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Treasure warns 14,000 customers after fulfillment partner suffers data breach. The incident marks the first time Treasure customers shipping addresses were exposed. This is a breach at Treasure shipping partner Shipmunk exposed information belonging to approximately 13,689 customers. For 11,742 of them, the compromised information included names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails. Criminals now potentially have a hit list of people who have bought hardware wallets and know where they live. So the first risk obviously immediately is fishing. The bigger problem right now is wrench attacks, which means physical attacks to try to steal people's Bitcoin and crypto. If you think I'm being hyperbolic, you should take a look at what's been happening in France over the past couple years.
Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy is opening a series of small and medium format stores this summer, starting with [music] two this week. One in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and the other in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The company is reevaluating its store presence [music] after years of slumping sales and declining stock performance post-COVID. The company's first fiscal 2027 quarter outperformed Wall Street expectations, but it followed years of declines. Like in its fiscal 2026 third quarter, when net income dropped more than a hundred thirty million dollars, for example. The retailer has also been impacted by tariffs and the soaring price of memory chips, which is raising costs for some electronics. This new chapter will be one of the first tests for incoming CEO Jason Bonfig. He's been with the company for nearly three decades and will replace current leader Corie Barry in October. Barry took the helm in 2019 and she led the retailer through the pandemic, >> [music] >> high inflation, and the onslaught of President Trump's high global tariffs in his first and second terms. But now, the company wants to get back to meaningful sales growth and capitalize on the AI boom. New leadership is part of that. In an exclusive [music] interview, I spoke with Bonfig earlier this week about his plans for the company's growth. >> Corie and I are partnering in using this transition as an opportunity to accelerate even faster and drive the strategy that's built on top of the strategy that we've had for the last number of years.
Some of the platforms now are trying to be a bit more transparent. Deezer has really been on top of this. They're a French streaming platform. They label AI-generated songs. Spotify recently is taking a different tack where instead of outright labeling AI songs, they want to label AI personas. So the idea is if you have like an AI band. Exactly. So the idea is like, maybe you hear a song and you're like, I really like this. Like, who's this by? You go into their artist profile and you will see, oh, it's an AI persona, and you could feel whichever way you want about that. Maybe you do want to keep going deeper or you're like, oh, this is an AI song. I did like it, but now I know it's created by an AI persona. I was like looking around for some data on like how big this has gotten. There's a site called Slop Tracker, but there's one called Breaking Rust. This is an AI band. Apparently they're making like they've made about $300,000. Their monthly income is about 8,000. So it's not like as much as a real artist would make. But now that's pretty good though. Or there's Cain Walker who's made like 77,000. So it does seem like the numbers are they're substantial. It's more than most wannabe musicians would make. But it's not like Katy Perry money. No, it's not super star money at this point. But I think part of where gasoline can be poured on the fire is with the algorithms. And promoting these songs like Breaking Rust was a story for a little while, because I believe they were promoted in a playlist, which is how a lot of people just well and and then once it became people, I've heard that name because I know it's AI generated. Once that becomes a thing, people are like, hey, I gotta hear that. I read song and like all of a sudden like that can create its own momentum. On Borrowed Time, their number one hit has been played 23 million times. There you go. Yeah. So this became kind of a story with Breaking Rust specifically. But now again, this kind of speaks to that tension where a lot of people got very upset. They were like, why is Spotify promoting an AI generated artist and song to me, I'm here to, I guess, enjoy. There are a lot of people who would love to have their song played 23 million times, who have been toiling away for years, right? Like, you have the listeners who are upset. Yeah. And the artists. Yeah. So with this new AI persona thing, they say they're no longer going to promote songs that are created by in playlist by AI personas.
Welcome back everyone. We just had
breaking news that Bill Ackman is once
again a Netflix shareholder. That's
right. After his brief stint of owning
it for about 3 months in 2022, he
finally decided to buy back in. So what
changed? Why is Bill Ackman now buying
Netflix when he used to own the company
and he at one point called it too
unpredictable? It seems like he's
changed his mind on Netflix as well as a
number of other companies. In fact, he
didn't just buy Netflix as a new
position, he bought six new holdings.
That's a lot of buying. Bill Ackman has
been on a buying spree. But the
interesting part about this is I already
own three of these six new companies.
Three of them were Netflix, MasterCard,
and S&P Global. These are all big
positions in my portfolio. So obviously
I have a lot of thoughts about his
analysis on these companies. And with
his analysis on them, he released an
entire in-depth update. This is the
Pershing Square Q2 report. It's very
in-depth. He goes through his entire
strategy, what he's trying to
accomplish. He goes through every
holding and the performance of it. He
also goes through the valuation and the
implied growth rates, how much he thinks
all of these companies will grow in
their earnings per share over the next 5
years. So I compared all of his
estimates against the market consensus
to see which companies he believes will
grow the most today compared to what
investors think. So this is going to be
a very full episode. We have a lot to
get into. Let's go ahead and get
started. Now the first thing I want to
address is many of the holdings that I
have now are in overlap with Bill
Ackman's portfolio. But I just want to
point out that in my defense, the
majority of them I have bought before
Bill Ackman. I've already been in a lot
of these companies. I bought Meta before
it was revealed that Bill Ackman bought
Meta. I had Google before he bought
Google. I had Microsoft before he had
Microsoft in his portfolio. I had Amazon
before he bought Amazon. I had Netflix
twice before he bought Netflix. And the
same goes for now MasterCard and S&P
Global. Now there are some companies
that I followed Bill Ackman into. One of
them was Chipotle, which was a
successful investment. And the other one
is Uber, which is a new position that I
really like. But the reason I point this
out is because between the two of us
there is a big overlap in holdings, but
I'm not just copying his trades. The
majority of these companies I've
actually owned prior to Bill Ackman
buying into them. Now, out of the new
companies that he just bought, the one
that I first want to outline is Netflix.
I find this particularly interesting
because
Bill Ackman had previously owned
Netflix, and I've owned the company long
ago. I owned it before Bill Ackman both
times. So, he's owned it twice now. This
is his second time. I've owned it just
once the entire time through. My
position is a $102,000 position, $30,000
in the green. If we look through
Netflix's stock price history, I'll give
a short outline of Bill Ackman's
dealings with this company a couple
years ago. In early 2022 or late 2021,
he bought the company after it suffered
a major fall. So, right there, Netflix
dropped like 25% in a single day because
things were slowing down. We had a major
slowdown in subscribers, and management
would they warned about it. They said
it's a problem. We have a slowdown in
subscribers. With Bill Ackman having
looked at the company and studied it, he
thought that this might be just a minor
dip, and he can buy the company today,
and it will sail back up in the future.
Well, what he didn't know is that is
that Netflix would stay flat for the
next 3 months, and then things would get
much, much worse. Netflix management
said that not only are they not going to
grow subscribers, but they're going to
lose 2 million subscribers.
So, millions of customers being lost.
Their churn has picked up. They're no
longer a growth company, and literally
everything flipped on top of its head.
Netflix now was being viewed by Wall
Street as a has-been, a company that was
totally saturated. It couldn't grow at
all. It had no pricing power, and it had
competitors crowding it out. The news
was so insanely bad. I've never seen
anything like it. YouTubers were making
videos of of rise and fall of Netflix
with big arrows and explosions showing
it just crumbling. People are almost
rejoicing in the fact that this big
company came tumbling down. From the
peak to the bottom, Netflix dropped by
about 75% and again sentiment could have
not been worse. Everybody was mocking
anybody that owned the company.
It was a terrible time to be a Netflix
shareholder. And Bill Ackman, after two
days after that report and the stock
dropping, he decided to move on. He
called CNBC and he said that the stock
has become too unpredictable and he
wanted to move to a more predictable
company.
>> As he told me,
the reason why he exited his position
after only 3 months at a $400 million
loss was, quote, "I'm 100% ready to
admit when I'm wrong and 100% ready to
admit when I'm wrong quickly."
So, that sort of gives you an idea of
where his thinking was.
>> So, he sold out of Netflix roughly at
the bottom. Now, this isn't to criticize
Bill Ackman. We all have to make
judgment calls. He had a different
analysis on this company than I did at
the time. And I would say that my
analysis of Netflix at the time was
uniquely bullish on the company. I I
realize it was a bit of an outlier at
the time. I had studied Netflix so much.
I felt so confident in it. Maybe to some
naivety. Maybe I was being
overconfident, but I just I could not
fathom that Netflix was done growing. It
was just such a global company. They had
so much content. They They, in my
opinion, they owned the world and I
thought that the market got it wrong.
So, while this is going on, I continued
to add to my stake in Netflix. I bought
more and more of the company. I
continued to buy it and I talked about
it incessantly. In fact, I even
published and I I wrote things in-depth
about Netflix. This was December 1st,
2022. The stock price at the time of
writing that was $30. So, I wrote this
December 1st, 2022, Netflix is trading
at a price-adjusted $30 per share.
And I go through and I highlight a lot
of different things that are going on
with Netflix at the time.
Netflix reported subscriber losses for
two consecutive quarters. Netflix
subscriber loss resulted in destroying
investors confidence causing the stock
to drop by over 70%. Netflix had changed
their mind on having no ads and has
introduced a new $7 month ad tier.
Netflix has decided to monetize password
sharing accounts. Netflix admitted they
faced real competition in streaming.
Netflix made a pivot into gaming.
Netflix has done layoffs and budget
cuts. So when you're looking at the
situation here, this is illustrative of
what goes on during a time period where
a stock is in crisis, where it's just
dropped 75%.
Everything is interpreted negatively.
All of these actions that Netflix took
looked desperate on the surface. Oh,
they changed their mind and they're
adding ads. They're going into video
games. They're they're monetizing
password crackdowns. All of these looked
like desperation when in reality they
were well-calculated moves by
management. I continued on saying the
damage to Netflix's story over the past
year is real. Investors confidence has
been shaken. Even Bill Ackman purchased
into Netflix to buy the dip and quickly
sold out 3 months later when Netflix had
another disappointing quarter. He's now
stated that the stock is {quote} too
unpredictable for his concentrated
portfolio. This is where I continue to
strongly disagree with the market and
with Bill Ackman. I don't think things
are so bad for Netflix. I don't think
the company is unpredictable. In fact, I
think Netflix is one of the most
predictable companies in the market. I
go on talking about how Netflix is
making breakout shows. You had the Glass
Onion. You had
...[Transcript truncated for size]...
Are you a young investor? Should you take more risk? Something that I see very often in comments is that someone in their 20s can generally afford to take more risk than someone in their 50s because they have more time to recover from mistakes. Well, my take is that if you take risks, sooner or later, those risks will materialize and that is where you get screwed. Just take the Nasdaq from 2000 to 2002, 72% down. Take the Nasdaq from 2000 to 2009. Those who took those internet stocks risks, down 72%. So, when the risk materializes, you can be down 75% after 9 years. Very few recover from such destruction. So, it is up to you to decide, especially if you are young, am I going to compound patiently boring value investing, owner's earnings, dividend by dividend, step by step, minimizing risk, or am going to take risk? I have started investing when I was 19 and I always followed the following principle from some old guy called Warren Buffett. Now, if you are a risk-taker, that's it. If you're a value investor, then this video is for you so you don't have to listen to those risk-takers. Check my investing channel, free value investing course, a book is coming out. We discuss a lot of things focused on risk so that you can compound for the next decades in more peace.
In today's video, I want to go over the CPI inflation report with you. And I just want to say that Okay, if I if I look agitated making these videos about government reports, it's because like how do you expect me to feel? Because my opinion is that these government reports, they're just gobbledygook. It's just sheer nonsense. Like I don't know how you feel, but that's my opinion. Okay, but if I say that, then why am I even covering these reports? It's because well, my opinion is that it's still very important to know the government's narrative and how to try and trick the American people. And basically well, using that, how can we make money off this? So, because what's the government trying to do? They're trying to suppress us financially. So, I'm not I'm not down with that. Okay, with that being said, me just speaking sincerely, here we go. The government is now reporting to the American people that the rate of inflation has fallen to 3.4%. So, that's great news, right? Just awesome. Like you should be thrilled just like me. So, here's a historical chart of the rate of inflation. It was at 3.5% in June. In July, it's fallen to 3.4%. All right, now here's the bad news and I hope you're ready because I have more than one. So, first the government's saying that the rate of inflation is now fallen to 3.4% for July, right? But, if you remember my video for Monday, which I talked about the jobs reports, the government said that wages are growing at a rate of 3.2%. So, that means the government is saying that prices or the cost of living is going up faster than wages because you have 3.4% inflation and 3.2% wage growth. So, this means that the average American is seeing a pay cut in terms of real purchasing power, which means of course, a lower standard of living. And do you see the trend? I mean, look at the chart. Do you see the trends with wage growth? Like it doesn't look good to me. Okay, now let me share some more bad news with you. The government's CPI inflation report says that inflation is occurring at a rate of 3.4% right? However, when we take a look at the Federal Reserve's numbers, it tells a different story. According to the M2 money supply, which is basically how much money is out there. It's expanding at a rate of 7.2% in 2026. So, I'd say that that is much closer to the true rate of inflation right now, around 7.2% based on the Federal Reserve's stats. But, the government is saying 3.4%. So, if wages are growing at a rate of 3.2% and inflation is really around 7.2% since I mean, the average American household is taking a financial beating. And I'm not done yet. More bad news. Did you know that for Social Security recipients, they calculate the cost of living adjustment for next year? So, we're talking about how much additional money Social Security recipients are going to get for 2027 by using the inflation rates from the third quarter. Just the third quarter. So, we're talking about July, August, and September. July came in lower at 3.4% like oh, how convenient. If the government used the April and May figures like inflation rates for those months, then the cost of living adjustment would have been higher for next year. But, nope, like those months, they completely don't count. And the way things are going, the cola adjustment for next year, in my opinion, it's going to be around 3% while the true rate of inflation is going to be around 7 to 8% in my opinion. So, Social Security recipients, like I'm telling you, they should be prepared for a more difficult year next year in 2027. And just so you know, 75 million Americans receive Social Security benefits. So, I'm just going to say this, if the governments used the true rate of inflation, then they had to pay more money to 75 million Americans, then that That be quite expensive for the governments. And of course the government's broke. The government is in debt $39.9 trillion. So listen, I understand that most people that are watching this video, they understand the situation and what the government's doing. But in reality, like you know this, most Americans are clueless. Like they don't understand that the government doesn't show their work on how they came up with inflationary rates of 3.4%. Sure, they can show the formula, but they don't show the source data. And of course if you talk to an average American, they they have no idea what the money supply is. They don't understand the government's fiscal problems. They don't understand that the Federal Reserve is not even a part of the US government. The Federal Reserve is not federal. The Federal Reserve have they have no reserves. Like it's a misnomer. So listen, that's the bad news and yeah, I mean it was it was pretty bad news. But the thing is that there's good news too and I want to share that with you. So the good news is that the wager that I made that the Federal Reserve won't raise interest rates in September, like that wager is now up 50%. Like I'm at a 50% profit. So definitely a silver lining there, you know, at least for me. So now I want to tell you what's going on with the Federal Reserve and interest rates. The next Federal Reserve meeting's going to be on September 16th. A month ago, there was a 69% chance that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates at that September meeting. And then the jobs report came in bad. The labor market lost jobs. So there's now less incentive for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates because they don't want to raise interest rates and further damage the labor markets. So after the bad jobs reports, the odds of an interest rate increase fell from 69% to 48%. And now because the CPI inflation report came in decent at 3.4% per the government, there's less urgency for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to fight inflation. So now the odds of an interest rate increase in September have fallen from 69% to 48% to now 40.1%. So, if inflation came in blazing hot in the reports, then the Federal Reserve would be more inclined to raise interest rates to fight inflation, but that didn't happen. Okay, but how are they going to Like this is my question. How are they going to How is the government going to write a high inflation figure for July if that's going to cause the government to pay more more money to social security recipients next year and also hurt the stock market right before the midterm elections? Like come on, let's be real. Like this is politics. Like you know how this game works. But listen, if you made that bet with me, which I told everyone in my investing community on Patreon and you're up 50%, then feel free to take money off the table to de-risk, but I'm going to continue to hold the wager. And listen, I just want to go off topic for a few seconds because a lot of stuff is going on in the news and I really don't care. So, I just want to hecklers that have been giving me grief for the past few months about my investments that I am now beating the S&P 500 year-to-date. I'm beating the performance. In 2025, I crushed the S&P 500's performance by about six times over. So, I just want to stare at you for dramatic effect and say "Haha in your face." And to everyone else that supported me, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And if you want to join my investing community, I'm going to leave a link for you down below. Thank you. Now, going back to the CPI inflation report, why did the rate of inflation decrease from June to July? It's because energy prices fell another 1.5% in July and gasoline fell 2.9% in July. And the government is saying that food prices fell by 0.1%. And they're saying that shelter increased at only a rate of 1.2%, which helped bring down the overall inflation figure. And I just want you to know that shelter is a huge component of the overall inflation figure like the headline prints. Unfortunately, a lot of a lot of the figures for shelter, they're computed with surveys rather than actual figures. So, again, very questionable. Okay, to conclude, t ...[Transcript truncated for size]...