Dan Ives: Apple's Make or Break AI Moment
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Welcome to the Risk Reversal Podcast. I am here with a great friend of mine who's back on the pod. This is his third time in three months. That would be Dan Ives. He is the global head of risk reversal.

of technology research at Wedbush Securities. Dan, welcome back. Oh, it's great being here. I really I look forward every time when we do this. This has been a great sort of series that you and I have done over the last few months or so. So I hope we keep it up. You are fresh off the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. You were on the Halftime Report with our main man, Scott Wapner. You've made some really big calls over the last couple of months or so. So we're going to hit

Some of those, you got a new one, not a new one, but it's an extension of a theme that you've had with Tesla for a while. You've been very bullish on the name and you didn't get shaken out a little bit towards those recent lows, but you definitely had some nuance sort of calls about what the opportunity was going forward. We'll talk a little bit about Mag7. We have an S&P 500 that's up about 25% off of those recent lows in April.

The NASDAQ is up about 32%. That's the NASDAQ 100. And then you launched an ETF last week. Let's start there. It's the Dan Ives Wedbush AI Revolution ETF. Talk to me. Yeah, I mean, look, the big thing for me is like in 25 years doing this,

You know, investors around the world, they're like, how do you invest in AI? And you're like, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta. But it was very important to me to put an ETF together based on what I view as like my thematic and deep dive research. And we came up with what's the AI Ives 30. And really, it's a list of 30 names.

that I view as either first, second, third derivative themes of AI, whether it's on chips, NVIDIA, TSMC, the hyperscalers, some of the use case names, from Mongo to Palantir and others, Meta, Autonomous, names like Tesla, the energy side, like Aqua, that was one that's on there. But it's a dynamic list, Dan. It's one where there's names that could come on, come off.

But I wanted, when we were talking about an ETF, it's an ETF based on my research that captures Riveview as the biggest transformational theme that I've ever covered. Yeah, and so you've been very consistent on that for a couple of years. I think a lot of analysts in your sector were kind of late to identify some of the,

the broader opportunity, the here and now. I mean, I know that they were focused on, let's call it the picks and shovels and who are the early beneficiaries. A lot of the most innovative companies are in the private markets, right? They're not even in the public market. So the idea of broadening that out, what do you say to folks

that say, oh, this is the top. Dan Ives, you know, very bullish for many years. A lot of folks are calling for some sort of digestion, some sorts of evidence of, you know, return on the investment that a lot of these companies have made. What are the use cases, that sort of thing. What do you say to that? Look, and I get it. I get like skepticism. People are like, oh, Ives doing the, oh, this is it. Maybe a clown face in there. Nah, come on. No, but what I'm saying is,

But look, I like hearing feedback, both good and bad, because you want to understand how investors are viewing this. Look, and I get it, but look, my view, me and you have talked about it a lot, is that we're going to be talking about NASDAQ 20,000, 25,000, but here's the difference.

And it's something you've talked about. It's not just about like one, two, seven, eight. See, my view is like there's names today that are not viewed as like AI names. Maybe it's on energy. Maybe it's on the consumer side. Maybe it's in healthcare. But more and more as you start to attach those, I think the stocks, I think have huge runs ahead because they're

We're talking about $2 trillion of spending next three years. What do we have cumulatively over the last two and a half? Nearly a trillion? Maybe like $700 billion or something like that? I mean, it's about $600 billion. And I think there's about an incremental two trillion. Is that because we're hearing about sovereign AI? You just have this trip over to the Saudi and everything like that. That's the next leg? That to me is the key. Because look, today you only have 3% of US enterprises that have gone down the AI path.

So 3%, zero in Europe, zero in Asia, X China. So when you think about sovereigns, really they're just getting started. And look, and that's why, and I know we've talked about names like Palantir, that's why I believe Palantir is going to be a trillion dollar market. Because my view of like, as sovereigns go down the path and more and more enterprises, and as it goes more, you know, I think global, there's companies today that they've only seen this piece

they're gonna have so much more. And that's sort of my view of just the broader theme. - Yeah, I mean, there's some valuation traps. Palantir, you and I have now been talking about it for six months, and it's gone from 100 billion to 200 billion to 330 billion. And so you've been very right on that. I have a hard time sometimes when stocks get disconnected from the fundamentals. And here's a situation where

Maybe the fundamentals are perfectly good, but trading at 80 times sales and 65 times next year, this is a $4 billion revenue base. You know what I mean? So even if it were to go to seven and a half next year or something like that, it still doesn't make a lot of sense. So at some point there has to be some sort of issues. Do you worry? All right, so let's talk about stock picking based on your research. How do you, you just said you'll move some in and out. Who makes those sort of qualitative judgments? And that's my, so in other words, like,

it's all, it's really, it's the first ETF that's based on like actual analyst research. So, so my whole thing here is like, as I move in out the ETF, that's how that changed. And that's why what I love about it is like, it's a living organism. So in other words, like if there's a cybersecurity company that comes in here, maybe another one moves out based on all of our research. So I feel like it's a theme that,

That it's not like it was a few years ago. It was like NVIDIA, Microsoft. Now thematically...

- Will you catch some shit though from your clients? Let's say you have a buy rating on such and such or you're underweight, let's say Microsoft or something like that. - Yeah, now right now if you look at like everything matches, so in other words, if I have a buy rating, that's actually in there. So it's not like there's a name where I'm like neutral on it, but there actually is part of the AI 30. But to your point, yeah, that's where it could definitely get like complex. But I think for me, it's just like, you know,

All the work we do gives me the conviction. So, and I've never been one that looks at me, like Microsoft being a good example. Like I've never viewed it. Like even when like the stock was a treadmill, didn't do anything for a year and a half. It's like, oh, is it over? And you have a lot of downgrades. My view is like you are in their backyard, in the enterprise, in this theme. Microsoft, if I'm like, unless we're totally wrong in the AI theme, Microsoft is a 600-hour stock. Yeah.

Because it's almost, I view them hand in hand. I don't see how the theme could work

without Microsoft working, just given where they plan to end up. Right. If you think about it for the, okay, that's what I was going to say. For the enterprise, and you think of their installed base, and you think of how easy it will be to cross-sell or up-sell, you know what I mean? Enterprises who are behind the eight ball. I totally, totally get that. You know, the one thing I just say, if anyone is looking at something like this and wants to be critical of it, you do the work, you show up every day, you're talking about it, you're very transparent. I'm going to give you

all of that. You know what I mean? I think that's really important. It's not like you're doing a set it and forget it. And the other thing is, if you don't agree with it, if you don't like Dan and you don't like his work, have a ball, short it. You know what I'm saying? And we'll eventually have other ETFs. There'll be like ones that you could short me and all the, and like, cause it, so the point is, is that like reverse Ives or whatever it may be. But look, Dan, it goes to your point. We spend all of our time like

it's not just passion, the theme is like doing the work. So I feel like I, of course you're never going to be, you're going to be wrong on names. But to me it's like, it's about the conviction level that gives me the confidence to do something. Well, listen, I wish you the best of luck. It's a very innovative idea. I haven't seen one attached to a

What do you research? Yeah, it's the first one. Yeah, well, good luck, man. I appreciate you coming here and talking about it. All right, let's move to, we're not going to do the whole thing on the MAG7. I promise, I promise, I promise. Let's talk about the fact that, you know, the NASDAQ and the S&P, they're very close to their prior all-time highs. If you go back to, you know, February 19th, the one thing I'll say is that, you know, it's not as simple of a trade as it might have been coming into the year. Right now, we have four stocks

in the Mag 7, Apple, Tesla, Amazon, and Google that are still down on the year, which I think is kind of interesting. And so you have an NASDAQ that is up 2%. The NASDAQ 100 is up 4.25%. The S&P 500 is up 2.5%. What do you attribute that to? Is it a broadening out of multiple themes in the market? Prior winners are not going to exactly be the ones that lead us out?

I think it's like, let's just use Oracle and Apple as a good example. Okay, so Oracle just breaking out because now the theme is playing out in their install base. Like in terms of everything Safra's done. So you're seeing massive multilayer all time. Contrast that, and we were there last week with Apple. Can't get out of its own way. You know, it's one where it's like,

They are not in any way attacking the theme. They're not going to get any credit till they do. And it's a stark contrast to what you're seeing with the rest tech. Take Alphabet as another example from like all the headwinds in terms of the lawsuits, antitrust, is search potentially at risk because of AI?

Now contrast that with what we're seeing in, let's say, like cybersecurity, names like CrowdStrike. That's a good example, like AI theme, attach, look what's happened. So I think it's also, you can separate out between, it's a broadening of tech, but I think also there's companies that are attacking it, embracing it, and running with it, versus others that are

you know a little backwards treadmill kind of way all right let's talk about Oracle for a second then I do want to hit on Apple so if you look at that gap that it had on Thursday the follow through into Friday opened on the lows closed on the highs both days on massive volume and what that tells me is that okay they're thinking about what's the next leg of some of these other like to your point about the broadening out but

Oracle's not that story, in my opinion. Now, I get OCI, their cloud business is coming off of a low base. It's probably, what, 15%, 17% of their total revenue. 13%. So it's having greater growth of a low base. It's not a huge part of their total revenue base, but they're basically sopping up excess data.

demand that exists in the space right now. So unless you think that the build out of, let's say, Microsoft's involved into Microsoft's going to pull back from core, we they probably are going to pull back from Oracle at some point. Nvidia is getting into the data center game, so they're going to stop up a lot of that. So is Oracle something that you think makes a lot of sense to chase here? Because it reminds me of what we saw with Broadcom back in December.

They were finally able to talk about a TAM and custom silicon. This is all based on AI and the customers that they have are NVIDIA's customers. Stock gapped up and then kept on going for two days in a row. But ultimately, that gap and all the folks that went into it, that was kind of part of the problem when people thought, okay, maybe this trade is taking a pause. No, that's a good, because I kind of view you as like a tech,

I'm not a historian, but me and you have done it since the late 90s. So we both have seen so many in terms of the context to compare. I actually think Oracle and IBM are similar. And we're bullish on IBM because this is my view that at one point, the party may stop. At one point, in terms of multiple extension, you hit a quarter where next quarter is in line, in line, stock sells up.

But to me, it's really, these are companies where I kind of view IBM and Oracle similar to how I view Microsoft in like mid 2023. Like in other words, because of the install base and because of where a lot of these companies are in these AI sales cycles, I think it's one where these stocks, Oracle and IBM work together.

until they don't, in other words, I don't view it as one like music stops in the next week. Yeah, and the valuations for those two stocks though, always trading at a big discount to its peers in the market. Now they're not. They're trading at a premium, which should make some folks worried if you have a sense of history. If you have a sense, but also I also, I can just tell you institution, look, I mean, I have a unique perspective like a web, which where I interact so much with,

retail and private client from around the world, but yet institutional as well. I could tell you right now, institutional caught way, way behind starting in April. So you're seeing huge catch ups in a lot of them and you know this world so well.

Oracle is one where from a value, you could rationalize that as a catch-up sort of trade. So I think from an institutional perspective, especially when it comes to AI, I think you are seeing catch-up trades to Oracle.

I think you're seeing with IBM. I think you're seeing with Microsoft. Well, it's funny. IBM is basically up the same amount as Microsoft off the late 2022 lows. Why I'm looking at late 2022 is obviously the market bottom there, but you also had the release of ChatGPT. And so I think that's interesting. Oracle's up 200%.

since that time period. It was trading very cheap now, then now it's trading kind of expensive. All right, let's go to Apple. So a day like today where we are seeing semis rage, we're seeing a lot of these adjacent AI trades rage. Apple is up less than 1%. It just can't get going. It's down 20% on the year. We know the reasons why. Will you think to be a bit contrarian in laggards like this or in a Google because again,

Might they attack the problem? We know that they're going to be attacking the problems, whether they're successful at it or not. Both of those companies, Google and Apple, have tried. They've failed. They haven't really. Maybe they're laying some sort of groundwork, but for Apple, it doesn't really appear that way. Look, I'll tell you this. Being there last week and being at so many Apple events,

It was one of, like, you know, walking out of there, I'm like, what is going on? Because part of it is just, like, I get close to the vest. Last year, huge black eye mea culpa, right? In terms of, like, everything. Never seen that by Apple, by the way. Never seen it. So basically, they promised things. They had a significant backtrack on, okay? You get some, like, government scrutiny, Trump, all the other. But, Dan, it's like when it comes to AI, it's one, like, it is –

it's befuddling to watch it now again my view is like do they have something up their sleeves finally m&a like do you go after perplexity like like is there something that they have behind the scenes where they realize like time's up i do think i do think like they're gonna have to significantly change there's a window here for apple look the install base

It's the golden install. The services is there. It's the Rock of Gibraltar. But for them now, there's a window here. I mean, there's a window for them to do something aggressive. Otherwise, like, I think you look back years from now and be like, that was Apple's opportunity to go after. Well, I would say that anything they do right now, and you just mentioned perplexity and, you know, on this pod, I mean, Deirdre Bosa and I were talking about that like a year and a

half ago. I was like, why wouldn't you just, they were raising money at 2 billion and I hit a couple of folks at private equity or, you know, why wouldn't you just do a $5 billion knockout bid, get the team, build it. When you see what Meta just did with a scale AI, a $14 billion acqui-hire for all intents and purposes, now perplexity is raising at 14 billion. Apple has never done a deal this size. Now you can say, you know, when they bought Beats, which was a

dead bang loser, yeah, through something like that. On the market cap that it had then, it was still a rounding error, but right now, I wonder if investors would not like them making a 15, $20 billion acquisition, partially because they don't have a lot of confidence that it's gonna do the thing that they laid out in 2024, the WWDC. They're talking about this integrated into Siri, integrated into the device, and you can't just take a wrapper like Perplexity

and put it really for all intents and purposes to start out as an app, right? You know what I mean? And you can't charge, you know, Apple users for it, right? Because that's the whole thing. They don't charge you for Google search on your iPhone right now. But they're going to look, they're going to have to do something, whether it's like start charging for advertising and get the data privacy. So they, that was the first time, like so many developers that I've talked to for decades,

That was the first time like walking out of Apple Park, the developer was like, what are you giving us? And I think it's just clear the message they're getting. Look, do they care about people like me? No. But here's what they do care about, developers. Yeah.

That's the one thing I'd say is like they care about developers. So what was the vibe among developers? Because people forget, you know, the keynotes on Monday and it's not the sort of keynote that they used to do. By the way, their videos were so cringy, like so cringy. Craig Federici. And Cook was there for what, three minutes on stage? It was just really bad. So I guess my question to you is, and I know this sounds ridiculous because when you think about how weird

well the stock has done, how the company has operated since Tim Cook came over. I think they've returned, you know, like over, I don't know, a billion dollars in something like that to shareholders, which, excuse me, a trillion dollars to shareholders. Isn't that correct between dividends and buybacks here? That's crazy.

But the company, the last big hit they had was AirPods prior to that. It's Watch. Both of those are not particularly interesting. And so I just wonder, Vision Pro, you could say, is a dead-bang loser. You know what I mean? Like, ultimately, spatial computing will be a thing, but I'll take the over on that. So is Tim Cook on the clock here? You know what I mean? And some of those other guys, Q and Federici, have to be. Some of those guys have. Look, I think the thing is that you talk about wartime CEOs. Yeah.

You know, it's like Zuckerberg's a wartime CEO. Musk, like him or hate him, he's a wartime CEO. You know, like Sundar is a wartime, Nadella is a wartime CEO. Look, I mean, Apple needs a wartime CEO. And I think Cook, this is, look, this is one of those periods where the status quo is not going to work next six, nine months. Like they're going to have to do something, a model change, an acquisition, you know,

you know, something from a partnership perspective to change it because I think the big worry is it goes back to developers. You go to open AI conference, which we were, you go to Google, you go to Microsoft. Yeah. You go to Apple. It, you know, it's almost like it's a little time warp, right? So I think that's the concern is like,

It felt different. And I feel like any time it felt different, like I met him back in like 22, it felt different. Now obviously Zuckerberg changed significantly and obviously the rest is history.

But this is, look, this is a moment in time. Well, it's interesting that you just bring up Meta because if you think about late 21 when Zuckerberg was in the metaverse and they changed the name and they were spending like crazy reality labs. And, you know, to your point, you know, a year later, the stock was down 70 some percent and he got the memo, right? But also open AI. I mean, like, look, no one understands Cupertino and Apple Park more than Johnny Ivey. Yeah.

So when OpenAI, six and a half billion, buys his company, well, that's the other thing. It's like that is within Apple. No one understands the inner workings better than him. Yeah.

Well, he was also the heart and soul. I mean, like Steve Jobs used to call him his muse for all intents and purposes. But that's the crazy thing to think about is like there's no talent internally, at least that they have actually let bubble up that could take over from Steve Jobs. And then if you think externally, I mean, the last CEO they had before Jobs was some

stiff you know what i mean in the in the mid to late 90s and i was at john scully who i know and he's not a stiff he's a he's a great great man and i mean that sincerely but he didn't have the dna yeah the entrepreneurial spirit and the creativity and the the ability to just kind of take um big chances and you know you think about apple might they be on the precipice

of one of the first share loss situations as it relates to iPhone. Units have been flat, right? And so if there is some sort of-- - And China obviously is such a key-- - Well they're losing share in China, we know that right now. - As well as the irony with everything is that you're in spotlight in terms of Trump, in terms of bring iPhone to US.

I could argue even like Trump basically launches a phone that's kind of a little kind of shock. - They're talking about that? That's crazy. - But even though it's experimental and it's a PR, it's a little like kind of at Apple. - In your face. - Yeah, at Apple. Obviously DOJ and a lot of the pressure they're getting from a regulatory Google.

China is its whole other issue because they're trying to balance that, but yet they're moving to India. So this is a very complex time for Apple. Yeah, no doubt. And obviously very similar for Google.

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On the Google search thing, we keep hearing about all this challenge to their search and no one could ever believe this would ever happen in the last 20 years or so. Whether it's happening or not, and based on the results that they printed two months ago, it wasn't evident that they're actually losing share. And it's not there yet. Yeah. But also it speaks to like, I'm 50. The thing is for people like...

40s, 50s, that seems crazy to people in their teens, tweens, it doesn't. So it also, it goes back to demographically too in terms of AI from a search perspective. And that's why, that's another example for Google. It's

this is like put up or shut up time. Like this is the time for them to get aggressive. - Right, all right, so let's talk about Meta, 'cause it's somewhat related in a way. About a week and a half ago they launched some AI tools to give to brands. I mean directly to brands to create AI generated advertising. You've just, you know this Cannes Lions is going on in France right now. Every advertising operation in the world, whether you're an agency, whether you're creative, whether you're ad tech, they're all there right now.

And it seems like there's been a snowballing effect of just the commentary around these ad agencies and then specifically, you know, the sorts of ads that are going to do well on social, the place where you kind of need to be if you're going to get some morality and kind of get exposed to the demographic that you're talking about. And three and a half billion users, right? Yes. Combined. I mean, that's.

So that's meta and they're doing that. And so thoughts there because the stock today is up nearly 3% because they announced that they're going to be putting ads on WhatsApp. I don't know about you. I'm not an active WhatsApp user, but I've never seen that on there. And people have been asking for 10 years, how are they going to monetize WhatsApp? No, I know. I mean, but it's another example of like it, you contrast that with Apple, right?

There's things that Zuckerberg and Meta are going to do that won't work, but it feels like they are, outside of NVIDIA, they're the one kind of pressing the button, like going to see how they could advertise. It feels like Zuckerberg, from an AGI perspective, is going full sort of black. Let's talk about AGI for a second, okay? So what does that mean to you and whoever comes forward

to that point, however it's defined, the competitors are gonna say, "Well, that's not really AGI." So in your opinion, define what you think AGI is and how important it will be to the enterprise. Let's just say you are Microsoft Azure or OpenAI

or your AWS, Amazon doesn't seem like they have something, Google, you know what I mean? They're working toward, you gotta think about the ones that are actually talking about it. I've read some stuff where people think it's total bullshit, like AGI is not gonna be a thing. And so what are we talking about when AI is as smart or as useful as a human, right, for the most part? - Yeah, and I take Musk, that's a big thing that he talks about. - Oh yeah, XAI, yeah.

But look, and the point is like true AGI, I don't think you ever get there, right? But I think it just shows- Like sci-fi sort of stuff like AGI. Yeah, but I think it shows when it comes to like Zuckerberg is the one outside of Jensen. And you could say must hate him or love him, maybe like, but especially Zuckerberg now from a technology perspective feels like the one like, hey, like on a war path.

to get there. And what that basically means is like, for Meta, given their install base, at least from like evaluation, you could start to now be like, okay, like, does this mean there's gonna be like a whole nother, is it 10 billion, 15 billion incremental? Like, what could the incremental business be for Meta? So I think now you're gonna start to see scenarios where it's like some of the parts, Meta,

you could get to a four-digit stock. Yeah, but you're not worried just if you think about Lama and where they are Lama for. And Lama, they're very far behind. Well, that's what I, so I mean that then it looks like they're panicking with the scale AI a little bit paying $14 billion for half the company and

And they're losing Google, obviously, as their huge customer. Right. And so like you think about this is like, are they really driving a lot of the narrative? Maybe they're disrupting a whole heck of a lot in the advertising business. First, the kind of old state advertising business that keep

reading stories about WPP and publicists and all these sorts of guys. And if they don't get their act together, you know, they're going to, they're going to really have a difficult time. And it's really, isn't this technology in general about taking out the middleman, right? If you think about it. So, so, so is meta, like, where do you rank meta?

Like you just said, Lama's an underdog right now. It seems like they're not. And on the model perspective, Lama's nowhere near Chachi PT. I mean, because it goes back to open source versus closed source. Look, I think it's like Lama, to me, looks at like, okay, they went down that path. You don't win down that path. That's one, like you have a horse in the race and they finish like sixth.

I think meta has recognized, okay, that's not where we're going to win. I didn't, they've right there too far. Why did they need like a foundation of model? Like what, why couldn't they have, like, if you think about it, if the, like, you know, Apple needs to integrate, um,

this technology on hardware, right? If you think about meta, like, yeah, they got meta AI and Oculus and stuff like that, but that doesn't really matter. The reason they needed it is because even if it's the fifth horse or the sixth horse, their view is they need the whole, they need to own the whole piece. Yeah. So in other words, like their view is like, even if it's not the best, they can't rely on a partner. They need to have the whole food chain. That's why I think they have their own LLM. Okay.

Okay, so let me ask you this, and that's fine. I mean, like, you know, they repurposed a lot of the spend on Metaverse into building Llama, right? And then they've been basically able to kind of get the benefits for serving better ads and being able to charge more and that sort of thing.

here's a company that is expected to grow earnings this year 10%, 13% next year, revenue growth this year 14%, 13% next year. Yeah, this got like a gross margin of 81 that everybody in the world would love to have.

But the growth is not dramatic. Sure. And it's trading 27 and a half times this year, 25 times next. So what do you pay? And here's the thing. Does anyone give a shit if the stock market is trading at 21 and a half times, okay, and growing in high single digits earnings and you're meta and you're growing low double digits and you're trading at, you know, five terms over the S&P? Maybe that doesn't matter. You know, I don't know. I could tell you investors I talk to, they believe, it's not about I get this year and next year, they think,

Let's say if there's a 25% chance that they're right, then meta is actually an accelerating growth story the next three to four. And it was like that growth rate actually goes 15, 17, 19. And then some of the parts, you actually now start to value it on almost. Who values some of the parts?

- Right, like I'm just saying like Microsoft, AWS, Amazon, they've been talking about that for a long time. And you know, I'm just looking at consensus and I'm just looking at the fact that it's 13% revenue growth for the next four years expected and it's like, you know, 10, 11% earnings growth. - But Street kind of views that whisper numbers are probably three, 400 bps above where the Street is. - Right. - So if they actually hit the growth,

then you don't know meta here. I think the view is that numbers are significantly underestimating what they're going to be. Because they don't know how to model the benefits of, let's say, AI across those platforms. So it's almost like the street's not modeling that. So if you're buying it right here, you're viewing that those numbers are a joke. Yeah. And they're going to be like 300, 400 bps above that.

If you actually think they're a 13% grower, you're not buying meta here. Okay, so right now you have your ETF. That is what it is. It's very transparent. We're going to see what goes on in there. As you think of your coverage, as far as let's throw Apple out of there. Let's talk about Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon. How do you rank those? We'll just call them the hyperscalers as far as conviction. Microsoft, Amazon, Meta.

I'd put IBM and a guy put IBM and Oracle. I had a Google like, yeah, because in my view where like, because Google has like, remember still bullish and good, but if I had like rank order, because you have like,

The perceived headwinds, whether you're fighting the goose, you got the DOJ thing. They're still behind the eight ball and some of those other issues. But I think like number one, like to me, Microsoft has like a clear path to like 550 to 600. Like that Microsoft and Amazon to me are the two where it's like...

All right, we haven't... Give me your elevator pitch on Amazon. We haven't talked about it yet, but I'm just curious. I mean, to me, it's just like, I'd argue like Jassy for the first 18 months was basically cleaning up. Some mis-execution. And now he's an AWS guy. And I think like the view that...

as really the cloud leader. I mean, Microsoft is the enterprise, but I mean, from a share perspective, and I believe like their ability to monetize and AI is going to be significant when it comes to AWS. I think the anthropic relationship is something that is still being underestimated. At least when I talk to customers of that, like what Amazon is now doing when they're actually set, they're able to sell a full stack. You weren't able to do that even six months ago.

So my view of Amazon is like from advertising to the e-commerce piece, where I think numbers are very conservative out there and you have stabilization from a margin growth perspective. But you're basically now owning what I think, like if they could be successful on this AWS penetration story when it comes to AI,

you start to look at what could be $280, $300 stock. - Yeah, so I say a lot of dumb things on podcasts and on Fast Money, but last year after really taking a hard look, my initial reaction at a WWDC that afternoon was like, there's no there there, okay? And the fact that the stock rallied like that,

over like, let's say a few trading days or something. I think it gained like 12% or something like that. I didn't get it. Now, I get why investors wanted to believe, you know, but I made this comment that I think that Microsoft is going to overtake Apple in market cap and it's never going to look bad.

And if you think of it right now, Apple has a $2.95 trillion market cap and Microsoft has a $3.55 trillion market cap. That'll be the first. Them and Nvidia, $4 trillion. Yeah. And then Five also or no? I believe we'll be sitting here...

a year, two years from now. And we'll be talking about four and ultimately $5 trillion market because I just think tech more and more, whether it's percent market share, it just continues to increase more and more. - Yeah, all right, before we get to macro, 'cause I definitely want to hit that on the way out, let's do Tesla here. You were on the record, I think,

suggesting that it's on its way to two trillion. Here it is at, what, 1.1 or something like that. They didn't have a robo taxi event. I don't know why it was being billed as such, you know what I mean? But they were putting some out on the road. - Well, they will, like, June 22nd, whatever, they'll do probably,

Depends if it's a soft launch or how they're actually going to like. But they have a couple on the road right now, right? So Kathy Wood, who also has an ETF, a very famous one, you know, she thinks it's going to be the first $5 trillion market cap company. She thinks it's going, you know, over the next few years, it's Robotaxi, it's robotics. It's probably, you know, I suspect they buy X and XAI, you know, next year, especially as they're trying to build out

It's like, don't look here just yet. Look here and then we'll look there in a year or so. So why is this a $2 trillion market cap? And what kind of time browsing are you thinking of? Look, I mean, it's my view. I know we've talked about a lot. It's like my view is like this is the beginning of what's going to be in 25, 30 cities. Like I view despite like the on again, off again with Trump, like you're going to have a very, very,

green-lighted autonomous roadmap, federal, not state, over the next one, two years. I think when it comes down to true level four autonomous, true scale and scope, I don't think there's anyone that can match Tesla. Now, look, Waymo, first mover advantage. But Waymo, look, they're $230,000 cars and they're in four cities. So I just think when it comes to the view of autonomous, I believe 20% of vehicles...

when we look out over the next seven, eight years, are going to be autonomous. And I think what's going to happen is that they're going to OEM that autonomous technology to other automakers. So that's, look, we are in the beginning of this era.

key stage now look what do you think other automakers are going to want to license this technology when they recognize what a competitor you know tesla has been on the ev front i just think they don't have a choice because look they're gonna have to offer autonomous at some in some form whether it's bronze gold no silver i just think they will just like what's happening from a

supercharger perspective with other automakers. I just believe autonomous is how they, they ultimately will be the sort of big winner. - Who owns the fleets? Because this is gonna be a huge issue. If you think about it, I've talked about this before with Uber and Lyft,

You know, either the owners or the drivers own the fleets. There are some fleet services, but I think they're less than 15% of the cars on the road. And you have insurance. You have the depots. You have the cleaning. You have the charging. I mean, the list goes on and on. Elon talks about, you know, consumers putting their cars in the fleet. That's kind of high in the, you know, pie in the sky sort of crap. This thing is, you just mentioned Waymo in four cities. It's going to be complicated.

You know what I mean? Like it's not going to be an easy sort of like point from A to Z. It is complicated. But see, like it's my view and like Jensen's talked about it is that I believe like when you buy AGI, see to me, the holy grail for AI is autonomous and robotics. Whether it's Tesla, UA, or you're saying it's, you know, it's going to be like other players, other robotics player. But I believe that is true.

Physical AI is the whole... And they're going to have it if they can execute because it's, you know, it's RoboTax and it's robotics. And that's how you think. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I get it. You and I, we've kind of gone back and forth about Tesla and Elon. But I do agree with you what you say about the... We've talked about the fleet concept. I agree with you. Like when you talk about like they're going to add it to the fleet and you're going to have your...

but right now you're a Tesla's part of the fleet picking people up. I think that's, yeah. I mean, we're going to need a lot more clarity. And by the way, you know, it's interesting that, um, there's a headline today or at least a story that, you know, the Trump administration is looking to make it easier to get to full self driving. But on the flip side, I think that that's probably a little bit of a carrot cause they're going to cut out, um,

you know, the tax credits. And then they're also like ripping money away from the build out of the supercharger network or the charging network, which is also something that I think is a massive headwind. As well as also like if any, once these, like in Austin, if one hits a squirrel, yeah.

it'll be a huge foot, right? So it's like, yeah, it's going to be a bright, bright spot. I just think I'll take the over on that. I'm not going to take the over as far as getting the 2 trillion. Cause I have no idea. You don't have any idea. And you know, it's not going to be a straight line. I know that folks saw when it doubled late last year, they thought it was going to be a straight line, but there is something called gravity in markets also. All right. Let's kind of finish with the macro here because going back, uh,

Mid-April, you and I did a pot. I think it was on the 11th. A dark day. Yeah, and everybody was really bogged down with trade and loss of U.S. exceptionalism and a whole host of other things. And our markets were careening, and there was a huge disconnect between treasury yields, the dollar going lower, the yields going higher. You know, where are you right now? Because, you know,

It's really hard to think of what the bear case is for the stock market right now. I'm not telling you I'm at all bullish because if that was the case, you'd go out there and sell the market because, you know, I'm a perma bear, right, Dan? I know. And people, and just at this time, we were talking about...

You say you're perma bear, but actually, I think that's a wrong label because actually in a lot of ways, you are bullish on a lot of the technology. Sometimes it just comes down to valuation. So I think it's different. A lot of times perma bear are more just bearish in the whole thing. Yeah, but so the point I was going to make is like, okay, so if you think about it, the economy is doing okay right now with, you know,

Yields where they are. We have 4.2% unemployment rate. If you think that we're going to get some sort of tax thing, it's going to be front end loaded where you get the cuts and then you get intermediate term, you know, like cuts to spending and stuff like that. That's obviously going to be stagnant.

If you have a massive truce as it relates to the trade war and we settle something around 10 percent or something like that, you know, the situation you can make the argument with what Israel just did and with what Iran is like hoping to happen, a de-escalation situation.

You could say that Israel really maybe stabilized the Middle East here because they took out Hezbollah, Hamas seems to be neutered a little bit. Syria. Right, so there's a whole host of things going on. What's the bear case here for the market? To me, the bear case, again, it was never like Israel, Iran, oil going to 120, this.

- To me, the bear case continues to be the China. I mean, to me, it's all about the China deal. - China growth? - It's China, it's any snafu in US-China relations,

It's about export controls. It's about Nvidia in terms of, will they be able to sell a restricted chip? You know, obviously the H20 in terms of that got pulled in terms of China growth. Will there be retaliatory in terms of what that means for Tesla Apple? Look, I think to me, that is, that's front and center. If there was like a bearish piece, it's some snafu and a,

the opposite of a de-escalation happens with the U.S. and China. I think that that to me is what I view as like the biggest worrying thing, just given it's still a very fluid situation. Yeah. And I wonder if you got to go back to like February where Treasury Secretary Besant Trump said, we don't care about the stock market. We care about like, you know, Treasury yields. And so the fact that you still have the 10 year at 4.45, you have the stock market all the way back to where it was in February. You have a weak dollar

I wonder if they start targeting a little bit or being a bit more aggressive with China. It's been my view that they kind of did things ass backwards. They should have gotten the tax thing, you know, and then they should have started with China. You know what I mean?

mean? Rather than our, you know, allies. And so, um, I wonder if they start getting a bit more as we get to some of these deadlines, you know what I mean? A bit more aggressive because at this point, you know, it doesn't feel like we're ever going to have a recession ever again. I'm being sarcastic people if you're just listening. Um, and then, you know, it just feels like, um,

you know, this is one of those things where he's kind of emboldened by the taco trade. He does not like that name. I mean, but it's just, it's one of those where that's why you can find Navarro. Like you're going to continue to see Besson because the reality is like,

They way overstepped. They had to take significant steps back. And they heard that from Jamie Dimon to everyone. And I think now, even like G7 and everywhere else, it's a much softer tone. And, like, when you see Trump and Carney at the G7 compared to, like, whatever, when Carney first came, like, a month ago to Oval Op, that's like a different Trump. Why? So you think he's a bit more subdued? Oh, 100%. Yeah.

it's a lot of low energy by the way he likes to call people low energy but it was really but it was the reality i mean that was such a stark difference because he understands like where do you get your lumber from yeah where do you get your steel so now the realities of everything from in terms of going back to liberation day to today they're just going to have to make deals but

Those deals need to come because I think there's always that sort of wild card when it comes to Lutnick and Navarro. All right, Dan Ives. You're not just a tech stock savant. You also got some macro chops there. So I really appreciate you coming back here. It's great. And I love coming and thanks for inviting me back. Thanks so much. And let's do it again next month. Definitely. All right. Thanks, Dan.