So it was never institutional risk, it was household risk. And Goldman estimates that 3.4% of South Korea's adult population has received a margin call. I mean, that's insane when you think about it. So, the human cost here is so real that South Korea has rolled out a debt counseling hotline as part of its suicide prevention plan. That's a sentence that should give us all pause. And so, the lesson here isn't new. It's just very expensive for every generation to relearn this, and that is leverage doesn't create risk, it removes your margin for being wrong. And I think this is, you know, you miss some upside, it does cost you, but I think once you get to any sort of asset base, one means of protecting yourself, we keep talking about diversification, but it's a good idea to game theory out. And you can use AI for this. Put in all your assets, what your mortgage is on them, what you have pledged against them or you've taken money out on margin, whatever it is, whatever qualifies as leverage. What are the scenarios where you might be a forced seller? And you want to give up some upside if and when the market draws down, as it always does through cycles, you can ride it out. Your thoughts?
Ed Elson 12:25 ↗
Well, the Leopold Aschenbrenner, this Situational Awareness thing is really interesting because for those that don't know, this is this hedge fund that was started by this former OpenAI employee who wrote this paper called Situational Awareness that was all about how the AI revolution is going to change the world and all of these things that we should be thinking about. It went super viral and like many up-and-coming asset managers today, it happened because he went viral and then he kind of launched his hedge fund career off of that and the fund performed unbelievably well. I mean, just looking at this year, from June, it was up 439% on the year and basically all he was doing was investing in AI stocks and chip stocks, all of the names that have just gone absolutely crazy over the past few months. By the way, side note, his wife is the chief of staff at Anthropic. So a lot of people have been saying like, oh my god, this guy's a genius. How does he know when to buy all these stocks? How does he know when things change? And the answer is probably like he's literally married to one of the most inside insiders in Silicon Valley. But last week we learned a truth bomb, which is that it turns out he was 5x levered up. He was then margin called and then he decided, well, not decided, he was forced to liquidate his entire public equity portfolio and supposedly he's also selling his stake in Anthropic too. And it is remarkable because if you've been online, if you've been on Twitter and you're kind of plugged into the investing community, this guy was considered AI Jesus. He was like the savant of our time. He could predict the future. He knew everything that was going to happen. And literally overnight, the whole thing has collapsed. And what is it? It's a story of leverage once again. He was levering up into the hottest stocks, into the hottest momentum trades in the world. Looked really smart until suddenly he didn't. And it is just so fascinating because we have seen this story over and over and over again. We saw it with Michael Saylor and the MicroStrategy play. We saw it with Cathie Wood and ARK Invest yoloing and levering up into Tesla. We saw it with Bill Hwang. We saw it with Long-Term Capital Management. And it's just hilarious to me how we always kind of fall prey to the same game. We see these gigantic numbers and then we assume these people are geniuses. In reality, they're just taking on a lot of leverage. By the way, interesting side note, he sold his entire position, all of his longs, like SK Hynix, by the way. All of his shorts as well, like Adobe. He sold them all to a single buyer. Do you have any guesses at who that buyer was?
Scott Galloway 15:28 ↗
I think I read it was Citadel, Ken Griffin.
Ed Elson 15:30 ↗
No, that's right. Ken Griffin.
Scott Galloway 15:31 ↗
Yeah. And by the way, Ken's going to make a lot of money. If you could find a fund that said we're buyers of nothing but assets from forced sellers, those are the... I think the greatest investment trade was when Bill Ackman... there was a family that owned all of these malls. I think it was called GGP. Anyways, General Growth Properties, GGP, and they got caught in a down cycle. I think it was '08, and basically they couldn't make their debt payments. He came in and basically squeezed them and bumped them into bankruptcy. If they had been able to hold on for literally like 3 months longer, they would have been fine. And he got something like a 35,000% return on it. Just an insane amount of return. And that's again, it's really easy in good times to mistake leverage for IQ. I was just talking to my tax advisor and she said, 'We should put some leverage on your real estate.' At my age, I've had my eyebrows burned off and my fingers, like not burned, but chopped off a couple times in the market. So I don't like any leverage at all. And she convinced me that a little bit of leverage is actually healthy and strategic. So again, it's like, you know, it's like I don't know what the term is, prescription drugs as taken as prescribed can be very good for you. Too much of anything is going to kill you. So I think leverage is something you need to understand. You need to understand... I was thinking that like what could we do at the University of California, like how does the curriculum need to change? And I was thinking going back into high school, how does it change? And I'd take a course on adulting that spent a decent amount of time talking about leverage, whether it's the mortgage on your house, what margin is, credit cards are essentially leverage on your lifestyle, or taking leverage out, but understanding the concept and what is the healthy zone of leverage. Very few people can buy a home for cash. I'm in a position of privilege, so what is a healthy amount of leverage?
Ed Elson 17:43 ↗
Yeah, and I think the South Korean stock market story is the perfect example of leverage gone wrong. And I think it's a good warning against the downsides because it looked like, I mean, a lot of people in South Korea, a lot of retail investors probably convinced themselves that they were geniuses. They probably convinced themselves that they were the new Leopold Aschenbrenner. And we saw the inflows into those leveraged ETFs, these single stock leveraged ETFs, which is basically just a levered up version of SK Hynix and Samsung. And that's basically it because those two stocks are the only stocks that mattered in the market. The assets under management of those ETFs tripled in one month in South Korea. And I think as you mentioned, 92% of the investors in those ETFs were retail investors. Now we look at the damage. Those retail investors in South Korea have lost $39 billion so far. You mentioned the craziest stat I think, which is that more than 3% of the adult population has now received a margin call in South Korea. But I think probably most astounding is some of the imagery that we're seeing coming out of South Korea. If you go to the National Assembly building in Seoul, South Korea right now, and you go on the sidewalk, you will find a pile of funeral wreaths on the street.
Scott Galloway 19:11 ↗
Yeah, I saw that. With a sign that says abolish the single stock leveraged ETF because suddenly everyone is realizing that this stuff is extremely dangerous. There are literally thousands of people who have lost their life savings because they convinced themselves that this was the way to do it. This is how they were going to get rich. I mean, if you look at the amount of people in South Korea that are in the red on those two names, on SK Hynix and on Samsung, it comes out to around 70%. That is according to the Korean stock market regulators. The response from regulation, from the people in charge of South Korea's version of the SEC, is they're going to just stop allowing these new listings of the single stock leveraged ETF. They realized, wow, this was probably a bad idea. And you listen to some of the quotes that are coming out of South Korea right now. One of the parliament members said that the country has turned into a casino. Another said that the launch of the leverage ETF was a quote, 'man-made disaster.' The chief of the FSS, which is one of their securities regulators, said quote, 'I should have laid down to protest the launch of the leverage ETF by any means necessary.' So, they're suddenly realizing, 'Oh my god, why did we allow this to happen? Why did we encourage this? Why didn't we put out more protections, put out more regulations?' All of the things that I think you and I have been advocating for in America, but which we kind of get a lot of shit for because everyone's like, you know, you're patronizing investors, like let people do whatever they want to do. We're now seeing the downside. We're now seeing that people are taking to the streets and saying, 'Why didn't you ban this? Why didn't you stop me from myself?' And it's a really good warning story for America where we're seeing trends brewing in the same direction. And South Korea is an example of where it went wrong.
Yeah. And I'm curious if you agree with this, but there's a balance between infantilizing people and also protecting them, right? A government has a paternal or a maternal feel to it. We don't, you know, we make it illegal for people to take, you know, you can kill yourself by eating ice cream or going to Oregon for assisted suicide, but we put a lot of regulation and friction in between those things, saying that, okay, on certain levels, we do know better than you. And this to me feels like an example where we know what's going to happen here. We get regulated backwards. We wait for retail investors to absorb the downside of financial engineering which likely had really juicy fees for the middleware. We then apologize and then we regulate it. And the apology should come before these products launch, priced into the approval process with friction that says, 'Okay, retail investors, and this isn't infantilizing them, should probably not have access to products with 5x leverage.' That just presents an existential risk. And our population probably doesn't have the maturity, the experience, or the knowledge to realize you're putting nuclear weapons in their hands that seem to be endorsed by ads on CNBC South Korea. So it feels to me like there probably is regulation that's required here that says, okay, at some point when you're putting in place products that are subject to a cyclical downturn, which happens in cycles, that would wipe out the household wealth potentially of millions of households, we're not going to let them do it. Just as we wouldn't allow certain products, the availability of certain products that are dangerous. I mean, these products are dangerous. And at a minimum, you know, I don't think warning labels are enough here. If you're selling on the KOSPI and by major brokerages that have ad campaigns of 5 to 1 leveraged products, it's not if it's going to blow up, it's when it's going to blow up. So good regulation is prophylactic. So anyway, I'm curious to get your take because at the same time what you're doing is saying institutional investors have access to more products and more leverage than retail investors. But at the same time, you know, there is a need for protection, if you will. Do you think it's from your generation's viewpoint, do you think it's buyer beware? Don't infantilize me. I'm comfortable taking my own risk. You just want to sequester greater returns to yourself with access for wealthy people and corporations for access to a product universe that we don't have access to, or do you think the government has a role here in kind of being more paternal and saying no, we're not going to give you access to these products?
Ed Elson 24:13 ↗
I think it's a balance. I think that you need to... there are things that you can do to protect investors from themselves. You can limit the amount of leverage that they can actually take on. You can increase the minimum deposit requirements. There are things that you can do, which we used to do in America but increasingly seem to not be interested in doing because we've swung so far into this infantilization argument, which I think has gone way out of control. But also the education, as you say, the warning label, we don't have nearly enough of that. And part of the problem is that there is a coordinated campaign by people who make money selling these products and executing the trades on these products to blur the lines as to what is leverage and what is gambling and what is risky and what isn't. And I think what we're seeing is a proliferation of a lot of these financial instruments that are kind of just taking these weird side routes around the law and around regulations. The perfect example would be these perpetual futures which have become the most popular form of trading cryptocurrencies today. They made up 70% of all Bitcoin trading volume last year. And it's basically a way to lever up by like a hundred times or even in some cases a thousand times on crypto with no actual expiration date. It's basically just a bet on whether the price is going to go up or down tomorrow. And it's wiped out a lot of investors. Again, these are the stories that you don't hear because everyone brags when they're up 1,000%. They never brag when they're down and they lose all of their investments. But it's things like that. It's like the perpetual futures. It's the single stock leveraged ETF. It's the DeFi yield farming. It's all of these products that we are presenting to young people as if they are a legitimate financial product that is very complex and sophisticated. And if you can figure out how to do it, then that means that you're smart. And a lot of people get lured into this stuff. And so I think we could be doing a way better job of describing to people what it really is. Another example would be buy now pay later. It's a little different, but what we had when that industry exploded was you had these companies going around and saying, 'Hey, this isn't credit. We know that you guys don't like credit cards. We know that you guys don't like debt. This is a new thing where you buy it now and then you just separate the payment up into little increments and you pay it later.' And this was the story that they told us. They said that we were the debit generation. We don't like credit, so we'd prefer to do buy now pay later, which is literally the definition of credit. And eventually our regulators kind of stepped up. But honestly, it was a little bit too late. And they said, you need to be clear with people about what your product actually is. It is credit. It is debt. It is leverage. It is not a form of debit. It is not just taking it out of your checking account. So it's issues like that I think we need to be a lot more serious about making sure that people know exactly what they are buying, what the risks actually are. We could actually put these warning labels. Another example would be event contracts in the prediction markets. Are we going to step up and start explaining to people what these instruments actually are? But we've decided no, we don't want to do that, or at least this SEC has decided they don't want to do that. So, I think there's a lot of work that is to be done. I have another angle on this South Korea story which I think is very interesting, but before I do that, I'll just get your response.
Scott Galloway 27:54 ↗
I agree with everything you've said. Don't tease us. Don't be Rachel Maddow-ing me.
Ed Elson 28:02 ↗
Well, when you think about why has this happened? Why are all these young people flinging their money into these leveraged ETFs and then praying that the stock goes to the moon and then being upset when it crashes to the ground? If you look at South Korea on a demographic basis, there are few nations in the world that are experiencing a loneliness crisis more severe than South Korea. You look at their marriage rates which have declined 40% in the past decade. You look at the fertility rate which hit 0.8 last year. It's the only OECD nation with a fertility rate below one. You look at what the local governments are doing where they're actually paying people to get married. Now, I don't think it's a coincidence that they're suffering the same loneliness crisis that we're starting to see in America and also seeing the same sense of financial nihilism that is becoming pervasive among young people such that they are levering up on these names and praying and hoping that it'll take them into a state of financial security and success. I think the two are definitely linked and I think South Korea is ground zero for the problems that we're about to see in America.
Scott Galloway 29:18 ↗
I think that's really insightful and I hadn't connected those dots and it seems pretty obvious the way you lay it out that that's got something to do with it because 3% of Americans, I don't know what it is in South Korea, but 3% of Americans have a gambling problem. It's 10% of young men. And one of the most beneficial things for a young man, if not the most beneficial thing, is a relationship. And one of the most beneficial things for a young man in a relationship is quite frankly guardrails. And that is what the 'what the fuck are you doing? I thought we were saving for a house,' right? Or no, you know, don't take these kinds of risks with our money. And sometimes it's the opposite, right? Not as often, but people check each other when they're in groups. There's not only a wisdom of groups, there's a wisdom of relationships where you check each other. And the fact that fewer and fewer young people are connecting, and it sounds like the trends are also, if you're expecting a child, your risk profile goes down. You think, well, maybe I shouldn't be in this 5 to 1 levered fund because I've got to, you know, I've got to rent a place with a second bedroom. So there's definitely something. Also, relationships are hard, but they give you a lot of dopamine. They give you a lot of upside. They keep you busy. And when you're lonely and looking for a dopamine hit, I mean, and I'm addicted to this when I used to buy options or sell calls, it's fun. And you know, the more time you have, or the less time you're spending on kids or just focusing on work. And so what do you have? Fewer guardrails, a greater risk profile, fewer people to keep you in check, and quite frankly, you're probably just bored and looking for some entertainment value. But I think that's a really insightful comment. I hadn't connected those dots.
Ed Elson 31:10 ↗
Yeah. And hoping that this is the way that you're going to get rich and then maybe if you get rich, then that will mean you get a relationship. I mean, if we just look at the relationship inequality in South Korea specifically, only 8% of the men in the bottom decile of earners in South Korea are in a relationship currently and in the top decile it's around four times higher. So there is clearly a connection in South Korea and probably just in the world between financial success and romantic success. And I think that a lot of young people in South Korea, similar to what we're seeing in America, they think, 'I'm not going to be able to afford a home. I'm not going to be able to afford a life. I can't get to where I want to be by just continuing to work the current job I'm in and continuing to do the wage treadmill.' And so, I need to figure out a way to get 2,000, 3,000, 4,000% returns. And this is my ticket to doing it. And for maybe like a handful of people it works. And then for the rest of them, we're seeing this in the statistics, for the majority of the people who take that risk, it ends up being literally ruinous. And I think nothing tells that story more than the funeral wreaths that we're seeing outside the National Assembly building in Seoul. Just one final point. This is rising in America. You look at US leveraged ETFs. They've jumped from $120 billion in AUM in April to more than $200 billion today. It's up nearly 70% in just a few months. The number of US leveraged ETFs has more than doubled since 2025. And more than half of them are single stock ETFs. This is the exact same thing that got South Korea into trouble. So it'll be really interesting to see how this plays out in the US. I think the same trend is happening, but it's almost like we're maybe a couple of months behind South Korea, or at least we're less concentrated than South Korea is because of how dependent their stock market is on those two names in particular, but the same trends are beginning to happen. And I think it can only end badly.
Scott Galloway 33:21 ↗
Leverage is risk. It's not a strategy. And I agree with you that, I mean, what you basically said, the crossway connecting the dots around KOSPI is a lot of young men think that leverage is going to get them laid, and that is a story as old as time. Only 40% of men throughout history have reproduced, 80% of women. And men don't have the right to reproduce and women aren't obligated to service men, but the reality is a minority of men have had the opportunity to find a mate and to reproduce. The greatest innovation in history, which is not GPS or AI, but the American middle class, gave a lot more men agency to build a home and quite frankly attract mates. That is a uniquely Western post-World War II phenomenon. 75% of men in the West have had the opportunity to reproduce. And when men feel as if they don't have the... and unfortunately because our society has become so much about the idolatry of money and we've created a system with weaker social safety nets, you're kind of unviable in the eyes of a potential mate. I mean, essentially relationships have become a luxury item and we're regressing to the law of the jungle where the world is basically polygamy where a small number of men through luck or hard work or inheritance get all of the mating opportunities. And from '45 to present in the West we gave a lot more people the opportunity to have mating opportunities by reinvesting in the middle class. And when we have this sort of income inequality and the general public decides we'd rather have a super class of billionaires and giving more people an opportunity to be millionaires, you end up returning to the way the world has been through the majority of history, and that is a small number of men have all of the mating opportunities. But the problem is those types of societies collapse on themselves because those men get very angry and upset and a strong man takes advantage of that anger and invents wars or starts blaming people or saying the enemy is within. So this is, I like this framing, but this is a story as old as time. And again, I don't think we fully appreciate that the middle class is this incredible innovation that requires investment. And it's not a self-healing organism that's a natural part of history. A middle class and the majority of people having the opportunity to find someone to love and have children with, that's the anomaly. That's the exception to history. And by the way, it's fucking wonderful and a huge achievement on our society and it's worth investing in.
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APA

Galloway, S. (2026, August 3). How Leverage Turned An AI Boom Into A Crash [Interview transcript]. Prof G Markets. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003174/

MLA

Scott Galloway. "How Leverage Turned An AI Boom Into A Crash." Prof G Markets, 3 Aug. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003174/.

BibTeX
@misc{galloway2026_3003174,
  author       = {Scott Galloway},
  title        = {How Leverage Turned An AI Boom Into A Crash},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, Prof G Markets. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {aug},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3003174/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}