E91: SoftBank's $21B+ Vision Fund loss, signals of a bubble, macro picture, Trump raided by FBI

So look, I think we're in a shallow technical recession right now. I bet that we probably bounce out of it in Q3 or Q4, but I think there's a significant risk that we're back in it next year. Just my guess.

They are basically going to send Trump to the big house or the White House. I mean, because now the Republicans have rallied around Trump, I think he's going to be very, very hard to beat as the nominee in 2024, unless the FBI comes up with ironclad evidence to show that he did something significantly wrong.

SoftBank has found a way to sell down 25% of Alibaba, which is no trivial feat for half a trillion dollar company. This guy gets to keep swinging and if he hits it one more time, he'll end up with half a trillion.

we could be sitting here next year. Alibaba could double in value. A couple of their other positions could recover 50%.

And fundamentally, you know, VC is not that scalable. There was an attempt to make it scalable. There's an attempt to push more money into VC.

It is scalable. It's just that if you try to scale it, your returns will go to zero.

And I've mentioned this multiple times now that it's the thing I would watch most closely. While there are core elements of the current economy that look strong, there are real concerns around whether consumers can keep up with their debt payments in the months and quarters ahead.

I mean, I just think that there is, like, Friedberg has his pet issue, I have my pet issue, Sacks has his pet issue. You ask 100 economists, they'll have their own pet issue, housing affordability, whatever it is. The point is, we have 100 whack-a-mole problems.

And the problem in that model is that by giving you so much money, capital becomes your primary asset as a business. And capital needs to be the fuel that enables your assets as a business to accelerate. But as soon as capital itself becomes your primary asset, the business is doomed to fail.

So, inflation is still high, the jobs picture is good. We're technically in a recession.

and things are going to go down inevitably, but I don't think that this should be deemed that there's something fundamentally negative about the US economy.

And quite honestly, you know, in the process in November, when I started selling, I would have sold even more violently than I sold. And all I can say is I saved my ass in November of last year, looking at what's happened in the last six, eight months.

The quality of the diligence by necessity has to go to zero.

Tiger had huge funds. They were deploying very quickly, but there was a lot of so-called tourist money, basically money from crossover funds. Investors who are not primarily VCs came into the ecosystem over the last few years, and a lot of that was driven by sovereigns and by liquidity. So, you know, you can't forget that we had $10 trillion of liquidity pumped into the system over the last couple of years, and many billions of that found its way into the tech ecosystem.

But again, we're in the summer where we don't have the pressure on energy that we're going to have in October, November this year.

Because these public valuations are the exit comps for the private markets. And those valuations do eventually trickle down. And so if there is a bubble in the public markets, it will trickle down to the private markets.

which is, hey, if we have increased participation, that's great. Increases monetary velocity, increases participation in the economy. That's a possible path out.

Even in secular decline on that trend for 25 years. So maybe on the margins, a few folks run out of stimulus and decide to go and get a job. But I don't think, again, it's kind of like, you know, when you're at the blackjack table in Vegas and somebody's clapping. I feel like all the, like what we're talking about right now is clapping as a strategy.