The Labubu trend is massive and investable!
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There is a weird toy triggering a global frenzy right now. They are called Labubu and stores can't keep them in stock. Collectors and wannabe influencers are flooding malls and waiting in lines for every new drop. They buy these things and unbox them on TikTok, which is thrilling content, I'm sure. Labubus, they're sold in blind boxes, meaning you don't know which one you're going to get until after you buy it and blindly open the box, which is actually a huge part of their success. The element of surprise and scarcity and some of the characters are

being harder to find than others. It's really become an addiction for their fans. The company behind Labubu is called Pop Mart. They're a Chinese retailer listed on the Hong Kong exchange. They've been around in China for 15 years. They started doing blind boxes about 10 years ago. They just expanded into the U S last year, and they currently have a couple dozen stores and pop-up locations here because of the worldwide Labubu viral moments we're going through right now, the growing popularity of blind boxes as well. The revenue,

for this company has just doubled in the past year. And the majority of that is from selling the boo-boos. That has caused the stock price to jump more than 1200% since the beginning of last year. So are we at the peak of a viral moment or will the stock keep going up?

I guess you could say the Pop Mart stock is pretty much like a blind box itself. Today on Dumb Money, we're going to uncover our investment and tell you why at least one of us is still betting that the boo-boo trend is going to push Pop Mart even higher. Your burger is served, and this is our finest Pepsi Zero Sugar. Its sweet profile perfectly balances the savory notes of your burger. That is one perfect combination.

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Hey there, Dave here along with Chris and Jordan. We are Dumb Money. Welcome to Dumb Money Live. Take a quick second, if you will, smash the like button for the almighty algorithm, Chris Jordan. We can see Chris is remotely doing this from vacation, so we appreciate that. Millennials had their beanie babies. Gen Z is apparently jumping on the Laboo Boo bandwagon, making it the must-have random doll for their generation. I don't get it. I mean, I kind of get

I kind of get it, but I really don't get it. So we have a lot to talk about today. Chris, you were teasing this last time we were on talking about getting money from your global account into the Hong Kong market. So what let's start from the beginning. What is your thesis?

Hey, Dave. I get it. Let's just start there. I get it. All right. Let's just say that... I get some of it. We'll get into the things that I understand about this and the things that I think are just completely absurd. Maybe part of the reason why I get this, as you guys know, I'm a part owner of Collecticon. We're the world's largest Pokemon show. We're in 18 cities this year in the U.S.,

And quite honestly, over the past 30 years, it's been one of the most successful investments companies that I've been affiliated with. It's just a complete runaway success. And over the last few years, I've really gained a deep understanding of what drives the TCG trading card game sector and Pokemon in particular.

And while there is an element to that industry sector, and by the way, Pokemon is one of the world's largest toy companies. Okay. Very similar size to Pop Mart. They do about, I think about half a billion dollars of profit a year. A big piece of that success. Can we just talk about the size of the company? Because Pop Mart is doing 500 million in revenue.

No, no, no, no, no, no, Dave. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Pop Mart is doing over about a billion and a half in revenue. They're doing half a billion in profit. Half a billion in profit. They're doing 913 million in revenue. And if you compare that to other toy companies, Mattel and Hasbro, they are doing around 5 billion compared to 900 million.

I just want to put out there the picture of the financial health of these companies. PopMart, adjusted for U.S. dollars, is a $44 billion company. Okay. Again, Dave. Hasbro and Mattel are a fraction of that. Dave, again, don't look at revenue. Look at profit.

margins and profit. Let's talk this through for a second here. The success of Pokemon... By the way, can we frame it a little larger for the audience? This is really important, guys. If you look at the five biggest...

uh toy trends of modern history okay it starts in the 70s okay with action figures remember gi joe yeah transpar was a big part of our star wars big part of our youth even i would say maybe bigger than that uh was the video game console boom that started in the 1980s okay uh that was one of the biggest toy trends of modern history um

Shortly after 1990 is when Pokemon hit and collectible card trading games became a mega boom. And to this date, it is now one of the largest toy trends in history and one of the most profitable because of the cost of

of actually producing those cards relative to the price that you're able to get for those cards. Okay, that's something really key when you compare it to just a normal toy company that has to spend a ton of money making stuff, sell it through a distributor, right? Ship them big toys, little toys. Margins are really, really thin. They have licensing fees because they're licensing all these brands. Not the case with TCG, okay?

So we can move beyond that to like even another equally sized trend, which is the construction and creative play market dominated by Lego. Okay, as we know, Lego is one of the most profitable companies in the world. Why again? Because the cost to actually produce Legos relative to the actual price you're able to get from them in the market. Now, if we move forward,

we're now into this thing we call the blind box collectibles market. Now, one thing that I've observed

specifically with Pokemon and TCG, is that the bulk of interest in that sector is the gambling or surprise element of opening a pack, similar to sports cards going all the way back to the 80s. It's that gambling element, which has always only appealed to one half of the world's population.

We have never, to my knowledge, had something that hit on that gambling, surprise, let's just call it degenerate aspect of our personalities that has catered to women in any real meaningful way.

And that's what Pop Mart and Labubu has essentially done. Now, this brand started getting really big during the pandemic because it was escapism. People wanted to escape with little toys, anything that can kind of give them this element of non-reality.

Now, we've also moved to an area where people have kind of kept that mentality here in 2025. People are having less kids. They're zoned in on other things like pets or fake pets, which are basically what these are, right? Yeah.

this blew up in China in 2022, blew up in the US starting last year and really globally. You know that Korean pop artist Kim, who's like one of the... Kim's her name, right? Am I getting that right? Is her name Kim? She was like... I might be getting her name wrong, but she was the one I think on... That was on this... What was the show that was really big a few months ago? Oh, uh...

My K-pop history is very, very scary. Oh my God, I'm losing my mind. I'm on vacation, guys. I'm not here. Anyway, she's one of the biggest influencers in the world. People in the comments, I'm sure, will get it. There was an influencer named Lisa, I think. Lisa, Lisa, not Kim. Lisa, Lisa. Originally showed off these things and got into these things and kind of made the K-pop world very excited about it.

But here's what you need to know beyond the influencer momentum. I believe that Pop Mart, okay, and Labubu specifically just might end up being the largest toy trend of the 21st century.

And I do not believe it's over because if you look at the data, it really just started ramping up beyond China in the last 12 months. And we are now accelerating into that adoption curve outside of China.

And I saw the largest move in the adoption curve over the past five years happened in the last 30 days. Now, you're talking about the valuation of this company, which is insane. Just as a benchmark, the valuation of Mattel and Hasbro combined.

is half of the valuation of Pop Mart. Yeah. Okay. That's insane. Do you know what that tells me? One 10th of the revenue and have more than twice the market value. Stop talking about revenue and start talking about profit. It's so broken.

No, you don't because profit is what matters most here because the revenue line for Mattel and Hasbro shows you how hard it is for them to grow from that point. Whereas if you have a smaller revenue line but a much larger profit line, it shows you that there's more top end to convert at those juicy 30% profit margins.

Because these things that Pop Mart sells, the Labubu craze and the Skullcandy, which is accelerating just as quickly as Labubu right now, which is another form of this little... We didn't even talk about what the hell these things are, but I'm sure by now people have Googled them and know. They're basically figurines, okay? They're figurines. They're plush with rubber faces and they look like weird toothed monsters. Yeah.

- The thumbnail of our video has one. - Do you know what they are? They're fun. They're fun, they're trendy, and they become status symbols now because there are levels to rarity. And that's what has blown up Pokemon. - That's the degenerate gambling portion, exactly. - I like how Chris angrily yells into the camera that they're fun. They're fun. - They're fun! - Listen to me. - Listen guys,

Hey, but I want to talk about, so like you can get past the, the valuation thing. I, you know, if something's hot and growing, I think valuation is secondary, but one of the biggest things, and you've texted it to us, is the threat to the, one of the things that you alluded to at the beginning, which is one of the unique parts of this business model. That, that's...

And it's leading to a decline in the stock price today. Okay. So, Jordan, what happened is China has a rule that you can't, I guess, sell these to age eight and younger because of the addictive nature. And the Chinese state media, not the government, but the state media came out two days ago and said...

We think the addictive behavior of this is so damaging that the government needs to expand regulation of Labubu and Pop Mart in China. And the stock has gotten crushed like 15% in the last two days because of that threat. So I would say the biggest risk factor right now is that the government

actually listens to the state media and expands the ban of Labubu beyond age eight, maybe up to age 12, maybe 14, maybe 16. I think that's one of the real interesting parts of this story is how they would get involved with something. I mean, there's obviously like a demand for these people like that gambling style. Like they like a lot of this about the product. And yet the government would

Arbitrarily step in for this. It's the Chinese government, and the Chinese government can just do whatever they want. Yeah. It seems like an odd...

Singapore put price limits on what blind boxes, not just Labubu, but blind boxes in general on what the price can be. I think like $100, somewhere around there. Japan has some kind of limitations. The UK actually, they had to stop selling in the UK temporarily because there was like violence and riots at the stores of people trying to get these things. So it's like, there's a lot of like weird risk factors here, but I just think that like,

everything about it somehow somehow chris you think this is going to be the next pokemon i when i'm on our website i was just browsing around it's not just labubu they have like hundreds of random characters and random lines they own most of that property they do license a little bit from uh from like marvel and disney but most of it is their own ip but it's like

This one thing broke out. How many other things are going to have a breakout? That's not true. That is not true. Skullcandy and others are breaking out just as strongly as the boo-boo right now. And I want everyone watching this show to do something for me right now. I want everybody to look at the app store, the iOS app store rankings, okay, for free apps, not toys, globally. I want you to look everywhere.

across every category. Number one is ChatGPT, then Peacock, then Threads, then CapCut, then Mixi, Google. You know who number nine is? Number nine.

is Pop Mart. Pop Mart is bigger than WhatsApp right now and downloads. Bigger than Google Maps. Bigger than TikTok. Bigger than Sheen. Bigger than Instagram. Bigger than YouTube. Bigger than Gmail. Bigger. It's a top 10 app. Everybody already has Gmail. They don't need to download that. I don't understand. Why are people actually even needing the app? Is there some kind of a trading component? Because I think...

Isn't eBay going to be where all of these things are sold in the aftermarket? Dave, it's not even about that, Dave. You have a toy store app that is top 10 in the world. It's insane.

We have not seen anything like this in as long as I can remember. Okay. And I want you to understand. So I, so I have an analyst in the field. I can't disclose who he is, but he has been doing interviews multiple times a week at pop Mart shows. And I'm going to read you what he sent to me. Okay. I thought I, I thought I had it pulled up. So just, just give me one.

second because it's extremely it's extremely important um this this is his insight from his talks to uh pop mart stores okay one it's an irrelevant irreverent distraction from our administration daily chaos pets are the new kids now bag charms and plushies are the new pets um uh

He actually has a thesis that the more that these that you see dangling from women's keychains, the more anxious the person. Now, he says it starts with little boo-boo, but it does not end with little boo-boo. He's been visiting the Pop Mart multiple times a week, engaging with staff.

And the accounts they say are getting even stranger and more absurd every week. Since the scarcity of Labubu, the customer now just wants anything collectible, anything. He says, Hironos are on fire. Uh, he says that monkey Kiki's are on fire. He says, because the legacy appeals getting traction in New York. Uh, this person has been traveling the world, uh,

doing analysis on the boo boo. He says millennials and Gen X Americans love it. He says the boo boo, the Norwegian lore is reacting well globally to them. He believes- But you think that beyond, so the boo boo is going to be a thing and they'll come out with new series over time. You think that that is the thing? Or do you think that Pop Mart actually is going to have all of these brands have some level of importance?

Blind Box is not exclusive to Pop Mart. Blind Box is not revolutionary. Like you mentioned, Pokemon is a Blind Box product. Happy Meals are a Blind Box product. I mean, if you go to an Asian mall, you'll see all sorts of different stores selling stuff that are in the Blind Box format. It's not just Pop Mart. Dave, you are correct, but Pop Mart has now...

basically substantiated its brand as the legitimate real brand. And they have something that is incredibly important. They have distribution. All right. They have 6000 vending machines. If you go on TikTok, you will actually see fights breaking out in malls because one person will wait at the vending machine for

hours for them to fill it and open it up. It only starts selling after a certain time and they'll buy out the entire vending machine. It's insanity. We have a resale market for these. It's literally, it's a flipper market. People trying to buy as many as they can and get them on eBay.

It's a flipper market, but what's really fascinating because even on the secondary, Dave, these things are only valued at hundreds to maybe tops a thousand bucks, like tops, like $1,500. So it's not even as if, it's not what you would think of as being a conventional gamblers degenerate secondary market, like with sports cards.

Most of this is for fun. Most of the people that land the rares are not reselling them. They're trading them and they're just having fun with it. It's like fun going for the rares and it's fun going for the ones that you actually want because you don't know what you're going to end up.

up with. So they're creating this cultural kind of market for collecting and trading. It's very similar to what I see in Pokemon, where the joy in Pokemon is not so much the money that you make off of it. The joy is landing something great. Okay. Most of the people that collect Pokemon are not in it for the money. Yeah.

They're in it for the gamemanship, okay? And that's exactly what I'm seeing with Labubu and PopMart. The difference is that they are tapping into the 50% of humans that have never tapped into this psychological phenomenon before. Collecting things is kind of a psychological phenomenon for humans anyway. We were hunter-gatherers long before we were, like, people who talked on podcasts all day, right? So...

It is natural for a human to want to go out searching for things. Yeah, I like it. I mean, it makes you want to feel something, right? You don't know what you're going to get. You want to feel that. I think it's great. Well, and I think that's the thing I like. The thing that I get about it is that this is a natural human experience, too. It is the experience. It's not the stupid toy. It's the experience. Yeah.

And the gambling element is new for this demographic. The gamble that that's existed in the card world for a long time. But I just. Jordan nailed it though. Wait, Dave Jordan just actually nailed it better than I could have ever have nailed it in a few words.

you want to feel something. That is actually probably the number one thing to understand here. So many people in this world right now just want to feel something and men are

kind of have an outlet for that with a lot of things they do with gambling, sports wagering, investing. If you're a nerd, Pokemon, right? All that stuff, video games, okay? The thing that women do to feel something historically is shop, okay? But this is a way to actually shop for something reasonably priced, okay?

Okay. For the subsection of women in the world. And there are a lot of them that do not either have the budget or just don't care that much about, you know, fashion, right? Like as to the degree that every woman does. And this is giving them that same feeling of wanting to feel something like you have to get into the psychology of it. But I want to also talk about the trade really quick guys, because the valuation for me is so outlandish. It's so outlandish. Okay. So I'm going...

That's what I keep saying. You don't think this should be a $44 billion company or do you? Do you think it should be a $100 billion company? I'll tell you. I think that the world, the investment world has fully factored in to where they are today as a company, meaning they factored in the trend. They've already done that. But what they have not factored in is this trend continuing at this pace.

Okay, so I have invested a large amount of money into Pop Mart by converting a lot of my US dollars into Hong Kong dollars through Schwab Global and then purchasing it, Pop Mart on the Hong Kong exchange because I do not trust the US traded ADR. It's traded too thinly, I do not trust it. But my methodology here is to only own this stock

as long as the trend continues. So I'm monitoring data, not on a weekly basis, but on a daily basis. And as long as I see the search frequency, the web traffic, the app downloads continue to climb, I will hold on to my pot mark position.

fully understanding that even if that happens, there is a real risk that China might clamp down on

on regulation and I could still lose 20 to 30 percent value of this stock just by China doing that. But if China does that, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy more at those levels as long as the data is supporting it. The reason why? I don't think you could stop kids from buying them. They will buy them through their parents. This stuff is like crap.

And people are going to get it. I saw one of the executives from Pop Mart basically saying that these are not kids toys. They're not really for children. It is for that kind of kid adult range. The Gen Z kid adult. It's like the Disney adults, right? It's more than that, Jordan. It's for everyone. It's for kids. It's for adults. And it's not just for the Disney adults. I think that's really like

Jordan, I think you are tightening the demographic too much because Rihanna went out and bought these. Lisa bought them. They're celebrities. Kardashian has a dozen of them. Kim does. She also bought a Ford Ape. How did that work out for her? Dave, that was different. Just saying, this is very similar to an NFT for girls. No, these are way less expensive. No, no, no. These are not NFTs for girls.

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This is broad-based mass consumption. It is cool. It's fun. And it's the thing to do. And as long as it's a thing to do, as long as it's considered acceptable, cool, and fun, and still continues to tap into that kind of gambling mentality, which every human has,

I will own this stock. The second I see demand start to flatten through a flattening of search, a flattening of web traffic, and a flattening of app downloads globally, that's when I will sell my position in PopMart. And it could be at any moment.

That's my trading. By the way, we're not financial advisors. I'm just telling you what we're doing with our portfolio. I don't think Jordan and Dave are buying into this. I don't think they bought into Pop Art. I bought the ADR. I mean, not a lot. Just enough to have fun with. All right. That's cool. If I was putting real money into it, I'd do what you did. But I'm not. I'm putting just...

some fun money into it. I put real money in. I put massive amounts of real money in. And I put it in before the stock made the last pop, but also before it got destroyed the last couple of days because of the Chinese media saying that this is getting too big and the government needs to stop down. But I don't think they can stop it. And by the way, guys, most of the growth is happening outside of China.

right now. So even if China does that, most of the growth is happening outside of China. I am not sure that the investor in Pop Mart, which is mostly Chinese investment firms,

fully grasp the degree to which this is taking hold in the US. Again, if you watch Labubu videos on TikTok, you will understand the depth of interest. And by the way, what I love about this trade

is that we're in June because you know what's coming, the holiday season. It is so perfectly aligned for this holiday season in the U.S. right now. It could be this holiday season's Stanley Cup. Collectible, fun, female-targeted, multiple colors, limited quantities. Boom. Boom. You just nailed it. But, okay, I'm not buying it, though. I'm not buying it.

You had a negative attitude from the beginning on this. From the first thing I sent you on the move, you had a negative attitude. I feel like it was almost visceral because of how quickly he responded to it. I don't think he even had time to do the real homework. I think he just looked at the valuation and was like, hell no. Listen, I will say this. I'm not going to make an investment in a company that has...

Okay, maybe they have a high profit margin. Their $900 million of sales might crank out $300 million of profit, but no. It's only like an ADX PE, right? It's only like an ADPE. All right, I get it. I understand that. But, look, I understand it, but.

I will own this stock as long as the momentum of sales and consumer interest continues to broaden. And right now, it's not just broadening. It's actually accelerating right now. Okay. So their gross profit last year was $9.23 billion. In the trailing 12 months, this is $9.44 billion.

No, Dave, you're talking about foreign currency right now, dude. You're not talking about US. Oh, yeah, that's foreign currency. No, I've got to do the math. Yeah. I hate foreign companies. I have the math. I have it right. I'll read it to you if you want to know what it was. So in 2024, the revenue was 1-- So I'm saying $9 billion. That's going to be way less in US dollars. No, no, Dave, I don't even know what you're reading right now. Because in '24, I'm showing the US revenue to be $1.8 billion.

I was reading Hong Kong dollars. Now, Labubu and the Monsters IP, Labubu is part of the Monsters IP, was 419. Excuse me. Wait, wait. No. That's, yes, that's correct. 419 dollars.

a million so roughly i don't know what is that between a third and a fourth of their revenue is the monsters ip so they have a massive amount of revenue that goes well beyond labubu so as labubu and the monsters ip which is really the hot thing here that has all the growth as that continues to accelerate

We could see massive expansion of profits, I think, for this overall brand still ahead of us. So listen, guys, I like this. As a company, they're kind of similar in size as far as revenue and market, not market cap, but revenue to Funko. Market cap is way different, but-

Funko does about the same in revenue. It's a really bad comparison. Really bad. They make random collectible toys. That's not going to be a bad comparison. Not even close. I'll tell you why, Dave. First of all. And Funko is currently valued at

$269 million. Dave, Dave, I just want to let everybody know that the plan today, so we had a plan going into today, and the plan was to spend the first 10 minutes on marketing. And that has gotten thrown out the window.

Margins on Funko stink, okay? Like they have to license all that stuff, Dave. They have licensing on everything that they make, okay? And they sell those things for way less, way, way, way less. And they have to sell most of them through other retailers. They have more revenue than PopMart. And their valuation is sub-

okay listen i will say this uh pop mart is a dangerous trade if you're not watching the demand daily like i am okay and like that news came out and boom well you know jordan though i don't think we can control that news flow it's just gonna be what it's gonna be right so like yeah i feel

I feel like they got a big hit. But you have to know what's going on. You kind of do. But I think the only thing within our control as investors is keeping an eye on the demand. And I love the setup going into the holiday season. If the demand continues to scale and ramp, especially in the U.S.,

and they're able to produce enough of these to satisfy that demand, especially in the U.S., I think we continue to see momentum through the holiday season. So I kind of, you know, I like it here, but I'm keeping a close eye on it. Okay, second half of the episode. Yeah, but blind boxes, I think, are a thing, and I think that our U.S.-based toy companies are going to get more into blind boxes, and I've seen that, like,

There are U.S. brands that are selling, like My Little Pony, I think, has a blind box product. I agree, but listen, it's this... There's a cultural coolness of these things that kind of came out of China. It's a manufactured corporate product.

collector. It's a hobby that influencers influenced you to want to hang off of your handbag. It had nothing to do with influencers. This trend was not about influencers, but do you know why this trend worked, Dave? Sometimes there's just a little bit of magical luck involved. And I will say this, Pop Mart, right time, right place, got lucky. They got lucky, okay? But it

But how long can they stay lucky? How long can they stay lucky? Once you've collected all six of this collection, do you really want to be a collector of other figurines in other collections? Okay, well, Dave, do you know what? You know what's hotter than it's ever been? Because I just got done with Collecticon Dallas this last weekend.

i don't know pokemon pokemon right this moment is hotter than it's ever been like it is hot hot hot we can we we literally like sell out of tickets now to every collecticon because pokemon is that hot and that started in 1990 dave you're gonna have to open up the doors to a wider audience and have these labubu heads coming in

But the difference is Pokemon is not cool outside of that demographic. These things are cool with moms, with girls, with fashionistas. There's every single element of

the female demographic globally do you know and something you can relate to dave you know what a four quadrant movie is i know you know what that is this is like the equivalent of a four quadrant movie within the female sector for toys because it's cool with kids it's cool with adults it's cool with nerds it's cool with the people that are into like the trendy fashion stuff it is like there's not one

part of the female demographic where this is acceptable right now. But do you think that the sequel is going to be as popular as the LeBoubou? I'm already seeing it, yes. I'm already seeing it. I'm already seeing it. And by the way, Dave, LeBoubou doesn't end. It just continues. How long are you going to want to hang a LeBoubou off of your purse?

I don't know. It's a fad. It doesn't seem like it's going to be like, I get the, the, the Pokemon has an underground society. That is an authentic community of people. What does it matter? What does it matter? Outlet for your consumption.

But Dave, you're proving my point. I don't care because I'm going to sell the second it starts to flatten out. I don't care if this thing falls apart in three months or six months or 24 months because I'm watching it every day and I have enough eyes

eyeballs on this, and I'm visiting the stores weekly myself, because we have one in Dallas, by the way. We have one at the Galleria. You should go. That I am going to exit my position the second I see any hint of the trend flattening out. So I don't care if it's a fad or if it's something that is lasting. That's what I'm saying here. I'm not disagreeing with you necessarily. You're just disagreeing.

No, we agree. We agree that we don't know how much longer it's going to last, but I don't care. And I agree that there are things about this trend that makes it different. I just don't see the people who are driving this continuing to drive it.

I see it being very popular in Asian culture. I don't know how long it's going to be popular in the Western world. I don't know. I could be wrong. Asian culture is hot right now everywhere, including in the U S and Europe. Like Asian culture is having a moment. Anime as you're well aware, Dave is like,

has been the hottest thing in the entire entertainment sector for the last 10 years. We will have to just watch the stock. Right now it's up 600% year to date or in one year. It's down 13% after China might be clamping down on sales. We know that their sales, like 70% of their sales are to China.

They could have expansive growth. They could have an insane holiday season in the U.S. But what does an insane holiday season mean? Does that mean that instead of 300 million of profit, they're doing 900 million of profit? Does that make them worth $44 billion as a company? No, not at all. It doesn't matter, Dave. The valuation doesn't matter. When something's growing like that,

the stock price will reflect. I feel like I'm the Jordan of this episode because normally Jordan would be like upset that the valuation is completely absurd. Things I would have never expected is for Jordan to be team Labubu, but I love it. I love it, man. I love it. He owns the stock. This is so unexpected. That is mind blowing to me. And not much, a small amount. We're going to have to check back in on this topic in the future because this is,

This is going to go one way or another, and we'll have to see. So from Labubu, we should probably transition to nuclear world war, which is the... So there's two big things happening in the world right now. There's Labubu and there's world war. Labubu and world war. Let's transition to world war. What the hell are you guys doing? I'm going to say there's no way this turns into a world war. Tell me why. I just don't think you have the interested parties, right? So you don't have...

I mean, you've got Donald Trump kind of flirting with talking about nuclear weapons, but we're not that dumb, right? Any of the countries that have a major arsenal of nuclear weapons, of which there's like four, know that it's a bad idea to deploy them. It's not going to happen. So I think this will stay regional. I think cooler heads will have to prevail. Will there be an overtoppling of Iran's regime? Maybe, maybe not.

but I just don't see other parties getting involved in the conflict. I tend to agree with you only because probably the biggest positive that I've been tracking in the last week is the fact that Russia and China have been quiet. If Russia and China were chiming in, this would be a totally different scenario. That said,

It's what keeps me up at night because if I wake up one morning and there's word out of China, more so China than Russia, that they now want to get involved or threatening taking – But China doesn't get involved directly with conflicts like this. If anything, they would supply weapons. But I don't – Jordan, they have made comments. They have made comments in the past. Supplied with nuclear weapons.

They have made comments in the past, though, in terms of like whenever we get in these situations, comments like saying, you know, kind of supporting the other side, kind of supplying. They do this for balance. They do this. That's what they do. They supply other side. I mean, they're a proxy fighter, kind of like we generally are. They're not going out in.

engaging in armed conflicts directly. But I think the one thing that makes this case different is that we really just don't need more countries with enriched uranium or with nuclear weapon capabilities. So here's the deal. Can we talk about what really matters here from an investment perspective is Trump?

because Trump holds the cards here as to how the market reacts. If Trump gets involved, the assumption is the market is going to take a massive downturn, even if it's just temporarily. If Trump backs off, the market will likely see that as a massive positive period. So it's a fairly black and white thing here. Well, it's black and white, but we've got a two-week period.

"Meh, I don't really know what I'm doing." Period. Right? A two-week, one-month, "Meh," period. - But I think what's going to happen, Jordan, over the course of the next two weeks is the market is going to trade around signals that he's moving one direction versus another direction, right? - Right, people are gonna watch and know what equipment's being moved to where in the world, and they'll make assumptions based off of those things.

That's exactly correct. I would say the best strategy for me is to not overplay any of this and just to let it ride, not be super levered in anything long or short right now. Because when that happens, I tend to lose a lot of money in premium. The issue is I've been on vacation and I do not like to be stressed out when I'm on vacation.

So I have been buying war puts, as you know, Dave, I've been talking about that with you. Just so I don't have to be watching my phone every second of the day while I'm vacationing with my family. And I just kind of know in a worst case scenario, if something happens, I'm not going- And if you're doing broad market puts, you're not trying to target anything specifically? So Dave, for me, since I'm so over levered in tech right now,

I tend to just buy puts on the QQQ for a little bit of balance just in case something really bad happens and Trump says something or we signal that we're going all in. What do you see as the worst case scenario on the market pullback if Trump were to signal there is a bomb headed to Iran?

i i think the market will always depends on what kind of bomb what kind of bomb we talking the bunker buster talking bunker buster i i don't think we're gonna do anything more than a double that double bunker buster that needs to try saying that fast that needs to uh penetrate to the underground

uranium facility? - I've been thinking about this a lot. - Is it a 5% move, is it a 20% move? What is it? - History shows us that any time that we get into uncharted territory where we don't have some type of direct correlation to understand what the impact of an action will be, it tends to overreact out of safety. We don't like the unknown.

I think we could see a pretty significant 5% to 10% market move if he were to go down that direction because it ignites all kinds of controversy, right? And all types of unknowns, both politically here in the U.S., abroad. I just think we don't really know exactly how it's going to all play out with the market movement.

It introduces all sorts of new questions, too, because it kind of derails the president's agenda for everything else, because now everything is focused on, oh, well, we're now in a war. Yeah, not just that. It derails a lot of things that are going on in the Middle East right now, too. And you've got a lot of uncertainty over what the power vacuum in Iran could look like, what other state actors could do. It creates a lot of questions.

Would you agree with me that studying Trump's psychology and his patterns that, you know, he likes to take a really strong stance. He already did this time. He took his Trump, like the hard edge Trump stance. He did that a few days ago, right? And he gave him like 48 hours and like everybody thought that this is happening, that this is happening. And then usually...

when he has time to take a breather if if the world goes against him when he takes a strong stance which is exactly what happened because we had people in his own party we had the tucker carlson's we had you know all these people coming out against him saying that like the trump faction was going to be split in half now

I think that was probably a little rough for him. I don't know if he fully anticipated for that to happen. When that happened with tariffs, what did we see? Trump kind of pulled back, right? And so what happened here? He pulled back.

He pulled back. So we're seeing the pattern. And if that pattern continues, it would lead me to believe that he's more likely to not drop the bomb than drop the bomb. Just based on Trump patterns of he doesn't have the support. He wants to have the support, at least of his people. He wants his people to like him. Yeah, at all costs. He wants his people to like him.

What happened with tariffs? He lost the support of his people with tariffs, and he pulled back. With his hard stance against we can't have a new –

leaning towards potentially getting involved, wow, he lost like half of his people and he's starting to pull back from that. So he'll go back and forth, but I would say the like de facto assumption has to be that he's not going to press right now as opposed to pressing. And part of his rhetoric going into after the election was or into the election was that he was going to be anti-war.

He's been what you put off. And that's what people are starting to say to his face and put pressure that way, which I think is right. You know, you said you were anti-war. You don't want to get involved in all these conflicts. So why are we trying to step up over here? Yeah, he's he's been anti-war and he's always said, you know, look, there was not a war at all the first time I was president. And I will make sure that happens again.

Can I say this is like, listen, geopolitics is exceptionally difficult. Everyone likes to make it out to be like a black and white thing. And you should do this and not do this. I've been thinking about this a lot. And I do not know. I feel like the only way you can make a proper decision is through great intelligence. Because you're ultimately making a decision based on

how close are they to actually having the nuke and to what degree can that nuke be used to do something more than just invade Israel? Like, can it impact other areas of the world, including us? Right. And so,

I don't have that intelligence. When I was younger, I would love to believe that the U.S. had it. Now I don't believe anything. I don't know who has what intelligence, how accurate anything is anymore. I don't know who to believe. I don't know if we have adults in the room anymore. I don't know anything. So this is just a big mess.

You don't know what to believe. You don't know because we were saying just weeks ago that they had no nuclear capability. And now we're like, well, we don't know. And then, you know, we will definitely know for sure if a bomb is going in. Right. At least we'll say we both sides have good cases here. Right. Like no matter what argument you're on, you have a valid case as to we should not get involved or we should get involved.

I get it. All I care about is what we're actually going to do, how that is going to impact the market, because that's the one thing under my control is how do I trade this for my portfolio? Right now, I do have some degree of protection on my portfolio. I tend to like to have more protection over the weekend. I don't know why historically, it just seems like

stuff just happens over the weekend. And this is a very weird trading week, having the market closed yesterday and then a one-day trading week today, and then we have another weekend. It's like, oh, I bet the closed market was nice for you, Chris, since you're on vacation. You got to just forget about your phone for a day. It's nice. I'm going home today. So I'll be home tonight. I'm wrapping up here, but it's been a nice...

It's been a nice week. You know something funny? I was telling my wife this yesterday. I've been on calls basically five hours a day doing work in the middle of the day, even while at the beach, because it's so hot anyway. I couldn't come in and do calls. You know your bathing suit string that kind of sometimes it unravels and comes out, and then you got to get it back in? Oh, I never let mine get that far.

I did for the first time since I was a kid. It got all the way out. And so it took me two and a half hours yesterday to get the string all the way through. At that point, you just buy a new pair. Well, no. Here's the thing. I was like in my house overlooking the ocean while doing – it was like knitting. It felt like knitting. It was like cathartic. I don't think –

Jordan, I don't think I've been this relaxed in years, maybe a decade. And it was because I couldn't be on my phone doing social arb research or on Twitter. I had to use both of my hands on this. And I was on a conference call. I was still on a call talking to one of my buddies. We're trying to get more allocation in open AI right now. So we're working through that whole thing.

And I was like, dude, I am so relaxed. I was like, I think I got to get into knitting or something. It sounds like that is the one thing that will help you turn your brain off or at least halfway off so that you can make it through the day. I do that. I'm not now. I'm not a financial advisor or a medical advisor, but I think that that's probably good for you.

So what he was telling me was that, so I'm going to his, he's doing this conference up in, I don't know, Wyoming or one of those places. I don't know where it is. And I'm speaking at it. And he said I should go fly fishing when I'm up there. Because it's the same thing. You have to be doing something when you're fly fishing. You can't be fishing with a phone in your hand. I will tell you, if you're planning to fly fish...

Take lessons before you go so that you can enjoy it while you're there. Can I do that in Dallas, Jordan? Yes. Yes. You can go to like an Orvis and they'll do like weekend. They're down the street from you. They do flying, fishing, casting lessons in the parking lot. Do I do it in the parking lot? Yeah. Talk to Drew. Drew's done it. Talk to Drew. Okay. I'm going to do that because I feel like I need...

something that forces me to not love the damn phone, dude. I mean, there's like, I tell people, like, I love it. You know this. I love doing research. Like, I love it. That's why you guys get texts from me at three in the morning. I just can't stop myself. But it's nice to be forced to not be able to do that. Maybe you should also pick up collecting the boo-boos.

No, because I would be researching them the whole time. You could knit special clothing for them. It'd be perfect for you. Dave, you need to go to the Pop Mart store in the Galleria to at least experience this for yourself. It might change your life. I've seen enough videos. Unfortunately, the algorithm now thinks that I'm interested in Labooboos because I was researching for this episode, and now my reels are just like,

Well, I went to the mall and I had a terrible experience about... Did you say reels? Hold on. Are you... Yeah, I watch way more reels than I do TikToks because I feel like the best TikToks, the ones that perform the best on TikTok get reposted as reels and

And that algorithm is better for me because this is insane news that I'm getting right now that Dave is an Instagram person. Dave watches a today's show. Every he's like a middle-aged middle-aged. He's a middle-aged woman. He watches today's show every morning.

He does reels, not TikTok. TikTok is too edgy for him. I had to give up on TikTok because I kept getting into loops of things that I was not interested in, and I don't understand why the algorithm keeps trying to show me things that I'm just not interested in. Okay. Going back to Pop Marf, I'm reading the chat.

Again, I will not trade the ADR that trades in the US. I think it's too thinly traded. I don't even know what the ticker is. What is the ADR ticker? I do not recommend people necessarily mimicking our trades at all. But for anyone that wants to ever trade an international company, you can do that through Schwab Global. And I think you could do that through...

But I like Schwab Global because they make it really easy. That's another thing that made this trade not attractive to me. It seems like a meme stock trade. At least it's trading like a meme stock, but it's not available on Robinhood. And so the meme stock investors... They don't have the ADR on Robinhood? I couldn't find it. I searched for it just by PopMart and I didn't see it. And they have a list of all the companies on Hong Kong and that wasn't one of them.

By the way, everything that we said... Maybe it does exist, I just couldn't find it. Everything we said would happen at Robinhood is happening. I mean, what they're doing with this crypto-native...

global trading strategy is fascinating and potentially enabling kind of people to trade other markets because it's so difficult to do right now, especially if you're outside of the US, it's really difficult to do. I think that could end up being just massive for Robinhood, massive.

I can't wait to see what they announce. They have a crypto-focused event. I think it's next week or the week after. It's in France. They invited me to it. I can't go, but it's a crypto-focused event where they plan to announce things, kind of like their last event where they announced that they're adding basically becoming a bank, banking services without being a bank, which seems like the best of both worlds as an investor in Robinhood.

You know what I would do if I was one of those kind of eBay, Amazon hustlers? I would be buying as much Labubu as I can right now and flipping it come November. That's what I would do.

- Just load up an inventory and hope that the market stays together for Christmas. - Patrick, if you're watching this right now, you should be doing, 'cause our buddy Patrick does this. This dude, I hope you're buying Labubu. Like you gotta go to the vending machines. You just got, it's hard to get it, but.

I saw the video from our local mall where they had the lines were like, they announced that they were going to open at a certain time and which door to line up. The crowd outside the mall had to be led in by security. People snuck into different entrances and snuck into the line earlier. People weren't getting any of the product. They only had like a limited amount. I cannot imagine a worse buying experience for a product. Yeah.

Dave, have you ever seen a line like that at Galleria ever? No, it's worse than when iPhone came out, like iPhone 1 and 2, back when there was a lot of giant lines.

So I think other industries need to adopt this whole blind box format because think of what it does to like smooth out your inventory. Like you don't know if you're Apple and you're making a white phone and a gold phone and a pink phone and a black phone, and you don't know which one to, which one's going to sell. Just have a blind box. You don't know which color you're going to get. You might have to buy two and then trade with your friends.

It is genius. It is so genius. And you're absolutely right. I can't believe it took this long for something to hit that demographic to that degree because it's something that every human has. It's fun doing that, like not knowing what you're going to get.

I just say, I want you to imagine something. Imagine how long the lines will be come holiday season. Just think about it. Just think about it. Do you really, if the craze is still a craze, unlike a traditional collectible where you might collect your whole life and find unique items along the way, this

This is like a one-time, like, oh, once you buy all six, you've got all six. No, no, that's not how it works, Dave. That's not how it works. They have series and series and series. They're endless. It's an endless number of series. It never ends.

That sounds really daunting as a collectible. To fulfill your mental of, I want to have the entire set, to know that there's just going to keep making an infinite number of these things. Do you know how many series they have of Pokemon? They come out with a new one every 60 days. Every day.

every 60 days, I think it's every 60 days, there's a brand new series of Pokemon that hits the stores. And you got to collect them all. You got to collect them all. Yeah, isn't that their tagline? With the revenue that this thing is generating, Dave, you don't think that they're going to come up with innovative ways to keep people interested? They will. I just think that these new people who are just experiencing it once, like I watched a video of a girl who was very excited about it and overjoyed.

went through the whole thing and opened and she got to, but she's not becoming a collector. She enjoyed it. It was fun. It was a one-time thing and now she has a toy and she isn't a toy person. She's not a collector. She's not going to become a collector because she had a fun experience one time. And so that's where it's just like... She might.

She might. That's fine. We need to wrap up anyway because it has been an hour and we should all pretend it's a weekend and go do fun things. I'm headed back to the beach for an hour before I have to head home. That sounds like a blast. We'll see you next time. We're done money. Have a good weekend.

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