Workers need to stay competitive. And as companies invest billions in AI, workers are facing growing pressure to adapt. Joining me now is Amber Winton, CEO of AI upskilling platform Network. Now, Amber, thank you for joining us here. Everyone hears that AI is coming for their job, and you've built a business around trying to do the opposite. And is AI really behind these tech layoffs, or is it just a convenient excuse? So, I guess I'm asking like where are the opportunities you're seeing? >> Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Jared. Glad to be here. I think there's a lot of change going on with the upskilling market at the moment. We're seeing this from entry-level through to people being laid off when they're mid-career, all the way through to, you know, even retirees thinking about how they're using AI and how that applies to them in the workforce. So, I think that there's a huge change here, and both sides of the coin are struggling. How can you stay competitive with this, and how can businesses on the flip side tell what's real and who has what skills? So, I think the struggle goes on both sides and across all industries, not just tech. We're seeing it across design, we're seeing it across accounting, law, all sorts of different industries are facing this problem. How can we upskill, and how can we verify who has these new skills? >> All right. So, for somebody who doesn't work in tech, let's say a marketer, or you mentioned accounting, so we got an accountant. What is the first AI skill they should learn, and what is that pay premium? How long does it last once they get that, do you think? >> Yeah, absolutely. Depending on the industry, I mean, there's so many different ways that you can start. If you're looking to stay in that industry, then you really just want to be across the basics. Know your models, know which ones apply best to you. You know, we all know about there's ChatGPT, there's Gemini, there's Claude, there's Grok, and all of them have slightly different uses depending on the industry that you're in. So, we often see people coming in asking, you know, where should I start? And if you're not in a technical background, And there are some really basics that you can do across chat GPT, across Claude, and that are going to help you with some basic automations. Uh plenty of things that you can do to just learn and get started, uh whether it's across your emails, whether it's across your calendar, whether it's across reading documents for you. And those are some great places to get started. And Annex Work um is is where, you know, we teach a lot of these skills. So, as for the premium, you know, and how long does that AI last? Right now we're seeing as the best time uh in in history to be learning AI. There has never been a better time to be learning it. Um and as long as you're able to prove the continuous upskilling, the ability to adopt new technology quickly, then it is a fantastic market for you right now. Uh there is lots and lots of opportunity out there. >> All right, let's say somebody is looking for a job. Your research says 97%of Fortune 500 companies now use AI to find and screen job candidates. I know people who have gone on job interviews to interview with a robot. So, if a robot reads your resume first or they end up interviewing you, what advice do you have for people? Cuz this is charting unknown territory for most of us. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a shock to a lot of us if you are applying for a job and the first thing that you're doing is talking to an AI um or even just getting totally rejected by a screening bot. Uh this is the reality of it and I feel like a lot of us are really unprepared for that interaction. Um we don't expect it. We still expect a resume and have, you know, a person on the other end say, "Great job. I can see you put in a lot of effort to writing your cover letter." But but that is just not the case anymore. So, what you want to do is almost think about yourself as, "How am I being found by these bots? How am I being How's my application being read by these bots?" And, you know, we talked in the past about an SEO or search engine optimization score for companies um or AOGEO was about Agent Tech Search, but I think that we need to be talking more about perhaps a personal HEO score, a hiring engine optimization score. Um and the real way that you can start that is to really understand that the resume is not enough these days. Um you really do need to have a portfolio of work, something that you can showcase and prove and have a really rich data set of all of the amazing things that you can do, that you've been building, that you've been experimenting with. That is the best way that you are going to make it through these AI hiring bots and actually get through that interview process. >> All well said and I I I read a lot about this and who it affects, the AI revolution. Uh it's hitting new grads, especially in their early 20s, disproportionately. It's also hitting workers who are maybe 45, 50, 55 years old and uh different reasons. So, what do you say to those people, those two classes? They need to learn new AI skills. What do they do first? >> Yeah, absolutely. Um to the new grads, I would say um that you need to be thinking about this earlier. Absolutely. Um I think a lot of people are having this um this kind of let down from from a university or from a degree where it was this golden ticket promise that once you got your your degree and you graduated, that there was a guaranteed job at the other end. Um, but unfortunately, that's just not the case, and so, you know, it is time to look around and realize, "How am I going to be, uh, making that first job, making that first step?" Because a lot of the jobs that we're seeing, um, that are really struggling, that just don't exist anymore the junior jobs. And so, I think the junior market in particular right now, they're the ones that need to be thinking about this the most. If you're in university or if you've got children that are in university, um then it it is a really good advice to start building up that portfolio, to start, you know, taking stock of your entire presence. You know, it used to be your online footprint, but now really think about what is your AI footprint and and how is that being found? Um I think that the the university market is going under a lot of change right now. Um so, that's where we need to be focusing.
The U.S. is just days away from an election that could change the balance of power in Congress and define the last two years of Donald Trump's presidency. As Americans head to the polls, the largest group of single-issue super PACs in U.S. history is spending big, to the tune of over 206 million dollars, to shape the outcome. And it's not the first time. Crypto-related PACs dropped around 250 million dollars to elect pro-industry candidates across the country in 2024, hoping to pass major legislation favorable to digital assets. Of the 57 races Fairshake spent money on, the PAC's preferred candidate won in 52 of them, a 91 percent success rate, making up 1/10 of lawmakers on the Hill, but two years later, the crypto industry got mixed results from the Congress and the president it helped elect. There are new rules for stablecoins, but a major piece of comprehensive crypto legislation is all but dead in the Senate, and huge questions loom about whether top government officials like the president should be allowed to deal in crypto. Just as a record 89% of Americans say corruption in the government is widespread, so can this industry once again reshape Congress to get its legislative agenda across the finish line? The 2024 election marked a complete 180 for crypto in Washington D.C. Just a few years ago, there was truly a war on crypto, where it wasn't about trying to get regulation; it was trying to truly kill this industry in the absence of promulgating rules and regulations. We're not going back to that era in large part because of all the progress we've made. The industry celebrated over a dozen new crypto-friendly candidates taking office, with major ousters in the process. That included then Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat who served as the chair of the Senate Banking Committee and was a noted crypto skeptic. It wasn't just Congress either. Millions in donations from the industry helped elect a self-proclaimed crypto president. We ended the war on crypto once and for all, and it's been booming. And once elected, President Trump wasted no time implementing the pro-crypto agenda the industry had long sought after. In January 2025, he signed an executive order promoting the advancement of digital assets. Then, in March, President Trump established a digital asset stockpile and strategic Bitcoin reserve, and in April he signed a joint resolution to overturn an IRS reporting rule targeting decentralized finance brokers. Then a major milestone came on July 18, 2025, when the president signed the first piece of crypto legislation into law in the U.S. The Genius Act, which establishes a federal framework for stablecoins. The Genius Act is actually really the only major piece of bipartisan legislation that made its way through Congress in the past two years. It had huge support in the House from Democrats, 70 votes in the Senate. It's very bipartisan. I think everyone understands we need to strengthen the dollar, make it competitive technologically, and so these are federal statutes. These are part of effectively the new, you know, prudential banking regulatory code. I think crypto got a big return on investment in the last election cycle. Passing Genius was a major deal. This has been a very unproductive Congress writ large, but crypto got the Genius bill for stable coins, which was a big win. So, given the amount of money they spent, which was large, they got a pretty big return on investment. Did they get everything they wanted? No. One of the industry's highest priorities was a comprehensive market structure bill to regulate digital assets. After more than a year of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, the Clarity Act was poised to set clear rules for issuing and trading tokens, shift oversight of many digital assets from the SEC to the CFTC, and introduce a slew of new guidelines for crypto in the U.S. The Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act on September 15th when the bill fell short of the 60-vote threshold. Ultimately, Clarity stalled over ethics and the proximity to the vote to the midterms themselves, and it was just not politically palatable for certain policymakers to vote in favor of the bill with anything less than a 100% win on ethics. Democratic lawmakers argue the bill fails to effectively prevent high-ranking public officials like the president from profiting off crypto. This comes after President Trump's federal ethics and financial disclosure reports show he and his family earned more than $1 billion from crypto-related businesses and token sales over the prior year, and so now the industry's biggest legislative priority is left hanging in the balance. In the latest iteration, 78 House Democrats supported market structure legislation, and though it couldn't make it out of the Senate. You had a bipartisan group of senators working over the course of many months to put together the most comprehensive 600-plus page bill addressing market structure legislation, and that is not wasted time and effort. Coinbase's 79 million dollars in contributions during the last election cycle. Established the company as one of the largest corporate political donors in modern history. That includes a $1 million personal contribution from CEO Brian Armstrong to Fair Shake in 2023. And now the company is spending heavily once again in the hope that the next Congress will take on crypto legislation. This election cycle, the industry is again positioning itself as one of the largest corporate sectors shaping congressional races, alongside online betting companies and AI-driven businesses. In fact, Coinbase donated 25 million dollars to Fairshake in 2025. The ultimate goal is to make sure that we bring our 20th century financial system into the 21st century, and I think in an era where affordability is top of mind for American voters, it's important that we find a way that we can move money more cheaply, that we can invest more easily, and that we can transact more quickly. And fundamentally, that is not something that Democrats or Republicans should oppose. The advocacy group Stands with Crypto, launched by Coinbase in 2023 has been hitting the ground to ensure that happens. The group has endorsed a total of 45 candidates this election cycle, 42 in the House and three in the Senate. Stand of Crypto is running a electoral program mobilizing our millions of grassroots advocates across the country, primarily to support incumbent pro crypto champions. At the end of the day, what matters right now to our community is who are we re-electing, who are we holding accountable, and how do we make our voices and our votes translate into pro-crypto policy in the next Congress? Fairshake and its affiliated super PACs are backing 33 incumbents, committing dollars to support 19 Republicans and 14 Democrats, all in the hope of preserving a pro-crypto bloc in Congress. As part of that effort, Fair Shake has committed a baseline of $1 million each to six House candidates who spearheaded digital asset frameworks or are positioned in highly competitive districts. Those include Republican Bryan Steil, who serves as the chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Digital Assets, along with French Hill of Arkansas and Bill Huizenga of Michigan, who serve as the chair and vice chair of the House Financial Services Committee. Congressman Steil is an incredibly thoughtful, incredibly big advocate of not the crypto industry for crypto, but understanding both what it does for his constituents and for what it does broadly to the economy, so it is important to keep him in place. He's been a really good advocate for a long time. The Democratic candidates getting $1 million from Fair Shake include Janelle Bynum of Oregon and Derek Tran of California. There's also Steven Horsford of Nevada, who, on top of supporting the House version of the Clarity Act introduced his own crypto legislation called the Parity Act. It simply updates our fede ...[Transcript truncated for size]...
>> BLOOMBERG TECH IS LIVE FROM THE HEART OF SILICON VALLEY, WITH ED LUDLOW IN SAN FRANCISCO. ED: COMING UP, INTEL SHARES PLUNGE, SET FOR THE BIGGEST DROP ON RECORD, AS A BLEAK OUTLOOK EXPOSES THE CHIPMAKER'S STRUGGLE WITH A DEEPENING PC SLUMP AND INABILITY TO MEET CPU DEMAND. AND WE SPEAK WITH THE AWS CEO ABOUT ACCELERATING AI BUILDOUT. BITCOIN DIPS AS A RECORD $600 BILLION BINANCE HACK ROCKS THE CRYPTO WORLD. INTEL SHARES DOWN 28%, 20 9%, PUTTING THEM ON TRACK FOR THE BIGGEST ONE-DAY DROP SINCE RECORDS BEGAN IN 1980 TWO. I AM GIVING YOU A FIVE DAY CHART FOR TWO REASONS -- THE SEVERITY OF THE DROP RIGHT NOW AFTER EARNINGS, BUT ALSO THIS IS A STOCK THAT POSTED THE GAINS FRIDAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY BECAUSE OF ENTHUSIASM ABOUT WHAT THEY MIGHT ACHIEVE. THE FOURTH QUARTER WAS WEAK. LET'S START WITH THE FOURTH QUARTER OUTLOOK. EXPLAIN IT TO ME, HOW IT MISSES RELATIVE TO ESTIMATES. >> THE FORECAST WAS THAT IT WOULD BE UP 16% FROM A YEAR AGO. THE PROBLEM WAS, THE EXPECTATIONS WERE GREATER THAN THAT. $3 MILLION MORE THAN THEY SAID THEY WERE GOING TO POST. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. THIS IS THE TIME WHEN THEY SHOULD BE CASHING IN ON THE BIG DATA CENTER SPENDING BOOM. UNFORTUNATELY, THEY ARE NOT ABLE TO DO THAT IS MUCH AS PEOPLE WANT THEM TO. ED: THE WEAKNESSES IN THE CLIENT SEGMENT, WHICH IS PC'S. WE GOT OFF THE PHONE WITH THE CEO OF INTEL. THE WEAKNESS IS CLEAR. WHAT IS IT? >> THIS IS NOT A SURPRISE. THERE WAS THIS HORRIBLE TRIP AND COMING DOWN THE TRACKS. ALL OF THAT MEMORY THAT IS GOING INTO DATA CENTERS FOR AI IS NOT GOING INTO PC GROWTH. IF YOU WANT TO BUY A LAPTOP RIGHT NOW, IT IS GOING TO COST YOU A LOT OF MONEY IF YOU WANT MEMORY. THE PC MAKERS THEMSELVES, EITHER THEY CANNOT GET THE MEMORY OR THEY HAVE TO PASS THAT TO THE CONSUMER, WHICH IS AFFECTING DEMAND. INTEL SAYS THEY DO NOT KNOW WHEN IT IS GOING TO GET BETTER. AND THAT IS A HUGE VOLUME MARKET. ED: ON THE PHONE, THEY SAID THIS WAS GOING TO CONTINUE INTO THE FIRST HALF OF NEXT YEAR. WHAT IS CONFUSING IS THAT INTEL IS SAYING THAT DEMAND FOR CPUS FOR DATA CENTERS BECAUSE OF AGENTIC WORKLOADS IS VERY HIGH. THEY ARE NOT ABLE TO MEET THAT DEMAND. SOMETHING IS GOING WRONG. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THAT? >> THE CEO WAS CLEARLY DISAPPOINTED. THAT CAME ACROSS ON THE CALL. BASICALLY, THEY ARE ACCIDENT-PRONE, UNFORTUNATELY. THEY HAD A REALLY UNFORTUNATE LITERAL ACCIDENTAL EXPLOSION AT A PLANT IN ISRAEL. THEY CANNOT GET ENOUGH OF THE SUBSTRATE, WHICH IS HOW IT IS PACKAGED BEFORE IT GOES INTO THE COMPUTER. AND THE FACTORY IN IRELAND IS GETTING BETTER AT OUTPUT, BUT NOT AS FAST AS THEY WANT THEM TO. THE WORST THING FOR A COMPANY IS TO HAVE ALL OF THIS. THEY CANNOT REALLY GO ELSEWHERE. ED: THANK YOU VERY MUCH INDEED. LET'S STAY ON INTEL WITH A PORTFOLIO MANAGER. SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT HAVE A POSITION WITH INTEL, BUT HAS A LONG HISTORY COVERING THE CHIP SECTOR, AND KNOWS INTEL INSIDE AND OUT. THIS IS THE THIRD STRAIGHT QUARTER I HAVE GOTTEN ON THE PHONE WITH EDWARD TAM AND HE HAS EXPLAINED TO ME THAT THE COMPANY HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO EXECUTE TO MEET DEMAND. HOW WOULD YOU INTERPRET THAT? >> THEY ARE TRYING TO RESURRECT INTEL, BOTH ON THE RESEARCH AND THE MANUFACTURING SIDE. WE ARE ALL FAMILIAR WITH THE CHALLENGES THEY HAVE HAD, AND ED BOUTON TRYING TO FIX THOSE THINGS. WE HAVE STAYED AWAY FROM THE STOCK FOR OUR CLIENTS. THE OPPORTUNITIES IN THIS LITTLE INTEL DISASTER -- IT IS PROBABLY FOR AMD, AND YET THE MARKET DOES NOT SEEM TO BE TREATING THE NEWS THAT WAY. IN FACT, AMD SHARES ARE DOWN PRETTY SIGNIFICANTLY. IT IS A STOCK WE OWN. ED: THE CONCLUSION I AM TRYING TO GET TO IS, WHERE IS THE MARKET SHARE GOING? IS INTEL REGAINING LEADERSHIP IN CPU? IS AMD RUNNING AWAY WITH IT? >> I THINK THERE ARE TWO THINGS GOING ON. I THINK THE PC MARKET IS IN REAL TROUBLE. IT IS GOING TO SQUELCH DEMAND, AND I THINK THAT IS WHY AMD IS DOWN. THEY WILL BE HURT BY THAT AS MUCH AS INTEL. AIM HAS BEEN TAKING A SHARE. THE OPPORTUNITY MIGHT BE ON THE SERVER SIDE. IF YOU ARE ORDERING A BUNCH OF INTEL CHIPS, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO JUST FLIP OVER TO AMD CHIPS. BUT IF INTEL IS HAVING EXECUTION PROBLEMS, YOU HAVE TO WORRY THAT CUSTOMERS WILL SAY I CANNOT RELY ON INTEL TO DELIVER. I HAVE TO RECONFIGURE TO AMD. WE KNOW THEIR SERVER CHIPS, THE WAY THEY ARE ABLE TO COMBINE HIGH-END CPUS WITH GPU USE WITH AI ACCELERATORS MAKES AMD A MORE COMPELLING OPPORTUNITY. ED: YOU DON'T HOLD THE STOCK ON BEHALF OF CLIENTS. I WOULD POINT OUT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HAS 5.2 PERCENT OF INTEL. THAT IS SOMETHING I REFLECT ON, PARTICULARLY DURING THIS PROGRAM. THERE IS AN IRONY HERE. AI IS MAKING MEMORY PRICE IS EXPENSIVE, WHICH IS PUTTING THE CONSUMER OFF LAPTOPS AND PC, AND IT IS BECAUSE OF ALL THE MEMORY DEMAND THAT IS GOING INTO THE DATA CENTER. WITH INTEL, THAT IS OPPOSING BUSINESSES GOING IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. WHY NOT GIVE THEM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT ON THAT? >> I THINK THERE IS THAT BROADER IMPACT, AND I THINK THE AI BUILDOUT IS CREATING MORE EXPENSES IN A LOT OF PLACES -- NOT JUST MEMORY, BUT RAW MATERIALS, INTEREST RATES, THE MASSIVE DEMAND FOR BORROWING. AND THIS IS CAUSING PROBLEMS ACROSS THE ECONOMY. INTEL COULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE MASSIVE DEMAND FOR CPUS, AS EVERYBODY HAS REMARKED, PARTICULARLY INTEL AND AMD. THERE WOULD BE A SHIFT IN THE MIX. THE CPU/GPU RATIO WAS GOING TO FAVOR INTEL AND AMD. BUT IF YOU CANNOT EXECUTE TO THAT DEMAND, YOU ARE LEAVING A LOT OF MONEY ON THE TABLE. ED: AT THE INDEX LEVEL, IT IS PRETTY UGLY THIS FRIDAY. THE NASDAQ 100 ON THE WEEK HAS BEEN CHOPPY. WE ENDED FRIDAY WITH PRETTY SEVERE PRESSURE ON THE TECHNOLOGY STOCKS, THE AI TRADE. THE STORY CHANGED REALLY QUICKLY. COMING OUT OF MICROSOFT IN PARTICULAR, THERE WAS SO MUCH POSITIVITY. NOW, WE ARE BACK TO THE SAME CALCULUS, SPENDING AND PAY OFF. IT IS HARD TO DRAW A CONCLUSION. IF WE HAD A GOOD WEEK AND EARNINGS, WHAT WAS THEN RESULT? >> IT IS REALLY MIXED. IF YOU JUST LOOK AT THE AI SIDE OF THINGS AND THE REVENUE -- LOOK AT AWS. YOU LOOK AT GOOGLE CLOUD, AND YOU LOOK AT MICROSOFT AZURE. ALL OF THOSE BUSINESSES SAW ACCELERATING REVENUE GROWTH. SO THAT IS A REALLY POSITIVE SIGN FOR WHAT IS GOING ON IN AI. ON THE FLIPSIDE, THERE ARE OTHER BUSINESSES SAW WEAKNESS, WHETHER IT WAS ADVERTISING FOR GOOGLE, FOR AMAZON. MICROSOFT IS PRETTY CLEAN AND THEY ARE KEEPING SPENDING UNDER CONTROL, SO A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE ENCOURAGED BY THAT. THE BROADER QUESTION REMAINS. IS THERE IN A FUTURE REVENUE GROWTH TO COVER ALL THESE CAPITAL SPENDING OPPORTUNITIES? AND THEN YOU HAVE THIS SORT OF CREATIVE FINANCIAL SOLUTION TO WHAT WOULD OTHERWISE BE A REALLY STICKY PROBLEM IN FINANCING A VERY LARGE BUILDOUT INVOLVING SOME RELATIVELY NEW COMPANIES LIKE ANTHROPIC AND OPENAI. I PERSONALLY SEE THIS SO CALLED CIRCULAR FINANCING IS A VERY POSITIVE DEVELOPMENT BECAUSE IT SOLVES A MASSIVE CAPITAL MARKETS PROBLEM, GETTING INFORMATION. YOU NEED TO FUND RELATIVELY NEW COMPANIES. SO YOU HAVE GUYS WITH BIG BALANCE SHEETS COMING IN AND HELPING TO SMOOTH THE WAY, SOLVING SOME OF THESE INFORMATION PROBLEMS. I SEE THE UNDERLYING NUMBERS AS A POSITIVE, SEEING ACCELERATING GROWTH AS A GOOD THING. INVESTORS ARE A LITTLE BIT TENTATIVE, MAYBE BECAUSE THEY ARE OVEREXPOSED AND NEED TO BALANCE THEIR STRATEGIES. WHAT WE ARE DOING HERE IS MAKING SURE NOT TO BE OVERWEIGHT THESE THINGS. HAVE GOOD EXPOSURE. DON'T JUST OWN AI. IT IS GOING TO BE A GOOD GROWTH DRIVER CONTINUING FOR MANY QUARTERS, BUT YOU ALSO WANT TO OWN SOMETHING IN, SAY, THAT IS -- THE DEFENSE SPACE, SOMETHING IN CONSUMER, SOMETHING IN INDUSTRIALS, AND PARTICULARLY HEALTH CARE. MAYBE INVESTORS NEED TO REBALANCE THEIR STRATEGIES BEFORE THEY MOVE INTO THE NEXT YEAR. ED: THE NASDAQ 100 IS OFF SESSION LOWS, BUT STILL AT ITS LOWEST SINCE JUNE. GREAT TO HAVE YOU BACK ON THE SHOW. THE OTHER BIG STORY UP THERE TODAY IS AMAZON. THERE IS AMAZON AWS, WHICH BEAT EXPECTATIONS AND WOULD GROW 40% NEXT YEAR AND THE YEAR AFTER. AND THEN THERE IS THE BIT THAT PEOPLE TALK ABOUT LESS, THE RETAIL BUSINESS, WHICH FRANKLY WAS ALSO ASTONISHING. MUCH MORE PROFITABLE AT ENO ...[Transcript truncated for size]...
Google stock just reported earnings and the stock today is down 12% as a result. That's around $500 billion of market cap wiped away from this company. A massive amount of value loss. In fact, that is a $39 decline in the stock price, bringing it well below $300 per share. And up until now, Google has been one of the best stocks in the market. Their earnings report quarter after quarter have been great. So, what happened in yesterday's report that's causing this big sell-off? Well, we have renewed fears. Remember when everybody was concerned about chatbt destroying Google search? Well, those same fears are starting to renew. Alphabet's earnings miss reflect the first real sign that AI is taking a bite out of search. We also have Gene Monster going on to television saying that this is not good. >> They're saying that AI search queries had an impact on search revenue. So, how you >> So, that's not good. >> Yeah, exactly. That's their core business and it is back to that narrative that their core business is being cannibalized by AI. >> Google search is now being cannibalized by AI. It's not good. Now, is that true? How much of this is really because of AI? Is the search business going down? We had a sharp deceleration quarter over quarter and that's really what investors are concerned about today. And I want to go over this and give some clarity because I feel like a lot of the things that people are saying online, a lot of the posts, a lot of the Discord conversations are just not accurate. They're they're not accurate. What I hope to do in this episode is clarify the real situation of Google. what's actually going on with this company, not just with the search and cannibalization situation, but also with the valuation of the stock, with Google's financial situation, with them having their earnings go up while their free cash flow goes down, while their capex is explosive. It makes the whole situation more difficult to understand, and I think it's important to go over and clarify what's really happening with Google. So, we're going to be diving into it deep. We'll be going over the entire situation and trying to make sense of it. Now, we also have Microsoft that reported earnings. Mastercard, huge holding of mine, reported earnings, and Door Dash reported earnings and said that they're going to try to buy Instacart. So, we'll be going over those as well. Now, to start things off, I want to first look at some charts about Google's situation. For example, we'll just start with the price chart. Google stock dropped almost $40 per share down to $283 a share. Even after this drop, Google still has a 14% kagger since 2021, meaning that it's widely outperformed the QQQ and the S&P 500 over the past 5 years. That is including with the recent drop just today. Now, Google historically got up to $399 per shares. So, basically, it got up to $400. The lowest that it's got over the past 5 years is $83 and the median is $156. So right now Google is still a good performing stock even with this drop. It brings it down and it takes away a lot of the excess performance but the median over the past 5 years being 156 shows that this thing has really surged up over the past 2 years. Now we can look at how this price change affects my portfolio because Google was one of my largest positions and it did hit it hard. The impact of Google's drop on my portfolio was equivalent to 1.5%. Now, when I look at the one day, I'm actually only down6%. But that's because Google's gone down a lot, while a lot of other companies have gone up. We look at Google and it's down 12%. That's $23,400. But then we have Meta that's up $5,000 today. We have Mastercard up 4%. It's my largest holding, so it's up $8,700. Amazon is down today, adding to the losses. But other companies like Texas Roadhouse, Moody's, Door Dash, Uber, they're up slightly. So overall, my portfolio is down a little less than the market today. Not so bad considering one of my largest holdings just got crushed. But one thing worth repeating is that investing in individual stocks brings along a lot of volatility. These companies go up a lot. They drop quickly. Investors repric them with any additional narrative or news. I've seen it with Google. I've seen it with Netflix. I saw S&P Global go from a low to a big high over the past month. Mastercard mid this year was super low. Now, it's at an all-time high. Stocks trade around like crazy. The important thing is to buy into great companies at good deals and hold them long-term. Now, let's go ahead and take a look at Google's financial picture here. We can start off with the revenue of the company. Now, it's important to highlight that this is the revenue rate of growth year-over-year on a trailing 12-month basis. So, this isn't their total revenue. It's not like it's going to be flat and then decline. This is the rate of growth. The revenue has been growing on a trailing 12-month basis above 20%. That's super fast. Google's still a super fast growing company and it's going to continue to grow faster in the future even with search deceleration. That's because the cloud business is so massive and the cloud business is growing above 100% year-over-year. But we look at it and it's going to get up to around 25% revenue growth. That's the estimates. And then it will taper off and go down to 23%. What I see here is very encouraging. This is one of the best revenue growth lines I've seen for a large company. So I don't see any concerns here. In fact, if I flip over and look at the total revenue growth, this is what it looks like. This is the TTM revenue over time, you can see it's growing around 14.5% keer. In Q3 of 2028, Google's expected to have $727 billion of revenue by analyst estimates. This is massive continued growth in revenue. And this is also growth in revenue in a really good product line. Cloud is not some unprofitable business. It has high operating margins. That's the reason that they're investing in it so aggressively. This is what that continued revenue growth at a fast pace looks like over time. It actually is going to be accelerating from where it is today. We're going to get to around $730 billion in revenue in 2028, which is just incredible. Google already said that they're at a half trillion run rate in revenue. These are staggering numbers and this is not what an unhealthy company looks like. Now, as we look at these metrics, before getting to the debate of whether or not AI is disrupting Google's search, I want to take a look at the earnings per share because this is probably the most confusing part of Google's financials. If you're just looking at the EPS growth over time, or even if you're looking at the PE ratios, that doesn't really show you what's going on. And it also doesn't even show you the valuation of Google clearly. It's one of these cases where the numbers are technically accurate, but without proper context, they're incredibly misleading. And that's what we see here. This chart shows the earnings per share rate of growth year-over-year on a trailing 12-month basis. So, every one of these bars is a quarter going back 12 months in the earnings per share growth. Now, did Google really grow their earnings per share by 120%. No, they didn't. They just invested in SpaceX. SpaceX IPOed. Google made like a hundred billion and that was counted as net income, which is counted as earnings per share. So, the huge majority of this big EPS spike is just from SpaceX investment. So, with that big SpaceX sale, that also means that the forward-looking earnings per share growth is also misleading. Google's not going to actually shrink in earnings per share over time. It's still going to continue growing at a fast pace. It just isn't represented here. So, if you're looking on a stock analysis website like Qualrrim or any others, you typically don't want to use the trailing 12 months PE ratio for Google because that includes the SpaceX investment and any other investme ...[Transcript truncated for size]...
Perhaps the most important news that was somehow shunned by the stock market going down last week was that Open AI missed its valuation target and didn't get as much money as it expected. The target valuation was 1.3 trillion. They got 1.25 on much less money that they expected. They got something more than 10 billion which is not 40 billion. What does this mean? Well, most of the AI narrative over the last four years was constantly investing in stock prices going higher and higher. Now, with AI getting just 10 billion, which I would dare to assume was just from previous investors giving a little bit more money to push the valuation higher so that they can unload in a 2027 hopeful IPO. But the risks here are huge. If it gets clear that it will not work, then those that funded the billions in the previous rounds, everything reverts. So does the stock market. Open AAI doesn't have the money to spend the billions they promised. Ly entropic. Investor get scared there too. And that might lead to the bubble truly bursting. I discussed this situation and a lot of other things related to AI, the risks, the bubble bursting in the video below.
The Federal Reserve had their meeting this past Wednesday, and they decided to not raise interest rates, which I already covered in my previous video. So, in today's video, I want to show you the highlights of the Federal Reserve press conference so that you're up to date with the current situation. The first highlight is that the Federal Reserve wants to change their meeting schedule. So, here's what you need to know. The Federal Reserve meets eight times a year, and at each one of those eight meetings, they make policy decisions such as, you know, are they going to change the interest rates? Are they going to print more money? If they're going to print more money, you know, at what speed are they going to print more money, etc. Okay, so they want to change, well, they are going to change it. So, now they still want eight meetings a year, but in 2027, they want to make decisions at just seven of those eight meetings. And in 2028, they want to make decisions at only six of those eight meetings. And that's important because, well, when they make decisions or change things, then if it affects the stock market. It moves the stock market. So, please take a look. >> And at every turn, good or bad, our job is to get monetary policy right. And that's exactly what we're doing. Now, with this objective in mind, we've decided on a change in our FOMC schedule starting next fall. We believe eight meetings per year is the right number for the FOMC. But in 2027, one meeting will focus exclusively on broad monetary policy strategy with neither a vote on the federal funds rate nor policy statement anticipated. The rest will be regular FOMC policy-setting meetings. And I expect that in 2028, we'll have two meetings dedicated discussions of strategy and six for setting policy. >> Okay, now let's move on to the Q&A. The Federal Reserve did not raise interest rates at this meeting, even though the rate of inflation is elevated. And the reporter asks, "There's been no progress on bringing down inflation, then why didn't you interest rates today? So, I want to first show you the question and then I'm going to say something. >> Thank you. I'm Colby Smith with The New York Times. There's been essentially no progress toward the 2% inflation target. The labor market remains stable, as you suggested in your opening statement, and most of your colleagues seem to be on board with raising rates in December. So, why not just raise rates today? >> Okay, so you heard the question. It's a very straightforward question. And I kid you not, the Fed chair Walsh took more than 2 minutes to not answer the question. Like if you believe me, then just I'd say skip ahead like in this video 2 minutes ahead, save yourself the time. If you don't believe me, you want to confirm what I'm saying, then you know, be my guest and just watch how he dances around the question. >> Um ensuring price stability, Colby, quashing inflation, is not about some fixed individual date on a calendar. Same way it's not about some isolated data point. If it were about those two things, this job would be easier, and we wouldn't be suffering from nearly 6 years of inflation above target. So, what's this about? It's about ensuring we have clear objectives, and it's about a monetary policy strategy, which might sound to your ear and others like a change from the last several years. So, let me step back. Uh in the 5 months or so that I've been around, we've put in place what I'd describe as new monetary medicine. Well, what's been in that package of medicine? First thing we did when we showed up with my colleagues, is we doubled down on the 2% inflation target. We said, "We own it. We're taking responsibility for it. And if you think that we're tolerating some inflation target somewhere in the twos, let us disabuse you of it." That was the first part of this new monetary medicine. Second part is we took responsibility. No anguish of central banking here, no blaming others. It's the third thing that we've done. We laid out for you and the world our framework. I did it in Jackson Hole. Was part of the discussion last couple days of the framework that many of my colleagues here, too, as well. This is how we think about how monetary policy should work. These are the transmission mechanisms and this is how we're going to deliver. Then what we do? We interrogate reality. We do that periodically. That's a very useful thing to do. But we don't just talk, we act. And so in September when we last met, we acted. We removed a dose of accommodation. So what are the signposts about how this new strategy is going? Inflation compensation as measured by swaps prices, many other measures, inflation compensation is going in the right way. Uh inflation expectations, the world is quite unsettled. Um if you'd say absent the Fed what would have happened expectations, they might have gone the wrong way. They've gone the right way, too. So I feel good about those signposts. The period right in front of us is information rich. There is a lot that's happening uh in the world. My colleagues and I are keen to take notice of it. So in this coming period, what do I think we're going to be able to do? We're going to be able to figure out what's the appropriate protocol as part of this package that we started deliver 5 months ago to deliver price stability. Uh I'm encouraged by the progress we've made in a short period of time, but if the crux of your question is you haven't delivered yet, you haven't achieved price stability, you're right about that, uh but we're working on it. >> Okay, now moving on, a reporter asks, "Did you keep interest rates the same because the midterm elections are in 6 days?" And this is importance because the Federal Reserve is not a part of the government and should be making decisions independently of what's going on with the government. So please take a look. >> Thanks so much. Elizabeth Schulze with ABC News. As you know, the midterm elections are in 6 days. Did the midterms factor into the Fed's decision to stay on hold? And if not, how can you assure the American public that politics were not at play here? >> So, um politics played no role in the decision. I just spent 2 days with my colleagues upstairs. I didn't hear an utterance about politics. I didn't hear a reference to uh politics, elections, what's happening in the next week or so. I didn't hear anything about it. Um and I don't believe it had any role in the decision, not just for me, but my colleagues around the room. But, I will say it's a information-rich interval in the coming period, having nothing to do with politics. >> Okay, moving on to the next highlights. The next Federal Reserve meeting is on December 9th, and that's going to be the last meeting for the year. In the Federal Reserve's most recent projections, they forecasted another interest rate increase in 2026. So, the question is, will you raise interest rates in December? Please take a look. >> I know you don't like the statement of economic projections, but last month they did your colleagues penciled in another rate hike for this year. And so, could you give us your sense from this meeting whether you still see widespread support for another hike this year around the table. Thank you. >> So, the blackout period for them ends, I think, on Friday or at some point over the weekend. So, they they might they might indulge you in that discussion. Um I don't believe in forward guidance. >> Okay, since we can't get a straight answer out of this guy, a different reporter asks, basically, in a different way. So, the question is, is the current interest rate appropriate? And Worsch basically responds with I don't know yet. Please take a look. >> Thank you, Chair Worsch. Uh So, if I could the statement says that the accumulation of more information will help the committee determine the policy stance appropriate to ensure a timely return of inflation to the 2% goal. Does that mean that the current level of t ...[Transcript truncated for size]...