Lou Whiteman

I hate to say it, it would probably work, right?

Absolutely, it would work.

I'd go.

I don't think that's what's going on here.

But look, at the end of the day, I love activists.

I've worked with activists my whole career.

A lot of it is, activists is just a PR campaign at heart.

You can have correct ideas about a company.

But if you can't get those ideas out into the world, to the shareholders, you're still going to lose, even if you're right.

So there is always an element of trying to attract attention to yourself.

A lot of times it's with really over-the-top language.

It's about accusations.

There's a lot of ways to do it.

But look, Jana has used celebrities before.

They used Dwyane Wade of the NBA and pitcher CeCe Sabathia when they went after Fresh Pet.

Famously, Starboard Value, another firm, they used Shaquille O'Neal to go after Papa John's.

But it all works.

This is just a way of going at it.

If you look at Six Flags, very, very ripe for an activist here.

It's been a disaster.

The stock's down 50% year-to-date.

No one is going to these parks in the volumes that we're supposed to.

They did a merger with Cedar Fair that was supposed to solve this.

It didn't.

So, you know, Jana, I don't know if... Jana wants to say, you need to improve marketing.

You need to improve your customer experience.

In a way, Six Flags already tried that.

We're going to, you know, have fewer people coming through, but we are going to treat them better, and they're going to spend more.

So, I don't know if this will actually work, but I do think that this is just... This is the classic activist campaign with just a little twist from...

the Swifty world.

Somewhere in the middle.

Activists like short sellers, I think, play an important role.

I think it's case by case.

Again, just like short sellers.

In this case, like I say, I do think that the target makes sense.

Whether or not the solution makes sense or how the solution evolves, that's something that an individual investor has to look at.

I'm a little

I want to hear more from Jana here, because like I say, Salim Basul was in here before the Cedar Fair merger, and he was trying to do a lot of, what he was doing sounds a lot like what they're talking about, and it didn't really work then.

So I'm not convinced, I'm not ready to put my money into chasing this, but generally speaking, activists have done a lot of good work cleaning up companies that were in desperate need of it, and this does look like a good target.

So I'm curious to follow it and see how it develops.

But Travis is welcome to come along, right?

It's a shame they couldn't come out with this, I don't know, six months ago, a year ago, when there was, like, all-around OpenAI glittered, right?

And maybe you would have gotten more then, but I think that shine is off of it.

This is a move, and look, I feel like a broken record here with OpenAI, and I don't mean to pick on them, but

all of their moves from their funding moves to what their products, their announcement, the kind of some of the pivots they may be doing in terms of what business they're chasing, which, you know, fine.

But these are moves of desperation, not of strength.

They're all understandable.

And I do think like introducing a browser, it does make sense, but they are in a position of weakness because they don't have the customer right now.

They are the ones trying to get the customer.

Google had all things ready to go, and they're just layering this in.

Microsoft has its giant office suite that they can just layer these in.

Quite annoyingly, I might say.

I'm not enjoying having an OpenAI prompt every time I go into Excel, but it's there.

Yes.

OpenAI has customers, but they started from zero.

Google started from billions.

They need to backfill so much just to get to the starting line.

They're trying things.

But to your point, look, Firefox is sitting on my machine.

Bing is sitting on my machine.

I still kind of just go to Chrome because I go to Chrome.

It is going to take something that just, wow, this is a ton better.

Not just it is the same to get me to switch.

From your reports, I'm quite happy.

This is another thing that little old me as an Android Windows users have to miss out on.

That's fine with me.

But yeah, I don't blame them for trying all this.

I also don't think it's going to be very successful.

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I would love to.

If I could get Sam Altman, moment of truth, was a browser really a priority a year ago, or was this something?

We all know that there was talk that Chrome would have to be split off as part of Alphabet's antitrust settlement.

Oh, interesting.

This feels like, and I've been in so many boardrooms where this has happened, where you start talking about an idea,

And that idea sort of made sense, because Chrome had its ready-made audience, right?

You would have gotten all those customers with that.

But you spend so much time on that, and that didn't happen.

And then suddenly, that is the shiny object you're chasing now.

So, it's like, okay, we need to build our own browser then.

I wonder, absent all of that talk, if browser would have really been like the North Star they were guiding towards.

We'll never know.

But I'm just kind of curious how much of it is after the fact with those discussions, them kind of talking themselves into how great it would be if they had a browser.

The news is that definitely all the rumors are true, that Paramount did approach Warner Brothers and they were rejected.

I think it's worth looking at both of these companies separately, because there's two separate dynamics going on.

I don't know which one is investable right now, but they're both interesting.

Warner Brothers' discovery is a mess, and Paramount is really being aggressive.

Which knife do you want to catch here, Travis?

For Paramount,

They realize that for all the billions they have and all the billions they've spent so far, they are still second tier.

Their solution, and I think it's the correct one, they're not going to invest in so much content that they get the next Stranger Things, they get the next Knives Out.

They are going to just try to consolidate the second tier.

They have the cash to do it.

This is just them saying, money's not going to stop us from

Larry and his son, yes.

Until I see otherwise, I think that this project will be funded.

For Warner Brothers Discovery, it feels like a question of just what price can you get.

This hasn't worked.

It didn't work pre-merger.

Even now, we're joking about this, they're trying streaming.

They launched CNN All Access.

But ironically, All Access CNN does not include access to CNN if you're not a cable customer.

They're just a mess.

I feel like there will be a deal here.

Whether it's Paramount Skydance, Netflix says they're not interested.

I think Comcast Peacock might be in a similar boat to Paramount, so maybe they get involved.

Not investment advice, because they have to do it right, but I actually do think that there is a successful play here from consolidating all of this second-tier or also-ran.

Paramount is not a standalone service, but I subscribe.

They do have assets that are of interest to people.

If you can collect all of those, I do think that that is a viable path to joining Netflix and joining Disney in this top tier.

The issue is execution.

M&A is really tough and it's really expensive.

I'm not interested in investing myself right now at this early age, but I do think that there is a path to success there for them.

I don't know what the path to success is for Warner Brothers Discovery.

It's harder to do.

It looks a lot better on paper than it does in reality.

I don't think it's a new business model.

I think it's a new application, but I think you're right.

The first thing is that meme stocks is a terrible identifier because it doesn't really tell you much.

There are some really crummy companies that have been memed, and there have been some really good companies.

And yeah, the good ones will take advantage of it.

As far as, you know, Dan mentioned that problem, if you get all your gains in three months, may we all have such problems, right?

But again, at that point, I think that's when kind of the

The question is, in one sense, it could be a great company getting a real benefit and a real cash infusion, or it could be just, all right, time to sell, I can't believe it worked.

I got to say, I have a soft spot in my heart.

for the whole meme crowd.

I'm constantly looking to buy stocks where I think the market is wrong, and I'm right, and that I see something that they don't.

That's value investing.

At the end of the day, that's what kicked all this off, that everybody's short this, they don't see what I see, and it can go up.

Look, I'm not going to try and predict the next one.

I'm not going to join the crowd, but I like this crowd.

I believe in this.

So I think, yeah, like you said, it depends on the company.

You mentioned Joby, and that's one I have too.

And I will say that Joby is not worth what the market values it at today, period.

But if all goes well, I think it could be.

So at worst, I'm going to take some off the table.

I haven't personally done that with Joby.

I've done that with a few others that have just kind of gone crazy in my head.

But look, I think you have to, I'm going in with a five to 10 year mindset and you have to keep that mindset.

And, you know, if you still see that potential, that should outweigh any kind of greed for today, I think.

The blueprint for me right now for this is Rocket Lab.

I don't know if Rocket Lab counts as meme stock, but it is up, what, 400% or 500%?

We'll put it in that category, sure.

Peter Beck, I think to his credit, the CEO who is an engineer at heart, almost seems to not see the stock price.

He's on his pace to build a company.

It's overvalued today.

It's valued based on the future.

He's not adjusting.

He's not saying, oh, no, I need to get there faster because of today's valuation.

But they have also raised equity at a share price that's 10X what it was this time last year.

Exactly to Dan's point, you don't ignore it, you don't mock it, but you also don't let that change your decision-making in terms of how you build a business.

Again, we'll see how Rocket Lab turns out, but that's what I want to see.

That's the template right now for me on how companies should deal with this.

I'm not sure about that.

Let's get to that in a second.

Maybe.

But look, I think at TSMC, we should have seen them react more to the AI boom than ASML.

ASML is a great company.

I own both of these companies.

But ASML makes the big machines that makes the chips.

These take years to build.

They're half a billion dollars.

You're not going to see quarter-by-quarter, blow-by-blow demand surge.

So, I'm not surprised.

Boring, slow, and steady is their game.

TSMC is going to directly see, like, if there's more demand for chips, they are going to see that quarter-to-quarter.

I'll say, here's my problem with the picks and shovels play in general.

None of it's cheap.

None of these companies are cheap.

There aren't a lot of values.

Right, Travis, but I don't have a time machine.

So I'm looking at it now, whether it's these, HVAC, energy, it all makes sense.

But so many of these things, there's only so much capacity to deploy.

And if you believe that it is temporary, even if it's an extended time temporary, you don't have the incentive to massively add capacity because these things cost money.

So I'm kind of intrigued still by cabling.

There's some companies there, Semtech, Astralabs.

They're still not cheap, but I do think that that is sort of, if there is an underappreciated aspect.

But for the most part, it feels like that this dance has been danced.

Back in the old days, when I used to look at banks for a living, we used to talk about cockroaches.

I thought it was funny that Jamie Dimon actually brought up cockroaches.

The old expression is, there's never just one.

If you see one, there's 30 behind the wall.

That's how you tend to look at bad loans.

If something comes out, the question is, how many more are there?

This week alone,

Earnings were strong, but JP Morgan was hit by Tricolor, which is a subprime auto lender that went bankrupt.

First Brands has been in the news with a whole bunch of banks attached to that bankruptcy.

The big blow midweek was Zions and Western Alliance both announced issues with the same unnamed customer.

uh the reaction we saw it wasn't about any one of these individual loans it's the question this cockroach question what else is out there to me to be honest i mean i think we know what's going on i think it's probably a lot of tariff strain and individual i don't think it's ready to say i'm ready to say the sky is falling to me the reaction

is the story.

We've known about debt buildups all summer.

We've been talking about it for a while.

Wall Street didn't care.

Suddenly, Wall Street seems to care.

All these stories, they don't matter until they do.

I think it does speak to perhaps a change in mindset, maybe a little bit a hint of risk off.

But yeah, to me, the reaction is more interesting than any one of these loans.

The banks are still pretty healthy, at least.

The question for me is, why?

Why do you do this?

Meta today just announced a $30 billion financing package for its Louisiana data center.

They're using a special-purpose vehicle.

Meta, I've joked, has all the cash in the world, thanks to their advertising business.

This is a reminder that that is a joke.

The simple answer, and they may push back on this, but the simple answer of why you do this is because you have to.

The market says, we don't want this on your balance sheet, you have to find a different way.

That's fine.

Like Dan says, they're disclosing it.

There's nothing scandalous here.

The upside is it will greatly expand your borrowing capacity.

It allows you to do more than you could do on your balance sheet.

The downside is that everybody is getting a piece of this exposure.

It creeps through and it becomes more of a systemic risk.

if any of these projects or if AI in general isn't what we hope it is.

You are broadening your risk, which is a good thing for Meta, and arguably, it's a less good thing for the entire economy if things don't go well.

Might not get surprised.

We could still get stung.

I'll take Bitcoin here, just on the optionality.

I don't know if I really, really feel a need to flight the safety into either of them.

But look, I mean, both of them are up crazy.

I think Bitcoin's up 800% over the last five years.

Gold is only a double plus in five years.

Gold's having a better year this year.

End of the day, gold, I know what I get.

And I think I mean that as a compliment, but I'll mean it as an insult and say with Bitcoin, I at least have optionality on something.

I love that you said that because when we were talking memes, I almost said that meme is just a new way to say conventional wisdom.

I think there's something to that, yes.

I got to take Google here.

I'm going to use the same word, optionality, just with Alphabet.

You get so much more than just this AI thing that I'm honestly worried the core AI business is going to get commoditized.

The other side of it is that I don't know what I think of Sam Altman.

I'm Alphabet in a big way here.

I can't believe you're talking me into buying Palantir.

The answer for me is neither.

Palantir, I love the business.

I just think it's overpriced.

124 times sales.

But here's my Coinbase paradox.

A lot has to happen with

the adoption of crypto for Coinbase to really, really pay off.

But if all of that happens, it has to be in a world where Coinbase still has this first mover advantage or just dominates the ecosystem.

I find it hard to believe that crypto matures in a way that really benefits Coinbase and everybody and their brother doesn't get involved to bring down the profitability for Coinbase.

Yeah.

I just think that's a very fine line.

for that to work out.

Palantir looks overvalued to me, but they've got incredible software and they've got big dreams.

To me, there's a better chance of that paying off than Coinbase, but I don't own either and that's intentional.

Dan?

I'm going to take Nvidia too, just because, A, they have experience before where

like they rode a wave and then found something else.

So I think there's more staying power there.

I mean, I remember when they were just a gaming company.

Also, on a valuation level, it really doesn't look that bad, even if we plateau from here for a while.

I mean, I don't think we can keep going up forever, but I do think there's a world with AI.

I think they can hold on to enough of it that, you know, AMD is more, I think, of a cycle play.

And NVIDIA, I think, has more staying power.

I think Delta, along with United, are the only two airline stocks worth considering.

I do think the world of Delta, but this is just a terrible cyclical industry.

Joby today is overvalued, as far as you're buying in for today.

But Joby is the one of these two that I do own, and it's the one I want to own.

I do think that when they actually start making machines, that we're going to have some margin shock and maybe a valuation adjustment.

But I do think there's a better long-term growth story there.

than there is just a cyclical airline play.

Dan?

I don't know if it's a big deal yet.

I don't think any of us do.

But look, healthcare drug discovery is really hard.

90% of drug candidates fail.

I would expect that, at least initially, Google's success rate will be similar.

But importantly, it could be a lot less costly than doing a lot of experimentation, a lot of trials.

Best case might be that what this does is use these models to improve the real-world success rates for those trials, to get that 90%

candidates fail down to, say, 50, which would be a big deal.

It's going to take a lot of time.

I don't think it's investable.

I think it has a better chance inside Alphabet than it does.

If a startup came to me and said, we're doing this, do you want to invest in me?

Again, maybe in 10 years.

Yeah, no, no, it's a great idea.

We all hope they succeed, but the hype is going to overwhelm the actual usage for a long time here if history is a guide.

So, real quick, the fun thing to me about this is, you know, we talk about intelligence, AI, we talk about almost a superhuman being.

It feels like that the use case here, and a great use case, is almost the same use case that all industrial innovation has been back to the Industrial Revolution, just the power of repetition, the power to just do things faster, quicker, over and over again, more so than the human being can alone.

That was the story of the cotton mill of the entire industrial revolution.

That's sort of the application here, too.

All right, Dan.

I'm looking at Booz Allen Hamilton, ticker BAH, one of these so-called Beltway bandits that provide IT and other services for the government.

Dan, it's been a tough year for these guys.

We have inflation, we have Doge, and now we have a government shutdown.

And I don't think it's going to get better quickly.

People I've spoken with say, the usual government end of fiscal year spending spree, that didn't happen in September.

Normally, these guys get flush with cash into September quarter.

If it didn't happen, that means bookings, free cash flow is going to be down when they report in a couple of weeks.

Here's the thing, long-term story is still compelling.

I think the headwinds will last a few quarters.

This is a stock down 25% year-to-date.

Booz Allen is starting to look interesting for long-term focused investors, so it's on my radar.

How do you say no to booze?